Re: For novices, Hour 41

Thanks!

Yes, once you referred to it, I went and checked out your report in another thread about your experience. I think we have little choice but to take such a scare seriously, even if it is really only "detox'. When I was first researching DF seriously online back in March, I came across a CureZone (I think?) post from someone who did not otherwise seem reliable in any way, but who was in run-on sentences blathering about how dehydration makes you really, really sleepy so don't fall asleep or you'll never wake up! That may be the DF equivalent of those who say "if you Water Fast for seven days, you will die!!!!!"; we just don't know yet until we hear about a lot more experiences and have them ourselves and everyone has to be so brave (or desperate or apathetic) to discover more...

But when I read that I was determined to time my DF so that I would not have to sleep at a time when I thought I might be reaching my limit; that is, I'd start with a DF in the morning and go for 36 hours and then break with water and then sleep. But it did not work out that way, because it seemed crazy to throw away all those hours overnight spent DF-ing that I often do anyway, just in order to "start timing" in the morning. I was worried about having exactly the experience you had; I wondered whether I would be alarmed enough to wake myself up, or whether I would be pulled under. That first fast, I actually broke after 32 hours, around 1 a.m. (I had not gone to sleep yet) because, although I had been feeling fine up until Hour 28 or more, suddenly I had pain in my eyes and my eye was very bloodshot. I think I had been prepared for eye pain because of the FitnessThroughFasting description, but when it really happened to me I had one of those moments, like, "How could I have been so stupid as to dry fast for 32 hours???" I really thought I was going blind. I only have sight in one eye and that eye was looking bad and hurting, even when closed. I broke with water with some lemon squeezed into it (I thought that might hydrate me better) and in fact felt worse after doing that - more thirsty, more alarmed in terms of my health (probably citrus inflames me). BUt I mention it because it is the experience you had and yet you did not break your DF then. I am a bit more prepared this time for that, because I know that I did not do permanent damage after all (I think); at the time, I thought I had! I even think now it may have been detox, but maybe it was pain because our eyes like to be hydrated!

The second attempt, I stopped at 28 Hours because I was sleeping and a nightmare woke me up - not what you experienced, just a nightmare, but it was bad and in my sleepy head I wondered whether it was a "sign" that I should stop, that I was in trouble. Probably it was just detox - I do have nightmares on Water Fasts sometimes and I take them as signs that toxins are passing through my brain, irritating my nerves or something. But on a DF one looks closely and a bit hyper-alertly for "signs" from one's body telling one of danger, I guess, and also I was fuzzy-headed from sleep and so I just went ahead and broke the fast at 28 Hours that time. I pinched my skin when I woke up and it seemed, to my sleepy brain, slow in bouncing back and that is what got me to the water glass to sip. Maybe if the skin had seemed resilient and there'd been no other alarm but the nightmare, I'd have turned back to sleep and gone on.

But although I think that nightmares during DF and WF are probably signs of just toxin irritation or toxins passing through the brain as the heart pumps the blood through, I don't think that applies to the experience you had. Obviously the art of fasting is precisely the art of learning how to safely guess what is probably "detox" and therefore good and what is not detox and is mortally, vitally bad. I'm not sure what to say about your experience, not because it has never happened to me but because for the past nine years I have had that experience, often multiple times a night, almost every night! I call them "night terrors" even though they do not match what are commonly called "night terrors" in the sleep disorder literature.

They are beyond scary. I do not now whether they are from hypoglycemia (a crash in low blood sugar?), an allergy to my own sleep brain-chemicals, a kind of heart event or a sleep apnea, but I believe I do die in such moments, my brain "flatlines". I have brought it to many doctors and other health professionals and they have never heard of it and they only comment that since it has not killed me yet, it probably won't kill me, "in all likelihood". But I think that, having experienced something like it yourself, you can imagine how totally non-reassuring that is. It absolutely feels genuine, and not in a mental/'spiritual"/emotional/psychological way but a physiological one.

The difference between your experience and mine is that, though I feel sucked down into death, I fight it. I jump up out of bed and sometimes start to run, or I shout "no no no"
or I desperately shake my head trying to wake up/stay alive.

This is a long way of saying that I do not know what the nature of such brain events are, but I devoutly do not believe they are healthy and I think you are right not to court them or continue fasting through them. However, just so you know, it would seem that medical profession has absolutely no idea what such experiences could be and is apparently unalarmed by them...because they haven't experienced one!

In reference to those "night terrors" of mine, I have often considered, as you say, that they might be a "dream", something as non-physically-threatening and chimerical, non-material, as that, but mostly I feel convinced that they are not a thought event but a physiological event of some (very bad and ominous) kind.

I don't want to scare you further, but hat is just my take on this sort of thing. My 72 hours ends at 3.47 in the morning and I am tempted to try to stay awake and not have to worry about sleeping at those crucial hours before the 72-hour mark.

I was alarmed last night by some chest tightness and an ache in the center of my chest, but my blood pressure monitor (quite expensive it was) actually has conked out after five months! I still want to get a new one because I feel it is a good thing to moniotr during a DF (and even a WF if one is given to chest pains at all).

I'm going to hurriedly close this because I just spent 40 minutes writing a reply to Sara (mo123, or something) and it all got erased and I don't want that to happen with you.
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