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I
wrote this lecture years ago after reading a book on fasting written by
an American, Dr Alan Cott, the book was titled Fasting, the Ultimate
diet. What I wrote was in Bahasa and, it was in the form of a
presentation. Now I m trying to rewrite it
in English adding to it what I learned from my many years of experience
fasting as well as treating fasting related problems in my clinic. This
writer was talking not about the Muslim fast but the fasting that some
people undertake, while not taking any solid food, they would take
water, or some would take juices.
The
Muslim fast on the other hand is a semi fast but also a complete
fast. One goes without food and drink and, more that this, one goes
without negative thoughts, if that is possible. The fasting one
undertakes is to fast from all negative things, including negative
thoughts. It is also a withdrawal from fulfilling some of our
bodily needs that are related to our desires and urges. While these are
not forbidden in themselves, they are to be abstained from while in the
state of fasting. This includes all actions pertaining to the sex act.
However it is only abstained from while observing the sun up to sundown
fast and is permitted in the night-time while not fasting even in the
fasting month of Ramadan.
It is not my intention to discuss the merits and demerits of fasting
but it is my intention to address some of the benefits, problems
and mechanics of fasting to help the individual who wants to undertake
the fast. It is also not my intention to go into great technical
details nor is it my intention to write a scholarly treatise with
references since there is a time constraint to my writing. Having said
that, most of what I am writing have been verified and data on it
can be easily found on the internet and in books.
The
fast begins with a pre fast preparation. The pre fast preparation
for the average Muslim faster is to get up before dawn to eat a meal!
Of course those who are afraid of going hungry will eat a big
meal if they have the appetite to eat at this hour! But, in actual
fact, the bigger the meal you eat, the faster you'll get hungry. It
would therefore be wise to eat a small meal that is packed with the
nutrients one needs for the day. A complex carbohydrate meal with a lot
of essential fatty acids and a helping of vegetable protein would be
good. If you take a cup of muesli with yoghurt and honey adding some
flax seeds, it would make a good pre fast meal. A liquid meal made from
a complete food powder may be a good choice for those who have no time
to waste preparing a meal, a light wholesome meal may be another
option. Milk with dates is also a good pre fast meal, adding a
whole food vitamin and mineral preparation would not be a bad idea. If
you are allergic to milk, substitute the milk with soya milk. Taking
refined carbohydrates like white flour and white rice is not such a
good idea because these foods digest pretty fast and you get very
hungry very soon, as well as your blood sugar will rise very fast and
then drop very fast. A complex carbohydrate on the other hand, will
digest much more slowly keeping the blood sugar steady.
Examples
of complex carbohydrates are brown rice, whole meal cereals including
wheat and all vegetables and fruits except for the very starchy ones
which have much less fibre and a lot of carbohydrates. Fruits are very
good for breaking the fast because they have a lot of easily utilised
sugars but they are not likely to cause the sudden rise and then fall
of the blood sugar. It is eating simple sugars (white sugar) that
sometimes make people dizzy after breaking the fast, because the blood
sugar shoots up suddenly releasing insulin which then works to bring
down the blood sugar again super fast as well. The fibre in the meal
slows down digestion, hence the blood sugar rise is gradual when we eat
complex carbohydrates.
For
those who are usually constipated while not fasting, the bad news is
that it is going to get worse when fasting and it is also going to
negate any beneficial detox effect of the fast! For these people,
I would suggest that a few days before beginning the fast, eat light
foods, avoid animal proteins, drink lots of water and take a
preparation that would cleanse the bowels. Depending on the type and
manner of constipation, these are the suggestions : Take a fibre
preparation before bedtime with a large glass of water, ones that can
be bought at a pharmacy are psyllium seed preparations or asperghula
husk. You can make your own preparation using local ingredients (getah
anggur, kembang semangkok, selasih). Take a tablespoonful of Lactulose
(available over the counter at the Pharmacy) or if this is too mild,
add two senokot tablets or granules prepared according to instructions
on the pack you bought. Senokot may cause some griping pain while being
a good bowel cleanser and each person has got to find their own
suitable dose! Start taking more fibre with your meals but, if you have
been used to eating low fibre meals, you may find that suddenly
increasing fibre intake will cause bloating! Adding a suitable amount
of chlorella and spirulina may help with the detox but having said
that, please make sure the brands you use are from pollution free
sources and, also there are some people allergic to chlorella and
spirulina so please start with a small quantity, way below the
recommended dose! You may want to know why I suggest a detox to
begin the fast. Most Muslims do not do any kind of detox and
simply plunge into the fast. Many will have been fasting for a few days
in the week the previous month and this will be a detox in itself.
