DOCTOR AND FASTING

Waipa Post, Volume 32, Issue 1784, 20 July 1926, Page 6

DOCTOR AND FASTING

FIT AFTER SIXTEEN DAYS. Perhaps the man with the greatest personal experience of fasting is a Wimpole Street doctor, Major Reginald) F. E. Austin, late of. 'the Royal Army Medical Corps. He is 60 years of age but has a very much younger appearance. Describing the self-disci-pline to which he has subjected himself, Major Austin said to a Daily Mail reporter: "The evident proof of the benefit of occasional fasting is that I am healthy and. active while men younger than I am who en'tered the service at the same time as myself are 'old crocks' now. I have fasted regularly for 18 years, once for 16 days, often for 10 days, and every week-1 dispense with all food for a day or two. During my long fasts I take a 12 mile walk every afternoon, and on the last day of my 16 dlays' experiment I had a walking competition with a man 20 years my junior up an Indian hill. I beat him easily. When I am fasting I take nothing but water or fruit juice. For the first few days one feels shaky, but afterwards an exquisite feeling of fitness and an extraordinary clear state of mind, are 'experienced.

"When I began fasting in 1908 I weighed 17lst. 21b. and measured 43 inches at the waist, now I am 12st., and my waist measurement is 33 inches. It i s erroneous to think, however, that fasting is beneficial only to heavy persons. I have known many cases in Avhich very thin people have had their state of health transformed. My experience is that when food ite taken away from a sick person it is the disease and not the individual that is starved."