CHAPTER XI
The mental effects of fasting have been known for ages and have been much discussed by all writers on fasting. A few years ago a group of young men and women at the University of Chicago lived for one week without food. During this period they attended their classes and engaged in their usual sports, following out their usual routine. Their mental alertness was so much greater during the period that their progress in their school work was cited as remarkable. Several repetitions of this experiment, always with the same results, proved that this was not exceptional.
All the purely mental powers of man improve while fasting. The ability to reason is increased. Memory is improved. Attention and as-sociation are quickened. The so-called spiritual forces of man—intui-tion, sympathy, love, etc.—are all increased. All of man's intellectual and emotional qualities are given new life. At no other time can the purely intellectual and aesthetic activities be so successfully pursued as during a fast. Sinclair (1910) says: "I went outdoors and lay in the sun all day, reading; and the same for the third and fourth days—intense physical lassitude, but with great clearness of mind. After the fifth day I felt stronger, and walked a good deal, and I also began some writing.
No phase of the experience surprised me more than the activity of my mind: I read and wrote more than I had dared to do for years before"
(p. 743).
People seem to learn faster when hungry and to rate higher in intelli-gence tests when hungry than when the stomach is full. This means that, as the old Romans used to say: "a full stomach does not like to think."
This well expresses a fact that is known to all mental workers. A full meal leaves them dull, unable to think clearly and continuously and often makes them stupid and sleepy. Mental workers have learned to eat a light breakfast and lunch and have their heavy meal in the evening after the day's work is done. When I was a high school boy, I used to miss a meal entirely when I knew I had an examination ahead. At that time I knew nothing of fasting, but I had learned that I could think better on an empty stomach. These facts are due to physiological causes.
Large amounts of blood and nervous energies have to be sent to the digestive organs to digest a meal. If these energies are not required there, they may be drawn upon by the brain in thinking.
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In my experience with fasting, I seldom see any increase in mental powers at the beginning of a fast. This is because we deal with the sick and these people are all inebriates and addicts—food inebriates, coffee and tea inebriates, tobacco and alcohol addicts. As soon as these things are taken from them they suffer a period of depression with headaches and various slight pains. After a few days, that is, when the body has had sufficient time to readjust itself and overcome the depression, the mind brightens up. The special senses also become acute.
Levanzin says: "But if physical strength is not lost during a fast, the mental power and clarity are extraordinarily increased. Memory devel-ops itself in a wonderful way, imagination is at its best." One of the most remarkable things about the fast, one that impresses patients even more than the physical gains made while fasting, is the mental benefit that accrues from a period of abstinence. The clearness of the mind, the ease with which previously difficult problems can be handled, the improvement of memory, etc., all surprise and please the patients.
These improvements must be attributed to clearing the body of toxins.
The almost universal testimony of fasters is that their mind becomes clearer and their abilities to think and solve intricate problems are enhanced. They are more alert and their minds seem to open up into new fields. This increase in mental power may not manifest in the first few days of the fast, due to the fact that when patients are taken off their coffee, tea, alcohol, and stimulating viands, there is likely to be a general physical and mental let-down. But after a few days, re-action sets in and they improve both physically and mentally. Experiments on students have shown that short fasts greatly enhance mental powers.
Why should fasting result in an increase in mental abilities? Primarily, I think, because it affords the body an opportunity to throw off its load of toxins, hence the brain is fed by a cleaner blood-stream. Secondarily, I think that the rest of all the functions of life that fasting provides, supplies the brain with more power to think. Who can doubt that modern living tends to dull the mental powers? Especially our national drug addictions and our almost universal overeating tend to reduce mental abilities.
SPIRITUAL POWERS
A few words about the effects of fasting upon the so-called spiritual powers may be appropriately introduced here. In detailing his experi-ences during his forty days' fast, taken some years since. Dr. Tanner said: "My mental powers were greatly augmented, to the very great surprise of my medical attendants, who were constantly on watch for mental collapse, which was freely predicted, if I persisted in the experi-ment until the tenth day. About the middle of my first experiexperi-ment, I, too, had visions; like Paul of old, I seemed to be intromitted to the third heaven and there saw things which not even the pen of Milton or Shakespeare could portray in all their vivid reality. As a result of my experiment, I came to comprehend why the old prophets and seers so often resorted to fasting as a means of spiritual illumination."
