Therapeutic fasting: benefits, indications for prescription

Fasting is a word on many people's lips today. Some pay tribute to fashion, arguing that today a wasp waist is relevant again, while others are seriously considering the possibility of improving their health by giving up their usual diet. In the second case, we are not talking about correcting the figure through a strict diet, but about a method that has a health effect. This is the effect that therapeutic fasting is designed for, which helps a person maintain both the physical and mental state of their body in the norm, fight various diseases and even prevent them by the body itself. However, we can talk about the benefits of such a therapeutic and preventive method only if a person approaches its organization correctly.

A bit of history

Not everyone knows that people began to practice healing diseases by fasting in ancient times. Mention of this can be found in the works of scientists from Egypt, Judea, Babylon, Persia, Tibet, etc., where therapeutic fasting was considered a guarantee of successful treatment.

The great sages of that time, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and Herodotus, were inclined to this opinion. At the same time, they themselves resorted to abstaining from food for different periods of time to improve mental abilities and creative thinking. And Herodotus and Avicenna considered fasting as the best cleansing procedure for the body, allowing it to remove all unnecessary things. They insisted that eating during a critical period of illness only feeds the disease, preventing recovery.

In the middle of the 19th century, doctors of traditional medicine began to think about the possibilities of fasting. Several experiments were conducted showing the effect of short-term fasting (about 2 days) on the human body. But doctors focused more on the sensations during fasting and the consequences of hunger.

A little more than 15 years later, the American doctor Edward Dewey, after miraculously healing his little patient suffering from typhus (the doctor prescribed the girl a month-long fast due to the impossibility of taking medications orally), began to think about the healing properties of fasting. After conducting a course of fasting treatment (the subjects were himself and his family) by giving up breakfast, he noted a noticeable improvement in his performance and well-being.

Based on Dewey's notes, physician Linda Hazzard published a book on fasting, in which she considered it as a therapeutic method. At the same time, she supplemented the method with important additional procedures: massage, gymnastics, cleansing enemas, vegetarian diet, thus creating a new health system.

Further research into this issue allowed fasting to be considered a scientifically recognized method of effective body cleansing. And so, at a congress of dieticians in 1928, the possibility of using fasting as one of the methods of treating various somatic diseases was first considered. In particular, options for using the method of treating cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, skin, metabolic and even endocrine diseases with fasting were considered.

It was during this period that much attention began to be paid to the impact of hunger on the immune system. An increase in the body's defenses was noted after a course of therapeutic fasting, as well as changes in the structure and capabilities of individual organs and their components. Thus, it was noted that the gastric mucosa after several courses of fasting treatment "hardens" so much that any food becomes indifferent to it.

Currently, therapeutic fasting methods are considered and practiced by specialists in different countries. True, there are some differences in the recommended duration of fasting. Thus, in England and the USA, doctors tend to favor a 30-day fasting course, the French prefer the standard 21-day course, and the French usually limit themselves to two weeks of complete abstinence from food.

In our country, various options for treatment by fasting are considered and based on them, as well as on the research of foreign nutritionists, entire systems of therapeutic fasting are developed. At the same time, the type and duration of fasting is largely determined by the diagnosis. And this may be not only obesity or excess weight in various diseases.

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Indications for use

Many different articles and posts have already been written about diets and fasting. But the goal of most methods is weight loss, and not for health, but for attractiveness. Speaking about therapeutic fasting, which is a therapeutic method, we pursue a different goal - restoring the body's natural defenses to fight disease. Attractiveness is no longer in the foreground here, because a healthy person always looks more attractive than a sick person, i.e. the second follows from the first.

Everyone is free to choose a weight loss diet for themselves, because even a medical opinion is not required to decide whether we need it and how to achieve our goal. And unloading and dietary therapy (UDT), like any medical procedure, implies supervision by a specialist. In addition, for various diseases, doctors recommend different therapeutic fasting schemes, based on the localization, nature and cause of the disease, the patient's condition, his age and physiological characteristics, and the body's capabilities.

It should be said that there is no consensus among doctors regarding the appropriateness and safety of prescribing therapeutic fasting for various specific diseases. After all, this system belongs to the category of alternative medicine and is considered by doctors only in the context of drug treatment and only in the area in which the doctor works.

Thus, in gastroenterology, which deals with the treatment of the gastrointestinal tract, therapeutic fasting has already gained a strong position. The belief of doctors in the benefits of abstaining from food in pancreatitis is considered especially persistent. And at the same time, disputes around this method regarding gastric ulcers do not cease.

