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Therapeutic one-day dry fasting: results, how to go out properly
Last reviewed: 03.07.2025

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Having heard the popular expression "hunger cures", many perceive it as a cruel joke. Is it possible to leave the body without food containing the nutrients it needs? It turns out that it is possible, and even necessary. However, it should be done wisely. For example, a one-day fast has never brought anyone to the grave, but how many people have it helped improve their health!
And this is not surprising. Let's remember at least what kind of fatigue, mental and physical exhaustion you experience after working for almost a year without a vacation. But it is worth resting for just a month, and you get a new powerful boost of energy. So is our body, it also needs rest to restore strength. And fasting is one of the ways to effectively rest.
Indications
Thus, fasting within reasonable limits can be considered an effective therapeutic procedure. The minimum fasting period is 1 day (24 or 36 hours, if you exclude evening and night time, as periods of low physical activity and slow metabolism). Such fasting can be easily carried out at home. Doctor's supervision is not required, a preliminary consultation on the possibility of fasting practice for certain diagnoses is sufficient.
One-day fasting is a simplified version of the traditional refusal to eat for a period of more than 3 days. However, classic fasting is suitable for people who do not have significant health problems. For therapeutic purposes, fasting for more than 1 day, which is considered a more effective cleansing procedure, is carried out only under the supervision of doctors in a hospital setting.
Regarding fasting, in medical terminology there is even a special term "fasting-dietary therapy" (FDT), which means voluntary refusal to eat for a limited time, which is carried out for therapeutic and health-improving purposes. Therapeutic one-day and multi-day fasting is practiced by various medical and health resort institutions, individual doctors, followers of Paul Bragg, Marve Oganyan, Alexander Voroshilov and other doctors who used special methods of fasting treatment.
Long-term fasting (from 3 to 40 days) is carried out in a course under the strict supervision of the attending physician. It is prescribed strictly individually, taking into account the existing pathology, its severity, the patient's condition, his age and some additional factors.
With one-day fasting, everything is much simpler. It has virtually no contraindications, which means it can be used for any diseases, including gastrointestinal ones. For some gastrointestinal diseases, such as gastric and duodenal ulcers, pancreatitis, dysbacteriosis with painful diarrhea, short-term refusal of food has an effect comparable in its effectiveness to taking medications.
And yet, the main indications for therapeutic fasting can be considered the following pathologies:
- arterial hypertension grades 1 and 2,
- vegetative-vascular dystonia, occurring according to the hypertensive or mixed type,
- angina pectoris, ischemic heart disease,
- chronic obstructive bronchitis,
- bronchial asthma,
- 2 first stages of pulmonary sarcoidosis with the formation of benign granulomas in the organ,
- chronic gastritis with increased or decreased production of hydrochloric acid,
- chronic pancreatitis, duodenitis, cholecystitis,
- gastric ulcer and duodenal ulcer,
- biliary dyskinesia,
- irritable bowel syndrome (IBS),
- inflammatory diseases of the musculoskeletal system, accompanied by degenerative changes in tissues,
- inflammation of the appendages, occurring with neuroendocrine disorders,
- prostate adenoma,
- obesity,
- allergic diseases, including food and drug allergies,
- neurotic disorders and depression,
- mild schizophrenia,
- resistance to drug treatment.
There is a certain circle of doctors who believe that with the help of therapeutic fasting it is even possible to stop the tumor process in oncological diseases.
Having studied the approximate list of diseases for which, according to doctors, fasting and diet therapy will be useful, it becomes clear that not all diseases can be fasted for a long time. For example, with gastritis with high acidity, such fasting can cause many unpleasant symptoms. While one-day fasting is not contraindicated even with this pathology.
In addition, doctors consider fasting a little bit useful for colds, because such a procedure will help boost immunity and focus the immune system's attention on fighting infections and viruses.
The reader may have the mistaken impression that one-day fasting should only be practiced for medicinal purposes. In fact, this practice is also useful for those who want to cleanse and rejuvenate their body without using strict regimens and potions. Fasting will also be useful for those who want to adjust their weight and maintain it within the norm.
It is important to understand that it is unlikely that you will be able to lose 5-10 kilograms per month even with a weekly one-day fast. Classic fasting patterns are more applicable here. But any long-term fasting requires definite preparation, because it is not for nothing that nutritionists recommend starting fasting gradually: first 1 day a week, then 2 days, etc.