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THE MIND AND SPECIAL SENSES DURING A FAST
That the mental powers of the faster are elevated instead of decreased by the fast, I have shown, but I pause here to express my opinion about these visions that fasters see. They are, I believe, due to hysteria or auto-hypnosis. They are seen by people who are called psychic which means they are easily swayed by suggestion, particularly auto-suggestion. Fast-ing tends to increase temporarily this suggestibility and for this reason was and is employed by all mystic religions for purposes of "illumina-tion." Auto-suggestion, during these religious fasts takes the form of frequent and repeated prayers. To add to the religious power of the fast, sexual desires disappear and thoughts of sex cease to obtrude upon the mind. In India the priests connected with the sacred temples are pledged to the strictest chastity. The Hindu high priest is forced to undergo a long period of training and purification and to pass through many severe trials to prove that he has thoroughly conquered his sexual appetites and passions and has them well under control of the higher powers of mind before he is admitted to the priesthood. In these days when the fallacies of psychology and psycho-analysis are on the lips of everyone and when feminine leaders declare chastity and continence to be neither desirable nor practicable and insist that they would be harm-ful if put into effect, methods of attaining self-control in matters of sex are frowned upon. This feature of fasting may not, therefore, appeal to many who read these lines. Fasting does increase one's control over all one's appetites and passions and this will account in some measure for its use by high priests and others in the religions of old.
INSANITY
Nowhere does the beneficial office of physiological rest in enhancing mental clearness show more clearly than in fasting by the insane. I shall have more to say about this in a future chapter. Here it is necessary only to deal with it briefly. Dr. Dewey tells of an insane woman who was completely restored to sanity by a fast of forty-five days. Dr.
Rabagliati tells of similar cases, although he more often employed greatly restricted diets, rather than a complete fast. A small quantity of whey each day was a favorite of his.
The common practice is to feed nervous patients all the "good nourish-ing food" they can be induced to swallow. If they are deprived of food and their accustomed stimulants, there follows a period of depression and an increased nervous irritability. Feeding and drugging smother these symptoms just as a dose of morphine relieves the addict who is suffering from forced abstinence from his drug, and this leads physician and patient to believe he is improved thereby. Yet, these very measures, so frequently employed to cure, are often the cause of nervousness.
If such patients are permitted to fast for a few days, a remarkable change occurs in their mental and nervous symptoms. One example must suffice. A young lady once consulted me. She was so extremely nervous that if her husband only pointed his finger at her and said 'boo!" she would become hysterical, laughing and crying alternately for sometime before she would finally regain composure. A little noise
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in the house or outside at night frightened her. She was placed on a fast. It lasted only a week, but her nervousness was completely over-come in this short time. Nothing frightened her any more and nothing would cause her to become hysterical.
Benedict (1907) says: "A characteristic of many delusions is a revul-sion towards food and drink, so marked indeed that in many instances all the skill of the trained psychiatrist is required to combat it. In a large proportion of such cases, artificial feeding must be resorted to"
(p.3). He recounts a number of cases from the literature of the subject, none of which will be mentioned here. Let me state, with as much em-phasis as I can, that the rejection of food by these patients is, in my opinion, not something to be combatted but to be accepted. Instead of forced feeding, they should be permitted to fast. I say this, not alone because I know of the benefits to be derived from fasting, but also be-cause I have seen such cases permited to continue the fast and recover sanity while still fasting. As my observations in this field have necessarily been limited, I have no means of knowing what percentage of them would thus recover. It is my opinion that the revulsion to food is an instinctive move in the right direction as certainly as is the cutting off of the desire for food in acute disease.
Kellogg suggests a "bland diet" "in cases of insane persons who re-fuse to eat and must be nourished by tube feeding." I helped care for one such case and we premitted him to fast. For forty days he continued to refuse food, then he developed an uncontrollable hunger and would invade the kitchen, if not watched, and get food at all times. The young man made great improvement both mentally and physically and was able to run and also to put up a stiff fight when efforts were made to restrain him in some of his actions. He committed suicide before his recovery was complete, however.
Insanity is frequently overcome while fasting, and practically all cases are improved by the fast. Max Nordau declared: "Pessimism has a physiological basis." It really has what we call a pathological basis and this is removed by fasting. Many cases of paralysis of the throat, legs, arms and other forms of paralysis have yielded to the kindly influence of fasting.
Dr. Kritzer, following the lead of Dr. Henry Lindlahr, warned against fasting in mental, nervous and "psychic diseases." "Beware of an empty stomach in melancholia," he said, "for the patient's constant brooding causes a congestion of blood in the brain, and unless the blood is with-drawn through the process of digestion, the chances of aggravation of the mental symptoms are increased. All persons negatively inclined physically, mentally or psychically—the 'sensitive types'—would fare better on a properly balanced diet rather than fasting, even though for short periods."
We must deplore this mixing of occultism and spiritualism with physiology and dietetics. I once placed on a fast, a psychic woman who had previously been warned that a fast would ruin her. She improved steadily during the fast and went on to good health. I do not hesitate to
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fast nervous and mental cases and always with good results. Dr. E. R.
