Fasting

I'm sure no one will want to hear about this, but one of the things I've learned to do when I'm having a loooong flare (which I am now) is to fast. Joel Fuhrman, MD, has a great book on this topic and how fasting will interrupt the disease process in many instances, and much as I hate to admit it, he's right. It is a royal pain to fast, and fasting on juices and the like doesn't seem to do it for me: I have to go cold turkey and fast on nothing but lots of water, for up to ten days. Needless to say, it's not that often that I can make myself do it, but it really does work. I suppose part of it, for me, is that I have a lot of food allergies, and also of course there's the inflammation thing...and Fuhrman says that the fat cells are what store the toxins, so although you wouldn't want to fast to lost weight, the connection is obvious.

The alternative to fasting would be a raw diet of green veggies and fruits, but that way it takes longer. The irony, for me, is that I most need to fast when the weather is coldest, and fasting REALLY makes me cold!

Anyway, I'm trying to get myself psyched up to fast, because I know it will work, and I'm amazingly miserable at the moment (as I notice a lot of people are here)... Wondering if any others have experience with this.

Cimorene

I've only done one really long fast, ten days....and I found, after a few days, that I actually felt far better and needed my meds less and less. I used that particular fast to get off my meds, and by the end of the ten days, I felt wonderful and didn't need them. As soon as I started eating again, of course, which I did carefully, I gradually started to have pain and my overall miseries again. I let a social occasion derail me, and that was that. I'm not sure what to conclude from this: it's true that fasting is quite impractical and very difficult. It's also true that it's a lonely process, as so many of our activities and relationships are based around eating occasions. As to the fast itself, I'm not sure what conclusion to draw: I could conclude my system got cleaned out and the disease process halted, or perhaps I have multiple food allergies and the fast cleaned THAT up. In any event, it's not an easy thing to do. Even a "raw" diet, or a plant-based one, is difficult in these itmes. But I have a feeling we're all going to have to go that way eventually.

I too have fasted for long periods (13 days drinking only water and tea) and felt phenomenally clean, energetic, and young afterwards. I looked quite young too, somehow. Many people mentioned the radiance around my face, and my skin was much more supple and elastic, my eyes no longer red with bags under them. I was sleeping better.

Granted, there is intense fatigue related to fasting, which was different from the fibromyalgia, obviously. There was also some back pain for me as well, which Fuhrman describes in his book on the subject as normal and part of the healing process.

I have ulcerative colitis (and it is the steroid Prednisone cortisol medication for that condition which triggered my fibromyalgia, by way of chemically induced adrenal fatigue, somehow.) Fasting cleared up all internal bleeding within 3 days, allowing the intestinal lining to heal (preventing further immune response to leaky gut, if you buy into that syndrome's supposed mechanics.)

But, yes, 13 days without food was one of the hardest things I'd ever done. I'm in the midst of a deep flare, of both conditions, currently and am attempting a shorter fast to get it under control. I expect 3 days will at least begin to knock out whatever ails you -- long enough for ketogenesis to occur.

I'm going to lock this thread, since fasting falls under "Diet and Food Discussions," and we have a thread for that. I'll bump it to the top again.

Debbie