Therapeutic Fasting by Yuri Nikolaev

In America, fasting for curative purposes was first used in 1877 by E. Dewey. This specialist was a supporter of long fasting courses. Using this method he treated obesity, many gastrointestinal and other chronic diseases of the internal organs. The concept of Therapeutic Fasting was populirized by American authors Paul Bragg and Herbert Shelton in early 20^th century. This fashion came to Russia in the 1970s. In Moscow, there had long been a scientific one, which was created by the doctor of medical sciences, psychiatrist Yuri Nikolaev.

“Russia is still a leader in the scientific study of fasting,” says Valery Gurvich (he is a student of the professor Nikolaev). According to him, the best schools operate in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Buryatia, Rostov-on-Don, Tyumen.

Yuri Sergeevich Nikolaev (1905 – 1998)- is the founder of the method of unloading dietary therapy (UDT), also called therapeutic starvation. (Here the word "Unloading" means "fasting") Over 7000 patients cured through fasting since 1972 by Dr. Yuri Nikolaev, director of the fasting clinic of the Moscow Research Institute of Psychiatry and co-author of the famous book in Russian language “Голодание ради здоровья” (“Fasting for Health”). The average duration of a fast was 25 to 30 days.

Yuri Nikolaev, a physician-psychiatrist, began using fasting as a treatment method in the 1950s, while working in a hospital with patients suffering from schizophrenia. Once, contrary to established practice, he did not resort to force-feeding patients who refused to eat, and he found that such refusal of food positively affected the condition of patients. In 1960, Yuri Nikolaev defended his doctoral thesis on the effects of wet fasting on patients with schizophrenia and continued to develop this topic, applying the fasting method to the treatment of other diseases. Thanks to his enthusiasm and the positive results, he managed to interest many therapists in this new medical method and to obtain the support of the USSR Ministry of Health.

In 1960-1990, Russian doctors successfully used fasting to treat a number of diseases: hypertension, coronary heart disease, asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, and diseases of the gastrointestinal tract. The protocols used by doctors were somewhat different, but all of them were based on the method introduced by Yuri Nikolaev. In the Soviet Union, anyone could be cured by this method, simply by coming to an appointment with their therapist. Many patients with bronchial asthma, hypertension, stomach ulcers, diabetes mellitus received not a prescription for pills, but a referral to the nearest UDT clinic. UDT was so successful that it was officially approved by the Russian Ministry of Health as a treatment for mental illness, including schizophrenia, epilepsy, and depression.

Dr. Yuri Nikolayev was first exposed to the practice of fasting in his early childhood. Whenever he or his brother Lev would get sick, their mother treated them with 2-3 days of fasting. Yuri’s mother, Larisa Dmitrievna, opened a vegetarian canteen in Moscow. Her book One Hundred Vegetarian Dishes began with an epigraph from Georg Friedrich Daumer :- “As long as there is a system of killing animals and eating corpses as a common custom, a period of true culture cannot come for mankind.” His father, Sergei Nikolayev, was a polyglot. He wrote, edited, and translated to and from several languages. In 1913, he was very inspired by American author Upton Sinclair’s book The Fasting Cure. There was a frequent exchange of letters between Sergei and the American author. The two communicated in letters. Long story short, these letters together with Sinclair’s book had a profound influence on young Yuri’s personal experience with fasting as well as the implementation of therapeutic fasting in his medical practice.

Dr. Yuri Nikolayev as a psychiatrist (his original profession), using fasting, he successfully treated thousands of patients with mental problems, many of them schizophrenics. Improvement was so remarkable that most of them managed to normally carry on with their lives after therapy. Psychiatrists noted fasting had an impact on mental illness.

Yuri Nikolayev developed a new kind of controlled fasting as a way to help people who were affected with diseases of civilization and overweight teenagers – some of his patients lost up to half their body weight while fasting. His technique is known as “UDT” (Unloading diet therapy). UDT’s core principle is that – starvation rids the body of harmful toxins. Most patients fast for seven days, which is then followed by a seven-day “cooling period” when food intake is slowly reintroduced.

