Fasting And Your Health

Fasting during the month of Ramadan can be good for your health if it’s done correctly.

When the body is starved of food, it starts to burn fat so that it can make energy. This can lead to weight loss. However, if you fast for too long your body will eventually start breaking down muscle protein for energy, which is unhealthy.

Dr Razeen Mahroof, an anaesthetist from Oxford, says there's a strong relationship between diet and health.

“Ramadan isn’t always thought of as being an opportunity to lose weight because the spiritual aspect is emphasised more generally than the health aspect," he says. "However, it’s a great chance to get the physical benefits as well.”

Source of energy during a fast

The changes that happen in the body during a fast depend on the length of the continuous fast. The body enters into a fasting state eight hours or so after the last meal, when the gut finishes absorbing nutrients from the food.

In the normal state, body glucose, which is stored in the liver and muscles, is the body’s main source of energy. During a fast, this store of glucose is used up first to provide energy. Later in the fast, once the glucose runs out, fat becomes the next source of energy for the body.

With a prolonged fast of many days or weeks, the body starts using protein for energy.

This is the technical description of what is commonly known as "starvation". It is clearly unhealthy and involves protein being released by the breakdown of muscle, which is why people who starve look very thin and become extremely weak.

However, you are unlikely to reach the starvation stage during Ramadan, because the fast is broken daily.

Gentle transition from glucose to fat

As the Ramadan fast only lasts from dawn till dusk, the body's energy can be replaced in the pre-dawn and dusk meals.

This provides a gentle transition from using glucose as the main source of energy, to using fat, and prevents the breakdown of muscle for protein.

Dr Mahroof says the use of fat for energy helps weight loss. It preserves the muscles and eventually reduces your cholesterol level. In addition, weight loss results in better control of diabetes and reduces blood pressure.

“A detoxification process also occurs, because any toxins stored in the body’s fat are dissolved and removed from the body,” says Dr Mahroof.

After a few days of the fast, higher levels of endorphins appear in the blood, making you more alert and giving an overall feeling of general mental wellbeing.

A balanced food and fluid intake is important between fasts. The kidneys are very efficient at maintaining the body’s water and salts, such as sodium and potassium. However, these can be lost through perspiration.

To prevent muscle breakdown, meals must contain enough energy food, such as carbohydrates and some fat. 

“The way to approach your diet during fasting is similar to the way you should be eating outside Ramadan," says Dr Mahroof. "You should have a balanced diet, with the right proportion of carbs, fat and protein.”

source:- http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Healthyramadan/Pages/fastingandhealth.aspx

Is Fasting Healthy?

Fasting has been practiced for centuries. But can it really help you lose weight and get healthier?

It sounds so simple -  no choices, no counting calories, no cooking. Just say 'no' to food, and start fasting for quick weight loss and other health benefits.

After all, Beyonce did it. She said she lost 20 pounds by fasting (and using a concoction of syrup, lemon juice, water and cayenne pepper) for her role in Dreamgirls.

But what about the rest of us mortals? We wonder:

• Is fasting an effective way to lose weight?
• Can fasting really help with medical conditions such as heart disease, high blood pressure, asthma, arthritis and other auto-immune disorders?
• Will fasting help you live longer?

And finally, is fasting healthy? Although fasting has been practiced for thousands of years, the question is still a subject of intense medical debate. WebMD consulted experts on weight loss and fasting for some answers.

Fasting and Weight Loss

If you weed through all the controversy, you'll find that most medical experts agree on one thing: fasting is not a healthy weight loss tool.

"The appeal is that [fasting] is quick, but it is quick fluid loss, not substantial weight loss," says Madelyn Fernstrom, PhD, CNS, founder and director of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Weight Loss Management Center.

"If it's easy off, it will come back quickly" -- as soon as you start eating normally again, she says.

Even some proponents of fasting for other medical purposes do not support fasting for weight loss. Some say it can actually make weight problems worse.

"Fasting is not a weight loss tool. Fasting slows your metabolic rate down so your diet from before the fast is even more fattening after you fast," says Joel Fuhrman MD, author of Eat to Live: The Revolutionary Plan for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss and Fasting and Eating for Health.

Fasting for weight loss carries other health risks as well.

While fasting for a day or two is rarely a problem if you are healthy, "it can be quite dangerous if you are not already eating a healthy diet, or if you've got liver or kidney problems, any kind of compromised immune system functioning, or are on medication -- even Tylenol," says Fuhrman, a family physician in Flemington, N.J..

Even worse for dieters is that fasting for weight loss "distracts people from the real message of how to lose weight: lower fat intake, eat five fruits and vegetables a day, drink water and stop drinking other liquids, walk 30 minutes a day, and get more sleep," says Fernstrom, an associate professor of psychiatry, epidemiology, and surgery at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

In addition, other practices that are often combined with fasting for weight loss, such as colon cleansing, carry their own risks.

"Fasts are sometimes accompanied with enemas to cleanse your intestinal tract, and that can be very dangerous," says Fernstrom. "The intestinal tract has a lot of good bacteria. When you are changing that balance, the good bacteria are affected, too."

This article is by Susan Seliger and appears on WebMD.

Reviewed by Cynthia Dennison Haines, MD

You can read it here:- 

http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/is_fasting_healthy