People may consider fasting as one of the form of religious practice. However, besides accomplishing their religion command, they believe there are lots of Health Benefits of Fasting. Of course if it is done properly. Actually, there are some kinds of fasting. There are some rules that should be applied based on your aim in fasting.
For Muslims, they should have a meal before dawn and then fast for nearly 18 hours. During the 18 hours, they are prohibited to eat and drink anything. But they can eat anything after dusk or Maghreb. Besides fasting as the form of religious practice, there are the other types of fasting. One of them is 7 days fasting.
Benefits of 7 Days Fasting
7 days fasting is a long term fasting where a person cannot take anything except of a drink. Well, during the 7 days, the person can only take fresh water as the dietary intake. You might start questioning if this method is okay. This method is done for some purpose such as health. Therefore, this method will give you health benefits of 7 days fasting below:
- Weight loss
As we know, the main key in losing weight is managing your diet. More you eat the more weight you gain. In this case, fasting is the best solution for you. Although the weight loss diet ideally should be accompanied by exercise, some people might don’t have any time to do exercise. If this is the condition, you might think to skip the exercise and put harder effort on diet. Well, 7 days fasting is the perfect solution for you.
The first few days, might be difficult for you. It is because you need to fight with hunger and fatigue. However, you will lose about 1 – 2 pounds a day. It is possible since you burn fewer calories than you eat in daily basis. Such a significant weight loss, isn’t it?
On the other hand, you spend your water and protein in your body to supply your energy. After that, your body will use fat as the fuel. In this phase, your weigh may decrease for about 1 pound in every 2 days. In this phase, you will be able to deal with hunger. Based on certain study, this kind of diet will decrease about 20 in seven days. Based on medical view, this kind of method is alright, as long as we keep the intake of water.
The water will supply the water for the cell, so that the organs will keep working well. You may also consider to get the Benefits of Ice Bath for Weight Loss
- Cell repair
Besides the benefits for weight loss, 7 days fasting also attributes to cell cleaning. On the daily basis, we eat anything we want. The consumption pattern sometimes force our body cell piled up by waste and junk. Further, the cell may prone to damage caused by the waste.
In this case, 7 days fasting will be a good effort to repair the cell damage. This function of fasting is even suggestible for someone with normal weight. The cell repairmen will also be useful to slower aging. Yes, 7 days fasting gives you the effortless anti-aging benefits.
In addition, for those with the intention of body building, this method of fasting will also recover your muscle from post workout damage.
- Detoxification
The effect from eating junk food is that our body will also filled by lots of junk. It is not good either for digestive organ or for the cell. As the 7 days fasting doesn’t allow us to take anything except fresh water, it is good for our digestive organs. It is enable the digestive organs to take a break.
Instead, it will process the waste inside, and release it. This process will keep our digestion completely clean from waste and residue. When our body clean from the waste, it is possible to run a better circulation of blood and oxygen within the body. The detoxification can also be completed by some physical activities such as Benefits of Reflexology Foot Massage for Health
- Good for hypertension
A study entitled Medically Supervised Water-Only Fasting in the Treatment of Hypertension proved that 7 days fasting is a safe and effective method to normalize blood pressure. The study took 174 hypertension patients with blood pressure exceed 140/90 mm Hg as the subject of the study.
As the result, almost 90% patients’ blood pressure reached lower than 140/90 mm Hg. The average decrease is about 37/13 mm Hg. The other activity which has been proven good for hypertension is Benefits of Running for Cardiovascular Health
- Mental health
Besides the physical benefits, 7 days fasting can also bring the benefits from our mental health. This is one of the ways to reset our mind about eating. Sometimes we find that the reason for eating is not because we are hungry. Sometimes we just feel like want to eat something when our body actually doesn’t need it.
In this case, health benefits of 7 days fasting will set you free from the mindset of emotional eating. When your digestion is taking a break from eating, we can say that our mind will do some kind like meditation to break free from the craving of foods.
On the other hand, it doesn’t come easily. We need a high self awareness to accomplish all of this. In addition, physical activities such as Health Benefits of Walking and Running is very good to turn your mind from emotional eating.
Cautions of 7 Days Fasting
The extreme danger of long term fasting is death of starvation. However, this will never happen if the 7 days fasting or the long term fasting is done properly. Well, 7 days fasting can give you some proves of health benefits. Nevertheless, you should definitely consult to the health professional such as doctors or nutritionist related to your own health condition. It is needed since the result may be different, from one person to another.
In some conditions, when our body doesn’t have enough protein supply our body will cannibalize the protein in our muscle. It is alright if the body takes the protein from biceps, and the other. However, it will be bad if the body cannibalize the protein from the internal organs muscle such as heart. It will weaken the heart performance. Therefore, this kind of diet is only suitable for those with strong heart condition.
In addition, after the 7 days accomplishment you will definitely lose some pounds. However, you will quickly gain weight if you don’t properly manage your diet. Therefore, if you don’t want to make your water fasting useless, you need to manage everything afterward.