Medical miracles of fasting

The human body is invaded by many toxic and harmful substances that accumulate in tissues. The majority of these substances is in food, especially nowadays where prosperity in many societies has created a wide variety of foods.Furthermore, the technological means intervened to improve these foods and encourage people to eat improperly, resulting in malfunction of many biological processes in the cells of the body.This imbalance has appeared in the form of the so-called "diseases of civilization", including obesity, arteriosclerosis, hypertension, acute myocardial Infarction (heart attack), stroke (cerebrovascular accident), pulmonary embolism, malignancy, allergies and diseases of the immune system.

And after medical references, almost all food nowadays include small quantities of toxic substances that are added during the preparation or conservation: enhancers taste, food, antioxidants, preservatives, food dyes, in addition to the chemical additives that absorb to plants and animals, including growth promoters, antibiotics and fertilizers and their derivatives. Some plants have in their components from harmful substances, while many foods include microscopic organisms which will secrete their substances toxic and pollute them.

On the other hand, people breathe air saturated exhaust smoke from factories and cars, and consume toxic medications in an uncontrolled manner. Add to that the toxins of countless living organisms that inhabit our bodies, as well as the internal combustion wastes that circulate with the blood, such as carbon dioxide, urea, creatinine, ammonia, sulfates and uric acid, not to mention the digested food waste and toxic gas from fermentation and their rot, such as indolethe skatole and phenol.

Thanks to Allah, exalted is he, the body gets rid of these toxins. The liver, main body to cleanse the body of toxins, neutralizes many of them, including urea, creatinine, and ammonia, and turn them even into useful substances. However, the liver has a limited capacity, and some of its cells can become defective due to a patient or the age.Therefore, a part of toxins deposited in the tissues of the body, and in particular in adipocytes.

Liver transforms so many molecules toxic, often soluble in lipids molecules non toxic soluble in water, the liver can get rid via the digestive tract or they are evacuated by the kidneys.

Fasting is a blessing:
During fasting, a large amount of fat stored in the body move to the liver, where they are oxidized and made useful. Liver recovers the fused toxins, removes their toxicity, then removed with waste from the body. In addition, cholesterol, which is found in the lipids accumulated in the liver during the young and from different deposits, control and increases the production of the components of bile, which in turn dissolves toxins and evacuated with the feces.

The young serves the liver cells, because it involves the oxidation of fatty acids and rids their stock in fat cells. Therefore, these cells become more active, their role perfectly and counterbalance the effect of many toxins, by adding sulfuric acid and gluconic acid to neutralize them and allow the body to get rid of.

In addition, liver devours all microscopic substances whose carbon molecules that reach the blood and the liver absorbs using special cells, called 'Kupffer cells. These, which cover the hepatocytes are secreted with bile. During fasting, these cells become extremely active and devour bacteria after have attacked them with compact antibodies.

Because, during fasting, catabolism in liver outweighs anabolism, the occasion becomes more conducive for the body rids itself of accumulated toxins and liver cells become more able to remove the toxicity of many substances.

Thus, young ensures the good health of the organs of the body. Dr. McFadden, a doctor who has studied the effects of fasting, said: "every human being needs to fast, even if he is not ill, because toxins that are found in foods and drugs accumulate in the body and weigh down it as if he was suffering from a disease, thereby reducing its activity. When the human being fast, it gets rid of these toxins and feels a force unprecedented. '

What is the month of Ramadan sloths who prefer to sleep at work and rest to the movement?
According to medical references, muscular movement exercised after the absorption of food during fasting leads to the oxidation of a set of amino acids aliphatic, i.e. leucine, isoleucine and valine. After the muscle cells get energy from this oxidation, two other very important acids are synthesized in these cells: alanine and glutamine. The first (i.e. alanine) is essential to synthesize new glucose in the liver, then the second (glutamine) is at the base of the DNA and a party turns into alanine. By oxidizing glucose in muscle cells, the activity and the physical movement also produce two other acid, pyruvate, and lactate, which are at the base of the glucose production in the liver.

Aliphatic amino acids which oxidize and are formed in the muscles during fasting, include alanine which constitutes 30% of some amino acids and pyruvate oxidation, and that turns itself into pyruvic acid via the circuit the synthesizing and hepatic glucose oxidation in muscles.