Recently, cardiologists and phlebologists have increasingly begun to turn to therapeutic fasting due to the insufficient effect of drug therapy in cases of cardiovascular diseases.

Many doctors no longer deny the benefits of fasting for colds, bronchial asthma, prostate adenoma and prostatitis, allergic skin diseases, and obesity.

Recently, the RTD method has been used by some doctors even in connection with diseases of the organs of hearing and vision (for example, in the treatment of inflammatory diseases of the ear and eyes, with some visual impairments, glaucoma). There are positive results in the practice of treating diseases of the musculoskeletal system with fasting (osteomyelitis, osteoporosis, myopathy, hernias, impaired joint mobility, etc.).

Some doctors practice the method of therapeutic fasting in the treatment of diseases of the urinary system: pyelonephritis, cystitis, urinary retention in the body, urinary incontinence, etc. However, in this case, special attention should be paid to the extent to which the kidney function is impaired, the load on which increases during fasting.

The RDT method is especially popular for the problem of excess weight. Thus, a doctor may prescribe therapeutic fasting for weight loss if excess weight causes excessive strain on the heart, kidneys, legs or other organs. As a result, the patient may develop various diseases or problems with their treatment. In this case, the methods and duration of the course of treatment may be different depending on how much weight needs to be lost and what concomitant diseases are present.

Despite the fact that therapeutic fasting is one of the oldest therapeutic methods, its incorrect use can lead to serious consequences, including the death of the patient (there are such statistics). Followers of the RDT method, who claim that abstinence from food is a natural way to recovery from many diseases, sometimes forget to mention that the method also has contraindications, and in addition, at home without medical supervision, sick people can fast for no more than 3 days.

These are the important points that can prevent a tragedy, but they are often not taken into account by patients who have despaired of finding help among traditional medicine methods or simply do not want to turn to them. The result is various complications, with which patients go to the doctor. The skeptical attitude of doctors to therapeutic fasting is supported by the facts of its ineffectiveness and even harm to health. It is clear that in such conditions the method cannot be widely distributed until people's consciousness changes.

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What diseases can be treated by fasting?

To begin with, let's consider for what diseases a doctor can support the idea of therapeutic fasting and what are its optimal terms. In this case, the word "can" comes to the fore, because not all doctors have a positive attitude towards such "violence" against the body.

Therapeutic fasting for obesity can be carried out as an independent treatment or included in a complex of therapeutic procedures. Depending on the degree of obesity and the parallel procedures, RTD takes about 2-4 weeks. At the same time, its results are visible even when other methods of combating excess weight are powerless.

If the diagnosis of obesity is still in question, i.e. excess weight has not yet become critical, therapeutic fasting for 14 days gives good results for body shaping, which helps to lose extra pounds and restore normal metabolism, cleansing the body of everything that was bothering it.

Therapeutic fasting for diabetes is used only in cases of uncomplicated insulin-independent diabetes type 2, the main problem of which is considered to be excess weight, which is precisely the risk factor for glucose metabolism disorders.

It is quite logical that insulin, produced by the pancreas and necessary for glucose metabolism and its proper absorption by tissues, is produced after eating. In the absence of food, the pancreas has the opportunity to rest, and beneficial changes occur in the metabolism, which helps to normalize weight and blood sugar levels.

In case of diabetes, after appropriate preparation, a short course of fasting is prescribed (usually 3-5 days). Surprisingly, even a short-term refusal of food while maintaining a drinking regimen gives a noticeable decrease in blood glucose levels without the use of hypoglycemic drugs. With positive dynamics, the doctor can prescribe courses of medium or long (over 3 weeks) duration.

Therapeutic fasting for pancreatic diseases is based on the same principles. Usually we are talking about inflammatory pathologies and dysfunction of the organ (the latter is the basis for the development of type 1 diabetes). The diseased organ, which participates in the digestive process by producing insulin and pancreatic juice that breaks down fats (lipase enzyme), proteins (trypsin enzyme) and complex carbohydrates (amylase enzyme), is unable to fully perform its assigned task. This, of course, affects the processing and absorption of food in the intestines.

We already know about the ability of our organs to self-recovery. Inflammation of the pancreas is mostly not of an infectious nature, so to restore its tissues, it is enough to simply rest, when the production of digestive enzymes stops, which means they do not irritate the internal walls of the organ. At the same time, it is necessary to unload the gland as much as possible, which is possible with absolute, i.e. dry fasting.

In 1-3 days, the pancreatic tissues return to normal, and it can function normally, which is not a reason to overload it again. However, a longer fast can be harmful, since, having “relaxed” too much, the organ may not want to strain itself further, and subsequently may lose the ability to produce digestive enzymes.

