Even though everyone might not realize it, we all experience fasting every day. In fact, this is where breakfast gets its name from: breaking your fast from the previous day or night. Of course, there are numerous different types of fasting, including spiritual fasts such as Lent and Ramadan. However, regardless of the kind of fast, it’s always advisable to consult with a doctor or health professional before starting. Individuals with anemia, diabetes, or adrenal fatigue must be particularly careful about choosing the right fast for them (if any fast would be healthy at all).
Studies on mice reveal that fasting slows the growth of cancerous tumors and is “effective at suppressing tumorigenesis in mice genetically predestined to tumor development.” Mice that were more likely to develop tumors due to mutated genes were less likely to develop them when they were on a program of fasting. What’s more, research published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition indicates that after 8 weeks of fasting, weight, body fat, total cholesterol, and blood pressure are reduced.
Please read the list below to learn about more specific types of fasting.
The Warrior Diet
This involves fasting during the day and then eating a large meal at night. Fitness expert Ori Hofmekler is a proponent; eating small amounts of raw fruits and vegetables is still permissible throughout the day, as long as the only feast occurs within a 4-hour nightly eating window. Checkout the paleo diet to focus on whole, unprocessed foods.
Juice fast
It’s possible to obtain all nutritional needs from juice and water only. However, you do need to consume a wide variety of the right kinds of liquids.
Spontaneous meal skipping
This involves skipping meals whenever it’s convenient and manageable to do so. Basically, followers of this philosophy believe that starvation mode is a myth, and that as long as you consume healthy foods whenever you do eat, then skipping a meal every once in a while is an ideal way to reduce calorie intake.
Alternate day fasting
To adhere to this fast, don’t eat for 24 hours, and then eat regular meals the next day. This can be a difficult fast to follow, to say the least.
Cleansing fast
This calls for liquid drinks containing lemon juice, simple sugar, cayenne pepper, and other spices if desired. This fast will cleanse the colon of toxins if 6 to 12 drinks are consumed on a daily, regular basis. Do consult a professional to learn the right time period for you.
16-hour fasting
Pick an 8 hour time period for eating, but don’t consume any calories during the other 16 hours of the day.
20-hour fasting
Choose a 20 hour time frame for eating, and refrain from taking in calories outside of this window.
The 5:2 diet
This involves fasting for 2 days each week; the 5:2 diet requires standard eating for 5 days and calories restriction (500 to 600) for 2 days (all out of a 7-day period).
Multiple day fasting
Fasting for more than two days demands adequate and proper preparation. Begin with a juice fast a day in advance, but do consult a doctor or a health professional to ensure you don’t attempt to fast too long.
Religious fasting
As alluded to, many fasts are related to religion, spirituality, or ritual. The Daniel Fast is modeled after the book of Daniel in the Bible, and the Jewish Tzomot involves seven different religious fasts over a 365 day period. Ramadan spans an entire month, and food can only be consumed during nighttime.
Keep in mind that research in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition suggests that fasts do not normally result in counterproductive binge-eating. In fact, 25 minutes of moderate-intensity cardio three days each week is usually enough to make fasting manageable.
Of all the typical Plains tribes, the Cheyenne were most distinguished for warlike qualities.
Few in number, they overcame or held in check most of the peoples who opposed them, and when the westward movement of European civilization began, they made more trouble than all the rest combined.
In short, they were preeminently warriors among peoples whose trade was war.
As in other Plains tribes, the warriors of the Cheyenne were organized into societies or orders.
These societies were fraternal, military, and semi-religious organizations with special privileges, duties, and dress, usually tracing their origin to some mythical culture hero or medicine man.
Each society had its own songs and secret ritual and exacted certain observances and standards of its members.
Of these organizations, none played such a part in the history of the Plains as the “Dog Soldiers”.
The Cheyenne were the most infamous tribe on the American plains – when they were only fighting other tribes, they overwhelmed them, even though the Cheyenne were almost always outnumbered by the other tribes in the Plains; and when it came to the fight against the European civilization, no tribe was as tough to beat as the Cheyenne. In short, they were a people born and bred for war.
One crisp winter morning in Sweden, a cute little girl named Greta woke up to a perfect world, one where there were no petroleum products ruining the earth.
She tossed aside her cotton sheet and wool blanket and stepped out onto a dirt floor covered with willow bark that had been pulverized with rocks.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“Pulverized willow bark,” replied her fairy godmother.
“What happened to the carpet?” she asked.
“The carpet was nylon, which is made from butadiene and hydrogen cyanide, both made from petroleum,” came the response.
Greta smiled, acknowledging that adjustments are necessary to save the planet, and moved to the sink to brush her teeth where instead of a toothbrush, she found a willow, mangled on one end to expose wood fibre bristles.
“Your old toothbrush?” noted her godmother, “Also nylon.”
“Where’s the water?” asked Greta.
“Down the road in the canal,” replied her godmother, ‘Just make sure you avoid water with cholera in it”
“Why’s there no running water?” Greta asked, becoming a little peevish.
