The FastDay Forum

I was out last night for my eldest 21st when my friend from school asked if I was still fasting, when I replied yes she went mad and told me to "STOP! NOW!"
She has just done a first aid course and while on it she had been told that 5:2ing is dangerous and can cause heart attacks and high blood pressure!
I have had a look on the nhs about fasting and although they are very vague about any side effects and for that matter benefits there was defiantly no mention of heart attack!!
I told her that many people fast and I actually do eat everyday and I have no intention in stopping.

Wondered if anyone else had such extreme reactions?

I've not encountered any and a lot of my friends/family are doctors or nurses. I understand that very prolonged fasting can have serious consequences but IF is by no stretch of the imagination prolonged. As you rightly say, you eat every day so where is the problem. I find people are often scared of what they don't understand. I'm sure Caroline will be along after she has had her first coffee/tea of the morning to put your mind at rest. Glad you were not spooked by this. Just a thought but I often eat nothing on a Monday and it has never done me any harm and for medical reasons folk often have to go without food for one reason or another and no one seems to worry about heart attacks then. Sounds like a complete over reaction to me.

Ballerina x

Sounds like she hasn't understood what 5:2 is to me. I've heard about heart attacks for people who don't eat (like anorexics) but that happens when they don't eat for months and possibly years - I think their heart just isn't strong enough anymore in that case because the heart is a muscle and not eating causes muscle loss - but that's not going to happen if you miss breakfast!
Think about the fasters who fast for religious reasons - entire populations would be dropping dead during ramadam if what she said was true!

My eldest had a twisted gut and needed urgent surgery. After 7 days of drip only and another 2 days of water only they got him on solids, only for his repair to rip open again. The second surgery took another MONTH of no solids and only saline drip initially or water by mouth before they considered him healed enough to have solids again. Fasting short term is not going to kill you, unless there is an underlying medical condition adversely affected by fasting. As many have shown on here, fasting improves many medical conditions.

I've done first aid courses and have never heard that. Also the church I belong to fast every month for 24 hours with no food or water and as far as I know the members are not all attending hospital the next day. Maybe your friend should try fasting!

I discussed 5:2 with my GP before starting it. She told me that she just got back from a women's health conference where 5:2 was discussed. She thought the science stacked up and in fact had started following it herself.

I saw a new specialist the other day--she had never heard of IF, but was very interested. She and her friends will be turning 40 soon and are worried about losing the few pounds of "after-baby" weight they still had. It's "much harder to lose after 40", she said. (A doctor who's younger than my children ) She was very impressed that I lost 14 pounds just last year when I was 72. She did not think that it would be harmful at all.

Another doctor for IF!

Fasting for more than a day or two without knowing what you are doing can in some cases lead to severe electrolyte imbalances that can kill you.

And yes, fasting for one day can raise blood pressure in some people, as I saw that myself as I have been fasting. I'm not sure what the reason for it is, but I measure blood pressure at home and saw that rise, so I was taking a bit more medication on fast days for that reason. There are some old threads on this board where other people report the same issue.

So if you have a history of high blood pressure, as I do, monitor with a home meter.

[quote="Mich37"]I was out last night for my eldest 21st when my friend from school asked if I was still fasting, when I replied yes she went mad and told me to "STOP! NOW!"
She has just done a first aid course and while on it she had been told that 5:2ing is dangerous and can cause heart attacks and high blood pressure!

Does your friend not know that 5:2 was the brainchild of a certain Dr Michael Moseley and his programme was widely televised without complaint from ANY medical establishment. Anyway, what does IF have to do with first aid?

Ballerina x

Thanks guys for your responses.
My friend is one of those people who once she has a idea or opinion in her mind then there is no changing her mind and over the years i have learnt to smile and nod even if I do not agree with her opinions.
I did my first aid course in feb and although my instructor did mention food it was only in relation to his own thoughts that a little of what you fancy, everything in moderation is the way to go and this was because we were talking about possible going to MacDonalds on the last day. So not sure what she had been told!
I certainly have no intention of changing my WOL and am very happy in my decision to start doing this.

Re the fasting can make high blood pressure worse - I've been hypertensive for years and my BP hasn't risen in response to fasting (for a year now) - and now is much lower than before (so maybe I should see the GP about reducing my medication). I think it might depend what medication one takes - if you're on an ACE inhibitor you might have more problems so I understand. We're all different. I've also been a nurse for 30 years and am not sure that people who teach First Aid courses are necessarily medically qualified in a professional sense. A little knowledge can be dangerous.

I am indeed taking an ACE inhibitor, Captopril. I'm curious why that kind of medication would cause blood pressure surges while fasting.

I think part what might make a person react so negatively to the idea of a "fasting" diet, is that what we are doing here really isn't the kind of extreme dieting most people think of when they think of fasting, since we aren't going days without food. But out there in the world of silly/stupid/dangerous/extreme dieting, people are doing some very dumb starvation diets, and those can be very harmful, especially to anyone who has some kind of underlying, undiagnosed health problem, as many people battling obesity tend to have.

The world is also full of people with serious eating disorders who do starve themselves while drinking dangerous amounts of fluid under the name of dieting. And some of the currently popular fad diets out there are potentially very dangerous, since they encourage people to eat no more than 500 calories a day for long stretches of time which CAN be quite damaging unless those 500 calories have been very carefully chosen and designed to provide adequate protein, fat, minerals, and vitamins. Back in the 1970s a number of people died eating very low calorie liquid fasting diets which provided inadequate protein.

So someone who hasn't looked into the particulars of this particular diet might confuse it with one of those more extreme, currently popular, diets, which I do believe are dangerous, based on tales I have read on some other diet boards, where people who have eaten those starvation diets for a few months report that it can take them up to a year to get to where they recover from the damage they have done their metabolisms (and ability to lose weight and maintain that weight loss sanely.)

But alternative fasting with a few days between fast days strikes me as a far saner diet than most, and far less likely to cause problems. It doesn't carry the undertone of anorexic attitudes to whole classes of food as most other diets do. No wholesale demonizing of bread or fruit or fat or dairy or what have you. And that to me seems like it is much less likely to produce some kind of backlash in the future, as restrictive diets so often do. Or turn people into neurotics who people dread inviting to dinner because of the long list of things they refuse to eat (and make other people feel guilty about eating.)

Reading some other alternative day fasting boards that promote unrelentless alternate day fasting has made me think that too much fasting does attract people with eating disorders, and that there might be problems with that approach over a long period of time. But that doesn't seem to be the case here.

I'm not sure either but I do remember reading ages ago posts from carorees and her issues with her BP control because of her medication which was an ACE and I remember reading some explanation for why it was happening (if I was savvy enough I'd be able to point you to the discussion but I'm not). Maybe you could pm her and ask?

Hi, my husband and I are starting 5:2 tomorrow.

We have researched it and read a lot about it for quite a while now, before starting.

I too get a lot of fear mongering from those who are uneducated about fasting. An ex-friend in particular thinks I am absolutely insane to do this. She opted for one of the weight loss surgeries (not sure which one), where she can only eat two bites of food without getting sick, and she had a ton of awful side effects. Me? I'll opt for 500 cals two days a week and eating heartily (NOT overeating) the other five.

Fasting is showing nothing but obvious health benefits, and I'm glad I found this forum!

Liz,

Thanks! I will if she doesn't chime in here.