Distilled water is always recommended as it does not contain chlorine. The billions of healthy bacteria you want to protect will be appreciative.

More on garlic as an optional additive, i have read that it kills the bad bacteria (as well as parasites) and not the good. Also when taken this way the garlic helps to further detoxify the liver.

Hang in there, Sacristia!!!

I remember well how acute my sense of smell was (it is anyway).

All I can suggest is bathing, as much as you like. It's also a gentle way to take in water, when you can't "stomach" it. For me, a bath does wonders. Always. (and then there's EFT: "even though I feel..." that's always helped me weather some of the rough patches in water fasting)The only time the bath hasn't helped though, I knew I was in trouble: that one time it turned out to be a serious illness. (meningeoccal pneumonia). But have no fear. If you don't have a filter for the bath, do what I do and run the water very hot, then let it gas off the chlorine, before you take it.

Best, C

Hello Mighty.Sun.Tzu (Love your username btw.)

Yes, many people do disagree with me on the use of enemas during the water-fast and I respect their views, after all this is not a dictatorship, but an advice column based on personal experience and that of thousands of others.

My own view and my own experience (after completing two extended fasts) tallies exactly with that of the early and latter-day Natural Hygienists......except for Dr Tilden MD who employed the enema in his fasting patients, but later came to abandon the idea later in life as serving no useful purpose, except to drain the already weakened state of a patient even further.

Whether anyone continues to use the enema on a fast is entirely down to personal choice, but I felt compelled (as I have done before on this forum) to explain the reasons not to.

For example........
"Although a strong advocate of the use of the enema in the fast, Bernarr Macfadden (the father of physical culture) states: "enemas are somewhat enervating, and when the patient is already weak, he may find it a drain upon his vitality to take these."--Encyclopedia of Physical Culture, Vol. III, p. 1374.
It does not seem to me necessary to resort to enervating practices in our conduct of the fast and for more than twenty-five years I have refrained from the use of the enema. The enema is at all times a drain upon the patient's powers and its use during the fast not only weakens the patient and thus prolongs his illness, but it impairs his colon and he is often weeks and months getting over the effects. The employment of laxatives, as advocated and practiced by some, has the same weakening and debilitating effects upon the colon and they exert their irritating influence upon the stomach and small intestine, also"............

THE ENEMA DURING THE FAST...........
http://www.soilandhealth.org/02/0201hyglibcat/020127shelton.III/020127.ch29.htm


"I am certain of another important matter, namely, that the frequent use of the enema during the fast, as at other times, impairs bowel function, so that after the fast is broken, bowel function is not as efficient as in those patients who have not had enemas. My good friend, Dr. Carlos Arguello, of Nicaragua, put this matter to a test by dividing his patients into two groups and giving one group enemas and the other no enemas during their fasts. After their fasts were broken he kept careful records of the bowel movements of the members of both groups. Those who received no enemas had nearly a third more movements in the same period of time following the breaking of their fasts.

The regular and frequent use of the enema induces several important evils in the colon and their use is not to be recommended at any period of life, certainly not when one is sick and weak and needs to conserve himself in every way possible. At the beginning of 1925 I ceased using the enema and I am much better satisfied with its non-use in the fast than with its use. My patients also escape the discomforts it induces".
BOWEL ACTION DURING FASTING...........
http://www.soilandhealth.org/02/0201hyglibcat/020127shelton.III/020127.ch13.htm


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Therefore, we can safely assume that what is not a good practice for the sick and already enervated, is also not a good practice for the relatively well, as is the case of most Water-Fasting-Support-Members..
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"Bowel action is necessarily more or less absent during a fast. There may be two or three actions during the course of a comparatively short fast, or no action at all during a most prolonged fast. The use of the enema during the fast, so much advocated in many quarters, is both unnecessary and pernicious. How unnecessary it is will be shown by the following cases"
Refer to the fourth Chapter down................
http://www.soilandhealth.org/02/0201hyglibcat/020127shelton.III/020127.ch13.htm


We should also bear in mind that this is the experience of people who conducted tens of thousands of fasts, and includes such eminent Doctors as Dr Charles E Page MD, and where the consensus of opinion and experience with the enema was not favorable to the patient whether sick or well.

Regards

Chrisb1.

Hello again Mighty.Sun.Tzu,

re' my own quote that you have quoted...............
"There is absolutely no build-up of toxins or "autointoxication" from the digestive tract on a water fast: this is a fallacy that has to be put to rest and complete nonsense."

And your own quote.....................
"If this is true, why each time i do an enema do i get a ton of stinky very dark stuff out? If this is not junk that should be leaving my body, what is it, stinky dark nutrients? And if the toxins in the colon were not reasably substantial, why do i (and sacristia and others it seems) feel so much better after rinsing them away"?
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In answer to the question of autointoxication or the re- absorption of toxins from the bowels during a water fast, (or at any other time come to that) could be answered this way................

"I soon became convinced from tests I made that there is no absorption of toxins from the colon. At that time, twenty-five years ago, physiologists were still teaching that toxins are absorbed from the colon. Since then, they have changed their minds.
The lining membrane of the colon no more absorbs toxins than does the lining membrane of the bladder. If the bladder does not absorb urine which is liquid, how can the lining membrane of the colon absorb feces, which is more or less solid? Answer this question in any way you may, there is one thing of which I am certain and this is, that, no symptoms of auto-intoxication develop during a fast of the longest duration when no enemas are employed"..........
http://www.soilandhealth.org/02/0201hyglibcat/020127shelton.III/020127.ch13.htm

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Sheltons and the other Hygienic Doctors experience, was also that of my own, in that there is no re-absorption of toxins from the bowels during a water fast: evidence of this can be found in the fact that when elimination has been completed, or almost completed, the tongue will clear, the breath will become sweet, the skin will appear smooth and blemish-free, the eyes become bright, and where the whites of the eyes become whiter than white.
These are sure-fire signs that the elimination of toxins is finished or almost finished; but, if toxins were constantly being reabsorbed from the colon/bowels via autointoxication, then the body would be in a constant state of toxemia from the fecal matter contained therein, and where these signs just would not be allowed to develop.

It is true to say, that the bowels for most, will: "shut-up-shop" on a fast, and where the fecal matter within them becomes "self-contained" and of no harm to the body; this fecal matter is easily removed post fast on the resumption of eating.
This was my own experience and the experience of thousands of others, post (two in my case) extended fasts.

However, I think your own experience with the enema could be explained in this way...........
Hygienic Doctors of the past (and present) discovered that very sick and enervated patients received no benefit from the use of the enema and in most cases proved to have the opposite effect; so someone as yourself who is most likely in a much better state of health, and not enervated and sick, would find the enema to be "stimulating" with very little loss of the fairly abundant bodily energy that you have available.

As I have said before, the use of the enema is a matter of personal choice, but that choice needs to be well-informed prior to its use.

Regards

Chrisb1.