Moras tells of placing a woman on a diet of strained orange juice who
"had been insane for eight months and treated by eminent neurolo-gists." In seven days the girl called for food and in six weeks was normal.
She was "psychic." I have found it best, in those cases who have had shock treatment and long periods on "nerve" drugs to employ relatively short fasts, two or more, rather than the long fast.
Dr. Kritzer said: "The ill effect of prolonged fasting upon the nervous system is, however, more pronounced and of longer duration. Indeed, the individual drifts into a negative condition, becomes irritable and extremely sensitive.
"It often requires years of careful living in order to successfully over-come the shock received by the nervous system after an injudicious long fast."
Dr. Kritzer had not been studying fasting; but a mixture of fasting with hot and cold baths, spinal manipulations, massage, electrical treat-ment, psychotherapy and other such forms of destructive nonsense. Fast-ing does not produce the effects he attributes to it. The depletion of the nervous system he and others write about, is due to the insane abuse in the form of so-called treatment to which patients are often subjected in most drugless and semi-drugless institutions, and often occur in pa-tients that are fed. "Those who obtain the best results from fasting and proper dieting," to quote Dr. Weger, "are those whose mental state is not shattered by the long continued use of drugs and by psychic shock."
He makes this observation with particular reference to cases of epilepsy, but it is true in general. By this is not meant that even these cases do not derive benefit from fasting and proper diet, but merely that the benefit is not so apparent and requires, often, much longer time to make itself manifest.
Lennox and Cobb (1928), of the Harvard University Medical School, experimented with fasting in epilepsy and reported that except in one patient there was little permanent effect on the "seizures." They found that in the majority of the cases the "seizures" were entirely absent or were greatly reduced during the fast, but that these returned with the resumption of eating. As this experience is wholly out of keeping with my own I shall make a few remarks concerning the "essentially negative results of fasting" which they report. Let me say that I have had only two cases in which the fits returned after the fast. I recall one case, however, which was in a sanatorium with which I was connected. This patient had two fasts of about twenty days each. The milk diet was em-ployed after each fast. It was found that if more than six quarts of milk were consumed in one day a "seizure" would result. It was also found that if he was given milk for six days and no food of any kind on the 7th day, he would go for long periods without trouble; but as soon as he took milk on the 7th day he had a "seizure." This case very forcibly illustrates the relation of eating habits to the "disease." Another of my cases that had been having one and two "seizures" a week, did not have one seizure during over three months under my observation after a fast of
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less than a week. The fast was followed with proper diet and living re-form. The fasting cases of Lennox and Cobb lasted from four to twenty-one days, and the longer fasts were certainly long enough to produce great benefit in these cases. They think that if fasting were employed in the early stages of the "disease" the results might be more encouraging.
They also say that it would be strange if "any acute therapeutic dietetic measure" should give lasting results in a chronic condition like epilepsy.
I would say, however, in view of my own experience, that their lack of knowledge of fasting and especially their lack of knowledge of proper feeding after the fast, is responsible for their partial results.
The effects of fasting are profound and lasting, but these may be totally spoiled by injudicious care. Dr. Weger says: "It is conceded by physicians that most epileptic seizures are precipitated by gastro-intestinal derangement, gastric hyperacidity and gastro-intestinal fermenta-tion, even by a very slight deviation from normal at any period of the digestive cycle. The most frequent source of irritation is the colon."
One of my cases noticed pain in the left pelvic region and a knotting of the colon preceding each "seizure." There was a failure of colonic function before each "attack" with a loss of appetite.
If good digestion is so important in these cases, it should be quite obvious that the permanency of the results obtained by fasting must depend largely upon proper feeding and proper general care after the fast. As Dr. Weger says, "It is absurd to look for good results in this class of cases unless some attention is given to the kind and combina-tion of food. If the same kind, quality, and quantity of food is permitted after the fast that the patient was in the habit of taking before the fast, the experiment is doomed to failure."
Fasting and prayer were prominent among the remedies employed by the ancients in epilepsy. Dr. Rabagliati says that the best remedy for epilepsy "consists of a careful restriction of the diet. * * * I have for many years now advised restriction of the acute cases in epilepsy to two meals daily, and sometimes one, and in acute cases have recom-mended further and greater restriction to a pint or a pint and a half of milk daily for a considerable period of time. * * * Fasting in fact, seems to be of very great efficacy in the treatment of epilepsy."
"ABNORMAL PSYCHISM"
Dr. Henry Lindlahr conjured into being a condition to which he applied the term "abnormal psychism," which he said often resulted in certian types of individuals when they fasted for prolonged periods.
I have found no reference to any such mental aberrations in the writing
I have found no reference to any such mental aberrations in the writing