Therapeutic fasting for gastritis raises doubts about its safety and relevance for many. However, practice confirms that short-term fasting for 1-2 days gives better results than fractional meals and light food. Both fasting schemes are used (both wet and dry fasting), but the second gives more interesting results, allowing the organ to fully rest with a significant decrease in the secretion of gastric juice, known for its acidic environment and high aggressiveness towards the mucous membrane.

RDT allows to calm acute symptoms of gastritis, after which it is possible to consolidate the therapeutic effect with medication. But in chronic gastritis during periods of remission, therapeutic fasting is inferior in its effectiveness to fractional nutrition, and in some cases, on the contrary, can provoke an exacerbation.

Therapeutic fasting for reflux esophagitis, as one of the diseases of the digestive system, also aims to reduce the irritating effect of gastric juice on the walls of the gastrointestinal tract. But in this case, we are talking about the esophagus, the mucous membrane of which becomes inflamed as a result of the reflux of gastric contents, abundantly flavored with digestive juice, into its lumen.

In practice, fasting for this disease is used only in severe cases, when there is severe inflammation of the esophagus tissue, in which eating becomes a problem. After all, pieces of food, as well as changes in its temperature or acidity, can negatively affect the condition of the organ, injuring it in addition to gastric juice. Fasting eliminates the irritating effect of both factors: both food and gastric juice, the production of which is minimized.

Like gastritis, esophagitis (esophageal inflammation) is treated by practicing a short course of fasting (1-2 days), after which they switch to liquid light food. But it is important to understand that fasting is not a complete treatment for reflux disease, since it cannot eliminate its cause, which is often hidden in the weakness of the ligaments of the esophageal opening of the diaphragm, as a result of which the stomach can take an incorrect position, or the sphincter of the esophagus. Fasting in this case can be considered as symptomatic therapy.

Therapeutic fasting for hemorrhoids, which is another digestive system disease localized in the lumen of the large intestine, is not officially recognized by traditional medicine. Moreover, many doctors believe that it can provoke an exacerbation of the disease, because at the beginning of fasting and immediately before it, a thorough stimulated cleansing of the intestine is required, which can cause injury to the hemorrhoidal nodes and bleeding.

In a disease with an insufficiently studied pathogenesis, which is hemorrhoids, it is difficult to predict the result of untested treatment methods. So the fears of doctors are quite justified. And yet, short-term therapeutic fasting can be prescribed in connection with an operation to remove hemorrhoids. The absence of solid particles in the feces and some delay in the passage of feces, observed in the first days of fasting, make it possible for the wounds at the site of the removed vascular nodules to heal faster.

Some people successfully practice therapeutic fasting for allergies. Well, with food allergies everything is clear: no allergens, no allergies, and fasting helps cleanse the body of toxins, allergens and other harmful substances. But, it would seem, what relation can food have to seasonal allergies or allergies to environmental substances?

However, fasting courses of varying durations help in this case as well. At first, with RDT, there is some suppression of the immune system activity (and in allergy sufferers it can be unreasonably active due to increased sensitivity to certain allergens), as a result of which acute allergy symptoms quickly disappear. Further cleansing of the body leads to the removal of allergens from it, and cleansing of the intestines helps to normalize the immune system and reduce its sensitivity to substances that are not actually dangerous.

It should be said that subsequent restorative nutrition not only consolidates the result, but also teaches the body to work correctly. But some diseases arise due to improper functioning of organs. Thus, autoimmune diseases are caused by inadequate functioning of the immune system. It is not surprising that therapeutic fasting for autoimmune diseases is supported by many doctors of traditional medicine, because, as in the case of allergies, there is excessive activity of the immune system, which does not improve, but on the contrary worsens the well-being of patients.

In simple terms, fasting helps to restart the immune system and correct the disrupted pattern of its functioning, which is beyond the power of classical drugs. After all, if we somehow manage to fight allergies (purely symptomatic therapy), then with many autoimmune pathologies and immunopathological diseases (Graves' disease, lupus erythematosus, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, autoimmune eczema, psoriasis, etc.) even a weakening of symptoms cannot always be achieved.

Let's remember such an unusual disease as psoriasis. The disease has been known to mankind for more than one millennium, but there are still no effective ways to stop the disease forever. Some treatment methods only allow for long-term remission, when the patient's skin is not covered with unsightly flaky plaques protruding above the surface of the body.