Since your body can survive on energy you’ve previously conserved, Nikolayev’s technique does not require one to be bed-ridden while fasting. In fact, clinics employing UDT offer their patients a free, semi-active routine. Activities include swimming, walking, massages, spa treatment, sauna sessions, chess and attending lectures. So rest assured, you won’t be bored !! UDT was officially recognized by the Russian Health Ministry in 2005.

Dr. Nikolayev cautioned that hunger treatment should be administered only under carefully controlled conditions. The patient and his relatives must approve the procedure and the patient is thoroughly examined before the treatment starts. While therapeutic fasting may be a very powerful tool in the repertoire for optimizing wellbeing, it should be implemented with the most caution possible and under medical supervision.

Food is reintroduced gradually. First, he is given diluted fruit juices, then whole juices and grated fruit mixed with yogurt. These are followed by cooked vegetables and boiled cereals. In the therapeutic fasting of duration 25 to 30 days, nearly on the 32^nd to 37^th day, normal eating is resumed. Yuri Nikolaev said that the hunger treatment gives the entire nervous system and the brain a rest. The body is cleaned of toxins and the tissues and glands renovated.

If the fasting cure is successful, the pathologic disorders of the patient will disappear. Their blood pressure and the glucose levels stabilize at their initial values. The greedy appetite and the increased mood usually last for 2-3 weeks after which they resume to normal.

Unloading dietary therapy (UDT) is a non-specific, i.e., biological, general health-improving, method that mobilizes and increases the body’s defenses, which makes it possible to use it to treat a wide range of diseases, including somatic diseases – cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, painful joints, respiratory organs , skin, allergies, obesity, etc.

The results of curing diseases are amazingly high and surpass the success of all other therapeutic methods. Thousands of patients who have been unsuccessfully treated by pharmacological methods for many years have found health. Therapeutic fasting is  a scientifically grounded approach to therapy based on voluntary refusal to eat for a sufficiently long period of time (at least seven days). Therapeutic fasting today is one of the most effective means of treatment and prevention of a wide range of diseases, brings the body into a stressful state, as a result of which such body’s abilities as regeneration, self-healing and self-purification are activated. Therapeutic fasting is a medical method that allows you not only to lose weight and rejuvenate, but also to get rid of many diseases.

The correct name for fasting that doctors use is unloading diet therapy (UDT). It is the only official fasting method that was approved by the Ministry of Health in 2005, Russia. The name UDT was chosen for a reason. It carries in itself such a meaning – the fasting period, which we call starvation, is inextricably linked with the dietary period of getting out of hunger. Doctors note that the dietary period is even more important and difficult than the period of refusal to eat. During the fasting, the body switches to endogenous nutrition – nutrition at the expense of its own reserves. As a result, a restructuring of metabolic processes occurs and a recovery and purification mode is launched, recovery processes are activated, “diseased” cells die, the end products of metabolism (slags, toxins, drug metabolites, etc.) are excreted from the body.

This is a kind of shake-up of the body: not having received the usual portions of food, it experiences short-term stress, which forces the defense systems to mobilize, and the cells and enzymes to activate. Even for healthy people, regular UDT is the best preventive and anti-aging therapy. To live long and efficiently, we need to be in harmony with the nature of our own organism, and not go against it.

Pathological, premature old age is complicated by diseases. But, even with physiological old age, there are shifts in metabolism and the state of organs and systems of the body. However, by changing the nature of nutrition, it is possible to influence the metabolism, adaptive and compensatory capabilities of the body and thus influence the rate and direction of the aging process. Rational nutrition in old age (gerodietics) is an important factor in the prevention of pathological layers on physiologically regular aging.

More about therapeutic fasting

Mankind consumes more than three million tons of medicines a year. It is difficult to say how much money is spent on this from the meager family budgets. As a result, the greatest harm to health. There is no benefit from drugs - why not? There is -- Paid medicine, pharmacological enterprises, intermediaries. In the USA doctors are one of the richest people -- Profit from sufferings !!! But the patient does great harm to himself for his own money.

