People buy a car, People in the "west" gorge their mouths constantly on anything that looks or smells good to them, without any thought whatsoever of all the chemicals, pesticides and hormones that are injected into those foods. And extra for better gasoline, shine their car, give it quality oil, take it to regular maintenance and love their automobiles like some god, but treat their own bodies like expendable garbage, like it is somehow some amazing instrument capable of processing and removing all the garbage we put into it. Add to it the air we breath, which goes deep into our lungs and through that into our bloodstream. Did you know that our bodies are capable of processing the basic elements of air - carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen - and converting that into food? So our bodies actually consume air, contributing to some percentage of our overall food intake.

But if you live in the city, this includes all the pollution emitted by cars, which contribute to half a city's air pollution. Gasoline and with all its additives has about 600 chemicals in it, many of which contribute to neurological diseases. Now if we add up all the chemicals in processed food, pesticides in our fruits and vegetables (which certainly do not all wash away by simply running them under tap water but are absorbed deep into their cells as they consume water while they grow), car exhaust, cigarette smoke (there are about 600 chemicals in your average cigarette, including ammonia to help it burn and help you get more addicted), whether inhaled directly or secondary smoke, and alcohol, which is a toxic poison (think of inTOXicated), you can see how we daily pound our system with hundreds of chemicals.

And you can imagine how these foreign and unnatural substances accumulate in our cells over a lifetime. We are born fresh little babies, assuming our mothers maintained a healthy diet and lived in the clean air country. We grow up and our young bodies are better able at processing any bad stuff we put in it. We feel invincible in our youth, but over time and once we hit around 20, the scales are tipped, our bodies are no longer able to process everything so fully, and we start to see the effects.

This is when it is a good idea to start thinking of a spring cleaning. In fact, it would be better to think of good and wholesome eating all year round, but even if you managed to accomplish that to the best of your abilities, there still remains all the other substances found in our surrounding environment. Cancer was apparently non-existence more than 50 years ago, but with all the chemicals that have been added to help things grow faster, in our air, and the environment around us, it is no wonder that this disease has exploded.

Imagine going to the store and buying a fresh, white rag to clean your house with. You go around your house with your pale of water, wiping this and that, until both the water in the pail and the rag start to look increasingly dirty. And you find that you are no longer able to make things look cleaner, but are rather just moving and smearing dirt around. Well you can look at your body in the same way. Initially able to process junk, but as the junk accumulates in your system and your body get older, not as capable of cleaning itself that effectively, this junk starts to remain and reside in various cells and corners of your body, sitting there rotting, reducing your body's overall performance, and leading to all sorts of diseases.

This is when you want to take your rag and run it under clean water, and your body through an annual spring cleansing. When I go through my annual cleanse, I am amazed at all the junk I see being removed from my body. Now before I embark on an explanation of how to clean your body, I'd like to point out that I have been doing this for years, starting slow, and each time improving on it, such that I have brought it up to a rather thorough level, which could seem quite extreme to anyone who has not cleansed their body before. I will first explain to what measure I do it, and then provide various alternatives for those who are just starting out. After all, when you rid your body of toxins, it is said that you could actually die from over toxification if you have never done this before (in fact, die of this sooner than lack of water or sleep). Releasing the floodgates of toxins stored and built up in your bodies over the years can cause such a poisonous shock to your body that it would actually kill you! So I'd actually suggest you start slow and improve on it every year. When I started, my first year I was whining and groaning like a baby from one mere day of fasting. But by the third year I felt no pain at all (I guess because I had removed most of the toxins), and now I can go for eight days on water only and not feel the slightest bit of discomfort. Amazing eh?

I combine my fast with various other techniques I have learned over the years, but first to explain the principle of a fast. When the body does not have enough of its regular intake of food, it starts to look around for other things it can consume. Usually when you feed it enough, it has plenty of fuel to burn in the stomach, intestines and bloodstream. This is the easiest source of energy, so it burns that first. But when it runs out of that, it starts to search the body for other possible sources of energy, and this is where it burns away other things which don't really belong there (like fat, for example). And after that, toxins, and yes, even cancer. They say you can cure yourself of cancer by not eating for forty days, but I can guarantee you that it would take years of training to achieve a forty day fast.