In the classical approach to treating the disease, patients undergo regular courses of drug treatment and hydrotherapy. Treatment with drugs is a systematic intervention in the body from the outside throughout the patient's life. This includes financial costs, depression if there is no result (and this often happens), and constant anxiety that such an intrusion into the immune system can cause harm.

It is not surprising if, having failed to find effective classical methods of treating the disease, a person turns to non-traditional ones, especially since a lot has already been said about the benefits of temporary abstinence from food. Therapeutic fasting for psoriasis, if approached correctly, helps to achieve stable remission, cleansing the skin from crusts and replacing old diseased cells with young and healthy ones.

True, not all doctors support the treatment of psoriasis with fasting, although they have a positive attitude towards the diet for this disease. One of the reasons for the negativity is the fact that failures in the immune system in many patients indicate the presence of other concomitant diseases. But we know that therapeutic fasting is not useful for all diseases.

Those who support the idea of RDT, in psoriasis recommend using different fasting patterns depending on how long ago the patient developed symptoms of the disease and how severe the skin lesion is. They associate these moments with a greater or lesser slagging of the body. It is clear that in the first case, a longer course of cleansing will be needed (about 20-30 days). However, you should always start with courses of medium duration (5-9 days), especially for those for whom long-term fasting is difficult or contraindicated. It is recommended to alternate dry and wet fasting: first, a 5-7-day course of dry fasting, and after a couple of weeks, you can sit on water for the same amount of time.

Therapeutic fasting, however, like other methods, is not a panacea for psoriasis, eczema and many other diseases, so even with a positive effect, a course of treatment with fasting will be needed. Many patients were able to achieve a reduction in the manifestations of the disease and stable remission, conducting fasting courses 1-2 times a year.

Rheumatoid arthritis is another fairly common autoimmune disease, which alternative medicine specialists and some doctors tend to treat with fasting. The disease is characterized by joint inflammation caused by the body's own immune system, which, for various reasons, begins to perceive its own cells as foreign.

In rheumatoid arthritis, short (3-5 days) courses of therapeutic dry fasting give good results. This period is enough for a large number of hormones to be released into the blood due to the restructuring of nutrition, including corticosteroids produced by the adrenal cortex. That is, the body itself is able to provide a strong anti-inflammatory effect, similar to that observed when steroids are administered from the outside. Inflammation quickly subsides, and pain goes away after it.

During fasting, the immune system is restructured and strengthened, as a result of which the likelihood of recurrent inflammation is significantly reduced.

Therapeutic fasting is also used for asthma, which in most cases is of allergic or autoimmune origin. In this regard, chronic inflammatory processes occur in the body, and when they are localized in the bronchi, asthma attacks occur. The developed methods of treating bronchial asthma of various genesis usually help only to relieve attacks characteristic of the disease, but are not able to cure the disease. And yet, not all doctors are positive about the idea of treating asthma with fasting, although more and more doctors are inclined to believe that such an alternative method of treating bronchial asthma has a right to exist.

Exposure to allergens, stressful situations, hypothermia, infections and some other factors provoke sudden swelling and obstruction of the bronchi - a life-threatening condition for patients. Therapeutic fasting helps to stop inflammation by the body's own efforts, strengthen the immune system and coordinate its work, optimize the work of the respiratory system.

It is important to understand that if the pathological program is embedded at the genetic level, then even fasting cannot completely correct it. But in many diseases of autoimmune genesis, the genetic (hereditary) factor plays one of the leading roles. Therefore, one cannot count on a complete cure in one course of therapeutic fasting. We are usually talking about a course of treatment that will help prevent repeated attacks of suffocation. In this case, the duration of the course of treatment usually depends on the severity of the pathology.

The RDT system suggests treating inflammatory diseases with dry fasting. The release of corticosteroids into the blood can be expected with wet fasting, but inflammation, which implies tissue swelling (fluid accumulation in them), will subside faster if it is not fed with moisture. With inflammation of an infectious nature (bacterial or viral), the infection dies 2 times faster without water, which facilitates the work of the immune system.

It is on this basis that therapeutic fasting for flu is built as an alternative to drug therapy. Probably, not all doctors will agree that with an illness that weakens the body so much, it is possible to refuse food that gives it energy. It is difficult to disagree with such an argument, because both illness and fasting are stress for the body. But if you start fasting at the first signs of the disease, the crisis, and with it the recovery, comes much earlier. After 3-4 days, a person feels quite healthy and active. Late fasting is also possible, but the recovery process is definitely delayed.

Probably, many have noticed that during the acute period of the disease, the appetite noticeably decreases. This is due to the fact that the body switches to an economical mode, not spending the energy needed to fight the disease, on processing food, which also requires energy. So maybe it is worth listening to your body?