The emergence of antibiotics already in the early post-war years and the ever-increasing drug boom in the 1950s and later, due to the really successful development of the chemical-pharmaceutical industry, dulled interest in non-drug methods of treating diseases. It took a while to realize that chemically created drugs are not omnipotent. Moreover, we are increasingly suffering from the consequences of using certain drugs too often. The term “medicinal disease” appeared and gained notoriety. As a result of too wide, sometimes unjustified, the use of certain drugs, in particular antibiotics, directly or indirectly increased the level of sensitization (hypersensitivity) of the population to various kinds (including habitual, household) irritants, with the development of unusual responses close to the disease. In all industrialized countries of the world, the level of allergic diseases has increased. What do caring entrepreneurs do for the sake of the health of citizens! And pharmacies are being built, and fabulous money is allocated for all sorts of projects, and in developed countries, every third advertisement on TV is necessarily some new drug. While life expectancy is increasing in Western countries, cases of diabetes, hypertension, obesity and cancer are increasing, and the consumption of medication has exploded causing side effects.

Tablets and drops have already become a psychological habit with the slightest common cold. Men after forty, if you believe the television commercials, without special medications, you can't even dream of normal potency. Statistics show that many doctors suppress even the mildest diseases with strong drugs. This has spawned a culture of quickly treating symptoms rather than treating the body as a whole. And the habit of taking antibiotics even with a slight increase in temperature contributed to the development of intolerance to these drugs in a huge number of people.

Therapeutic fasting treatment is a saving instinct forgotten by man. Indeed, among wild and domestic animals, starvation during illness is a natural reaction. Animals during most diseases either completely refuse to eat, or eat a little grass. Sometimes they fast until wounds or fractures are healed. In wild animals that are not assisted by a veterinarian, this may be the only chance of recovery.

In our prehistory, for thousands of years we were trained to go through famines and fast in times of intense exercise and spend sedentary times, living in the cave protected from the cold, with which our organism developed both capacities for survival and mechanisms to survive from the reserves without losing muscle or losing it in minimal amounts.

These circumstances logically revives interest in non-pharmacological methods and methods of healing, including undeservedly forgotten ones. The low effectiveness of traditional medicine in the fight against even the simplest diseases, not to mention the "incurable" ones, forces us to look for other approaches to solving the problem.

Western medical science condemned fasting on the grounds that it is necessary for purely religious purposes, but doesn’t provide any benefit to the body. In fact, fasting, no doubt, can restore the health of the patient most quickly. Perhaps the idea of ​​abstaining from food to fight disease is too simple, which is why orthodox physicians view it negatively.

Psychiatrist Yuri Nikolaev (1905-1998) arrived at fasting as a treatment method in the 1950s, when he was working with patients suffering from schizophrenia in a hospital setting. Once, contrary to established practice, he did not resort to forced feeding of patients who were refusing food, and found that the refusal to eat leads to a noticeable positive effect on the disease symptoms. In 1960, Yuri Nikolaev defended his doctoral dissertation at the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity on the topic “Unloading dietary therapy (UDT) for schizophrenia and its physiological justification”. Yuri Nikolaev studied in detail the processes that occur in the human body during abstinence from food. He also developed the first scientifically based method for the use of UDT. Scientific and practical conclusions Yuri Nikolaev outlined in the book "Fasting for health." This book can be called a "fasting textbook". Later, UDT was successfully used by Nikolaev and his students also for the treatment of many somatic diseases that were considered incurable. An article from the “Los Angeles Times”, published on April 3, 1972. An article written by Murray Seeger was called “The Soviet Cure for Everyone :- Eat Nothing for 30 Days” Thus, people of USA came to know about – therapeutic fasting by Yuri Nikolaev.

