The Oldest Cure In The World

“An illuminating exploration of the rich and varied history—and myriad health benefits—of fasting.” —Wall Street Journal When should we eat, and when shouldn’t we? The answers to these simple questions are not what you might expect. As Steve Hendricks shows in The Oldest Cure in the World, stop eating long enough, and you’ll set in motion cellular repairs that can slow aging and prevent and reverse diseases like diabetes and hypertension. Fasting has improved the lives of people with epilepsy, asthma, and arthritis, and has even protected patients from the worst of chemotherapy’s side effects. But for such an elegant and effective treatment, fasting has had a surprisingly long and fraught history. From the earliest days of humanity and the Greek fathers of medicine through Christianity’s “fasting saints” and a 19th-century doctor whose stupendous 40-day fast on a New York City stage inaugurated the modern era of therapeutic fasting, Hendricks takes readers on a rich and comprehensive tour. Threaded throughout are Hendricks’s own adventures in fasting, including a stay at a luxurious fasting clinic in Germany and in a more spartan one closer to home in Northern California. This is a playful, insightful, and persuasive exploration of our bodies and when we should—and should not—feed them.

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 A doctor in Minneapolis decided to cure himself of his various illnesses by fasting for 10 days. He went from being hungry to not thinking about food at all, and when his ailments got better, he continued fasting. While he didn’t reach his goal of 12 days, he did reach his goal of not eating anything and lived to tell the tale. #2 A man in Minneapolis went from being hungry to not thinking about food at all, and when his ailments got better, he continued fasting. He didn’t reach his goal of 12 days, but he did reach his goal of not eating anything and lived to tell the tale. #3 In 1847, a doctor in Minneapolis decided to cure himself of his various illnesses by fasting for 10 days. He went from being hungry to not thinking about food at all, and when his ailments got better, he continued fasting. #4 In 1880, a doctor in Minneapolis decided to cure himself of his various ailments by fasting for 10 days. He went from being hungry to not thinking about food at all, and when his ailments got better, he continued fasting. He didn’t reach his goal of 12 days, but he did reach his goal of not eating anything and lived to tell the tale.

Upton Sinclair was not only a prolifc and much admired author, but also a follower of Bernarr MacFadden's Physical Culture movement (see his Physical Culture Cook Book, 1901) and a member of the editorial staff of Physical Culture Magazine. Dedicated to MacFadden, this 1911 volume advocates the benefits of systematic fasting in producing long-lasting health benefits.

"I had taken several fasts of ten or twelve days' duration, with the result of a complete making over of my health." -Upton Sinclair, The Fasting Cure Upton Sinclair's The Fasting Cure (1911) consists of two essays in which Sinclair discusses the reasons he believes that engaging in regular fasts to remove toxins from the body is a healthy practice. While medically controversial, this book is considered worthwhile as an historical document of the "fasting fever," which occurred around the time of its writing.

A book so compelling it deserves to become one of the nonfiction classics of our time. As propulsively readable as the best “true crime,” A Kidnapping in Milan is a potent reckoning with the realities of counterterrorism. In a mesmerizing page-turner, Steve Hendricks gives us a ground-level view of the birth and growth of international Islamist terrorist networks and of counterterrorism in action in Europe. He also provides an eloquent, eagle’s-eye perspective on the big questions of justice and the rule of law. “In Milan a known fact is always explained by competing stories,” Hendricks writes, but the stories that swirled around the February 2003 disappearance of the radical imam Abu Omar would soon point in one direction—to a covert action by the CIA. The police of Milan had been exploiting their wiretaps of Abu Omar for useful information before the taps went silent. The Americans were their allies in counterterrorism—would they have disrupted a fruitful investigation? In an extraordinary tale of detective versus spy, Italian investigators under the leadership of prosecutor Armando Spataro unraveled in embarrassing detail the “covert” action in which Abu Omar had been kidnapped and sent to be tortured in Egypt. Spataro—seasoned in prosecutions of the Mafia and the Red Brigades and a passionate believer in the rule of law—sought to try the kidnappers in absentia: the first-ever trial of CIA officers by a U.S. ally. An exemplary achievement in narrative nonfiction writing, A Kidnapping in Milan is at once a detective story, a history of the terrorist menace, and an indictment of the belief that man’s savagery against man can be stilled with more savagery yet.

In 1976 the body of Anna Mae Aquash, an American Indian luminary, was found frozen in the Badlands of South Dakota — or so the FBI said. After a suspicious autopsy and a rushed burial, friends had Aquash exhumed and found a .32-caliber bullet in her skull. Using this scandal as a point of departure, The Unquiet Grave opens a tunnel into the dark side of the FBI and its subversion of American Indian activists. But the book also discovers things the Indians would prefer to keep buried. What unfolds is a sinuous tale of conspiracy, murder, and cover-up that stretches from the plains of South Dakota to the polished corridors of Washington, D.C. First-time author Steve Hendricks sued the FBI over several years to pry out thousands of unseen documents about the events. His work was supported by the prestigious Fund for Investigative Journalism. Hendricks, who has freelanced for The Nation, Boston Globe, Orion, and public radio, is one of those rare reporters whose investigative tenacity is accompanied by grace with the written word.

"An engaging exploration of the unique history and biology of fasting-an essential component of many traditional health practices, religions, and philosophies, resurging in popularity today-perfect for readers of Breath by James Nestor and Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker.We fast all the time, even when we're not conscious of doing so. A fast manifests the idea of holding back, resisting the animal impulse to charge ahead. Its flip side is similarly everywhere: call it splurging, self-indulgence, or a variant of "self-care." Based on extensive historical, scientific, and cultural research and reporting, The Fast illuminates the numerous facets of this act of self-deprivation. John Oakes interviews doctors, spiritual leaders, activists, and others who guide him through this practice-and embarks on fasts of his own-to deliver a book that supplies readers curious about fasting with profound new understanding, appreciation, and inspiration. Fasting has become increasingly popular for a variety of reasons-from health advocates who see fasting as a method to lose weight or to detox, to the faithful who fast in prayer, to seekers pursuing mindfulness, to activists using hunger strikes as an effective means of peaceful protest. Fasting is central to holy seasons and days such as Lent in Christianity, Ramadan in Islam, and Yom Kippur in Judaism. Advocates for justice who have waged hunger strikes include Gandhi in India, Bobby Sands in Ireland, and the Taxi Workers Alliance in New York City. Whether for philosophical, political, or health-related reasons, fasting marks a departure from daily routine. Fasting involves doing less but doing less in a radical way, reminding us that a slower, more intentional contemplative experience can be more fulfilling. Ultimately, this book shows us that fasting is about much more than food: it is about reconsidering our place in the world"--

Excerpt from Fasting for the Cure of Disease Self-conceit, credulity, and skepticism are said to go hand in hand; and candor compels the remark that these graces are not confined to the ignorant or to the uneducated. If a man be a skeptic, he can but mean that certain things do not exist relatively to his own knowledge; but no one can deny the possibility of the existence of that which he cannot har monize with his accepted opinions, or of which he is ignorant. Should he do so, the conclusion holds that he is Just as credulous as the man who believes without discrimination. When an extraordinary fact, a fact be yond its own experience, is presented to a mind vicariously moulded, more often than not it is rejected as impossible or as the result of disordered physical condi tions. In these circumstances even the testimony of the senses is repudiated, and that of credible witnesses is frequently imputed to base motives. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.