A 1-3-day absolute refusal to eat in the first days of the disease is unlikely to cause harm, but will significantly speed up recovery. However, at high temperatures, refusal of water is fraught with increased blood clotting, so it is better to give preference to wet fasting, although its duration will be longer - 5-7 days, but you will not have to poison the body with medicinal chemicals.

Therapeutic fasting for varicose veins requires a certain amount of caution. The disease itself is not an absolute contraindication to fasting, and a risk factor for the development and complications of varicose veins is excess weight, which can be dealt with by giving up food. But on the other hand, it is impossible to cure the disease with fasting alone. This method is effective in the early stages of the disease, since it can slow down the progression of varicose veins and facilitate its treatment with other methods (we are talking about complex treatment).

The benefits of therapeutic fasting for fractures may seem unclear, because abstaining from food is unlikely to help bones heal quickly and properly. On the contrary, the lack of calcium in the body, as a necessary component of bone tissue, may be alarming. However, some practitioners claim that the healing process for surgical injuries is faster, and the likelihood of complications is significantly reduced.

It is very important to start treatment as early as possible, without postponing it for even an hour. At the same time, you cannot refuse medication and other methods of treatment, but the amount and dosage of drugs should be minimal, and the prescriptions vital. In case of acute injuries (and even acute myocardial infarction or fresh stroke can be considered as such), timely resort to therapeutic fasting allows you to limit yourself to a 5-7-day course. And even with purulent pathologies, you can achieve a positive result, avoiding amputation of the damaged organ, however, in this case, a strictly individual approach is needed in determining the duration and type of fasting.

Doctors have a negative or highly skeptical attitude towards the treatment of malignant diseases of the body using therapeutic fasting. A different attitude is taken towards the use of RDT for benign tumors. Thus, therapeutic fasting is currently used quite successfully in the treatment of pulmonary sarcoidosis (formation of benign granulomas in the organ) and prostate adenoma (benign tumor of the prostate gland).

In the second case, dry fasting can slow down tumor growth (in some cases, in the early stages of the disease, the tumor disappeared completely) by reducing the synthesis of dihydrotestosterone (formed from testosterone with the help of the enzyme 5-alpha-reductase) and stopping the inflammatory process.

Moreover, the process of fasting has an amazing effect on the sexual and reproductive spheres: sexual desire increases, orgasm intensifies, and the composition of seminal fluid improves. This is noted by both men and women who have undergone a course of fasting treatment for gynecological pathologies. Such a practice in gynecology is still rare, but the available results speak in favor of using the method: rapid relief of inflammatory and tumor processes, resorption of cystic formations, the appearance of orgasm in women who have not experienced it before, normalization of the menstrual cycle and a decrease in pain during dysmenorrhea, delay in menopause and a decrease in its unpleasant manifestations.

We have already mentioned that therapeutic fasting helps to restructure the work of various body systems, including the cardiovascular system, eradicating pathological stereotypes and improving the self-regulating function, i.e. establishing a correspondence between the cardiac pump function and peripheral vascular resistance. The goal of fasting is to reduce weight, which entails a decrease in cardiac output and the load on the heart muscle, normalization of vascular tone and a decrease in peripheral resistance. All this helps to normalize blood pressure, which is why therapeutic fasting is so popular for hypertension.

Unloading and dietary therapy is also indicated for other diseases of the cardiovascular system: VSD of the hypertensive or mixed type, ischemic heart disease, vascular atherosclerosis, angina pectoris. For hypertension and VSD, 1-3-day dry fasting gives good results. Even without medication, blood pressure drops to normal within 5-7 days. Preventive 2-3-week fasting courses for high blood pressure should be taken 1-2 times a year, and with increased body weight, it is recommended to arrange 1-1.5-day fasts once a week.

In case of angina pectoris, the approach is somewhat different. In this case, 1.5-2 week courses of wet fasting are more appropriate, which are combined with taking nitro drugs, but the dosage of drugs is minimized. If the patient's condition has worsened and does not improve even with an increase in the dosage of nitrates during 1-2 days of fasting, gradually return to the usual diet. Repeated courses of fasting with positive dynamics should be carried out no more than once a year and not during periods of exacerbation.

But in case of disturbance of heart rhythm and its conductivity (arrhythmia and heart block), and in particular in case of tachycardia, therapeutic fasting is not prescribed, as well as in case of severe myocardial infarction. However, today doctors are no longer so categorical about treatment of arrhythmia with fasting. The ban applies rather to its severe forms.

