Going About Fasting With Scientific Guidelines

If you are from Nigeria or Africa, and you are of the Christian faith and possibly attending a Pentecostal church, this is the season of the year where you all begin to do all types of fasting from relay to hurdle and marathon. I am not talking against anyone's faith but a lot of people are going to be doing it wrong like someone in my neighborhood who said she would be fasting for 31 days marathon without eating anything and drinking any water. I did my best to tell her that water is life and it is essential for her survival and I hope she listened but so I do not get a repeat of such here among scientists, I decided to share about fasting and the right way to go about it here.

Before you start to throw me stone for speaking about fasting, let me state that it is a great tool to improve ones health as it increases the energy of the person and boost mental clarity, and for those in who are doing it for the purpose of religion, it also helps them get a better understanding and closer relationship with their faith. That said, when it comes to fasting, you are either fasting blindly or you are fasting right but how do you know which of the spectrum you fall into? My concern here is your health and not your faith so do not mind that I am discussing science.

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With that, the first thing to do before you begin fasting is to see a doctor. It is important to be sure that you are in the right frame of mind and health before you embark on a fasting journey. If you have a medical condition such as ulcer, it will be wrong to blindly follow everyone to begin a fast and worse of all to say you want to go for a hurdle or a marathon fasting. Let me state clearly again; if you are a pregnant or nursing mum, aged or immunocompromised person, sick or just recovering, it is important to speak to your doctor before you begin any fasting routine be it 6 to 6, 10 to 12, or even 5 days pause to break and continue.

I am mentioning this because fasting has its effect on our biological activities in the body including affecting the blood sugar level in the body, ability to metabolize drugs, and affect blood pressure. Due to complications from things like this, it is advisable to visit the doctor, a dietician or a nutritionist.

If you are going for any length, please always drink water when the going is getting long. When you are not having food in your body for a long time, it is best that you take water because of low calories. I am talking about those of you that intend to go for days like the person in my neighborhood I talked about. If you are someone who wants to go from 12AM to 6PM, please avoid taking sugary drinks when you are about to break your fasting. Energy Drinks, Sport drinks and so on, please avoid them because they are going to spike up the insulin level of the body.

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When you are fasting, and you notice that you are feeling drowsy, nausea, or extremely tired with your eyeballs rolling, it is advisable that you stop the fasting plan and think of the next step. When your body is in need of food which serves as fuel, please do not be too carried away by the fast that you would not notice what is happening so you do not end up on the hospital bed with doctors fighting to save the life that you ignorantly wanted to lose because you were not paying attention to your body.

Talking about paying attention, you need to have a fasting schedule and not fast at any random time as you will. Not properly planning your fast well and following the schedule can cause nutritional deficiency. Also, fast comes with losing essential electrolytes in the body like sodium, potassium, magnesium, and other vitamins, so it is important to eat food that will help regain lost electrolytes and vitamins as well as take supplements when breaking fast.

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When breaking your fasting, do not break it with a feast. You can start with eating nutrient dense food such as fruits. If you are fasting for the purpose of weight loss, breaking it with a feast is a wrong way to go about it. You cannot cabbage in 3 times what you have just cabbage out because you want to break fast. When you are breaking a fast, eat as you would normally eat and not like a person who had just finished a hunger strike period and want to eat all the lost food at once.

If you are embarking on a fasting now, that's good because I have been embarking on my routine for a very long time with Intermittent fasting. So while there are a lot of people that can begin a fast and complete it without any problem, people with health issues such as type-2 diabetes, heart disease, Pregnant, conceiving, or nursing mothers, aged and elderly people, people who are underweight, people with blood sugar problems, people who have experienced eating disorders, and low blood pressure should please see a doctor to be sure if they can start a fasting routine or not but remember to fast responsibly so the doctors do not fight to save your life.

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For Further Reading

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^{https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/intermittent-fasting-guide https://www.webmd.com/obesity/ss/slideshow-fasting-overview https://newsinhealth.nih.gov/2019/12/fast-or-not-fast https://www.uvmhealth.org/healthsource/intermittent-fasting-effective-or-dangerous https://health.cornell.edu/about/news/ramadan-fasting https://sph.umich.edu/pursuit/2019posts/beginners-guide-to-intermittent-fasting.html}

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