The terms “ naturopaths ” and “ naturists ” are becoming increasingly popular in the Soviet and foreign literature . So called people who prefer natural, natural food.
Thus, they seem to protest against the modern food system with a predominance of canned and refined products, with an abundance of carbohydrate, meat, fatty and sweet foods.
One of the first proclaimed the need to abandon this style of power Paul Bragg. His voice was loud and was heard all over the world, including in our country.
The most famous of the Bragg’s book “The Miracle of Fasting” was published in the West by multimillion copies.
And the best illustration of Bragg’s lectures, articles and books was himself, his own experience, his way of life. At the age of 90, he was strong, agile, flexible and enduring as a young man.
He made three-five-kilometer jogs every day, swam a lot, went to the mountains, played tennis, danced, made long walking tours, did dumbbells and weights, was fond of surfing – riding on a special board in the waves of the ocean surf.
His working day lasted 12 hours, he did not know illnesses and fatigue, he was always full of optimism, cheerfulness and desire to help people.
“Since the time of Adam and Eve, – he wrote – The most important problem is the extension of human life.
Not a single person managed to escape death, but each of us, following certain hygienic and dietary rules, can prolong our life. And everyone is obliged to do this – for his own sake, for the sake of his relatives and friends, and, finally, for the sake of his country.
The care of each person about his health, about his body is extremely important for a society that badly needs people to live to the natural limit of their lives in vigor and good health.
I believe that everyone has the right and the obligation to live up to 120 years or more. It is impossible to buy health, it can only be earned by your own constant efforts.
Only persistent and persistent work on oneself will allow everyone to make themselves an energetic long-liver enjoying endless health. I myself have earned health with my life.
I am healthy 365 days a year, I do not have any pain, fatigue, decrepitude of the body. And you can achieve the same results! ”
All his life, Paul Bragg called people to improve their physical abilities and explained ways to improve health.
Paul Bragg died in December 1976 at the age of 95 years. But he did not die of old age.
The death of this man – a tragic accident: while riding on a board off the coast of Florida, he was covered with a giant wave. Bragg failed to save.
He was mourned by five children, 12 grandchildren, 14 great-grandchildren and thousands of followers. The pathologist stated that the heart, vessels and all internal organs of this person were in excellent condition. Bragg was right when he said about himself: “My body has no age.”
The main value in its wellness system Bragg attached to a balanced diet. The essence of his views on food can be summarized as follows. Approximately 60 percent of the daily diet should be vegetables and fruits, mostly raw.
In the rest of the choice is wide enough, however, products that have undergone industrial processing with the help of various chemicals should be avoided.
Food should be as natural as possible, contain a minimum amount of salt, refined sugar, various synthetic components.
Bragg was not orthodox and believed that if a person got used to meat, then let him eat it, but no more than three or four times a week (and not three times a day, as many prefer).
He did not recommend to get involved in sausages, canned goods, fried and fatty meat. Bragg did not mind the eggs, but not more than two or three pieces a week.
He believed that adults should not abuse milk, sour cream, cheese, butter and other animal fats.
“What I eat may not like you at all. Every person is unique, therefore it is impossible to follow any absolute diet, – he wrote. “The main thing is to exclude all perverted products, and there are not so many of them.”
To himself, Bragg was more strict than to those to whom he gave his recommendations. He almost did not eat meat, very rarely ate fish. And this does not prevent Bragg from being called a vegetarian, meaning here is not an ascetic who is disgusted with any food, if it is not vegetable.
Vegetarianism is a fairly common phenomenon and is not necessarily associated with absolute abstinence from a non-vegetative diet. The reasons for this look quite physiological.
Vegetarians claim that the structure of the entire digestive tract, starting from the teeth and ending with the excretion system, indicates that meat is not a natural human food.
Moreover, meat food causes lethargy of the intestine, contributes to the clogging of the body with toxic substances, over-stimulation of the perineal system, the emergence of a number of diseases.
“The frequency of deaths from coronary diseases in any country is also directly dependent on the consumption of meat products: the more, the more often,” – wrote academician P. Anokhin.
About vegetarianism argued a lot and argue now. This topic is not simple and not unambiguous. We confine ourselves to only one statistical comparison: it is believed that there are 1000 “meat-eaters” per one vegetarian, and among those who crossed the milestone of 80 years of age, there are already 100 vegetarians per 1000 people.
Among those who call themselves vegetarians, we should highlight people who eat only raw plant foods – raw vegetables and fruits, nuts, honey, oilseeds, leaves of wild plants.
