The benefits of fasting during the Holy month of Ramadan have been passed down through generations for every Muslim, not only through the hadith(sayings) of the blessed Prophet Muhammad SAW but also through a Muslim’s own firsthand experience of fasting during this month. 

The blessed Prophet is reported to have exclaimed,

“O People! The month of Allah (Ramadan) has come with its mercies, blessings and forgiveness. My Lord has decreed this month as the best of all months.” 

The beauty of Ramadan is that it provides to people from all walks of life, whether coming from plentitude or an impoverished state, something to gain from it by recognizing ones strengths and weaknesses to help establish our approach towards life and living it. Much of which is without doubt mainly achieved by the fasting schedule one must follow consecutively for 29-30 days by refraining to eat or drink anything from sunrise to sunset. 

The good news for people from all walks of life however is the recent advent of scientific research¹ into the benefits of intermittent fasting making all that was a matter of practicing faith at one point for a religious community only, now proven to be one of the most rewarding exercises for the majority in order to achieve optimal health.

To explore this more one can read more about the remedial effects of fasting by tracing them all the way back to Hippocrates when it was a recommended practice for those with ailing conditions in order to heal.² Yet most people in the modern times have essentially forgotten what it really means to let your body starve for a certain number of days either willfully or not as a means to heal. And as much as the recent era has provided the masses with abundance of readily available food, it has most certainly also created its own set of problems in the shape of all kinds of diseases and chronic ailments that may be the result of simply overconsuming!

Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.

Brillat-Savarin

Having said that, fasting during the month of Ramadan for about 30 consecutive days has also been the subject of numerous scientific studies in the recent years, to understand it’s benefits. Researchers are swiftly trying to catch up on the health benefits of starving your body to enable such adaptive responses at the cellular level like autophagy³, that are key to retaining wellness.

At the base of such bodily functions as autophagy is the phenomenon known as hormesis⁴ which is defined as the biphasic dose response of the body, characterized by a low dose stimulation and a high dose inhibition response to maintain homeostasis in the body. Meaning when the body is exposed to bursts of stressors like short term intermittent fasting, it stresses the body beneficially when performed in low doses which in return helps the body to react and regenerate at the cellular level as a positive reactionary response to those stressors. In fact, induced short term stress has been a crucial factor for millions of years providing the diversity and adaptability one sees in life and its different forms. 

In homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann states as follows in his organon,⁵

“Every agent that acts upon the vitality, every medicine, deranges more or less the vital force, and causes certain alteration in the health of the individual for a longer or shorter period. This is termed primary action. Although a product of the medicinal and vital powers conjointly, it is principally due to the former power. To it’s action our vital force endeavors to oppose its own energy. This resistant action is a property, is indeed an automatic action of our life preserving power, which goes by the name of secondary action or counteraction.” Aphorism 63

What Hahnemann is trying to establish here is quite similar to what the hormetic phenomenon shows, of how the body responds positively to low dosage stressors. The biphasic effect of the homeopathic remedy being how at first a short aggravation may show up which is the primary effect followed by a lasting curative effect as the counteraction or the secondary response of the vital force’s (immune system) reaction to that dose. Similarly during fasting, one may experience fatigue, headaches, irritability etc., which are the primary responses of starvation, only to be followed by the positive secondary responses of increased energy, regeneration at the cellular level, release of oxidative stress, mood enhancement amongst many other benefits.

In homeopathy the administration of potentized low doses when the symptoms indicate a remedy is the way to expose the body to a low dose stressor which in return activates the body’s own healing mechanism that shall take care of the similar underlying disease without any further external intervention. Because it has been seen that the long term exposure to high doses of any substance will ultimately create disharmony in the body (aka side effects of medicines) and this can also be applied to fasting too if it is done for a prolonged period, making it regressive and ultimately fatal.

All things are poison, and nothing is without poison; the dosage alone makes it so that the thing is not poison.

Paracelsus⁶

For those new to homeopathy, it is very important to understand the difference between how the ultra-diluted doses of the homeopathic remedies serve as a pivotal point in the field of therapeutics, which is further clarified by the hormetic principle of low level stress induction to achieve healing versus the allopathic approach to cure with high and toxic doses, which has yet to catch up with the broad scope of achieving health and harmony with the former.

References:

1-https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4516560/

2-https://bhma.org/fasting-a-modern-take-on-an-ancient-practice/

3-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autophagy

4-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis – :~:text=Effects in aging Effects in aging One,with respect to its applicability is aging.

5-http://www.homeoint.org/books/hahorgan/organ060.htm – P60E5

6-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dose_makes_the_poison

For more detailed information on Hormesis, Homeopathy and the Effects of Fasting kindly refer to the following comprehensive articles:

Exploring Possible Mechanisms of Hormesis and Homeopathy in the Light of Nanopharmacology and Ultra-High Dilutions

Dana Ullman

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/15593258211022983

HORMESIS: A fundamental concept in biology

 Edward J Calabrese

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5354598/#B31

The Effect of Fasting on Human Metabolism and Psychological Health 

Yiren Wang and Ruilin Wu

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC875459

Disclaimer by the Author: This is the opinion of the writer solely intended for informational purposes. To address and treat your health issues kindly consult your personal caregiver.