To answer this question, let’s take a look at what happens in your body when you begin to drink nothing but water.

After your cells use up the sugar in your bloodstream from your last meal or beverage, your body has to find another source of energy for your cells. The first place it turns is your liver as well as the muscles. Both the liver and muscles store sugar in the form of glycogen, and when needed, glycogen can be broken down into glucose, which all your cells can use to produce energy for their ongoing activities.

During a water-only fast, your glycogen stores are depleted within about 24 hours. After your glycogen stores are used up, most of your cells begin burning fatty acids for energy; these fatty acids come from your fat reserves, including fatty tissue that surrounds your organs.

Two groups of cells, your red blood cells and your brain cells, cannot use fatty acids to fuel their energy needs. Red blood cells and the brain require glucose, and once glycogen/glucose from your muscles and liver are used up, your brain and red blood cells get their glucose from two sources:

From glycerol, which is a component of your fat tissues.

From your muscles some of your muscle tissues get broken down, and the amino acids from the muscle tissues are used to produce glucose in the brain and red blood cells.

Clearly, it’s not in your best interest to rapidly eat up the muscles to meet the energy requirements of the brain and the red blood cells during a water-only fast. Somewhere between the 2nd and 3rd day of water-only fasting, the liver begins churning out ketones which, come primarily from the breakdown of fatty acids from the fat reserves.

Once your liver generates large numbers of ketones, the brain is able to use ketones to fuel itself. At this point, only the red blood cells require glucose that must still be derived from the breakdown of the muscles; however, with the brain no longer dependent on breakdown of muscles for energy, the rate at which muscles are catabolized will be such that the muscles are spared as much as possible. This state is called “protein sparing” … a survival mechanism built into human physiology to deal with times of famine.

Getting back to the big picture; it should be clear that from the 2nd or 3rd day water-only fast, the body meets it energy requirements by burning through your fat reserves.

Since the bulk of the toxins in the body are stored in the fat reserves, the longer you fast on water only, the more fat you’ll burn and the more toxins you’ll eliminate from the system.

This is why we see elimination of lipomas, atheromas (accumulated waste in your blood vessels), and other conditions related to toxin accumulation during a prolonged water fast.

Put another way, the body does not experience significant detoxification during the first 12-24 hours of a water-only fast.

The body begins to eliminate large quantities of toxins only after it begins to burn the fat reserves at a rapid rate. And this doesn’t happen until you’ve used up the glycogen stores in the liver and muscles.

So when you fast one day a week, you deplete the stores of sugar in your liver and muscles, and begin to break down your muscles. These are the main things you accomplish during the first day of water fasting. Significant detoxification only begins to occur if you continue past day one of fasting.

This is not to say that there are no benefits to fasting one day a week, or that you don’t eliminate any toxins during a one-day fast.

You are eliminating toxins with every breath you take. And your body will always increase its rate of ongoing detoxification whenever you get more rest and/or eat less food, because less digestive burdens and more physical rest always mean more available resources for detoxification.

Rather than fast one day a week on water only, I think it makes more sense to do a juice fast one day a week, or even once a month. With a juice fast, you can supply your body with enough nutrients that you don’t have to deplete the sugar stores in your liver and muscles, or break down a lot of the muscle tissue. At the same time, because the nutrients in freshly pressed juices are so easily digested, a one-day juice fast can ease the digestive burden and enhance ongoing detoxification to some degree.

But let’s be clear: the main benefit of a one-day juice fast is not significant detoxification; it’s a concentrated period of rest for the digestive organs, and an opportunity for the organs that are responsible for ongoing detoxification (liver, kidneys, skin, and lungs) to do a little extra health-promoting work.

To sum things up, I would say it’s not good for long term health to fast one day a week on water only. If you want to give the body a period of rest and intense cleansing once in a while, it makes more sense to spend a day eating all raw fruits and vegetables, or drinking nothing but freshly pressed juices.

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Dr. Ben Kim, a chiropractor and acupuncturist living in Barrie, Ontario Canada. His goal is to help people discover healthy solutions. Visit: www.DrBenKim.com.

http://www.inlightimes.com/is-fasting-one-day-a-week-good-for-your-health