What is fasting?
Fasting is the voluntary stop eating food and drink for a period of time.
We all have heard of intermittent fasting, no doubt. On the other hand, did you know fasting has been practiced for thousands of years for religious purposes and physical health?
Let’s check out how fasting is making a place for religious purposes.
✨ Fasting is a religious purpose to humble oneself, express repentance, seek spiritual strength, and God’s guidance.
✨Spiritual growth is taking place when subdue physical desires. Eating is one of the most basic desires that humans have in daily life. So, avoiding certain foods during fasting strengthens the soul and spirituality.
Let’s check out how Fasting is being practicing in religious.
For Muslims, Ramadan is the holiest month of the year to fast. In Islam, Ramadan fasting is one of the five key pillars. Many muslims from all across the world fast during daylight hours for 29,30 days, eat only 2 times a day, beginning with the ‘suhoor’ or ‘sehri’ just before dawn, and the second time is called the ‘iftar’, which is breaking the fast right after sunset.
For Christians, it’s an act of worship, a biblical discipline —an expression of humility, dependence, and desire for more of God. Common types include Jesus (40 days in the wilderness), no food or water, Esther fast, short-term fast (3-day), or Daniel fast, which is a partial fast, omitting specific foods or meals, such as no meat/sweets, and Nehemiah.
Jewish fasting (Ta’anit) involves abstaining from food and drink; in major fastings, 25-hour fasts are Yom Kippur(Day of Atonement) and Tisha B’Av and minor fastings(Dawn to Nightfall).
What is actually happening when we fast 30 or more days?
1. Reduced Obesity
One of the most obvious benefits of fasting is reducing obesity by using stored fat during the fasting gap. During long term fasting period, liver enzymes reliased to break down cholesterol and fats to convert them into heat, energy, which also increases metabolism and decreases appetite, reducing hunger hormones. So we may see that people have smaller porsions after a period of fasting.
2. Balanced Insuline Level
Fasting also corrects insuline level. During fasting, insulin in your blood drops significantly, and this helps fat burning in the body’s fat storage. It’s the number one method to regulate blood pressure, insulin levels and reduce fat storage without using drugs.
3. Reduced Blood Pressure
During fasting, the body uses fat, clogging ten arterioles to produce energy, and so metabolic rate is reduced, adrenaline and noradrenaline are also reduced, and this keeps metabolic rate steady, resulting in a reduction in blood pressure.
4. Detoxification
It’s also kind of a detoxification for our body as we keep away from processed foods, processed foods become toxin in our body, which is not good. Most of the time, toxins are stored in fat cells, so using fat stored for energy helps to get rid of toxins of processed foods as well.
5. Resting
Fasting also provides a rest for the digestive system.
6. Regeneration
One of the biggest benefits of fasting is allowing our cells, genes, and hormones to regenerate. This is also known as autophagy, ‘self-eating’. When you don’t eat for a period of time, the body to consuming its own damaged cells. The body begins important cecullar repair and fix fonctions of hormones.
7. Prevent Alzheimer
Recent studies show that after 12-16 hours fasting (exactly when breaking the fast right after sunset for muslims), the brain switches to ketones- a “superfuel” that repairs neurons which preventa Alzheimer and other mental diseases.
✨ Fasting is not only a spiritually healing also there are numerous health benefits of fasting in our metabolism.