I think you're missing the point. Your experiences and opinions are all valid, but no more so than ours.
We are not responsible for 'newbies' decisions. Nobody can know what information they have to start with just by a simple post asking for advice or support. And more often than not I think we all in supporting them ask them to go and do more reading and research and not take our opinions on their own merit.
You on the other hand are warning and potentially scaring people away from fasting with your message, talking of long term damage to the body and stresses that have little basis in fact. You simply have not read widely enough if you believe for example that complete rest is the only way to fast. I have read that too, but have also read that it is okay or even more beneficial to keep working and exercising, and my own long term fasts are proof enough of that for me. However I do not advise people to go and fast for 30 days 'the way I did it', I just relay my experience and offer my opinion.
Fasting balances the system and
Depression is physically an imbalance of chemicals in the brain, or at least that imbalance is present in most people with
Depression and other mental illnesses. If you have had a personal experience with fasting being bad for your
Depression say so, but this blanket advice that not to fast if you are depressed is again not based on any reasonable facts and I for one disagree that it is a bad idea to fast while depressed. If that was true then it would always be a bad idea for me to fast.
Fasting is also a real and useful tool for losing weight. And there is nobody out there can say that they have a perfect 100% tool for that, so advising against using fasting to lose weight is also unfair. Say it never worked for you. You can't back up your statement that fasting rarely works for weight loss for example. You can only post a few examples at best of when it hasn't worked. Say you don't believe it will work in the long run for this or that reason, but again these blanket comments about fasting not being any good for this or that, and assuming newbies can't think for themselves and need to be told not to fast because they aren't prepared enough. That's not your call to make.
On the contrary I assume that most of the people who come here are grown up human beings who must have at least some idea of what they are doing here, I don't think that people just suddenly decide to fast for 30 days on a whim. They come here for support and advice from people who have been there or are on the journey themselves already. We are a minority and as I've said already it's too easy to find people who will tell us for a great variety of reasons why fasting is bad for us and dangerous and so forth, but we don't come here to be put off, we come here for support and advice.
The person who came in and told us they were advised by a naturopath never to fast seemed very upset about this and was desperately seeking other opinions and advice. I gave them mine, that they should find another naturopath if possible, one who understands fasting better. That advice was based on my experience of which you know nothing about, and I certainly didn't expect everyone to have the same opinion or for that person to rush off and take my advice without thinking about it. We are not talking to sheep here but intelligent people who can make their own minds up, we don't have to assume they are unprepared in any way and need to be told what to do or not to do.
So please keep sharing your opinions and advice but don't tell us our advice is bad advice. It is all just as valid, based on our personal experiences and research into this wonderful topic.
Cheers,
Andrew.