From this seemingly limited range of products they manage to cook a lot of tasty and healthy dishes. “Raw foodists”, not without reason, believe that any heat treatment of food reduces the quality of products and reduces the content of vitamins and microelements.
Bulgarian scientist T. Todorov in his book “Solar food on our table” writes: “Raw plant food supplies the body with the highest potential of chemical energy necessary to maintain the processes that continuously take place in each cell.
Therefore, when the body receives boiled food with a lower energy value, the function of the cells is disturbed and inhibited. “
There are among the ” raw foodists ” optimists who claim that someday the whole land will be covered with orchards, vegetable gardens and walnut groves, which will replace the pastures and grain fields. Before this is still far away.
But the fact that today, raw vegetables and fruits can and should be 40-50 percent of the daily diet of each person, says not only Bragg, but many other experts.
It would be useful to make one meal (breakfast or dinner) a completely raw vegetable and fruit. An interesting consideration was given by E. Vilokh in the book “Vegetables are always useful” published in the GDR:
“Children often do not get raw vegetables in sufficient quantities, although they tend to them instinctively.
A child who eats a lot of raw carrots, cabbage, fruit, becoming an adult, as a rule, does not aspire to tonic means – coffee, tobacco and alcohol, since the charge of energy obtained from nutrition in childhood will not require artificial pathogens in a mature state “.
It has been observed that adults who consume a lot of raw vegetables and fruits also need tonic remedies much less often.
A very large role in his system Bragg assigned health starvation. He said that in order to cleanse the body of the decay products accumulating in it and all kinds of poisons, it is necessary to carry out a daily daily fasting and, moreover, once every three months, seven or ten days of hunger. During fasting, you can drink only water.
The healing effect of fasting has been known for a long time. In the book “Starvation for Health” Professor Yu. S. Nikolaev writes:
“When there is no food, the body sets in motion its internal reserves, internal (endogenous) nutrition begins. At the same time, the expenditure of reserves by various organs and tissues is uneven: the tissue of the nerve centers and the heart suffer the least losses, the fatty tissues – the largest.
The feeling of hunger appears only in the first days, and then disappears completely. It was also found that with full starvation with a weight loss of up to 20-25 percent, no pathological changes are observed in organs and tissues. ”
Another quote: “During the forced (not health, but we emphasize – forced) long starvation, the body of animals and humans die, often without reaching a deep degree of exhaustion, as a result of self-poisoning by decomposition products.
When, in the process of medical fasting, these products are removed from the body through a variety of procedures (cleansing enemas, baths, massage, increased ventilation of the lungs, walks), the body tolerates prolonged fasting without any manifestations of self-poisoning.
With full starvation, when the body receives only water, no dystrophic phenomena are observed. The body adapts for a certain period to the nutrition of its reserves of fats, proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins and mineral salts, which satisfies all the needs of the body and is complete. ”
According to Bragg, starvation is, first of all, an opportunity to avoid self-poisoning of the body by harmful substances accumulating in it, the source of which is unhealthy diet, as well as water and air pollution, drug abuse.
“99 percent of patients – wrote Bragg, – suffer from improper, unnatural nutrition. People do not understand how much they clog themselves, eating the wrong food and drinks, and how much of these toxic substances accumulate in their bodies. ”
And he added: “Starvation is not a way to cure any disease or illness. Starvation puts the body in such conditions when all its life force is used for purification and recovery. Fasting helps the body to help itself. “
Bragg is quite cautious and, although he was always quite sure of the harmlessness of starvation, he preferred to recommend holding it under the supervision of a doctor or a person who successfully practiced this wellness treatment on himself.
He believed that the transition to a healthy diet from food saturated with products that have undergone chemical treatment, from over-salted food (“the salt shaker doesn’t fit on the dining table, every natural product is rich in salt”) too sweet, overcooked, glut flour and starchy foods, yes and just abundant should be carried out gradually and through the stages of short-term fasting.
In our well-fed times, we almost forgot what true hunger is, what is the real need of the body for nutrition.
Nowadays, people most often take for hunger chronic gastritis neurosis, developed by the habit of eating several times a day, even if sometimes you don’t want to eat.
But to change the habits associated with nutrition, it is not difficult: enough for this solid psychological installation. Another Plutarch called: “Teach your appetite to obey the mind willingly!”
Apparently, all the same time of the day or the usual meal hours are not enough reason for the next meal, although three or four meals a day at the same time produces a good rhythm in the work of the internal organs.