In fact, muscles consume energy of this hepatic glucose. If movement increases the glucose becomes insufficient for muscles, they satisfy their need by oxidizing free fatty acids from the dissolution of fat in adipose tissue. The absence of fatty acids, the muscles get energy from ketones, derived from the oxidation of lipids in the liver. This shows that the physical movement and activity stimulate all operations of the oxidation of substances that supply the energy body, activate the dissolution of lipids and the synthesizing of glucose liver from glycerol, resulting from the dissolution of fat in adipose tissue and oxidation of glucose from lactate in the muscles.

Movement and activity during fasting :
Movement and activity during the Islamic young are positive and vital. They lead to increase the efficiency of the liver and muscles, to rid the body of lipids and protect it from harmful ketones excess. The physical movement slows down the manufacture of proteins in the liver and muscles, according to the force and duration of this movement. This in turn ensures a huge energy, used in the production of proteins: each group of amino acid needs of the energy stored in five particles of adenosine to guanine triphosphate. If each particle of these two substances has an amount of energy that varies between 5 to 10 calories, and knowing that a particle of the simplest protein contains less than 100 amino acids, what will be the amount of energy available in the different groups of proteins?

During physical activity, glucose and amino acids are consumed to produce the energy for muscle cells, which alerts the Center, given the inverse relationship between the existence of these substances in the blood, the degree of satiety and hunger Center alert in the brain.This is why the physical movement wakes up this centre and stimulates the appetite. Furthermore, excessive physical movement converts glycogen into glucose, if oxygen is lacking, as a result of the metabolism of glucose from lactic acid which circulates with the blood and turns to turn glucose and glycogen by using liver. Glycogen does not turn into glucose in the muscles in the event of passivity as it does in the liver, in the absence of glucose-6-phosphate. The physical movement is therefore an important factor to transform the stock of glycogen in the muscles into glucose and then transmit it to the organs that depend on, such as the brain, the nervous apparatus, blood cells and kidney.

Muscle activity may be linked to the renewal of the cells lining the intestines, thereby improving the digestion and absorption of nutrients. In fact, these cells need glutamine to synthesize DNA, that muscles produce in abundance during the physical movement.

The cells lining the intestines are renewed periodically, this period ranging from 2 to 6 days, and they are daily losing 17 billion cells. As a result, physical activity can alleviate digestive disorders and the poor absorption of food.

Wisdom of the young from a scientific point of view:
The wisdom of fasting is to refrain from consuming food and beverages. If the metabolism is based on anabolism and catabolism, it stimulated more, especially this last mechanism, during the day which is the time of activity, movement and work. Allah, exalted is he, has equipped the human body of a biological clock that organizes endocrine hormones. It is perhaps one of the reasons for which Allah, exalted is he, has prescribed fasting during the day time the movement and keep searching, and not during the night, calm and rest time.

We can therefore say with confidence, activity and the physical for the young movement to provide the body with glucose synthesized or stored in the liver, which is the ideal fuel providing the brain, red blood cells, bone marrow and nervous system, the energy that allows them to perform more effectively their function. Similarly, the physical movement ensures the human body energy it uses in its biological processes: it prevents the synthesis of proteins from amino acids and active catabolism during the day, consuming the stored energies and cleaner the galleries of toxins that take a solid form or which are dissolved in fat or ammonia substances.

Some fasters spend the day sleeping and ensure the night. This behaviour has effects whatsoever?
Spend the day sleeping and ensure overnight during the month of Ramadan causes disruption of Chronobiology, which affect metabolism.

Dr. Mohammed al-Hadrami, of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of King Fahd ibn ' Abd al-Aziz, has conducted a study on ten people in good health and not hospitalized, to prove the effect of this disturbance on cortisol. It found that during the last two weeks of the month of Ramadan, the daily cycle of this hormone had been disturbed at four people and than its usual rate in the morning and midnight had changed, saving the morning low and high night. The researcher attributed this disturbance to change behavioural habits of these fasters, concluding that they spent the day sleeping and watched the night. Cortisol level became normal four weeks after the end of the month of Ramadan, after these people had picked up the habit of sleeping at night and to be active during the day.

That is why the Prophet companions and the early Muslims distinguished the works executed in the period of fasting from those performed at another time. They were preparing the squadrons and throwing in the fighting, while they were fasting and thus worshipped Allah. The Muslims of today is release - they chimeric fear of movement and labour during fasting? Focusing on work and productive work and the struggle for the cause of Allah, exalted is he, in imitation of their Prophet  and their pious predecessors, may Allah be pleased with them?