“Well,” said her godmother, who happened to teach engineering at MIT, “Where do we begin?” There followed a long monologue about how sink valves need elastomer seats and how copper pipes contain copper, which has to be mined and how it’s impossible to make all-electric earth-moving equipment with no gear lubrication or tires and how ore has to be smelted to a make metal, and that’s tough to do with only electricity as a source of heat, and even if you use only electricity, the wires need insulation, which is petroleum-based, and though most of Sweden’s energy is produced in an environmentally friendly way because of hydro and nuclear, if you do a mass and energy balance around the whole system, you still need lots of petroleum products like lubricants and nylon and rubber for tires and asphalt for filling potholes and wax and iPhone plastic and elastic to hold your underwear up while operating a copper smelting furnace and . . .
“What’s for breakfast?” interjected Greta, whose head was hurting.
“Fresh, range-fed chicken eggs,” replied her godmother. “Raw.”
“How so, raw?” inquired Greta.
“Well, . . .” And once again, Greta was told about the need for petroleum products like transformer oil and scores of petroleum products essential for producing metals for frying pans and in the end was educated about how you can’t have a petroleum-free world and then cook eggs. Unless you rip your front fence up and start a fire and carefully cook your egg in an orange peel like you do in Boy Scouts. Not that you can find oranges in Sweden anymore.
“But I want poached eggs like my Aunt Tilda makes,” lamented Greta.
“Tilda died this morning,” the godmother explained. “Bacterial pneumonia.”
“What?!” interjected Greta. “No one dies of bacterial pneumonia! We have penicillin.”
“Not anymore,” explained godmother “The production of penicillin requires chemical extraction using isobutyl acetate, which, if you know your organic chemistry, is petroleum-based. Lots of people are dying, which is problematic because there’s not any easy way of disposing of the bodies since backhoes need hydraulic oil and crematoriums can’t really burn many bodies using as fuel Swedish fences and furniture, which are rapidly disappearing – being used on the black market for roasting eggs and staying warm.”
This represents only a fraction of Greta’s day, in Sweden, a day without microphones to exclaim into and a day without much food, and a day without carbon-fibre boats to sail in, but a day that will save the planet.
Tune in tomorrow when Greta needs a root canal and learns how Novocain is synthesized.
sourced – Eddie Peters – Perth, Western Australia — Tilburg-Netherlands
Originally published by Eric Ruben — February 12, 2024
I can prove to you in one word that the alleged “Pro-Palestinian” protests worldwide are:
At best, anti-Israel based on ignorance;
At worst, wildly antisemitic and/or hatefully anti-Israel; and
The one thing they are NOT is “pro-Palestinian.”
That word?
Yarmouk.
Yarmouk was, only 12 years ago, the Syrian city with the world’s largest Palestinian community. At least 160,000 Palestinians lived there.
Once Syrian dictator and butcher Bashar al-Assad got his grimy hands on Yarmouk, it wasn’t long before journalists were calling the city “the worst place on earth.”
Why? Several reasons; and I’ll tell you those reasons along with the world’s reaction to them. Then, you decide what that means.
On Dec 16, 2012, the Syrian air force bombed Yarmouk killing at least “dozens” of civilians (the real number may never be known). The streets of NewYork, LosAngeles, Chicago, Toronto, London, Paris, Rome, Dublin, etc.? All quiet.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians fled Yarmouk and were displaced without anywhere to go and without knowing if/when they may ever return.
For the Palestinians who stayed in Yarmouk, they could not possibly have imagined the dystopian hellscape that awaited them over the next six+ years.
First, Assad enforced a brutal and complete one-year-long siege on Yarmouk. He then continued that siege, only with a few exceptions, for another 5-6 years after that.
Were the streets of the world filled with protestors?
No.
There was no electricity in Yarmouk for a year, and very little electrictiy for the next five years.
No protests.
There was no piped water whatsoever in Yarmouk for a year, and very little drinkable water for the next five years.
No protests.
There was no access to or very minimal access to any food for a year and very little food for the next five years.
No protests.
Medical supplies were next to zero, as Assad did not want to risk them ending up in the hands of opposition fighters hiding in Yarmouk – Palestinian civilians be damned.
Even worse – after the initial fleeing of tens of thousands, the remaining Palestinians of Yarmouk were not allowed to leave the city – Assad made them stay there.
So, in the largest Palestinian city in Syria, Palestinian civilians were indiscriminately slaughtered, tens of thousands fled, and then Assad laid total siege to the remaining tens of thousands of Palestinians during which men, women, children, the elderly, the infirm, and babies were all forced to stay in Yarmouk without electricity, without water, with minimal access to food, and with little to no access to any medication or first aid of any kind.
And there were no protests.
The number of Palestinians who died of malnutrition and the number of Palestinian women and their babies who died in childbirth during the siege is unknown to this day.
There was no worldwide outcry.
There was no push for real numbers of the dead and the suffering.
There were no protests.
There was near total silence.
