Myth: Fasting is bad for you

Myth: Fasting is bad for you.

This one has undergone a change in recent times. In the old days, we were told that fasting would lead to all kinds of terrible consequences for the body and especially, the stomach. Now, with the popularity of the 5:2 diet, fasting has suddenly become trendy. I even read some ‘research’ that claimed that fasting helped the body heal faster.

There is, however, the widely held view that if you fast, your blood sugar levels will fall dramatically and that you may feel faint.

Indians should know that this is not necessarily true for healthy individuals. We have a long tradition of fasting and our ancestors managed okay. But there is now research to back up this view.

One study showed that volunteers who lived on nothing but water for 84 hours did see drops in their blood glucose levels. They fell from 4.9 mmols/1 on the first day to 3.5 mmols/1 by day four. But these levels are not unhealthy. They are not in any sense abnormally low and pose no great danger to health.

And there’s a silver lining. The same study showed that as blood glucose levels diminished, the levels of fatty acid in the blood shot up. This demonstrates that fasting causes your body to switch to fat-burning mode. And so, it’s not a bad way to lose weight, after all.