Preparation
At first glance, it seems that giving up food for just one day is not difficult at all. Alas, everything that is practiced for the first time does not go as smoothly as one would like. A person may feel exhausted from being unaccustomed to it, and thoughts about unavailable food will make him irritable and capricious. Therefore, nutritionists recommend paying special attention to preparing for a one-day fast. Then, when fasting episodes become regular, the body will get used to going without food for a certain number of hours or days, and fasting will no longer be such a painful procedure.
First of all, before you decide to take the important step of starting to practice one-day fasting, you need to visit your local or family doctor and consult how useful and safe such a practice will be. It is also worth clarifying the question of how often you can do fasting days, and what kind of fasting to give preference to: dry or water, because this is a purely individual question.
Psychological attitude also plays a big role. You need to prepare yourself in advance for possible difficulties, read the reviews of those who are interested in the "fasting" method of healing and rejuvenating the body. All of them initially experienced discomfort, hunger, irritation. Having learned from reviews about these symptoms, you can know in advance what to prepare yourself for.
The first time, of course, you will have to fight with yourself and your weaknesses, which means that in order not to give in during the process, you must definitely set yourself up psychologically for a positive result, believe in yourself and the internal strength of your body. It is advisable to start preparing for an important event a week in advance, so after visiting the doctor, immediately set the date of the first fast, preferably with details: start and end time.
If this is your first fasting day, you need to be very careful when choosing the date. It is not recommended to start a one-day fast on a working day. Firstly, it will be very difficult to resist the urge to have a snack during your lunch or dinner break, seeing your colleagues chewing around you. Secondly, your colleagues will not fail to ask why you are not eating and express their not always positive opinion, which may negatively affect your determination to stand to the end.
There is another point that speaks against fasting on a working day. It concerns those who are engaged in heavy physical labor that requires a lot of energy expenditure, and therefore its replenishment. In such conditions, it is very difficult to refuse food. Hunger can provoke dizziness, deterioration of attention and performance.
That's it, it's decided, the best day for the first fast is considered to be a weekend. But here too there is a small nuance that concerns those who live with relatives and friends. They will certainly notice, be surprised and possibly outraged by your refusal to eat, so you will have to prepare in advance not only yourself, but also your relatives, friends, classmates with whom you may have to share one room. You need to try to explain to them how useful and safe one-day fasting is, what results can be achieved with its help, tell them how interesting and necessary it is for you. By the way, convincing others usually strengthens your own opinion.
It is very good if your relatives support you in such a useful undertaking. Positive emotions before and during fasting help to endure it much easier.
If you practice one-day fasting for weight loss, you need to set a realistic goal (for example, to lose 2-3 kg within a month). In this case, breakdowns are less likely, because a person knows what he wants, what he strives for.
During the week, when eating, you need to think about the upcoming fast. You can try to gradually reduce portions, listening to your feelings. 1-2 days before the start of fasting, you should reconsider your diet in favor of plant foods, which are more easily absorbed in the gastrointestinal tract. It is recommended to completely refuse meat products during these days. The transition from light plant foods to fasting is much easier than from heavy and fatty meat.
What else should be avoided is alcohol and nicotine in cigarettes, which stimulate appetite. Spicy dishes, sweet carbonated drinks, and spices also belong to this category of products. Preference should be given to dishes that do not have a pronounced taste and do not arouse the desire to eat everything on the plate. Overeating on the eve of fasting is very harmful.
Well, basically, we are psychologically and physically ready for a one-day fast. All that remains is to steadfastly bring what we started to a victorious end and exit the fast correctly.
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General information of a one-day fast
Preparation for fasting days, which are essentially one-day fasts, is an important stage of the therapeutic, health-improving and rejuvenating procedure. It is the psychological attitude, emotional and physical preparation that determines whether a person can endure a whole day without food or return to normal life at the first opportunity.
It is important to maintain a positive attitude not only the day before, but especially on the day of fasting. To make hunger easier to bear, it is better to stay away from food sources for a while. If you are at home next to a refrigerator full of food, a stove with a freshly cooked aromatic dish smoking, a candy bowl with sweets and cookies, you are unlikely to be able to hold out for long. You can ask your family not to eat in your presence if this will somehow ease the lot of a person suffering from hunger.