Much has been made about the humanitarian corridors and humanitarian aide that Israel has allowed to flow into Gaza despite Hamas terrorists using the corridors to escape, and despite well over 50% of that aide being stolen by Hamas.
Well, in Syria, Assad refused to provide a humanitarian corridor; and he refused to allow humanitarian relief into Yarmouk.
The streets of the world?
Silent.
One Palestinian woman in Yarmouk described the scene:
“You couldn’t buy bread. At the worst point a kilo of rice cost 12,000 Syrian pounds (£41), now it is 800 pounds (£2.75) compared to 100 Syrian pounds (34p) in central Damascus. It was 900 pounds (£3.10) for a kilo of tomatoes … we used to eat wild plants. We picked and cooked them. In every family there was hepatitis because of a lack of sugar. The water was dirty. People had fevers. Your joints and bones felt stiff. My middle daughter had brucellosis and there was no medication.”
Silence. Deafening silence.
So many Palestinians in Yarmouk were dying from malnutrition that Yarmouk’s largest mosque gave a religious decree (fatwa) that permitted the consumption of dogs, cats, and donkeys.
Shocking silence.
In 2014, testing on a random sample of Palestinians in Yarmouk showed 40% had typhoid.
Silence.
All 28 of Yarmouk’s schools were shuttered.
Silence.
Even after the initial total siege ended, the water supply was not restored. The city’s water pipes were damaged in fighting in September 2014 – leading to four more years during which Yarmouk’s Palestinians had to drink untreated groundwater.
Where were the protestors?
During and after the complete siege, Assad began a campaign of particularly heavy indiscriminate bombing of Yarmouk that saw civilians, including children on playgrounds, blown up. How many? We can say “thousands,” but we will probably never know how many for sure.
The world? Silent.
A UN official anonymously admitted about Yarmouk, “Conditions are far worse than Gaza … Palestinians always had dignity, hope, resilience. Now after four years of war I see people giving up. They find it hard to accept there are no options.”
Even the virulently anti-Israel commentator, Mehdi Hasan, who recently lost his job for being too viciously anti-Israel even for MSNBC admitted in April of 2015:
“Let’s be honest: how different, how vocal and passionate, would our reaction be if the people besieging Yarmouk were wearing the uniforms of the IDF?”
By that point in time, Yarmouk was widely called the city with the “worst humanitarian crisis” since World War II.
But the streets of the world were not filled with protestors. There was barely a peep.
Meanwhile, many of the long-suffering Palestinians of Yarmouk started obtaining desperately needed medical assistance from what many may consider an unlikely source: Israel.
Starting in June 2016, the IDF launched “Operation Good Neighbor” to help civilians in Syria.
At first, Syrians who could make it across the border were transported to Israeli hospitals, and later Israel opened a field hospital close to the border since so many civilians started seeking Israel’s help.
One Palestinian from Yarmouk feared enough for her son’s life to seek help from “enemy” doctors in Israel. When her son was treated with care and humanity and nursed back to health, she told journalists, anonymously for her own safety back home, “I used to see Israel as an occupying power, but not anymore. My whole opinion of Israel has changed.”
In total, Israel treated at least between 5,000-10,000 wounded and often starving civilians who crossed the border from Syria.
Israel even started a donation drive and collected supplies like toys, crayons, games, and candies for suffering children; and Israel got those donations across the border quietly, along with government-donated dire necessities like food, fuel, clothing, and baby care.
How many stood up to praise Israel for its humanity?
Very, very few. And outside the Jewish world, almost none.
The worst of the dire situation in Yarmouk went on for more than six years.
In April of 2018, Yarmouk was being bombed twice every 90 seconds. By the end of that month, Al Jazeera estimated at least 60% of Yarmouk had been completely destroyed and an unknown number of Palestinian families were trapped under the rubble.
By May of 2018, journalists simplified it: “Yarmouk is gone”.
How many pro-Palestinian protests in how many cities do you recall in April and May of 2018?
How many protests do you recall for the entirety of those six years from 2012-2018?
Sadly, for those innocent Palestinian civilians who lived under the yoke of dictatorship – whether Assad or Hamas – their outrageously inhumane plight was almost entirely ignored by a disinterested world.
Yet, how many streets of how many cities across the world were already filled with protestors during the first days and weeks after the Hamas October7 Massacre of more than 1,200 Israelis?
The streets worldwide were filled even before Israel had begun its counter-offensive to rescue the more than 240 hostages taken by Hamas and to bring Hamas terrorists to justice and forever end Hamas’ ability to make war on Israel.
What more evidence could anyone need?
The worldwide protests are all about being anti-Israel and/or antisemitic.
They certainly are not about saving any Palestinians.
Sadly, when the Palestinians have needed the world to save them from other Arabs, nobody marched.
Only when Jews are involved – that’s when the venom, the hate, the motivation, and the organization to protest and intimidate comes out.
Several responses showed interest in “Operation Good Neighbor” when Israel aided injured/starving Syrians, including Palestinians.
Conan O’Brien did a show in Israel in 2018 and visited injured Syrians being treated by Israeli doctors (clip below).