Such a regimen confuses the centers of digestion control, teaching the body to get food even when there is no need for it. That is why, before you sit down at the table, you need to ask yourself whether you can do without food this time, can calmly wait for the next meal or limit yourself to a minimum.
Bragg did not eat breakfast at all. Instead of breakfast, he ate an apple or an orange and made a run. He believed that a person should earn his breakfast by physical labor in order to offset the energy spent, and not to feed in advance. Dinner, he preferred dancing, mostly modern, rhythmic. Two meals a day was enough for him.
A person who cleans his body by starvation, there is a need for daily physical exercise, Bragg argued. Exercise man creates his body and becomes the way he would like to be.
At one time, along with Bernard McFadden, he was the publisher of the journal Physical Education, the motto of which was the words: “Disease is a crime, do not be criminals.”
The meaning of this motto can probably be interpreted in such a way that most of our ailments are somehow connected with our violation of the laws of nature, the crime against the natural laws of being – unhealthy diet and lifestyle, lack of physical activity or poor hardening and reduced (most often because of your fault). ) adaptive capabilities of the organism.
He understood the term “physical culture” much more widely than is sometimes accepted. This, in Bragg’s absolutely fair opinion, is not only physical exercise, but the whole complex of means that promote a person’s literate, cultural well-being.
This complex, of course, includes a balanced diet, clean air, which we breathe, and a psychological mood of optimism, without which lasting physical health is impossible.
Bragg recommended people with neglected health to begin their wellness activities with walking. “Walking is the queen of the exercises, – He argued. “You must, starting with a small one, walk from five to eight kilometers daily and be able to double this distance.”
No external circumstances should interfere with daily walks at a fast pace. Traveling around the world with lecture tours, I often took a late evening walk through the corridors and stairs of the hotel where I lived. ”
Ignoring the puzzled glances of the passengers, he went to the tail of the plane during long flights and spent running there on the spot.
He considered daily contrasting water procedures to be absolutely obligatory for him – alternating hot and cold showers or rubdowns. He swam in the sea at any time of the year and was an active member of the Polar Bears club, similar to our walrus clubs.
Bragg constantly repeated that age, which is considered to be elderly or even senile, is not necessarily equivalent to poor health. Reasonably rebuilding your lifestyle, a man of advanced age may well exceed the level of health that he had in his youth.
In support of this, Bragg embarked on a journey through the California Valley of Death at a temperature of 54 degrees Celsius. Along with him were ten strong young athletes.
None of the Bragg satellites could not stand this difficult test. “The campaign was completed only by the great grandfather Bragg. At the end of the journey, I was as fresh as a daisy, – He wrote, proud of his victory.
Bragg’s books are like lecture notes, but these lectures are emotional and akin to passionate sermons: “There are only two kinds of people: real ones – they take care of themselves, and fake ones – they take care of themselves around others and doctors. What sort do you consider yourself? ”
Already, more and more people live in a diet that is limited from the point of view of the majority, but in fact is completely normal, in temperature regimes that provide good hardening, in a motor mode that meets the standards of reliable health.
And it comes, it is health, which, it would seem, is impossible. True, there are many other factors that undermine health, – Nervous stress, polluted environment, bad habits.
These factors are also successfully opposed by a lifestyle that provides physical and mental health.
It can be argued that each person, choosing for himself one or another way of life, one or another diet, physical activity, this or that mental attitude, to a certain extent determines the period of his life.
And how jogging, skiing, rational nutrition, hardening, the ability to manage your emotions add years of health and activity! The more fully we master all this, the more successfully we combine in a single complex, the higher our chance to live longer and happier in good health and mental balance.
It is a pity that the whole complex of health-improving means is in a certain contradiction with the psychology of the modern man.
Even more in contradiction with this psychology are dosed starvation, winter swimming and a long run, which contribute not only to recovery, but even rejuvenation. These tools seem unnatural to most people.
However, this situation will change. Man cannot break his nature, but in order to survive, he will inevitably change his psychology, his views on the essence of needs. We are not so our descendants will consider normal and completely natural and periodic fasting, and swimming in ice water, and regular jogging.
We will return to a healthy lifestyle of distant ancestors. Let us return, of course, at the new turn of the endless spiral of life. These times will come. So Paul Bragg claimed: “Longevity will become the norm!”
It remains to find out to what extent the Bragg recommendations correspond to the views of Soviet specialists. Let us turn here to the name of a very authoritative – Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor Yuri Sergeevich Nikolaev.
Throughout his life, the professor studied fasting theoretically and used it in medical practice. His book “Fasting for Health” has long been a bestseller, and thousands of people cured of various diseases confirmed the extraordinary therapeutic effect of this method.