It was thanks to Yuri Nikolaev efforts in Russia that this method was recognized as official medicine. In 1980, at the initiative of Nikolaev, in the Moscow City Clinical Hospital No. 68, an UDT (Unloading dietary therapy) department for the treatment of somatic patients was opened for the treatment of somatic patients, which has been successfully operating to this day.

Therapeutic starvation, called “Unloading (fasting)-dietary therapy”, consists of two stages. The first is fasting. The patients usually fast for three to five weeks. No food, no medicines, only clean drinking water without restriction. Daily – obligatory walks, warm baths and other cleansing procedures, in particular, enemas. The second stage is restorative dietary nutrition. First, juices from fresh vegetables and fruits, then raw vegetables and grated fruits. Later – a special vinaigrette, kefir, then cereals, nuts, salads … Everything is absolutely without salt to avoid swelling. The recovery diet phase lasts about the same number of days as the fast lasted, sometimes a little more.

In short, Nikolaev's technique boiled down to four main points: daily long walks (5 km) in the fresh air, drinking two liters of clean (boiled, non-carbonated  preferably distilled) water, taking hot baths with washing with a washcloth (for massage) and cleansing the intestines with Esmarch's mug (hanging enema). In addition to water, those starving according to  Nikolaevs’ UDT  are not forbidden to drink decoctions of medicinal herbs such as rosehip tincture.

By the way, Yuri Nikolaev was not a nutritionist, but a psychiatrist, and using therapeutic fasting, he treated patients with various mental disorders (even those with schizophrenia), but then he came to the conclusion that not only psychiatric diseases, but also ailments of the body (grave diseases of civilization). After graduating from the Moscow Medical Institute, Yuri Nikolaev became a psychiatrist. In medical practice, he sought to help a sick person not with medicines, but with the forces of nature.

The natural biological method of UDT, tested over several decades on thousands of patients and giving good results, rightfully becomes the object of serious scientific research and is adopted by practical medicine. Therefore, UDT is the best means of cleansing and healing, when the supply of food from the outside stops and the body switches to internal nutrition at the expense of accumulated reserves. At the same time, all extraction systems work extremely efficiently. After all, about 150 different toxins in the gaseous state are removed only through the lungs.

Fasting treatment is not a specific method for any one disease or group of diseases. This is a general strengthening method that mobilizes the body’s defenses and therefore has a very wide range of indications. For many diseases, if they are not very advanced, UDT can be applied in the form of short-term fasting or fasting days, when patients will receive fruits, vegetables or juices.

Fasting as part of a lifestyle is no doubt a good thing, Yuri Nikolaev says, but he is focused on making it part of the armament of doctors fighting the West’s epidemic of lifestyle diseases that threaten to undermine the healthcare system. He says – there is compelling evidence over decades of how it can lower blood pressure, reduce excess fat and blood glucose, modulate the immune system, increase mood effects and the sleep-regulating neurotransmitter serotonin, and increase protein levels, restore and reduce inflammation.

Pharmaceutical companies in the West are not interested in published data used to establish fasting as part of public health policy in the former Soviet Union and in the present Russia. Yuri Nikolaev quotes the ancient Greek philosopher and healer Hippocrates: “Wisdom is to know everything that nature has done.” This is the basis of the doctrine of therapeutic fasting, presented by Nikolaev.

From the point of view of Yuri Nikolaev, “there is only one “disease” – the result of ignoring or ignorance of the laws of nature, in this case the laws of nutrition and starvation, this single, dialectically interconnected process. This leads to toxicosis or clogging with poisons and toxins of metabolic origin. “In order to fight the disease, first of all, it is necessary to thoroughly cleanse the body. And we are talking not only about cleansing the blood, intestines or other organs (this is now being said no less than about diets for weight loss), but also about cleansing various tissues of the body, which is simply impossible to do by external methods.

Yuri Nikolaev wrote :- “From thousands of years of experience, after numerous experiments and careful clinical study, it became absolutely clear that therapeutic fasting is an exceptional therapeutic tool. It contributes to a radical cleansing, and everything that cleans, heals. Professor Nikolaev warns that fasting should be done under medical supervision. It is important to undergo a preliminary thorough examination of the body.