Doctors have positive experience of using therapeutic fasting for nervous disorders: neuroses, neuritis, neuralgia, headaches and migraines, consequences of craniocerebral trauma, sluggish schizophrenia, neurasthenia, etc. The type and course of treatment with fasting here is determined by the diagnosis and its severity. At the same time, fasting should be carried out during a period of relative calm of symptoms, and during exacerbation of neuropsychiatric pathologies it is not recommended, as it is associated with stress for the body, as a result of which the symptoms can only intensify.

We have listed the diseases for which traditional medicine doctors may consider the possibility of using therapeutic fasting as an independent treatment or as part of a comprehensive approach to therapy. But it must be said that people often do not expect such a prescription from doctors and apply the method to treat other diseases not included in the list of indications. Not everyone listens to the opinion of doctors on this matter.

What happens in the body during therapeutic fasting?

The fact that our distant ancestors resorted to therapeutic fasting does not mean that they were aware of the processes that occur in the body during a deliberate refusal of food. But scientists-doctors of that time noted that fasting for several days, if it is not forced, is not such violence against the body and is worth it, because at the end you get weight loss, relief from many diseases and, in addition, rejuvenation of the body, which is noticeable even from the outside.

Centuries of experience could not remain unnoticed, but in our days scientists not only blindly inherited it, but also tried to delve into the healing mechanisms that were triggered by fasting. Thus, the essence of therapeutic fasting was determined - the activation of the internal forces of the body and the self-healing program embedded in it, which does not work as a result of the negative influence of external factors on a person, but the wrong attitude to nutrition and its role in life on the part of the person himself.

External factors (water, air, radiation, infections, etc.) are not always within a person's power to correct even on a city scale, let alone a country or the planet as a whole. But we are quite capable of bringing order to our own bodies by optimizing physical activity, changing our attitude to nutrition, special diets, and cleansing procedures. In this context, therapeutic fasting can be considered a kind of diet with an amazing cleansing effect and prolonged action on the body.

Therapeutic fasting for internal diseases helps the body activate its forces to restore weakened or lost functions of various organs. In this case, a transition from exogenous (nutrients enter the body from the outside) to endogenous (due to internal reserves) nutrition is carried out. The lack of external supply of energy-valuable carbohydrates is compensated for by non-standard breakdown of fats, proteins and a small amount of carbohydrates. Incomplete breakdown of fats into fatty acids leads to increased acidity of the blood and the internal environment of the body (acidosis).

Under normal conditions, this phenomenon is considered pathological, but if it is controlled and the body is regularly cleansed, acidosis helps to increase the adaptive properties of the body. The body remembers ancient mechanisms of carbon dioxide absorption from the air, long forgotten in the process of life, thereby activating the synthesis of protein and other compounds that are so necessary for the construction and regeneration of cells.

Fasting is certainly stress for the body, but it is precisely this that activates emergency functions that are formed during ontogenesis (human development). The same macrophages that take an active part in the immune response, thanks to their ability to capture and digest infectious factors, now begin to digest dying cells and extract from them substances necessary to maintain the body's vital functions.

Our body is a self-healing physiological structure, so the work of its individual components pursues the same goal - maintaining homeostasis (constancy of the internal environment). This is confirmed by the fact that 7-9 days after the start of fasting, the acidity in the body returns to its previous values.

Now that the body has already adjusted to a different diet, fasting is no longer stressful for it. But since a certain part of the reserves has already been used, all the body's systems begin to work more economically, using mainly fats, which, however, does not greatly affect the activity of a person as a whole, but allows organs and systems to work in a less stressful mode.

In such conditions, restructuring of the lung tissue is observed, which makes it possible in the future to pass through itself a larger volume of air, and therefore oxygen, so necessary for the vital activity of cells. Changes in the composition of the blood during therapeutic fasting are not observed, but the heart begins to work more productively, which is confirmed by electrocardiogram data in most patients.

Therapeutic fasting is a scientifically developed scheme that involves 4 stages: preparation for fasting, the fasting process itself, exiting it and forming new eating habits. At the same time, restorative nutrition, necessary for a hungry organism, is no less valuable than fasting itself, which helps cleanse and reconfigure it. It is this that gives impetus to cell renewal, so you can notice that even old cells with damaged membranes (and this is a sign of any disease) acquire the forms and properties of young ones.

The goal of therapeutic fasting, in addition to cleansing and restructuring the body, is to develop a certain stereotype of eating behavior. In the physiology of higher nervous activity, a stereotype is considered a system of conditioned reflexes developed as a result of multiple repetitions.