So your body can actually devour viruses, weak and cancerous cells, and everything else which does not belong there. After about five days of water only, I feel like a Duracell battery, running on particular energy. In fact, when animals suffer a major injury, they automatically go into a fast to heal themselves. The body uses about 60% of its energy to consume the food we eat. When you free yourself of this burden, especially if you are a big meat eater, you would be surprised how much extra energy your body has to fight a sickness or to heal an injury. When I fast, I find I sleep less (sometimes only four to five hours a day), that I'm more perky, and I feel light and bouncy, like I'm walking on the moon. This contrary to the sluggishness and sleepiness I feel after a big steak meal.

In fact, whenever I get a strong cold (which is almost never because I eat rather healthily, with lots of garlic - check out my website how to kill a cold), I fast a little bit by eating less and eating only light foods like whole grain rice. This clears up extra energy which my body can use to fight the virus, and I often kill it within a single day.

So the principle of fasting cleans the body. Getting right down to the cell level and burning off junk that doesn't belong there. Junk which will stay there, festering and rotting over the years, and which cannot be removed in any other way.

Of course, during this period, you want to drink lots of clean, purchased spring water. Not mineral water, where minerals can generally deposit in your joints and cause problems later, but good clean water, and you can imagine your body like that dirty rag which you hold under running tap water and flush out all the junk clogged between the pores of the fabric. In this same way you are flushing and cleaning out your body.

One of the reasons why I started fasting is because I saw the affects on a friend of mine. Over forty years old, and his face looked noticeably shiny after a few days. I also notice my improved complexion, and my next fast I'd like to take before and after pictures to prove it. He explained how, with all the water you are drinking and your body burning and flushing away junk, your skin is sucked of all the junk clogged in it. Your skin is a very important and your largest bodily organ. It breaths, and has many important functions. So it is soaking in the junk from the air around you, and depositing in it the junk circulating within your bloodstream. So yes, one of my great motivations of fasting is to look young and beautiful. I admit it. And people constantly guess I'm at least ten years younger than I am. So you can forget about all that mascara and more chemicals you plaster on your skin to make yourself more beautiful, and simply embark on a good spring cleaning, ridding your body of all this junk, and you will be amazed what a simple and beauty trick you accomplished. After rinsing your rag under running water for a good five minutes, it won't look shiny and new like when you bought it, and you won't look shiny and new like when you first came out of your mommy, but you will certainly notice a healthy difference!

After hopefully convincing you of the sound logic behind a good spring cleaning, we can start to talk about how to go about it.

When I do my annual fasts, one friend of mine protested that I was not fasting at all, if she had found me nibbling on some food. But this is not true. What is breakfast after all than breaking an eight hour fast while sleeping? As soon as you reduce your regular intake of food, your body goes into fast mode, searching around for what doesn't belong there, to supplement its required energy intake. Many people "fast" by eating only fruits for thirty days. There are many ways you can go about it. Not necessarily the extreme I like to.

There is also a famous juice fasting concoction composed of squeezed lemon, maple syrup, clean water and a sprinkle of chilli. Lemon is a good cleansing food, maple syrup is the healthiest glucose you can find (where glucose supplies your body with raw energy), and the chilli for vitamin B and to neutralize the pallet. The latter is good because you will definitely taste the toxins coming out in your saliva. This juice fast is not as strong as a water fast, but works too, and you can apparently survive on that alone for forty days without any pain or effort.

But I must admit there is some pain and effort, for which reason I prefer to make my fasts more powerful, so that I can make them sweet and short. And the pain and effort for me has always been all those parties I had to forgo. For you certainly should not consider introducing your bodies with such poison as alcohol while you are trying to rid your body of those very toxins! Another pain was the torture of all the foods I smelled. When deep in fast mode, my sense of smell became very acute. I could smell someone cooking a block away. I would acutely know exactly which spices they were using, and my mind would be flooded with thoughts of sinking my teeth into a juicy steak, or licking on an icecream, or crunching into a handful of potato chips...

