Fasting Connection

At the early age of 16, my interest in nutrition was sparked by a friend who remained at home, afraid to exert himself because he had been diagnosed by a doctor as having a weak heart. For four years he remained fearful of exerting himself, till one day he went to a Naturopath, who put him on an exclusive orange juice diet for 10 days. All chest discomfort vanished and the Naturopath told him he never had a heart condition, and that his chest pains were due to gas pressure in his stomach, pressing against he heart, caused by wrong food combinations.
I asked him to ask his doctor for some names of doctors who wrote on the subject.

The names received were William Howard Hay in "Health via Food", Rasmus Alsaker, and about 10 other names, which included John Henry Tilden. I began to go to the main public library in New York on 42nd Street and 5th Avenue on a regular basis, spending 3 to 5 hours looking through their marvelous book collection, with some books going back to the 1600's. I looked up every recommendation, started to collect copious notes and began to change my eating habits drastically. I tested every diet that sounded promising.
My first radical move was to go on an exclusive fresh orange juice diet for 10 days. My skin rapidly became free of all blemishes and I felt excellent. This intensified my desire for more and more knowledge. I studied the orthodox nutritionists to begin with - Henry Sherman of Columbia University, Rose, Von Bunge, the English doctors - Thompson and many others. I gave up all junk foods and ate only whole foods for about 3 years.


FASTING
Then at 19 years of age, inspired by Dr. John H. Tilden, I tried my first water fast, living exclusively on water alone which I remained on for 10 days, Needless to say, my sister who was 1 year older than me thought I had lost my mind.
We were 4 children living together in our family - our parents were deceased, my mother 3 years earlier, under the legal guardianship of our uncle, who lived separately. My sister was 20, I 19, with one brother 18 and the youngest 13. I was like a papa of our family, my sister worked daily, my sister worked part-time as a musician and we shared our meager earnings. My sister tried to dissuade me, but my insistence, backed by my faith, prevailed.

The 10 day water fast was an unforgettable experience. Since I was doing it with the only guidance from books, I was somewhat fearful at first, which I kept secret, but soon saw rapid changes in my appearance, which encouraged me to continue.

After this I became a lacto-ovo vegetarian, when I immediately received an offer to work at a hotel at a summer resort for 10 weeks. Most interesting changes occurred in me physically and mentally on this diet following the fast. I soon developed a sense of smell like a bloodhound. I could tell what diseases people had just by the radiations given off by their bodies. My psychic abilities suddenly blossomed and I frequently picked up their thoughts, without trying to. My life flowed so smoothly that I was like an expanded consciousness, emotionally very calm, hardly aware of my body, which functioned effortlessly.

After I experimented with diet changes after 2 months, adding bread and some meat to my diet, I began to notice emotional changes and desires entering my consciousness and the sudden loss of my super-sensitive sense of smell. I felt as if I had fallen from the Garden of Eden, and longed to return to this wonderful tranquility I had lost. I knew that in the years to come I would be impelled further and further onward, in an adventure as fascinating as Ulysses' travels were to him.

Read more about this fast with Q&A about water fasting - in "My first water fast".


FRUIT DIET
Years later, as many nutritionists of that time, I fell under the spell of Arnold Ehret. His beautiful, alert expression in his photograph of his "Mucusless Duet Healing System", was very inspirational to me. He stated that all diseases were caused by mucus produced by the unnatural food eaten, and that the best and most perfect food was fruit, along with some green leafy vegetables, and that man could reach perfection on such food alone. Thus began my experiments with "Fruitarianism".

At intervals I went on long juice programs - some 10 days, other 20 days, several times each year. At one point, after living on grapefruit juice alone for more than 2 weeks (occasionally canned and unsweetened) I noticed my gums began to bleed and swell, and when I got to about the 18th day, my teeth began to loosen in my gums. This began to alarm me, so I discontinued these juices.

Years later, while working as a musician in Ashbury Park, New Jersey, I went on a 70 day fresh orange juice diet with no other foods. I lost about 1/2 lb a day until the 20th day when my weight remained almost stationary, losing only ounces over several weeks. I chewed on about 1 dozen oranges each meal and spitting the pulp out. I craved vegetables but refused to eat them, believing in Arnold Ehret's insistence that fruit was a perfect food - the Garden of Eden diet intended for man's highest spiritual evolution.

