It always takes more time for the blood to reach the head on a fast
because everything has slowed down, including the rate of the heart
beat, so blood pressure probably has dropped as well. If you stand
up very quickly you may faint. I repetitively instruct all of my
clients to stand up very slowly, moving from a lying to a sitting
position, pausing there for ten or twenty seconds, and then rising
slowly from a sitting to a standing position. They are told that at
the first sign of dizziness they must immediately put their head
between their knees so that the head is lower than the heart, or
squat/sit down on the floor, I once had a faster who forgot to obey
my frequent warnings. About two weeks into a long fast, she got up
rapidly from the toilet and felt dizzy. The obvious thing to do was
to sit back down on the toilet or lie down on the bath rug on the
floor, but no, she decided that because she was dizzy she should
rush back to her bed in the adjoining room. She made it as far as
the bathroom door and fainted, out cold, putting a deep grove into
the drywall with her pretty nose on the way down. We then had to
make an unscheduled visit to a nose specialist, who calmly put a
tape-wrapped spoon inside her bent-over nose and pried it back to
dead center. This was not much fun for either of us; it is well
worthwhile preventing such complications.
Other common complaints during the fast include coldness, due to low
blood sugar as well as a consequence of weight loss and slowed
circulation due to lessened physical activity. People also dislike
inactivity which seems excruciatingly boring, and some are upset by
weight loss itself. Coldness is best handled with lots of clothes,
bedding, hot water bottles or hot pads, and warm baths. Great Oaks
School of Health was in Oregon, where the endlessly rainy winters
are chilly and the concrete building never seemed to get really
warm. I used to dream of moving my fasters to a tropical climate
where I could also get the best, ripest fruits to wean them back on
to food.
If the fast goes on for more than a week or ten days, many people
complain of back discomfort, usually caused by over-worked kidneys.
This passes. Hot baths or hot water bottles provide some relief.
Drinking more fluids may also help a bit. Nausea is fairly common
too, due to toxic discharges from the gall bladder. Drinking lots of
water or herbal tea dilutes toxic bile in the stomach and makes it
more tolerable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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