Disclaimer: This is NOT to freak anyone out or spread paranoia. I was/am a huge supporter of water fasting, but really think it should only be done with the support and advice of medical professionals after what happened to me.
Recently, I ended a 20ish day water fast and I had initially planned to go on for 40 days or so. Around the 19th day, I started seeing blood in my pee and decided to stop the fast (also posted about this earlier where the general consensus was that I should stop). I didn’t feel sick, had no bad symptoms and was overall fine other than the blood in me pee.
After beginning to re feed (which I did very slowly with broth), things started taking a turn for the worse. I had significant edema in my legs so we decided to run blood tests. My albumin had dropped. My SGPT ALT and SGOT AST and Gamma GT levels had all increased much beyond the reference range, indicative of liver dysfunction and damage.
I had to come clean to my doctor about the fast, and he has strongly discouraged me from ever doing an extended fast again.
I am not posting this with the intention of scaring anyone or fear mongering, but even as someone who strongly believes in the benefits of fasting, I will never ever risk fasting for more than maybe a day or two consecutively again. My doctor said it’s good I stopped when I did, because there’s no saying what might have happened otherwise.
Anyway, this is just a tiny update, because I’ve met some extremely helpful people on this sub, and wanted to share my not so great experience as well, in case it’s of use to someone.
Sounds like malnutrition induced hepatitis. You’ve been fasting too much imo.
Diet and lifestyle need to be balanced. If you go to the extremes of either end of the spectrum you will run into problems.
Should just be acute liver damage, but I would stop fasting and run some tests in a few weeks to rule out anything else.
Guys, 7 days is good enough right? You can take break and do another 7 days.
No reason to go 20 or 40 days imo. I mean sure most people will be fine as long as you have the correct physical fitness but it’s still a risk that’s not needed.
I personally think 300 cal a day is good enough to call it fasting. You keep your body systems running as well, potentially losing even more weight.
But I get it, diehards are diehards, and they may die hard.
Sorry to hear that. I imagine it’s possible your liver would have acted that way regardless. Do you have any reason to link the fast and the liver issue?
I can very much imagine there being a link. I don’t expect it to be a risk at my level of fasting (max 3 days at a time).