At Great Oaks initially I continued working with psychotics, employing fasting as a tool, especially in those cases with obvious food allergies as identified by Coca’s Pulse Test, because it only takes five days for a fasting body to eliminate all traces of an allergic food substance and return to normal functioning.  If the person was so severely hypoglycemic that they were unable to tolerate a water fast, an elimination diet (to be described in detail later) was employed, while stringently avoiding all foods usually found to be allergy producing.

I also decided that if I was going to employ fasting as my primary medicine, it was important for me to have a more intense personal experience with it, because in the process of reviewing the literature on fasting I saw that there were many different approaches, each one staunchly defended by highly partisan advocates.  For example, the capital “N” Natural, capital “H” Hygienists, such a Herbert Shelton, aggressively assert that only a pure water fast can be called a fast.  Sheltonites contend that juice fasting as advocated by Paavo Airola, for example, is not a fast but rather a modified diet without the benefits of real fasting.  Colon cleansing was another area of profound disagreement among the authorities.  Shelton strongly insisted that enemas and colonics should not be employed; the juice advocates tend to strongly recommend intestinal cleansing.

To be able to intelligently take a position in this maze of conflict I decided to first try every system on myself.  It seems to me that if I can be said to really own anything in this life it is my own body, and I have the absolute right to experiment with it as long as I’m not irresponsible about important things such as care of my kids.  I also feel strongly that it was unethical to ask anyone to do anything that I was not willing or able to do myself.  Just imagine what would happen if all medical doctors applied this principal in their practice of medicine, if all surgeons did it too!

I set out to do a complete and fully rigorous water fast according to the Natural Hygiene model—­only pure water and bed rest (with no colon cleansing) until hunger returns, something the hygienists all assured me would happen when the body had completed its detoxification process.  The only aspect of a hygienic fast I could not fulfill properly was the bed rest part; unfortunately I was in sole charge of a busy holistic treatment center (and two little girls); there were things I had to do, though I did my chores and duties at a very slow pace with many rest periods.

I water fasted for 42 days dropping from 135 pounds to 85 pounds on a 5’ 7” frame.  At the end I looked like a Nazi concentration camp victim.  I tended to hide when people came to the door, because the sight of all my bones scared them to death.  Despite my assurances visitors assumed I was trying to commit suicide.  In any case I persevered, watching my body change, observing my emotions, my mental functioning, and my spiritual awareness.  I thought, if Moses could fast for 42 days so can I, even though the average length of a full water fast to skeletal weight for a person that is not overweight is more in the order of 30 days.  I broke the fast with small amounts of carrot juice diluted 50/50 with water and stayed on that regimen for two more weeks.