Why the Prophet broke his fast by eating dates?
This is the miraculous nature of the Sunnah. As dates are rich in glucose, they constitute the best food at the time of breaking the fast.In fact, dates contain a high percentage of carbohydrates which varies between 75 and 85% of its components. Glucose is 55% fructose 45%, in addition to proteins, lipids and some vitamins, including vitamins A, B2 and B12. They also contain some important minerals such as calcium, phosphorus, potassium, sulfate, sodium, magnesium, cobalt, zinc, fluorite, copper, manganese and a rate of cellulose. By consuming dates, fructose quickly turns into glucose which the digestive tract absorbs immediately to provide energy to the body, and in particular to the tissues which its substance is the main provision, namely brain and nerve, cells red blood cells and cells of the bone marrow. Fructose and cellulose activate vermicular bowel movement, while phosphorus irrigates all brain regions and enters the composition of phosphatic substances that transmit the energy to all cells of the body and rationalize its use, including adenosine and guanine triphosphate. 
In addition, vitamins that contain dates, including vitamins A, B1, B2, biotin and Riboflavin, play an effective role in metabolism and have a tranquillizing effect. As mineral salts, they play a key role in the formation of certain enzymes, essential for the biological body processes, and the operation of certain others, as they affect the contraction and relaxation of muscles, as well as on the acid-base balance in the body. Therefore, any muscle or nerve tension dissipates and the strength and peace spread throughout the rest of the body.

On the contrary, if one breaks his fast by eating proteins or fats, the body absorbs these substances long after their digestion, while it needs in emergency energy. In addition, these substances increase the amino acids in the body, since carbohydrates there are almost lacking, resulting in hypoglycemia.

That is why the Prophet we ordered to break the fast by eating dates and said:

« « If one of you wants to break the fast, that it is done with dates because they are a blessing, and if it finds no dates, it breaks the fast with water because it is a means of purification » [Abu Daoud (al-Tirmidhi: Saheeh)].

For his part, Anas, may Allah be pleased with him, reported the following: "the Prophet had used to break his fast before praying with some fresh dates, failing some dried dates or, if it was neither one nor the other, a few sips of water ' [Abu Daoud (al-Tirmidhi: Saheeh)].

The Prophet ordered the fasting person to keep calm and avoid disputes. Why?
When the fasting person gets angry and gets excited, the secretion of adrenaline in the blood increases to reach 20 to 30 times the normal rate. If this happens on the first day of fasting, during digestion and absorption of nutrients this causes disruption of all organs of the body. Because adrenaline relaxes the smooth muscles of the digestive tract, reduces the contractions of the gallbladder, narrowed arterioles, dilates coronary arteries and increases the amount of blood that reaches the heart and, therefore, its beats.

If anger and disputes occur in the middle or at the end of the fasting day, i.e. at the time of absorption of food, the rest of the stock of glycogen in the liver breaks down, as well as proteins that are then converted to amino acids and fatty acids are oxidized, thereby increasing the level of glucose in the blood that is consumed to ensure vital body energy during the feud. Therefore, the body consumes its irrationally. In addition, a portion of the glucose can be evacuated with the urine, if his rate exceeds the normal rate, which means that the body unnecessarily loses a large amount of vital energy and is obliged to compensate for oxidative more amino acids, resulting in the secretion in the blood of harmful ketones.

Furthermore, increased secretion of adrenaline in the blood leads to evacuation of large quantities of water through diuresis. In addition, the increase of adrenaline may lead to heart attack or sudden death in people who are susceptible, as a result of hypertension and need increasing their heart beating quickly, oxygen. Anger can also produce brain attacks in people with high blood pressure or arteriosclerosis.

Secondly, the rise of adrenalin as a result of nervous tension during anger, increases the production of cholesterol from reduced lipoprotein, which can increase during fasting, and it has been proven the link with arteriosclerosis. Here, among other reasons still unknown why the Prophet ordered the fasting person to keep calm and avoid screaming, tension and disputes.

And after Abu Hurayra, may Allah be pleased with him, the Prophet said:

« « When one of you fasting, that it preserves obscene words and shouting, and if someone insult or attacked, to say: 'I fast' ' (Bukhari and Muslim).
 

Category: Fasting