Those who plunge into the fast may have a tough time the first week of
the fast if their bodies are having a lot of waste matter that has not
found its way out of the body in the normal course of its metabolism.
How is this possible you may ask?
In an
experiment done in a lab, some cells from a chicken were grown in a
Ringer's solution. The Ringer's solution was changed daily. The cells
lived for more that 20 years. The reason the cells died finally is
because the solution was not changed during a long public holiday when
the lab was closed. This experiment showed that the cells survived when
their metabolites were efficiently dealt with. The Ringer's solution
that was contaminated with the metabolites from the cells still
contained enough cell nutrients, which means that what killed the cells
were their own toxic products! Our bodies have their metabolites
eliminated via our stools, by being processed by the liver, and through
our kidneys as urine, also through our skin as sweat and through our
lungs in the vapour that comes out with our breaths. If for any reason
there is an inefficient elimination due to the sluggishness of the
liver or the kidneys or the skin and lungs, our body will be storing
waste matter meant to be eliminated. The waste products are the
metabolites from the food we eat and also from pollution that we are
exposed to via breathing and our drinking water as well as food. When
we are not fasting, our cells are busy processing the food we keep
ingesting and this may make the cells fall back on the clearing out of
the waste matter which then gets retained in the cells but when we stop
eating the cells will then have the time they need to deal with the
waste matter. For this reason I have always advised people to stop
eating at about 6 pm and have the next meal at about 8 am, even if they
do not do any fasting! In other words, it is possible to eat ourselves
to death if we do not pay attention to the detox and elimination
functions of our bodies.
So now we go to the actual fast itself. Basically the fast is to stop
eating and drinking from sun up to sun down! The time of the
fast varies from country to country and season to season and year
to year. For some it may be 14 hours, for some much more and for some
much less! But somehow since the Muslim calendar moves because it is a
non-adjusted lunar calendar, it keeps shifting until those who have
fasted in the winter will find themselves some years later fasting in
the summer!
So
what actually happens during a fast? A long enough fast will result
in ketosis. The body will run out of its glycogen, the constant energy
supply that the body produces from foods eaten and, the body starts
dipping into its reserve supply stored in the fat. The body however, no
matter how fat a person is, is very reluctant to dip into the stored
fat, some long ago mechanism for survival of the human I suppose and
will let the blood sugar level really drop, as well as let the body
metabolism slow down before it actually starts to dip into the stored
energy reserves. Does a person who totally fasts for about 14-18 hours
in a day go into a ketosis state? This is an individual thing and, can
only be determined by doing a ketone test on the urine or the breath.
Some
of the experiences of the faster come from reflex actions by the
body. Do we feel hungry because the body does not have enough food?
More often that not, the hunger pangs we get are reflex, because we eat
at a certain time, so we regularly feel hungry even though our
body may not need the food! When the blood sugar goes down, we may feel
dizzy, and, we will not be able to stand the cold as much as when we
are not fasting.
Many
people
get a headache when they fast, even a few hours into the fast.. The
headache comes on for many reasons, some of it may have to do with a
gastric reflex action, and, some of it may be due to toxins that start
to get released into the blood stream because of being released from
the cells. The waste matter that has been trapped in the cells and in
our fat cells, start to find its way into the blood because we have
given the cells time to process the metabolites in the cells by not
eating. The cells start to deal with the accumulated waste products and
throw them back into the blood so that they can go to the liver and the
kidneys, and the skin and lungs to be released from the body. This
gives rise to the smelly breath, smelly sweat, pungent urine and smelly
stools the faster may experience. It may also make the faster
experience diarrhoea a few days into the fast and these increased
toxins in the blood, on their way out, also gives rise to the lethargy,
body ache and weakness, besides the headache and dizziness that
the faster experiences. It sounds bad, but leaving the toxins in the
cells is much worse because there they cause the cells to degenerate
and age faster. A person who has done some detox before the fast will
experience much less problems from these annoying symptoms besides
being simply tired and hungry.
Anyone who has actually undertaken the fast will tell you they start to
feel better in the second week of the fast! By this time the body's
reflex actions will have adjusted to the new time table of eating, and
also the accumulated waste in the cells will have had a sufficient time
to have been removed, thus the overload of metabolites from the cells
and the fat cells will have reduced.
Some problems however may start to become apparent during this time!