As you can see, the UDT technique is scientifically proven and is performed in specialized clinics under the supervision of experts. However, there are still several authors’ methods, among which P. Bragg, Galina Shatalova and GP Malakhov’s treatment and fasting systems are the most famous.

There are many cases when, with the help of fasting, diseases that did not respond well to traditional treatment were cured: Cancer Prevention Medical research has shown conclusively that intermittent fasting can significantly lower the level of the hormone IGF-1 in the body. This prevents the development of malignant tumors..

1.      Diseases of the musculoskeletal system, including osteochondrosis of the spine, metabolic dystrophic polyarthritis;
2.  Cardiovascular diseases, including hypertension, initial symptoms of atherosclerosis, vegetative-vascular dystonia;
3.    Diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, such as gastritis, colitis, pancreatitis, biliary dyskinesia;
4.   A number of gynocgical diseases, including chronic adnexitis, infertility;
5.   Allergies, some forms of bronchial asthma, Depressive conditions, especially those associated with constant stress and overload.

A book by Yuri Nikolaev

Nikolaev wrote a book “Fasting for Health” about the benefits of temporary refusal of food processes. Evgeny Nilov and Vladimir Cherkasov became its co-authors. The book talks in detail about the method of fasting, it describes in an accessible way from a scientific point of view all the physiological processes and changes that occur in starving people. Also, the reader finds in it many interesting stories of patients who have undergone therapy.

The first was published in 1973 with a circulation of 200,000 copies and quickly sold out, arousing great interest among both a wide range of readers and physicians. After reading this real ABC of therapeutic fasting, you will change your view of your own body and appreciate the Russian proverb: “Hunger is not an aunt, but a mother.”

The authors develop their own view of hunger and starvation. They note that hunger as a social phenomenon is a great scourge that can lead to exhaustion and death. However, in the hands of people who know and know how to use it, it can become a powerful biological remedy that allows you to save patients from various diseases that cannot be treated with medicines and other means common in medicine.

Meanwhile, at present, there are opponents of this method, denying the possibility of its use for therapy. In addition, not all doctors know how to use the method of dosed fasting for medicinal purposes. The authors show that if the method is mastered, then the result of the treatment will not be exhaustion and death, but the restoration of health and the prolongation of life in seriously ill people.

Many patients with bronchial asthma, hypertension, stomach ulcers, diabetes mellitus received not a prescription for pills, but a referral to the nearest UDT clinic. The results of curing diseases are surprisingly high and surpass the success of all other therapeutic methods.

At all times, people were very afraid of hunger and did everything to avoid it. Hunger in our mind is associated with torment and death, so it is difficult for many to imagine how one can starve voluntarily. However, it is possible !!

Anecdote about Yuri Nikolaev

One evening in March 1952, Efim Smirnov, Stalin’s Minister of Health, heard a knock at his office door. He was intrigued. It’s late, everyone has left except him; he had some last letters to sign. Who can it be?

A doctor from the Moscow hospital named Yuri Nikolaev timidly enters. He didn’t make an appointment.

The Minister was irritated: how dare this stranger appear, late at night and without having announced himself, in front of the man who was the head doctor of the Red Army? Nikolaev profusely apologizes. Nobody in the hospital that employs him wants to listen to him. He begs the Minister to give him five minutes of his time, after which he will leave. The Minister hesitates, falls back into his chair, motions for him to sit down.

Nikolaev told that he came across American books on fasting, including Upton Sinclair’s “The Fasting Cure”, and “got” something. He himself has been fasting for years and is never sick. He began to make patients fast with success, he has just succeeded in completely curing a schizophrenic reputed to be incurable thanks to a one-month fast.

Nikolaev asks for help to develop his research. Curing by fasting would be a major advance, which the Americans stupidly abandoned thirty years ago, under the influence of too powerful pharmaceutical lobbies.