It is much wiser to find yourself an exciting activity outside the home on the day of fasting, for example, at the dacha, in nature, in the garage, etc. Turn on your imagination! This way, you can kill two birds with one stone: be away from food sources and appetizing smells and distract yourself from thinking about food. If a person is busy with something interesting (and everyone has a favorite hobby), thoughts about food arise much less often.
Sports and physical work are also great distractions, but you need to be careful here. Excessive loads against the background of a nutritional deficiency can cause severe fatigue, dizziness, headaches, which will turn a positive attitude into irritation and a desire to quit the idea of fasting. The activity should give positive emotions, but not be tiring.
We start fasting like this: the night before we have a light dinner, in the morning we forget about food until the evening. As a result, we get 36 hours of fasting.
For beginners, a one-day water fast is recommended. This type of fasting is relatively easy to tolerate, because the stomach does not remain empty. As soon as thoughts about food and a feeling of hunger appear, you need to drink water immediately. The amount of water drunk during the day is not limited.
This type of fasting is called one-day fasting according to Bragg. Paul Bragg is an American nutritionist who developed a whole system of therapeutic fasting. According to his system, you can fast on water for 7, 8, 9, 10 or more days. With practice, such fasting can be done at home. But Bragg still advises starting with one-day fasting.
Some sources recommend performing cleansing procedures with an enema on the day of fasting. Paul Bragg has a negative attitude towards this recommendation, considering enemas an unjustified waste of the body's energy and an obstacle to restoring the normal functioning of the colon.
But the American nutritionist has nothing against a saline laxative. At the same time, he does not recommend buying pharmaceutical drugs; the laxative can be made at home by mixing 50 g of salt (it is better to take natural salt "Barbara" from Truskavets) and half a liter of water. Take the laxative in the evening before the day of fasting. After taking the laxative, it is not recommended to eat anything, but you can start drinking water.
We drink water without restrictions, giving preference to purified or distilled water, which will help remove excess minerals from the body in the form of salts. Mineral water and other drinks are not suitable for these purposes.
Such a one-day water fast can be practiced for gastritis and stomach ulcers. In this case, the patient will not experience excruciating pain in the abdomen when a feeling of hunger appears, but the gastric mucosa can recover from the irritating effect of food. With increased secretory function of the stomach, water will dilute its contents (in the absence of food, there will only be gastric juice containing hydrochloric acid).
A slightly different approach to the issue of therapeutic fasting is taken by naturopathic doctor Marve Oganyan, who actively practices 1, 7 and 21-day fasting methods. One-day fasting according to Marve Oganyan is abstaining from food in favor of water, herbal infusions and fresh juices for 36 hours. This is a method of daily cleansing the body of fats, slags and toxins.
Unlike Paul Bragg, Dr. Oganyan has a positive attitude towards cleansing procedures. He recommends taking a laxative both on the eve of a fasting day (exactly at 7 p.m.) and on the day of fasting (at the same time). A saline solution (50 g of magnesia grains per ¾ glass of warm water) is recommended as a laxative, which should be washed down with a mixture of lemon juice and honey.
After this, you need to lie on your right side for half an hour, placing a warm heating pad on the liver area. From 7.30 p.m. to 9 p.m., you need to drink another 5 tbsp. of saline laxative and go to bed.
The next morning begins with getting up at 7:00. Immediately you need to do a cleansing enema of 2 liters of water and 1.5 spoons of salt. We do the enema three times, kneeling and resting our elbows on the floor.
After thoroughly cleansing the intestines, you can drink herbal decoction and juices. The decoction recommended by Marva Oganyan is made from a collection of herbs (chamomile, sage, calendula, St. John's wort, knotweed, bearberry, rose hips, yarrow, thyme, nettle with the addition of licorice and valerian roots. As we can see, the herbs were not chosen by chance, they all have a healing effect on the body.
The herbs are mixed in equal parts. For 2 liters of boiling water, take 4 spoons of the mixture, let it boil and leave for half an hour. The decoction can be flavored with honey and lemon juice.
Oganyan's method involves taking herbal decoction every hour. The maximum daily dose is 2 liters. If hunger does not let up, replace the decoction with freshly squeezed diluted fruit and vegetable juices in an amount of no more than 3 glasses.
Doctor Oganyan recommends starting fasting again with one-day procedures, gradually increasing the number of days to 21. She recommends that patients with peptic ulcers undergo cleansing procedures not with a saline solution, but with castor oil or senna decoction.
