I am an RN in a cardiovascular ICU. Many of our patients come in congestive heart failure exacerbations. Their symptoms caused by fluid overload are edema, shortness of breath due fluid in lungs and other minor signs of Chf.
The treatment for a lot of these pts is to give them iv diuretics and have them just pee off the fluid and send them home with the same awful nutritional guidelines that got them in the hospital in the first place.
My question is their anyone in the medical profession here or patient with heart failure that sees dry fasting as a viable treatment?
I do see it as a viable treatment, in a very long run. If the patient is at the point of requiring hospitalization, lots of other stuff to fix first. Optimizing sleep with correct circadian rhythms first and a proper diet to support that would come first. After everything else is basically done, we’d have to carefully monitor the patient and ease into dry fast very gradually. It as a form of stress after all. It’s a good line of thinking, but I see very few doctors available who would go for such a thing. Using dry fast as regenerating new heart cells and reversing old damage? Sure, can be done.