Minister Smirnov reflected. In the military that he is -- in the middle of the Cold War, he will be glad to know if deprivation of food can improve the health of troops? This would be interesting. And if this doctor manages to prove the therapeutic benefits of fasting, it is the prestige of Soviet research that will benefit. He asks to think. The next day, Nikolaev received the news that he was granted a full 25-bed fasting treatment department at a Moscow spa.

This anecdote is told by Thierry de Lestrade in his French language book “Fasting, a new therapy”  published in 2015. A year later, Nikolaev received the support of Marshal Bulganin, Khrushchev’s right arm. It was the consecration and the beginning of an exciting therapeutic epic.

All of these healings provided the basis for his 1973 Russian language book “Fasting for Health”. This book was a bestseller in the Soviet Union. A few months after his release, Brezhnev formalized fasting as a therapeutic method throughout the USSR.

Upton Sinclair was absolutely right except……

“The Fasting Cure”, by Upton Sinclair, published in 1911, a seminal book on therapeutic fasting. Sinclair got interested in fasting as a cure for various illnesses about 1902. Sinclair’s theses were vehemently criticized by the Board of Physicians in the United States as pseudoscience. Another problem with this book is the claim that fasts for up to 40 or 50 days are common and healthy, modern medical advice would suggest that this is far too extreme and very dangerous. “The Fasting Cure” is a reprint of two articles written by Upton Sinclair in 1910 for Cosmopolitan Magazine magazine about his personal experience and championing of fasting as a natural cure-all.

Sinclair believes that fasting cures a lot of illnesses and that the reason some people didn’t experience a cure was because their fast was shorter than 7 days. Sinclair argues that prolonged fasts are a cure for virtually every bodily ailment, including deafness and cancer.

In his opinion, fasting around at least 2 weeks can be the cure for many dietary related illnesses and maladies, and can push the reset button on improper eating habits.

Sinclair wrote,“I believe that when the glad tidings of its miracles have reached the people it will lead to the throwing of 90 per cent of our present materia medica into the wastebasket.” (Page 25 of book “The Fasting Cure”) Upton Sinclair regularly practiced fasting. He further wrote, “I found perfect health, a new meaning of existence, a sense of purity and happiness, something unknown to most human beings !!”

The only wrong thing about Upton Sinclair is the claim that fasts for up to 40 or 50 days are common and healthy. The average duration of therapeutic fasting according to Yuri Nikolaev is – 25 to 30 days and this includes a very strict supervision under the trained medical expert using daily enema cleansing procedures and other necessary procedures.

Due to the discovery of autophagy, modern science is finally starting to understand and embrace the benefits of intermittent and longer term fasting. The 2016 Nobel Prize in Physiology, Medicine went to Japanese biologist Osumi for the study of autophagy. Osumi proved that due to hunger, the body starts the process of self-devouring cellular debris, bacteria and viruses. It receives raw materials for work by destroying old cells, which once again proved the benefits of fasting for humans.

Cleansing enemas and water procedures are necessary in UDT

At present, it is generally accepted to carry out water procedures and cleansing enemas during fasting in order to remove metabolic poisons and prevent autoimmune toxicity with metabolic products absorbed from the intestine. Despite this, many non-Russian authors including Paul Bragg unreasonably rejects this procedure, which according to Yuri Nikolaev -- worsens the results of UDT.

It is necessary to cleanse the intestines with enemas. They facilitate the process of starvation, help to remove toxins and metabolic products from the body. Otherwise, these substances will be absorbed in the intestines and increase the poisoning of the body. In UDT patient should perform daily cleansing procedures during the fasting period using an cleansing enema or perform a “monitor colonic dialysis”. Particular attention should be paid to the fact that skipping even one cleansing procedure can lead to a deterioration in well-being (headache, weakness, and other manifestations of intoxication). In the opinion of experts, “monitor colonic dialysis” is much more effective than cleansing enema, as the patient has virtually no side effects described above.