Following this period, I later lived for 1 year on a 100% raw unfired diet of fruits, nuts and vegetables alone. My weight was maintained and I ate large amounts of fruit, feeling fine throughout. Years later, I went on another 100% raw food diet, this time for 2 years, consisting of fruits, nuts, vegetables, and 1/2 to 1 avocado almost daily. Strangely, even though I wanted to lose weight, I couldn't, even though I had been fasting on water alone for 2 1/2 consecutive days every week. After the first day of each fast, I would lose 3 to 4 lbs, and after the second day about 1 1/2 to 2 lbs. Then after 2 1/2 days when I'd eat, I'd gain all the weight back within 3 to 4 days. For weeks and months, my weight remained the same basically, even with all the fasting.
Note: at one time I fasted every other day on water alone for almost 2 1/2 years, living on mostly raw, uncooked food on eating days, and felt great throughout. I continued fasting 2 1/2 days a week, every week, and maintained this habit for over 40 years, still continuing it to this day. I looked forward to these fast days since they were my most productive days - no distractions with eating, could sleep as much as I wanted, enjoyed reading, studying and thinking even on philosophical subjects.


FRUIT AND TEETH
When I was in my late 20's, I had the good fortune to meet a Naturopath and Chiropractic doctor, a great leader and teacher in the field of Natural Hygiene, Dr. Christopher Gian-Cursio, who introduced me to a new wonderful world of balanced nutrition, which I went into deeply, with the intention of becoming a practitioner some day.

He told me about his experiences while following Arnold Ehret, which led to deficiencies in his diet. He once went on a grape cure, recommended by Johanna Brandt. He lived on nothing but grapes, cases of them for about 35 days. He ate pounds of them at each meal. By the 32nd day, his gum was bleeding, and his teeth loosened in their sockets. He said that one of his teeth fell out of his mouth. He exclaimed, "My God, I am detoxicating my teeth."

At that point he knew that something was terribly wrong with the fruit diet. It wasn't until later, when he read a booklet by a famous British nutritionist entitled "Fruit, It's Use and Misuse". He said it was the best book he ever read on fruit. I later read his book, but don't recall his name. This doctor stated that according to the theory of nutrition, fruit was alkaline in it's ash effect after digestion and was good for you. But, after what he observed in many people, he came to the conclusion that the alkaline ash present after digestion was due to the fruit acids leeching out the minerals from the body to neutralize the acids in the fruit. The body was not gaining in mineral content, but was losing the minerals from the bones, teeth and body instead.

The theory was based on a faulty interpretation of what actually happened. This clearly explained what had happened to me on my citric-acid fruit-juice diet. This also explained what had happened to Dr. Cursio on his grape diet, rich in malic acid. This explained what had happened to many people who went on acid fruit diets. I remember when I was in a hotel in New York working with an orchestra, when several of my teeth had loosened up, and one abcessed tooth caused my face to swell greatly. Not wanting to quit the job, I began an immediate fast on water alone, a method I had always used in emergencies, whenever I was in pain. In a few days, the swelling and pain subsided and was completely gone by the 10th day and 2 days later I felt something in my mouth. I took it out and it was a molar tooth with a big hole through it. My body had ejected the dead tooth - first by producing an inflammation in my jawbone, followed by the loosening and discard of the dead tooth. The same thing happened to me at another time in my life when my body discarded another dead tooth the same way. When I told the story to 2 dentists, they said they never heard of this before. When my jawbone receded from the tooth, due to the loss of minerals from the acid in the fruit, I years later lost 2 healthy teeth due to the jawbone receding off the teeth.

A surgeon dentist who was a Natural Hygienist and later became my dentist, in Rockaway Beach, Moe Leichter, told me that the worst recession of the gums and loss of teeth he saw in patients were in vegetarians and Natural Hygienists who lived mostly on fruit. He said that their teeth were ridged, soft in some, and lacking in calcium. He believed it was best to avoid heavy use of acid fruit.

Dr. Curio eventually recommended the use of only sub-acid fruits, low in acids, like pears, golden delicious apples, and non-acid fruits like melons, is the best of the fruits. My two favorite fruits, honey dews and green Kadota figs were problematic to me. I found that the green figs in excess (over 1/2 lb), would occasionally cause my mouth and tongue to burn. After rinsing my mouth, my tongue was red, and I'd get occasional blisters on my lips. Honey dews, in I ate the whole melon, would cause my mouth and tongue to burn. When I rinsed my mouth the water was pink and sometimes bloody from the acid irritation.

I remember when I was in my teens, I would go down around Hudson Street in lower Manhattan to an animal importing house, owned by Henry Trefflech. He'd have hundred of Rhesus monkeys who were fed heavily on grain and some would develop bloody dysentery causing death in a few days. He would sell me these for $5 and laughingly expecting them to die. I would take them home, put them on a water fast and within a few days the dysentery would stop and they'd be well. Then I'd try different diets on them to gain experience, and when they reached good health I'd sell or give them to ape shops and look for more sick monkeys. I was somewhat annoyed to see them bite into expensive figs, eat the soft sweet center and seeds, and throw away the whole outside (the acid part). They never ate the skins or unripe part of fruit. This caused me to discard anything I couldn't chew down, and kept that practice going the rest of my life.

