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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
Malay and, it was in the form of a presentation.
Now I am 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 ('s)
used to take dates and milk. The prophet ('s) 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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