Carrying out the so-called cleansing procedures from the very beginning of fasting ensure the constant removal of metabolic products (endotoxins, "slags") from the body. Colon cleansing with an enema is one of the main methods that complement therapeutic fasting (UDT). And in order to understand how important this cleansing procedure is during therapeutic fasting, let's analyze the physiological processes that occur in the body during a food break.

During fasting, the main task of the body is to replenish the energy balance. At the initial stage, this occurs due to the breakdown of glucose. When it ends - and this happens within the first 20 hours - the breakdown of fats accumulated in our reserves begins.

During these processes, glucose is broken down into carbon dioxide and water. In addition, many harmful toxic substances are released in the body, which poison the body and lead to the following consequences: nausea, weakness, dizziness, headache, aching muscles.

The purpose of the cleansing enemas -  is to cleanse the intestines from feces, food debris, and toxic substances. Even with short courses of fasting, cleansing enemas are required. Especially with a long course of fasting (25 to 30 days), when the body goes to the stage of splitting the internal reserves of the body, releasing toxic metabolic products into the intestines and blood. Therefore, cleansing enemas are carried out without fail - this is one of the most important success factors for curative fasting (UDT). If you do not do a cleansing enema, then poisoning the body with metabolic products will not allow you to continue the course of therapeutic fasting (UDT).

Before the therapeutic fasting (UDT) procedure, it is necessary to cleanse the intestines and stomach with a laxative and an enema. It is necessary to remove all parasites, otherwise, during starvation, they will feed on internal tissues. It is useful for cleansing the body of slags and toxins. Leaving the stomach and intestines, they are not absorbed into the bloodstream and do not poison the system.

A day before a cleansing enema, a person takes magnesia to remove excess stomach contents. In this first initial stage, a solution of MgSO₄(magnesium sulfate, otherwise known as Epsom salts) is administered to the patient to induce a complete bowel movement. The bitter aftertaste is usually masked by a sip of juice. For this, lemon water is used.

The day before the start of fasting :- it is necessary to refuse dinner; make an enema with two liters of water to cleanse the intestines. A weekly fasting requires 16 purifications :- daily in the morning and evening and one on the eve and after completion. It is important to remember that the water for the enema should not be from the tap, and the temperature should be at room temperature, because too hot and cold enema can harm the intestines.

The whole essence of a three-week fast is more than simple – an absolute refusal to eat, drink only water. Water should be boiled and not carbonated. It is forbidden to drink juices, teas and any other liquids

The morning (during fasting therapy) starts with an cleansing enema. It is not surprising, but even during the refusal of food, feces continue to form from the decay products of internal resources.

Peristalsis is the automatic wave-like movement of the muscles that line your gastrointestinal tract. Peristalsis moves food through your digestive system, beginning in your throat when you swallow and continuing through your esophagus, stomach and intestines while you digest. Even a 24-hour fasting period decreases peristalsis in all 3 sections of the GI tract; however, motility returns to normal when feeding resume.

In some cases, intermittent fasting of more than 24 hours can totally throw your bowel movements out of whack. Hence, during the UDT therapy, it is necessary to cleanse the intestines in order to avoid stagnation and re-poisoning of the body. An enema requires up to 1.5 liters of warm, pleasant water temperature.

With therapeutic fasting, toxins are removed from the body by all available routes. Toxins are divided into two types: water-soluble and fat-soluble, therefore, the ways they are excreted from the body are different. The kidneys, salivary glands, lungs and gastrointestinal tract secrete water-soluble poisons throughout its length. Fat-soluble toxins are much harder for the body to remove than water-soluble ones; this work is done by the liver through bile and skin.

Fat-soluble toxins are excreted by the liver with bile where? – Into the intestines. This explains the fact that during starvation, black bile is abundantly secreted, despite the absence of food in the duodenum, which is the usual stimulus for the secretion of yellow bile during nutrition.

How it is? An amazing fact is that food is not taken, but a huge amount of black bile is released, which is revealed during washing enemas.

