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Ramadan: Ensure you are healthy to fast
In case of sickness, consult your doctor. Sometimes, you can defer fasting and after you recover, you have to make up the fasts that you missed during Ramadan.
What you need to know:
For people who have certain conditions or who take certain kinds of medications, fasting might not be beneficial and for some, it could even be harmful. Talk with your doctor about your desire to try fasting before you proceed.
Whenever Muslims across the World start fasting to mark the holy month of Ramadan, it is obligatory for everyone who subscribes to the religion and has reached puberty. Only those who suffer from a medical condition are exempted.
However, some Muslims in the latter category have insisted on fasting and sometimes gone against the doctors’ advice to have timely meals. This, doctors say, is dangerous as it compromises the effectiveness of the medicine. It can even be fatal.
Adherence to medication is also compromised as patients avoid taking water which is used to swallow medicine because they are not supposed to consume anything between dawn and sunset.
Avoid fasting
Agnes Baku Chandia, the head of nutrition at the ministry of Health, says the ideal thing is to avoid fasting if you are taking medication because there is no way to boost your immunity if you are starving which pauses a danger to your health.
“The fact that your doctor has prescribed medication means that there is something wrong with your body that needs to be treated before you are declared well enough to fast,” Chandia says. If there is something wrong with your body that needs to be corrected, it means there is a deficiency and you need to eat, the expert adds.
Patients, especially those suffering from diabetes and hypertension should not risk because they require to take light meals from time to time and cannot, therefore, stay without eating for this prolonged period, she says.
Islamic rules
The Islamic rules and regulations also cater for the health concerns and one’s wellbeing by exempting those who are insane, children who are not adolescent yet, the elderly and chronically ill for whom fasting is unreasonably strenuous.
Such persons are required to feed at least one poor person every day in Ramadan for which he or she has missed fasting. Pregnant women and nursing mothers may postpone the fasting to a later time. The ill and the travellers can also defer their fasting.
What to eat
Although life threatening, if one must fast despite having a chronic condition that requires them to take daily drugs, Dr Jacinta Asiimwe Kamuntu, a lecturer of nutrition at Kyambogo University, advises they should take highly nutritious food in the morning. These, Dr Asiimwe says, would help to sustain them throughout the time when they are not eating until they break the fast at dusk. “Fruits, vegetables and other low glycemic foods would help the body reduce the energy slowly and remain in the body throughout the day compared to the high glycemic foods which work the opposite,” she says.
According to Mayo clinic, a US based non-profit academic medical centre, a glycemic index diet is an eating plan based on how foods affect your blood sugar level. It adds that the glycemic index is a system of assigning a number to carbohydrate-containing foods according to how much each food increases blood sugar. Carbohydrates with a low GI value (55 0r less) are more slowly digested.
They are also more slowly absorbed and metabolised and cause a lower and slower rise in blood glucose. These include 100 per cent stone ground whole wheat, oatmeal, pasta, converted rice sweet potato, corn, yam, butter beans, peas and legumes. Others include most fruits, non-starchy vegetables and carrots.
According to Health line Media, a privately owned provider of health information headquartered in San Francisco, if you suffer from diabetes or low blood sugar, fasting can lead to spikes and crashes in your blood sugar levels, which could be dangerous.
“If you decide to try fasting, be sure to stay well-hydrated and fill your diet with nutrient-dense foods during your eating periods to maximise the potential health benefits,” reads the information on the website.
Benefits
• According to Health line media fasting may improve blood sugar control, which could be especially useful for those at risk of diabetes as indicated by several studies.
• Controlling acute inflammation. Although acute inflammation is a normal immune process used to help fight off infections, chronic inflammation can have serious consequences for your health, it may be dangerous.
• May boost brain function and prevent neurodegenerative disorders. Though research is mostly limited to animal research, several studies have found that fasting could have a powerful effect on brain health. One study in mice showed that practicing intermittent fasting for 11 months improved both brain function and brain structure (12Trusted Source).
(Source: www.healthline.com)
