I am always surprised by medical professionals who ought to know better when they say that fasting (or a juice fast like the Master Cleanse) is dangerous, will cause heart trouble, will cause death, etc. They obviously haven’t ever tried the Master Cleanse or other fasts, or even read Fasting – and Eating – for Health by Joel Fuhrman, MD; Fasting: the Ultimate Diet by Alan Cott, MD; The Science and Fine Art of Fasting by Herbert Shelton; or Diet Wise by Keith Scott-Mumby, MD, PhD.
The evidence for the power of fasting has been in the medical literature for decades. In Alan Cott’s book above, he has 329 citations. 158 of which are in scientific journals. He even quotes the New England Journal of Medicine.
Cott himself was a psychiatrist, who was introduced in 1970 to fasting to handle schizophrenia and other mental illnesses by Dr. Yuri Nicolayev of the Moscow Psychiatric Institutes Fasting Unit. Dr. Nikolayev was the first to put forward the idea that schizophrenia was caused by a biochemical imbalance and could be cured with fasting and diet.
According to Dr. Cott, Dr. Nikolayev used fasting on patients who did not respond to any other treatment. Seventy percent (70%) of the 10,000 patients fasted recovered and resumed an active life. Based on what he learned, Dr. Cott instituted a 25-day fasting cure at New York’s Gracie Square Hospital.
In his book, Dr. Cott makes the point that fasting itself does not cure. Fasting enables the body to exert its amazing powers of recuperation.
What other diseases respond to fasting? To answer that question, I offer this list compiled from the 2001 Conference on Fasting Therapy for Internal Pathology in Russia:
obesity
general health improvement
gout
high blood pressure
cardiovascular disease
ulcers
arthritis
nodules in lung, liver, lymph
dermatitis
eczema
psoriasis
neuroses
schizophrenia
bacterial & viral Infections in the:
lungs
colon
stomach
gall bladder
intestines
pancreas
Hello,Peter!
I have a very Important question to you, I’d like to know your opinion.
I have a friend, who has cancer.77 years old.He has cancer in several places in his body.He had a 12 session chemo-therapy, he finished that 2 weeks ago.
He got back the CTscan result last week, on some points the cancer decreesed 75%, some dissapeared (cleared),- some is still there,like in his lever, lung.
I was thinking, how about the master cleanse for him? Would help more to get out toxins from his system. Would give him energy.Otherwise he is feeling good, overall no one would say he has cancer, he looks good from “outside”, has gout, has high blood pressure, takes daily vitamins and takes AVEMAR a Hungarian “supplement powder” every day.
What do you Think? He can go for Master Cleanse???
Please help us out.
Kind Regards, Andrea
Hi Andrea,
NO, NO, NO, NO.
Max Gerson, an MD who began researching nutritional cures for cancer in the 1940’s and had many successful remissions for more than 5 years (I’ve personally talked to 2 people who had stage 4 pancreatic cancer before coming to Gerson 24 years before I spoke to them.) found that a portion of each chemo treatment stays in the body. He wouldn’t let people who had chemo do his nutritional handling on their own because it would release too many of the chemo toxins too fast.
Have him start on green smoothies every morning for many months.
No Master Cleanse for at least 6 months after the last treatment and even them he must be very careful and follow the instructions in my book for people who need to take it easy.
Best wishes,
Peter
Hi If all your blood work is normal including b12, iron, normal blood sugars, liver kidneys blood work is ok but am obese
(250lbs) no blood pressure problems and have hashimotos thryoiditis and on dessicated thryoid will going on the master cleanse (or even just lemon water or waterfast) be good to help me possibly reduce my autoimmune and lose the fat ? I’d like to first see if I can get to 10 days ,and work from there. Juicing is too costly.