During fasting, black bile is released into the intestines a lot and constantly, which, of course, is not associated with any meals, but with the release of fat-soluble toxins into the intestines from the liver. Bile in starving is of black, like tar, in colour, with a yellowish sheen. If you do not do cleansing enema, then for 21-31 days of fasting in the intestines such a huge amount of black bile accumulates and condenses that when you resume eating, then abundant black bilious stools can be present during the first 2-3 days.

In addition, if cleansing enemas are not used, the reabsorption of fat-soluble toxins from the bile condensed in the intestine cannot be ruled out.

Fasting and gallbladder

Gallbladder — an organ the size of a chicken egg (50 ml), which receives 1.5 liters of bile per day. Purpose of gall bladder — storing, thickening of bile and timely delivery of it to intestines. The function of purification and digestion of the organism depends on the accuracy of its work.

Bile is needed for the assimilation of fats, but together with bile, the liver is freed from toxins and metabolic products. When there is a problem with the excretion of bile, not only digestion but also the whole organism suffers.

One of the most frequent problems of the fasting day is an overfilled gallbladder. With regular consumption of food, the gall bladder works “occasionally when eating food”. If the food does not arrive on time, it overflows and creates problems, therefore, the fasting day must be preceded by a test, also called a blind probe.

When the gallbladder is not emptied, a person experiences a headache, dry mouth, nausea, pain in the right hypochondrium, weakness, palpitations, blood pressure may rise and jaundice may appear. These are signs of intoxication, showing that the products excreted by the liver did not leave the gallbladder and returned to the blood.

Cleansing enemas and colon hydrotherapy

Cleansing enemas are water-based and meant to be held in the rectum for a short time to flush your colon. Once injected, they’re retained for a few minutes until your body rids itself of the fluid, along with loose matter and impacted stool in your bowel.

Colon hydrotherapy is also known as colonic cleansing or irrigation, involves using water to flush waste out of the large intestine. The colon is the large intestine, and it absorbs water and salts from waste material that has traveled through the body.

Yuri. Nikolaev Versus Paul Bragg

Yu.S. Nikolaev fasting system is known as unloading (fasting) dietary therapy (UDT). UDT is based on the Paul Bragg system, but with some nuances. Firstly, contrary to Bragg's requirement, there is no need to constantly lie down during fasting. With immobility, fasting is tolerated worse than with significant motor activity. Nikolaev recommends that his patients walk more, and even ski in winter. Secondly, on the eve of fasting, Nikolaev recommends taking a laxative, such as magnesium sulphate (English bitter salt) in the amount of 1.5-2 tablespoons per glass of water, and using a cleansing enema twice on the days of fasting. Paul Bragg does not believe that you need to take laxatives or do cleansing enemas. Bragg believes that the use of cleansing enemas is unnatural. The opinion of  Professor Yu. Nikolaev on the issue under consideration is the opposite: with constipation, a cleansing enema is indicated in order to avoid intoxication of the body.

At present, it is generally accepted to carry out water procedures and cleansing enemas during fasting in order to remove metabolic poisons and prevent autoimmune toxicity with metabolic products absorbed from the intestine. “Despite this, Paul Bragg unreasonably rejects this procedure, which worsens the results of UDT” says authors of  UDT. Longer fasts already need additional measures for bowel cleansing. Often during fasting, intestinal atony is observed, caused by its insufficient filling. This prevents the elimination of feces, which can lead to waste and toxins being absorbed and entering the bloodstream. To avoid this, cleansing enemas should be given regularly, sometimes laxatives should be used.

The recovery period is very important in UDT. After the 25 to 30 days, the way out of hunger is staged, very gradual, starting with diluted juices and then adding whole vegetable or fruit juices. On the third or fourth day, you can turn on puree from natural vegetables and fruits and slowly move on to dairy and vegetable foods. Near the 35 to 40^th day, normal eating is resumed. Paul Bragg recommends a one-time exit from hunger by eating vegetable fiber from fruits, which is non-physiological.