My fruitarian diet experiences, the problems I saw with fruitarians who believed that fruit was God's gift to mankind, the dentist's years of experience, led me to live mostly on melons, especially watermelon.
I had always been a great lover of fruits, especially melons, which I ate liberally, considering it a natural food. My diet at that time had been mostly raw consisting of salads (whole and blended), large amounts of fruits, some nuts, seeds, fish, sea food and occasional chicken. I had lived on a 1 meal a day plan for more than 35 years. I ate only at night after a days work, having nothing but water at all times. I had developed the habit of eating slowly, chewing all food well.
Almost always I felt wonderful, and having an empty stomach most of the day allowed me to have all my energy easily available for mental and physical work. The only problem that resulted from living on 1 meal a day was that I wound up, after years, eating almost the amount of food in that one meal that consisted of a total of 3 moderate-sized meals in bulk. Since I always ate foods in the correct sequence (the most liquid first, and the most solid last, as well as in the right combinations), I had no difficulty digesting my meals even though the weight of that one daily meal added up to several pounds, frequently over 3 lbs. With occasional interruptions of telephone calls lasting 20 minutes or so, the time I spent eating that one daily meal added up to an average 3 to 4 hours or more at night. The largeness of the many-coursed meal provided my body with enough nutrition to satisfy all my needs for the remaining 20 hours that I ate nothing, and I was never hungry the rest of the time. By the following evening, my food was thoroughly digested, with all senses alert and a keen appetite always present.

It was a wonderful lifestyle, living with energy truly available at all times for even the most demanding mental or physical work, due to an empty, peaceful stomach. Most people, even doctors, are not aware of the fact that the greatest expenditure of energy in the body occurs in the digestion of food. Most of our energy is lost in the digestive process, so that even an extra slice of bread, eaten beyond the body's need for food, can account for 3 to 4 hours of energy used up in manual labor, such as shoveling snow. When not eating breakfast or lunch, this energy becomes available for even the most difficult and prolonged mental concentration, even exceptional sex ability, and when not used, provides a feeling of exhilaration of mind and body which lasts all day, every day, with rare exceptions. The only time I felt tired was after eating when I enjoyed relaxation or sleep.


FRUIT AND SLEEP
At one time, in studying the harmful effect of excess carbohydrates and its connection to almost all diseases, even though I had previously considered fresh fruit as a natural and healthy food, I experimented with eliminating it totally from my diet for several weeks. I wanted to find out if the sugar in fruit could be harmful, even though fruit was rich in nutrients, calories, minerals, etc. and highly recommended by most nutritionists and doctors.

At that time I found that I felt alright if I could get at least 8 hours sleep, but then, I felt better with 9 hours, and even better with 10 hours sleep, which I attributed to my advancing age. I received a call from a herbalist who was interested in old rare Natural Hygiene books and all books on health. He visited me and we spent almost 8 hours each day for about 5 days, wherein he chose books and we negotiated prices on each. He purchased half of my library, spending thousands of dollars on these books. Having very little time left to eat, I decided to omit all fruit from my diet and live only on salads, proteins and some fat in one moderate meal. The next day he came early when I had only slept 3 hours.

Usually, if I slept less than 5 hours any night, the next day I would feel fatigued after a few hours. When driving I would get sleepy occasionally and had to be careful to not doze off and when difficult to keep awake, I would put the car to a side and rest my eyes and try to doze for even a few minutes.
I was very surprised to find that I was not tired at all, but full of energy as though I had 9 or 10 hours sleep. This continued for 5 days of book sales, even though many hours were spent daily on boring negotiations on many single books.
I stayed on this diet of no fruit at all for about 3 weeks, finding that I felt good as long as I would get at least 5 hours sleep a night on the average.

Then after the 3 weeks I decided to go back to eating fruit again to determine the difference in how I felt. As soon as I added fruit to the diet, I found that I needed a lot more a sleep that same night, sometimes as much as 12 hours if I ate a lot of fruit. I discussed this with Dr. Aajonus Vonderplanitz, a nutritionist in California, and he said that he also needed a lot more sleep after eating fruit. He gained weight quickly from fruit and any cooked food. This had been my experience. The explanation was that the sugar in fruit, even though considered "natural", retained fluid in the body just as salt did. Since sugar in excess in the blood can be considered dangerous, the body keeps it well diluted in fluid as a safety measure.

I recalled days in the past when I had eaten large amounts of watermelon in the late afternoon. That night, 8 hours later I was awakened in my sleep sometimes 8 to 10 times during this night to urinate. I began to avoid these binges due to this sleep disturbance.


