Fasting Healthily During Ramadan

 It’s necessary for the fasters to follow a healthy fasting way to avoid any health problems during the fasting period in the holy month of Ramadan, in which fasting from food and drinks is done from dawn until sunset.

What are the common health issues in Ramadan fasting?

Since fasting during Ramadan contains abstaining from food and drinks throughout the daytime in addition to changing the time of the meals, then this would normally lead to several health and physical symptoms that differ in severity between people depending on their nature and the physical activity during the fasting time. The most common health issues contain the following:

• Sleeping problems: fasters suffer normally from sleep problems during the fasting period due to the tendency to delay the sleeping time from the normal time in addition to waking up in the night to have the suhoor meal, and this causes the deep sleeping time to decrease, which, in turn, affects the cognitive function and activity throughout the next day, as fasters struggle to stay concentrated and carry out daily tasks due to the lack of sleep.
• Digestive disturbances: fasters face digestive problems and disturbances due to the change in the nature and time of food, as fasting includes two main meals. The first is in iftar, which usually includes high-fat and rich-in-carbohydrates meals, and many people tend to eat high amounts of food to compensate for what they have missed during the fasting time, while the second one is the suhoor meal in the nighttime. This change in eating habits causes digestive upset for many fasters, especially if the food choices weren’t healthy and suitable, such as bloating, indigestion, constipation, heartburn, and GERD.
• Lack of caffeine and nicotine symptoms: the problem of not having caffeine is one of the most common difficulties that fasters face in Ramadan because they can’t drink their morning coffee, for example, which causes numerous symptoms during the daytime, such as headache, drowsiness, tiredness, and others. Also, smokers suffer from the inability to have their nicotine, which also leads to several symptoms during fasting, such as nervousness, irritability, and stress.
• Fasters might also experience other symptoms, such as dehydration, especially in hot weather, hypoglycemia, and dizziness.

How to avoid common health issues in Ramadan fasting?

Health issues that fasters might face might be reduced and decreased by following these recommendations:

• Avoid delayed and unexplained staying up as much as possible and try to have as much deep sleep as you can.
• Regulate correctly the way of having food during the iftar time to avoid digestive disturbances. This can be applied by starting with water and a few dates and then waiting for a few minutes and, after that, starting with light meals like soups and salads, then the main course.
• Avoid overeating during iftar to prevent bloating and indigestion, and it’s better to have the meal in two periods.
• The iftar and suhoor meals must contain all the necessary nutrients, so they should include vegetables and fruit, protein (like meat and chicken, legumes, and dairy products), carbohydrates (like potatos, rice, and whole grains), and healthy fats (like olive oil, nuts, and seeds).
• It’s preferable to avoid or reduce foods that are rich in saturated fats and unhealthy oils in addition to the sugar.
• Drink enough water between the iftar and suhoor and avoid strenuous physical activity during fasting to prevent dehydration.
• There isn’t a management for the caffeine withdrawal, unfortunately, and it’s recommended to adapt the body to reducing the caffeine amount two weeks before Ramadan.
• In case any symptom occurs that points to a health issue, such as dehydration and hypoglycemia, then this case must be managed immediately by giving fluids for the dehydration case and a rapid sugar source in the hypoglycemia case to prevent the situation from becoming more serious.