Many of us, contrary to the regimen we were taught in childhood, have become accustomed to eating incorrectly: irregularly, exceeding the recommended volume, consuming questionable products, not taking into account the needs of our body. That is, over many months and years, we have developed an incorrect stereotype of eating behavior, the long-term results of which we feel in the form of failures in the work of various organs and systems.

It is very difficult to correct a pathological stereotype (it is always easier to develop it than to change it). To facilitate this process, it is necessary to erase the old incorrect stereotype, which is achieved during the period of refusal of food, and then develop a new correct stereotype. The latter task is solved during the recovery period, when a person gradually accustoms himself to eat healthy products (new eating habits), control the volume and quality of food consumed, develops a new diet and life in general.

Benefits of therapeutic fasting

People who survived the war and the Holodomor of 1932-33 are unlikely to agree with the statement that hunger can be beneficial for the human body. However, statistics show that those who were forced to completely limit themselves in food in the past, even in old age look surprisingly active and healthy, while we, well-fed and happy, have many different diseases, weak immunity and low social activity. After all, when everything hurts, we have no time to transform the world.

It is also worth noting that without food, according to scientists, a person can live about 2 months, and without water - about a week. And we all think that if we miss even one meal, a real catastrophe will occur.

But nothing terrible will happen, even if we refuse food for several days. One of the important features of our body is its biological reliability. This means that everything is provided in it to preserve life as a whole and individual functions necessary for life and procreation. In other words, our body is prone to thriftiness.

Not everything we eat is used up. Some (and quite a lot) of nutrients are stored "in reserve" at the cellular level. This allows a person to survive in unfavorable conditions (for example, in the absence of food and water). Physiologists have found that the amount of reserves in our body is 40-45% of the total body weight, i.e. to survive we need only 55-60% of what we have.

Even if a person fasts for a month, weight loss will not exceed 25%. If all the requirements of the method are followed, such weight loss will not cause irreversible pathological changes in organs and tissues, which many are so afraid of. But it is important to understand that fasting for therapeutic purposes implies complete or absolute refusal of food. In the first case, drinking water is allowed, in the second - no.

Restriction of food in the form of malnutrition does not have a therapeutic effect. Moreover, practicing it for a long time can provoke the development of alimentary dystrophy (severe protein and energy deficiency, accompanied by hair loss, bleeding gums, splitting nails, early skin aging, etc.). This fact is confirmed by a tragic event in our history - the siege of Leningrad. People, as they say, without a piece of bread, had more chances to survive and remain healthy than those who lived on bread and water.

Therapeutic fasting is a concept that does not quite correctly reflect the essence of the therapeutic method. It is only about a temporary refusal of food (wet fasting) or food and water (dry fasting), which gives the body a rest, helps to cleanse itself well and restore its strength to fight the disease. It has nothing to do with hunger, because in fact our body does not starve, it just uses other sources of energy.

A complete, rational diet is good, but how many of us strictly adhere to it and can claim that there is nothing superfluous in our body? The dubious quality of water and food entering our body causes not only doubts about their usefulness, but also confidence that the words about the clogging of the intestines and blood vessels of a person are not a myth, but a reality. While therapeutic fasting helps to fight this reality.

It is the excesses within us that cause the weakening of the body's natural forces, which is why we get sick so often and cannot restore our health without medication. And this is despite the fact that the human body is a biologically reliable structure. Our cells are capable of self-renewal, i.e. regeneration, and the immune system can cope with any infection. But for this, it is necessary to create favorable conditions that will give the body the opportunity to activate its reserves to fight the disease.

Yes, it will be difficult at first. It is not for nothing that the Soviet and later Russian psychiatrist, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor Yuri Sergeevich Nikolaev in his book "Fasting for Health" calls therapeutic fasting a fasting-diet therapy. And like any therapeutic procedure, fasting does not bring relief in the first days, but is associated with unpleasant sensations. Probably the same thing is experienced by those who quit smoking, because regular food intake is akin to the habit of smoking after it. It is worth going through this at least in order to feel freedom from the former addiction after 3 days, the absence of hunger, calm at the mention of food.

There is no need to be afraid of this, because the absence of a feeling of hunger does not mean that your stomach has atrophied and can no longer perform its function. It is just that in the brain, which controls and regulates all physiological processes occurring in our body, a new scheme of survival at the expense of its own resources has developed and started to work. This scheme allows the organs involved in digestion to rest and cleanse themselves. And the body itself, after the end of fasting and even during it, gets the opportunity to enter into an active fight against the disease with new strength.