What I notice is an increase in cases of renal colic and gouty
arthritis, and, gastritis. I also find many cases of acute
gastroenteritis, quite apart from the diarrhoea that I mentioned
earlier as possibly due to a detox reaction. Most of these medical
problems of the faster is not directly related to the fasting but, more
because of how they break the fast each day! My favourite phrase that I
say to my patients is "This is not because of the fasting, but this
is because of how you break your fast!" (Ini bukan salah puasa, ini
salah buka puasa) Most people are not aware and do not think it
necessary to change the way they eat after not eating for 14-18 hours!
They break their fast by eating as they usually eat and if that
consists of really hot chili padi and curried chicken, roast beef and a
heaping plate of rice, then that is what they’ll eat when they break
their fast!
The problem is that the gastrointestinal tract, having rested for an
unusual length of time, and being really empty of food, is not ready to
digest irritating foods in large quantities engulfed in record time! My
advice would be to eat lightly and certainly cut down on the animal
proteins as much as possible and substitute mixed vegetables and beans
for it. This would counter the tendency for uric acid stones and
deposits, the main reason for the increased incidence of gouty
arthritis and renal colic during the fasting month. By the way, some
beans may also be a problem for some people with a raised uric acid
level to start with. Taking a lot of fruit juices would help
alkaliniaze urine and this would also be a great help in preventing
stones. Drinking a lot of water whenever possible throughout the night
would also be a good practise. If there is a strong tendency for uric
acid stones, perhaps a commercially sold alkalinizer may be a good
preventive measure.
The other reason for the gastrointestinal problems besides
indiscreet breaking of the fast, is eating food that has been in the
refrigerator, or worse still, kept on the table for long periods
of time. Asians for example would cook rice and leave it in the pot for
long hours in the hot weather and not realize that germs would have
been breeding in the rice. Or they would eat leftovers from the break
fast meal for the pre dawn sahur again paving the road for ingesting
germs! My advice here would be to cook enough for one meal, and to
quickly refrigerate leftovers if they are to be eaten again and, to
throw away the bacterial cultures and fungal cultures that you may
discover in the refrigerator after a week of fasting and accumulating
left over foods, lest a hapless member of the family raids the
refrigerator at night and ends up sick!
There
is
another problem that I have come across during the fasting month and
that is, many people who were allergic to certain foods had flare ups
when they ingested the food during the breaking of the fast! The
explanation for this is that, in actual fact the person may be very
sensitive to the food, but the effect is masked when the person eats
regular meals because of the other digestive functions. Abstaining from
food therefore augments the sensitivity reactions. This is actually
helpful because it identifies the food we are sensitive to and we can
thus avoid these foods. Although we may think that we have become more
allergic to these foods, in actual fact we are already very allergic to
these foods, except that the allergies would manifest in less dramatic
but more chronic ways. For example, if we are allergic to shrimp and
usually, on non fasting days, taking shrimp makes us wake up with
a runny nose the
next morning, we may find that taking shrimp for the break fast meal
may cause an immediate itch in the mouth! The most sensible thing to do
with food we are allergic to is to avoid these foods but I know of very
many people who would rather have the allergy than go without the food!
In this case, then I would suggest make sure you do not take foods you
are allergic to in the break fast meal, take it later in the night.
The best thing to take for the break fast meal is bland nutritious
foods and most Muslims know that the Prophet (pbuh) used to take dates
and milk. The prophet (pbuh) used to have a very meagre meal for
breakfast and the same for sahur, which would make the fast a ketotic
one, that is the body goes into ketosis, there is a break down of fat
and, there is a detoxification process that goes on, and research has
shown that in this kind of fasting, it is quite possible that tumours
will be resorbed and shrink, even disappear from the body. This kind of
fast, eating far less than the caloric needs of the day will have a lot
of added benefits but, is not to be undertaken by those who are having
other serious metabolic disease except under close medical supervision
and monitoring! It is also possible to cure disease related to the
guts, including colitis and constipation, if one is prepared to go on a
strictly bland diet, completely avoiding the foods that aggravate the
conditions. This is different in different people, many people are
gluten intolerant, quite a number are pretty allergic to spices and
chilli although they will say they cannot do without it. Some cannot
take certain vegetables and certain meats so what to avoid is quite
individual! The month long fast, if undertaken with the avoidance of
the foods one cannot tolerate well will improve digestion and heal many
minor functional digestive problems and possibly even more serious ones.
About
spices, many Asian styles of cooking are very spicy. Spices have a lot
of essential oils and stuff that need to be processed by the liver and
by the kidneys. So, in the fasting month when water intake is nil in
the daytime for 14-18 hours, it is very wise to cut down on spices or
to avoid spices entirely.
continue
to
Part Two
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