One-day water fasting is a gentle way to conduct fasting days, which helps to prepare for a more effective procedure - a 24-hour fast with a complete refusal of food and water. Dry one-day fasting is recommended to be practiced only after the body has learned to steadfastly endure hunger during the refusal of only food, but not water. That is, its dependence on food has somewhat decreased.
In principle, there is practically no difference between the procedures and the exit from them. Dry fasting is considered more effective, since it allows the gastrointestinal tract to fully rest.
There is no need to be afraid of dry fasting and especially water fasting. Scientists have proven that a person can survive without food for up to 2 months if they drink enough liquid, so one day of fasting is unlikely to have a noticeable effect on your condition and appearance. It is harder to do without water. Here the prognosis is more severe - from 2 to 10 days depending on the air temperature and humidity (although there have been cases of survival for 20 days).
But even if we take the minimum, we have two days in reserve anyway, so it is quite possible to endure just 1 day. And for this, the body will say "thank you".
Many people think that during dry fasting they will be constantly tormented by terrible thirst. In fact, everything is not so scary. Our body, in the absence of external sources of water, will search for them inside. And, strange as it may sound, it will find water in fats. The fact is that when fats are broken down, a significant amount of water is released, which will support vital forces. At the same time, the fasting person does not feel thirst at all, but fats are broken down very actively during dry fasting, which is what makes it attractive for those who want to lose weight, obese people and those whose illnesses are associated with excess weight.
Whatever type of fasting is chosen for the health of the body, it is important not only to prepare properly and not break down during the day, but also to finish the fast safely. Probably, it is not worth emphasizing once again that the first meal after fasting should be as light as possible, and the portion minimal.
It is better to exit a one-day fast in the evening after 6 p.m. Do not forget that our stomach has rested and slightly contracted, so overloading it with heavy food in the form of meat, fish, fatty foods, oils, cheeses, nuts and seeds is not worth it.
The best dinner option would be a salad of fresh vegetables. Paul Bragg recommends using cabbage and carrots as ingredients for a light salad. The vitamin salad should be dressed not with oil or mayonnaise, but with lemon or orange juice.
The described salad not only contains a large amount of vitamins and amino acids, it also perfectly cleanses the intestines, which means that our dinner can be considered the final stage of the cleansing and health procedure.
If hunger approaches again closer to bedtime, you can eat a small portion of porridge without butter or boiled (stewed) vegetables with a piece of bread. During the next 2 days, the diet should not contain sugar, salt, or products that increase the body's acidity. Boiled, stewed, and steamed vegetables and fruits, greens, beans, green tea, and herbal infusions will be useful.
Dry one-day fasting for chronic diseases
Let's face it, many of us by a certain age have accumulated a heavy baggage of chronic diseases. What are chronic diseases? This is a state of the body in which it is on the border between illness and health. At the same time, the disease tries to seize more advantageous positions, and the body tries with all its might to contain it. It is clear that a lot of energy is spent on fighting the disease. When it is not enough, the disease worsens.
It is clear that over time the body becomes increasingly weaker, tries to save energy at the expense of energy-consuming functions that are not vital. First of all, sexual function suffers, then muscle tone decreases, the body ages prematurely.
It turns out that the treatment of chronic diseases should consist of restoring the body's vital forces, then it will be able to cope with the disease on its own. Yes, but what causes the development of chronic diseases, what takes away the body's strength and how to restore it?
According to naturopathic doctors, one of the main causes of most chronic pathologies can be confidently considered endogenous intoxication. We are not talking about everyday food poisoning, chemicals or poisons, but about intoxication that is a consequence of a malfunction of the gastrointestinal tract and liver, as a result of which toxins enter the blood, gradually accumulating in the body to critical levels.
The source of toxins, of course, is the gastrointestinal tract. Overeating and digestive system malfunctions lead to the fact that even good food, lingering in the gastrointestinal tract and decomposing, turns into poison (toxins).
In a healthy body, the liver is responsible for breaking down toxins, while the kidneys and intestines help remove all unnecessary and harmful substances from the body. If these organs, especially the liver, malfunction, toxins are released into the blood and gradually poison our body. And then we wonder where chronic diseases come from if we never had any acute ones.
As usual, where it is thin, there it breaks, toxins primarily affect those organs whose protective function is weakened, and that is where the chronic process begins. And the body tries with all its might to stop it.