It was a never ending bombardment of temptation on my poor little mind, and my tongue dazzled my imagination with all sorts of succulent foods oozing over my hungry taste buds with a bountiful rich assortment of flavours squishing and squashing between my teeth, the delicious juices then oozing wonderfully down my throat. This was a constant torture indeed and I found the greatest exercise of my willpower. Absolutely no pain in my stomach (after the second year of fasting), my body felt perky and light, I felt awake and full of energy, but BOY was my tongue feeding my mind with the wildest fantasies of juicy red strawberries embedded in a healthy mound of vanilla icecream. Constant bombardment of my mind, and no wonder I would sneak off and nibble on the occasional potato chip, savoring every sweet little crunch, until I was caught red handed and accused of, "That's not a fast!"

Another torture was the boredom. You'd be surprised what a nice break in your long day a meal makes. And the entire ritual of cutting the garlic, washing the vegetables, stirring the pot, nibbling away contentedly. Heck, you even miss the ritual of washing the dishes! Instead, you spend your entire day working and being productive. It is horribly boring. Sipping on boring water, not dazzling your senses with the most varied foods, which you can usually choose at your whim, but only dreaming of when this blasted fast will be over so that you can sink your teeth into every pleasure you can find.

So over the years I found myself preferring a shorter but more powerful fast. Although I admit that my last fast was not such a torture session, and I am thinking it is because I prepared my body better in advance.

But if you will be doing the juice fast, I can at least confide in you some assurance that the pint of juice did have some rewards. Lemon, maple syrup, water and chilli may seem like a strange combination, but I tell you it was darn delicious, and at least SOMEthing. And I even appreciated the preparation of it, with the welcome ritual break during my long, awake and productive day.

And yes, on my longer fasts, I'd even indulge in some chicken broth soup, laced amply with crushed garlic, freshly ground pepper and tasty spices. The water would fill up my stomach so I'd feel full and sort of contented, while the spices satisfied my pallet. And my daily intake of energy was still plenty low so as to benefit from the nature of the fast. My friend may have pointed her finger accusingly at me while I sipped with utter delight each precious spoonful of my brothy and tasty concoction, but I am sure I was still benefiting from the power of the fast.

But before I embark on a detailed explanation of my powerful fast, I'd like to give you a bit of warning concerning the corners you might consider cutting above. First of all, I LOVE hot and spicey foods. And one year I'd say I over indulged in my spicy brothy soups, each time throwing in about five dried hot peppers, and two or three freshly bought red hot peppers (with curry spice etc.). It was a wonderfully satisfying dazzlement of my pallet, and because I was producing no stool, I imagined that my body was consuming this scanty amount of "food", meaning a few cloves of garlic, a seemingly innocent amount of red hot peppers, laced with my tasty lemon juice drink concoction richly supplemented with an ample serving of chilli pepper for greater satisfaction. Well, my friends, I'd like to assure you that my body was not magically consuming all these hot peppers as I naively imagined, but upon recommencement of eating some weeks later, I produced what I like to call the choochoo train of extreme pain. Yes, the first produced stool essentially bulldozed out this massive pile up of sweltering pain, the agonizing level reaching heaven itself and must have inspired Johnny Cash to write his Ring of Fire on the other side of the planet. I have never felt so much pain in my life, have slept so little and in so many desperate positions, that I would truly like to spare you anything like this. If you do happen to fall into such a trap, I would suggest a quick intestinal flush with sea salt water, explained below.

Well, hopefully I have not horrified you out of dabbling in this venture. But over the years, the fast has truly become painless for me, and almost a pleasurable experience, for example when I flushed out all my liver stones, felt the toxins flushing out of my system, and could look with joy at my shiny young looking face. It truly does feel like a rag under a running tap. You feel lighter, fresher, and it is a pleasure to feel your body ridding itself of all that junk. And you can look forward to a week of feasting afterwards, gorging on all those exotic foods you fantasized about during the fast.