Fasting IS NOT PAIN FULL
After
suffering through cancer, the middle-age woman decided her illness was too much
to bear. Everything she ate, she painfully vomited back up. The prospect of surgery
and a colostomy bag held no appeal. And so against the advice of her doctors
the patient decided to stop eating and drinking. During the next 40 days in
1993 Robert Sullivan of Duke Univ. Medical Center observed her gradual decline,
providing one of the most detailed clinical accounts of starvation and
dehydration.
Instead of feeling pain, the patient
experienced the characteristic sense of euphoria that accompanies a complete
lack of food and water. She was cogent for weeks chatting with her caregivers
in the nursing home and writing letters to family and friends. As her organs finally
failed she slipped painlessly into a coma and died.
In
the evolving saga of Terri Schiavok the prospect of the 41 year old Florida
woman suffering a slow and painful death from starvation has been a galvanizing
force
But medical experts say going with-out
food and water in the last days and weeks of life is as natural as death
itself. The body is equipped with its own resources to adjust to death.
In fact,
eating and drinking during sever illness can be painful because of the demands
it person weakened organs.
“What my
patients have told me over the last 25 years is that when they stop eating and
drinking there’s nothing unpleasant about it—in fact, it can be quite blissful
and euphoric,” said Perry Fine, vice president of medical affairs at the
National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization in Arlington, VA “It’s a very
smooth graceful and elegant was to go”.
Schiavo, who
hasn’t had any food or water since March 18, has been in a persistent
vegetative state for 15 years that makes it impossible for her brain to
recognize pain, doctors say.
Something about
the way Americans eat isn’t working—and hasn’t been for a long time. The NUMBER
OF OBESE Americans is now greater than the number who is merely overweight. It’s
as if once we taste food we can’t stop until we’ve gorged ourselves Taking that
inclination into account some people are adopting an unusual solution to overeating
rather than battling temptation in grocery stores restaurants and their own kitchens
the simply don’t eat. At least not at certain times of the day or specific days
of the week. Called intermittent fasting. This rather stark approach to weight
control appears to be supported by science not to mention various religious and
cultural practices around the world. The practice is a way to become more
circumspect about food its adherents sail but it also seems to yield the benefits
of calorie restriction which may ultimately reduce the risk of some diseases
and even extend life.
Mark Mattson
chief of the laboratory of neurosciences at the National Institute on Aging
says,
“Moderate fasting maybe one day a week or cutting back on
calories a couple of days a week—will have health benefit: for most anybody.”
Not all
nutrition professionals see the merits of fasting. Some think of it as a recipe
for disaster setting up a person for binge eating and metabolic confusion Ruth Frenchman
a registered dietitian in Burbank, Cliff and spokeswoman for the American
Dietetic Ass. Said,
“I frequently
see such extreme strategies backfire. You’re hungry, fatigue, irritable. Fasting
is not very comfortable. People try to cut back one day and the next dray they’re
starving and they overeat.”
Reached, who
study fasting and caloric restriction how is says the body’s hunger cycle ultimately
adjust. From a biological standpoint the fasting can be helpful whether someone
is overweight or normal weight. Were
brilliant at this referring to human” physical reaction to not eating, but we’re
not good at responding to too many calories. We’re very good at responding to fasting.
Fasting, in itself, is not an unhealthy process.
To be continued…
DR. KARL WALLACE D.D.S.
To read more Dr. Wallace go to: www.karlwallaceblog.blogspot.com