But how can you endure these three days until the feeling of hunger subsides or disappears altogether? Special preparation and various techniques that help distract you from thoughts about food will help here. But the main thing is the mood, awareness of the harmful effects of your previous diet on your body and the desire, despite everything, to become healthy. But this can be done without the use of chemistry in the form of pharmaceutical drugs and "magic" natural pills with dubious effects, the enthusiastic description of which looks at us from the advertising pages. Our body is capable of helping itself, but first we must help it.

When the benefits of RDT are in doubt

Therapeutic fasting for oncology causes a lot of controversy and objections. It is believed that malignant diseases already greatly deplete the body, so restrictions in food can have tragic consequences. In addition, hoping for a complete cure through fasting, many patients refuse traditional treatment of oncological diseases: radiation and chemotherapy.

But on the other hand, practice shows that many of those who took the idea of therapeutic fasting as a starting point managed to achieve good results: the tumor decreased in size or disappeared altogether. It is difficult to say whether fasting is able to recode the body to fight its own cells, which have lost their understanding of the correct behavior and life cycle, or maybe the reason lies in something else. After all, we know that fasting launches a program for the disposal and processing of non-viable cells, and cancer cells are clearly not among them. But what can be said with complete confidence is the possibility of reducing the negative effects of classical methods of fighting cancer by cleansing the body and removing toxic substances from it. That is, chemistry kills cancer cells, but at the same time significantly undermines health and causes phenomena similar to alimentary dystrophy, and therapeutic fasting prevents this.

Thus, therapeutic fasting for rectal cancer will help cleanse the intestines and promote tissue regeneration of the organ, which is important after the removal of the pathological neoplasm. However, if the disease has already significantly undermined the body's energy base, fasting is dangerous to use.

Hardly any doctor in the field of official medicine would prescribe RDT as an independent treatment for oncology. The very fact that in malignant diseases the effect is possible only with long-term continuous or course fasting (the total duration of the course of treatment varies from 30 to 55 days) causes a lot of objections from doctors. But as an auxiliary method of combating the consequences of cancer, therapeutic fasting has the right to exist, especially since there are positive results. The fact remains that during the entire course of fasting the patient must be under supervision (if not doctors, then at least relatives) and at the same time not refuse traditional treatment.

Among the indications for carrying out fasting-dietary therapy according to Nikolaev, you are unlikely to find liver diseases. Thus, therapeutic fasting for hepatitis C and fatty hepatosis of the liver (pathological degeneration of organ cells) is not only not considered useful by doctors, but they are also inclined to believe that the method of dry or wet fasting can harm patients. Doctors insist that stopping the intake of food into the body and actively removing toxins from it increases the load on the liver and kidneys, which can cause the destruction of tissues of organs weakened by the disease, disruption of their functioning. At the same time, preventive fasting for healthy liver and kidneys brings only positive results (with the right approach).

It should be said that the negative attitude of doctors towards fasting for liver diseases does not stop some patients. Not everyone understands that refusal of food is not a panacea for all diseases, and also has a rather large list of contraindications.

Doctors have an ambiguous attitude towards therapeutic fasting for tuberculosis. This is a serious infectious disease in which tissue, organs and blood components are destroyed by the mycobacterium that causes the disease. On the one hand, we see advice on treating acute bacterial and viral diseases by short-term abstinence from food. On the other hand, doctors give a categorical "no" to the acute stage of tuberculosis.

By the way, in the inactive form of the disease, doctors are not so categorical. Nevertheless, it is necessary to understand that the disease has a strong toxic effect on the body as a whole and its individual organs. So often, patients (including those who have undergone treatment with medications) experience changes in the structure of the liver and disruptions in its functioning. This organ is very sensitive to limited fluid intake and can lose a lot of weight during a dry diet, which will only complicate the situation.

Those cases when patients with tuberculosis and anemia noted an improvement in their health were associated with the restriction of food intake, but not water. It was based on the gradual cleansing of the body, and blood in particular, as well as on the restructuring of the respiratory system, which is relevant for the pulmonary form of the disease.

On forums you can find information that some people use therapeutic fasting for hypothyroidism, i.e. thyroid insufficiency. But there is no information about recovery, weight loss or noticeable improvement in the condition. And it is not surprising, because with endocrine diseases and thyroid dysfunction, refusal of food can only provoke an exacerbation of symptoms.

Hypothyroidism is a pathology in which the detoxification of the body, which we strive for, can have the opposite effect. In this case, the toxins will be hormones that are released into the blood in large quantities and suppress the function of the "thyroid gland". The most that is allowed with such a disease is fasting days and a certain diet.