FRUIT AND MODERN RESEARCH
Even so-called "natural" fruit sugar can aggravate "candida" conditions and it can be dangerous in diabetes, so we know that fruit has to be controlled in its consumption. Authorities are coming more and more to the conclusion that excess carbohydrate in the diet, sugars and starches which quickly convert to glucose are responsible for the cause of more than 80% of the most severe diseases - heart disease, blood vessel diseases, and cancer among a long list. There is no condition which is not affected adversely by an excess of sugar in the blood.

Dr. Richard Bernstein, recommended highly by Drs. Eades, was a type 1 diabetic, who was deteriorating rapidly in vision, legs were losing sensation, along with other very serious problems. He began to experiment on his diet in an attempt to create a stable blood sugar which remained in a normal range at all times, even after meals. After years he succeeded only after eliminating all fruit from his diet (appr. 25 years ago). And by limiting his consumption of vegetables (which contain only 1 gram of carbs per ounce) to 1 cup of tossed salad at the beginning of 3 meals a day, which included oil and a little vinegar or lemon. Known as perhaps the world's greatest authority on diabetes, he restricted his carbohydrates to a total of 14 grams a day of salad (or cooked starchless vegetables), stabilized his blood sugar at all times and became a super-athlete in his 60's, an anaerobic athlete comparable to the world's great athletes.

We know that even if no carbohydrates at all are eaten, the body can convert protein to carbohydrates needed by the brain and special organs (viz. - the Eskimos and some tribes that live exclusively on meat).

When I stopped eating fruit, - tomatoes, cucumbers and succulent vegetables became fruit for me, and I began to taste the sugar in vegetables. After a few weeks I rarely thought about fruit and enjoyed a life of great calmness and tranquility, free from the fluctuations in emotions and moods that consistently follow sugar and fruit lovers. Another bonus was control of weight at all times, which for me was a god-send.

In the 1990's and beyond, nutritional authorities began to write on the dangers of high sugar, and later, a high carbohydrate diet. Carlton Fredericks included natural fruit and its sugar as a culprit in hyperglycemia, then hypoglycemia. E.M. Abramson, in " Body, Mind and Sugar" spoke of the dangers of excessive glucose in the blood. William Duffy with "Sugar Blues" was another writer. Of the recent writers there were Dr. Robert Atkins, Drs. Mary and Michael Eades, Dr. Richard Bernstein, etc. All of these considered the sugar found in fruit to be a cause of the rapid rise in insulin secretion by the pancreas. When excessive it produced hyperglycemia (excessive sugar in the blood). This was soon followed by hypoglycemia (a marked lowering of the normal blood sugar).

Excessive insulin secretion to handle the excessive sugar in the blood leads to cellular insulin resistance, over-excitation of the pancreas, then the adrenal glands, the thyroid gland and a host of complications. For a full presentation of the dangers of excessive blood sugar, I recommend "Protein Power" by Michael and Mary Eades.

Dr. Cursio over the years was decreasing the amount of fruit he allowed his patients - from 12 oz at a meal, he lowered it to 8 oz. maximum.


TESTING ALL DIETS ON MICE
In 1990, after many years of reading, study and research of books written by doctors and nutritional authorities, each recommending their particular diet as the best of all, I decided that - since it could take many years to test each individual diet, and many lifetimes to test all of the diets - the best way to reach a reasonably scientific conclusion to this question was to do my own testing of all the possible diets on mice. Since 1 day for a mouse is equivalent to approximately 30 days for a human, by running several different diets on hundreds of mice, I could in a few years get the final answers on all possible diets.

I began this project testing raw vegetarian/vegan diets, cooked, lacto-vegetarian, ovo-vegetarian, lacto-ovo-vegetarian, the addition of fish, fowl, meat etc. both raw and cooked. After awhile, I tested the fruitarian diet. In a cage of 40 white mice I put all kinds of fruit. They ate some but were still hungry, so I added fresh corn-on-the-cob and avocado. All seemed well until the 3rd day, when I went to the cage, I saw 8 dead bodies with the heads missing and parts of some bodies eaten. I was shocked at the carnage. This was equivalent to severe deficiencies occurring to humans after 2 months on this type of diet. I immediately put the cage on a full diet including raw milk cheese, cooked food, grains, etc. to stop the deaths. Even with the diet change, other deaths followed for about 4 more days before it ended and conditions returned to normal.

Two years later, I repeated this diet again on this same cage, which had since recovered their health, and the same thing happened. On the 3rd day of this very liberal fruitarian diet which included corn-on-the-cob and avocados, I found 7 dead bodies cannibalized with their heads missing, I immediately stopped this "fruitarian" diet, which was the next direction of all of the 15 different diets + an additional 50 other related follow-up diets which I tested. From that time forward I have cautioned all prospective aspiring fruitarians to avoid this dangerously deficient diet, since I had proven it on living creatures close enough to man to have some relative validity.

Dr. Stanley Bass

10-2004

http://drbass.com/aboutfruit.html