The opinion of Yu.S. Nikolayev on the book by P. Bragg will help our readers to better understand the problems raised by the “Miracle of Fasting”.
The great merit of this book is its emotionality, the powerful force of influence on the reader. It is thanks to Paul Bragg’s publicistic gift of health starvation (however, I often use a different term – RTD, unloading and diet therapy) is becoming more and more understood.
I have no doubt that the publication of the Russian translation of this book will significantly expand the circle of people seeking to lead a healthy lifestyle, streamline their diet, use fasting for health purposes.
Bragg wrote his book more than twenty years ago. Since then, a wealth of practical experience has accumulated, which in some ways differs from Bragg’s recommendations.
First, it is impossible to agree with the very strange requirement to constantly lie down and rest during fasting. I do not think that Bragg himself followed his recommendations here.
With immobility, fasting is much worse tolerated than with good motor activity. This, by the way, is evidenced by experiments on animals.
We recommend to walk more during fasting, to run, to ski. When diseases of the joints is important to give during the fasting load on these joints.
I remember the case when several men undergoing my medical fasting course at the 68th Moscow hospital, with shovels and crowbars in their hands, helped the workers to repair the road near the clinic. They had a tremendous need for physical exertion. I felt the same need more than once for myself.
A particularly large surge of energy usually occurs on the sixth or seventh day of fasting. We in the hospital give the motor load in case of RTD even for seriously ill patients, who even walk with great difficulty. They do gymnastics in bed, train on simulators, move slowly.
Of course, exercise is dosed very individually. It is not necessary to force a person to move when he has neither physical nor moral strength.
It seems to me that, based on the concept of saving forces during fasting, Bragg greatly simplifies the understanding of the mechanism of purification from toxins. This process is going on at the cellular and subcellular level, and it now seems much more complicated than it was 20 years ago.
Secondly, I can not agree with the requirement of Bragg to drink only distilled water during fasting. Not to mention the fact that it is not easy to buy such water from us, there is no special need for distilled water.
In our hospitals with no less success using ordinary boiled water, it is even better to use melt water.
Thirdly, Bragg’s recommendation to refrain from cleansing the bowel with enemas and laxatives causes disagreement.
Alas, such abstinence is fraught with intoxication of the body. We recommend that all starvation begin with taking a good dose of laxative, best of all – sulphate magnesia, or, in other words, English (bitter) salt.
It is non-toxic and is able to remove many poisons from the body with one blow.
Normal dose: one and a half to two tablespoons of salt per cup of warm water. Since the laxative is very bitter in taste, immediately after taking it you can drink a couple more glasses of clean warm water and drink bitterness.
The best reception is a few hours after breakfast. Let’s say a person had breakfast at 8-9 o’clock (this is the last meal before a fast), and at 14 o’clock he got a laxative. It will have its effect within four to five hours.
Thus, a person will go to bed with a clean stomach. After that, he will easily endure the next day and another night without food. Remember: laxative take only on the eve of fasting. Then use a cleansing enema. At least once a year. Without it, there is no real adjustment in the body.
I do not mind self-starvation. But one should carefully prepare for it: study the literature, be convinced of the benefits of abstaining from food, instil in oneself the thought about the safety of this procedure, the ease of its implementation.
Of course, it is better if there is a specialist or just an experienced person who has experienced starvation.
Consultations with such a person will help overcome doubts, behave more confidently. But I must say that there are no absolutely exact recipes for each case and cannot be due to the very individual response of the body to starvation.
I’m not mistaken if I say that fasting is designed for an intelligent person who can not only understand the principles of this procedure, but also creatively apply it, based on the reaction of his body.
I would advise you to start with a 24-hour fast, a week later repeat the daily fast. If the fears are successfully overcome and the state of health improves, in a week it will be possible to spend a 36-hour fast (two nights and a day), and then repeat it after another seven days.
All of this will be a good workout for the body, preparation for longer fasting – by the 48-hour, three-day. If you tune in well and conduct everything correctly, then fasting is very easy. I think that, having such an experience, it is possible to successfully conduct longer fastings on your own.
It is very important to learn not to make mistakes in determining the time of exit from fasting and carefully carry out this exit. This is where consultation is highly desirable, especially in the case of a chronic illness.
But already after the first attempts, a reasonable person usually himself is very well oriented and acts confidently enough.
This is the information that, in my opinion, is necessary for our reader, before he starts the wonderful book by Paul Bragg “The Miracle of Fasting”.