But where can we get these very forces if the body simply does not have such an opportunity to stop and rest? One-day (and with sufficient practice, multi-day) dry fasting comes to the rescue. After all, to prevent further intoxication of the body, rest is required primarily by the gastrointestinal tract and liver. During dry fasting, neither food nor water enters the gastrointestinal tract, which means that the body does not spend energy on the digestion process, but spends it on restoring the protective and antitoxic functions of the digestive organs and liver.
During fasting, the liver also gets the opportunity to rest and restore its cells, because it does not need to filter the blood from toxins coming from the gastrointestinal tract. General renewal of the body also occurs due to the breakdown of fats and the receipt of "living" water produced inside the body.
The moment when cells switch to internal nutrition is called an acidotic crisis, when the body experiences maximum acidity levels. It is this stressful situation that gives impetus to the body's self-cleansing.
The absence of food and water from external sources, which naturopaths call "dead", has an invariable benefit for the body, because they were a source of not only useful, but also harmful substances. Our body is a complex system that is capable of self-cleaning and restoring. During fasting, the blood has time to go around the circle several times and cleanse itself to almost ideal levels. In this case, the immune system no longer needs to spend energy on fighting harmful substances in the blood, which means it can throw all its strength into fighting a chronic disease.
The lack of water intake plays an important role, because burning fats entails the destruction of toxins. In the absence of water, a reaction is triggered in the body's cells, leading to an increase in body temperature, which in turn inhibits the growth of microorganisms.
Even those microorganisms that can live without oxygen find it very difficult to survive without water. The absence of water activates the immune system, which releases a large number of special cells into the blood: lymphocytes, macrophages, dendritic cells, immunoglobulins, which actively search for and destroy foreign microorganisms.
The stress cannot be withstood by "own" weak or modified cells, which will also be removed from the body. This is the key moment in oncology therapy using "starvation" practices.
It is clear that one should not place great hopes on one-day fasting in case of chronic diseases. Even a single long fast will not help the body to completely cleanse itself of what has accumulated in it for many years. Therefore, treatment of chronic diseases with the help of fasting implies several treatment courses, and then also annual preventive ones.
The number of days of dry fasting, the frequency of repetition of courses and the duration of treatment are determined individually for each patient. Sometimes it is necessary to spend several years, but this will be the final victory over the disease, and not the achievement of remission, as in the case of traditional treatment.
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Benefits
There is no point in arguing with the truth that we get energy from food. However, at some point our body begins to get tired and can no longer properly manage this energy. A short rest is enough and everything returns to normal.
This feature was noticed by our ancestors back in the days of Hippocrates. Thus, the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates expressed the idea that the best seasoning for food is hunger. And Hippocrates himself used one-day fasting in the practice of treating many diseases.
The idea of treatment by hunger has not lost its relevance even today. More correctly, its relevance has become even greater. Pollution of the environment, irrational nutrition, saturated with "chemicals" and GMOs, lack of daily routine, due to which food enters the body irregularly and in larger than necessary quantities, constant stress - this is what our body has to deal with every day. Is it easy for it to work in such conditions? Every now and then, a failure occurs in some organ or system.
All of the above, and especially poor nutrition and the abundance of various flavor additives, preservatives, flavor enhancers, spices and seasonings of dubious quality in dishes, primarily affects the digestive and endocrine systems. Excessive load leads to fatigue of organs that cannot cope with their duties, weaken, and become ill.
As a result, we have acute or chronic gastritis, duodenitis, colitis, cholecystitis, etc. Metabolic disorders provoke the development of such pathologies as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular pathologies, failures in the neuromuscular and other systems. A person begins to experience a loss of strength, headaches, heaviness in the stomach, discomfort in the joints. His condition gradually worsens even if there are no obvious reasons at first glance.
The whole point is that the body needs rest, unloading, which can be done with the help of fasting. At the same time, we give our gastrointestinal tract the opportunity to rest and cleanse itself. The work in the digestive system does not stop, but long-term reserves of fat, slags, toxins are processed, which, depending on the duration of fasting, are partially or completely removed from the body.
A picky reader might say that our body already has time to rest every day (or rather every night). However, it should be taken into account that metabolic processes slow down at night, so such rest does not contribute to cleansing the body. But it is precisely harmful accumulations that prevent it from working at full capacity.
