 Ted Jacob, Calgary Herald / Dr. Jim Mayhew says for some people, a juice fast can have positive results. |
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Some people believe fasting is a good way to atone for food sins, clean the holiday goo out of the system and start afresh. But is fasting -- abstaining from solid food for a period of time -- beneficial to your health?
Although fasting enjoys periods of trendiness, it's not exactly a new notion. For millennia, humans fasted in an attempt to heal their bodies, improve their mental acuity, attain spiritual enlightenment or register a protest (think of the 14-year-old Calgary boy who's stopped eating because he wants to live with his father, not his mother).
During the Muslim Ramadan, for example, the faithful abstain from all food, drink, sex and fighting between sunrise and sunset -- for a month. The Christian faith holds that Jesus Christ fasted for 40 days and nights. And the holiest day of the Jewish year, Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, is marked by a sunset-to-sunrise fast.
Traditionally, fasting has been a religious and cultural experience that's been passed down over the centuries. Along the way it was adopted by several alternative medicine belief systems that see fasting as a healthy, therapeutic thing
to do.
Not surprisingly, health professionals' views of fasting are determined by where they sit on the continuum between complementary medicine and conventional medicine. Most physicians recognize only the 12-hour fast undertaken in order to get an uncontaminated blood test, says Calgary's Dr. Jim Mayhew. Otherwise, allopathic doctors see no benefit to fasting.
At the other end of
the continuum is Dr. Filip Vanzhov, a naturopath who's been running supervised fasting retreats at Mountain Trek Fitness Retreat and Health Spa near Ainsworth Hot Springs, B.C. for the past eight years.
"Fasting is one of the oldest, safest ways to recover and rejuvenate your health and it's a simple thing to do," he says. (See Supervised fast, Page VS2.)
Somewhere in the middle is Mayhew, former chief of the department of family medicine at Foothills Hospital and now a general practitioner at the Centre for Preventative Medicine.
The centre bridges the worlds of allopathic and complementary worlds. There, GPs use conventional medicine along with homeopathy and naturopathy, plus herbal, dietary, detoxification and chelation therapies. They treat a lot of patients with chronic autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia.
Although he embraces a wide array of complementary practices, with a few exceptions Mayhew isn't an advocate of fasting.
"I look at it more allopathically
because I have seen some people get quite ill from very severe fasts,"
Mayhew says.
Severe fasts include the "true" or "dry" fast -- not eating or drinking anything, even water, to promote a sense of euphoria. Mayhew says it's a dangerous practice because it dehydrates the body and depletes it of nutrients.
He thinks water-only, long-term fasts of seven to 10 days or more are also unwise. Risks include dehydration and an electrolyte imbalance, thereby putting your heart at risk for arrhythmia. You may also experience a metabolic imbalance, where the body starts to consume its own muscle.
And forget about using fasting as a diet tool. Fasting slows your metabolism, making it even harder to drop pounds once you break the fast.
Mayhew also emphasizes that people with serious diseases such as diabetes, cancer, kidney problems and hypertension should avoid or be "very, very careful with fasts."
Most fasters opt for a gentler regime that includes lots of water, combinations of fruit and vegetable juices, herbal teas, broth and even raw foods.
Some regimes include herbal laxatives or purgatives.
In some cases, Mayhew thinks a naturopathic cleanse can be beneficial.
"We see many people who have intestinal or energy problems. They might be terribly fatigued and you can't find anything wrong. Or they might have a variety of gastrointestinal symptoms -- bloating, gas, constipation, loose stool, whatever.
"If you put them on a juice fast for three to five days, with a laxative or a purgative, and then add in some doses of healthy bacteria. . . . you can
improve, symptomatically, their well-being."
That said, he dismisses claims a short-term fast of one day a week or once a month can somehow kick-start the immune system.
"When you read these things in the complementary literature, there's always a reference to 'studies show that
. . .' but they never quote the studies. That's the weakness of the system."
Mayhew himself doesn't practice fasting but doesn't see any harm in the occasional one-day fast. "It may be helpful in that it makes people pay attention to their own health and minimize their bad habits on the other days."
Ironically, many of the people he sees who occasionally do a one-day fast already eat well. "Not very many people with poor nutrition habits would even elect to fast."
Margaret Chandler, editor of the environmental issues magazine, Encompass, describes herself as a "random faster." She does occasional one-day juice fasts or fruit-only fasts, and twice tried a 10-day "master cleanse" (see Lemon aid story this page).
After overindulging, she may eat sparingly for a few days, perhaps having only one meal a day.
"After Christmas, I don't care what your diet is, you always feel like you were excessive," Chandler says.
She likes the idea of fasting to test self-discipline and is contemplating following the Buddhist tradition of picking one day a month to fast -- typically on a new moon -- and observing a day of silence.
"It helps you become more disciplined," she says. "I think discipline is like a muscle: you have to exercise it or it gets flaccid. It's a way for the body and the mind -- if you're thinking about not eating and not talking for a day -- to really slow down for a day and step off that wheel of eating, talking, digesting, always being busy.
"It's a spiritual thing."