When food does not enter the body during a one-day or longer fast, it has the opportunity to deal with the accumulated surplus that slows down its work. It is clear that it is unlikely that you will be able to remove everything that has accumulated over the years in one day, but if such fasting days are repeated regularly, then the body will eventually return to normal, and also:
- many diseases will retreat (this is a fact, because the energy that the body spends during the day to digest the food entering the stomach, it can successfully use to fight diseases),
- the general condition will improve,
- metabolism is normalized,
- immunity will increase,
- the process of active cell renewal will start, which will contribute to the rejuvenation of the body,
- the very attitude of a person to food will change, because many of us may well consider ourselves a slave to our stomach (we eat when we are happy, we eat when we are sad, we sit down at the table when we want to eat and when it is time to do it, and the lack of food quickly takes us out of our comfort zone).
With the help of regular daily fasting, you can learn to control your appetite and weight, adjust your diet, and get rid of the harmful addiction to “eating away” your problems.
Yes, any fasting, even for a minimal period, is a certain stress for the body. However, such a small stress is useful, because thanks to it, the body's defenses are activated, inflammatory processes are stopped, pathological cell division is suspended, which we observe in the case of oncological diseases.
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Possible risks
For those who are still hesitant to try a one-day fast for fear of dying of hunger, we remind you that without food and water, in the absence of physical activity, a person can easily endure from 3 to 7 days. Let us say right away that medicine is not aware of cases where a patient died as a result of a 24-hour fast. But there are a great many cases of healing patients who have undergone several courses of fasting treatment.
One-day fasting can hardly be called fasting in the literal sense of the word, especially in cases where drinking water is not prohibited. Fasting for 24-36 hours should be perceived as preparation for more effective procedures of multi-day fasting.
You shouldn't get hung up on one-day fasting, because the body gets used to it over time and reacts more restrainedly. As a preventative measure against the development of various health pathologies and a procedure that gives vigor and lightness to the body and thoughts, one-day fasting can be practiced for a long time. However, in this case, water fasting, as you get used to it, should be replaced with dry fasting, which will allow the gastrointestinal tract and the entire body to get a full rest and start self-healing processes.
In order for a one-day fast not to become a big stress for you, you need to approach its preparation with all responsibility, think of interesting activities for the "hungry" day, and most importantly, exit the fast correctly. The requirement of a gradual exit from the fasting procedure is not accidental. Hunger is already a certain stress for the body, but this stress is beneficial.
But eating large amounts of food after 24 hours of fasting will be a negative stress, primarily for the gastrointestinal tract. The digestive tract may react to heavy food or a large amount of it with an upset stomach or its stoppage. In any case, this is a certain discomfort and lack of benefit for the body.
Some authors believe that the practice of one-day fasting brings not only benefits, but also harm. But can the low effectiveness of one-day fasting in the fight against excess weight or the increased appetite after leaving the fast, which, if desired, can be controlled, be called harm?
Yes, if you conduct a trial daily fast, you can notice a noticeable weight loss due to the removal of water and feces from the body. When you return to your normal regime and diet, the weight is restored. But we are not talking about isolated episodes of fasting, but about regular practices once a week. If desired, you can conduct an experiment with one-day fasting 2 times a week, but practice shows that the most effective are still weekly fasts 1 time per week and fasts for more than 3 days in a row with the practice of daily fasts.
As for increased appetite, it can be fought by removing various temptations from reach. It is clear that the first time it will be difficult to endure a day without food, and then for another 2 days to limit yourself in food. But, according to the reviews of "experienced" people, it is always difficult the first 2-3 times, and then the body gets used to eating sparingly.
So, you need to be prepared that the first day of fasting will not go smoothly. Possible complications or, more precisely, unpleasant symptoms of one-day fasting can be called: headaches, nausea, dizziness, increased fatigue and drowsiness, the appearance of negative thoughts, irritability. People with stomach diseases may experience hunger pains (by the way, with a longer fast, they disappear after 3-5 days without harming the gastrointestinal tract). These symptoms, which are the consequences of stress, pass quite quickly as soon as you return to a normal diet.
For those who find it difficult to bear even a short-term separation from food and feel very acute hunger, in order to avoid nausea and headaches, it is recommended to drink not pure water, but water sweetened with honey or acidified with lemon juice once a day during the first procedures. These components will not be able to greatly harm the health of the body, since they themselves have a noticeable cleansing effect.
It is clear that in order to master the practice of one-day and then multi-day fasting, great patience and persistence will be needed. Therefore, if a person is not sure of the benefits of such an undertaking and does not set specific goals, it is not worth starting, it is unlikely that the matter will be completed.
Reviews and results
Hunger is an unpleasant feeling, which in its extreme manifestation can push a person even to betray his principles. How many cases are known when a spiritually strong person during a war was ready to kill or betray his own for a piece of bread. It is clear that starvation in peacetime also cannot but cause unpleasant sensations, especially if a person is not ready for them.
It is these negative feelings that become the reason for negative reviews about one-day fasting. It is clear that such reviews should be treated critically. Not all medical procedures are pleasant for patients, but this does not become a reason to refuse them, and the same is with fasting. Everyone decides for themselves whether they need such an alternative treatment or whether they should give preference to traditional medicinal practices.
A separate point is the results of weight loss with one-day fasting. The reason for negative reviews is the short-term result. But no one claims that one-day fasting is an effective method of fighting excess weight, so why make excessive demands on it. We are talking about cleansing the body, the ability to restore your strength, and improving metabolism. Long-term results are needed - to help practice multi-day fasting, breathing exercises for weight loss, various diets, work in the gym.
And, of course, there is some fear in the reviews: will fasting harm your health, will it exacerbate illnesses, will it cause intoxication (concerns dry fasting). For this reason, most of those who are interested in the system of weekly one-day fasts still prefer water fasting, considering it safer. Dry fasting is practiced mainly to combat illnesses.
The many positive reviews are encouraging, and what positive ones. Some note the attractive sparkle in the eyes and the blush on the cheeks during a one-day fast, others emphasize the lightness and airiness, the surge of energy after leaving the procedure.
People humorously treat one-day fasting as an opportunity to save money on groceries. It may be funny, but there is some truth in every joke. One-day fasting is considered a very accessible way to cleanse and heal the body, which requires only patience and willpower, and not financial investment.
Doctors' opinions on one-day fasting are mostly very vague. They do not deny the benefits of short-term fasting for some gastrointestinal pathologies (for example, pancreatitis, stomach ulcer, etc.) and the cardiovascular system (hypertension, heart failure, coronary heart disease, myocardial infarction). Short-term abstinence from food is also recommended during the treatment of colds or allergic diseases. And yet, in this case, one-day fasting is used as an auxiliary element in complex therapy, and not as a method of treatment.
Most often, fasting methods are practiced in health resorts under the supervision of experienced medical personnel.
Naturopathic doctors are more optimistic about fasting for the purpose of cleansing and healing, believing that the body is capable of independently coping with almost any disease, you just need to give it the opportunity to do so, push it, help it gain strength. And the optimism of naturopaths is based not on dry theory, but on real results.
Fasting treatment showed particularly amazing results in gynecology in cases of cystic neoplasms that prevented women from experiencing the joy of motherhood. Doctors in many cases threw up their hands, and desperate women turned to unconventional methods. Many of them became mothers precisely thanks to the practice of dry fasting.
And this is not surprising, because the cause of cysts is chronic diseases existing in the body. If the cause is removed, the cyst itself decreases, and often completely resolves. Therapeutic fasting helped the body of women to fight chronic diseases, and the disappearance of the cyst was a result programmed by nature.
The same principle is used to combat infertility, which in most cases is caused by the same chronic diseases. Specific positive results are available in the treatment of early stage oncology, prostate adenoma, prostatitis, bronchial asthma, hypertension and atherosclerosis, allergic diseases and even neurological pathologies (osteochondrosis, migraines, herniated discs, etc.). By the way, many patients, along with a surge of energy, also noted an increase in their sexual potency. Moreover, not only men but also women became more active in sex.
It is clear that achieving noticeable results in the treatment of health problems requires time and several courses of therapeutic fasting. Each course lasts 3 or more days, with each subsequent course increasing the days of fasting.
It is very difficult for an unprepared person to start treatment immediately with a 3-day course, so naturopaths recommend preparing your body for a responsible step in the fight against the disease by starting to practice one-day fasting. Only by learning to withstand hunger steadfastly, without breakdowns (even the smallest piece of food can reduce the entire procedure to "nothing", because because of it, the acidotic crisis, which is the beginning of the treatment, may not occur), without negativity, you can get a tangible result, and in some cases of persistent work on yourself and complete healing.