Short 1-3 day fasting always has a positive effect on the body. Fasting allows it to rest from the continuous digestion of food and helps prevent certain diseases. Short-term fasting is great for beginners, because it barely leaves room for mistakes. Prolonged fasting, which is carried out for therapeutic purposes, is more complicated. In this case, non-observance of certain rules can nullify the therapeutic effect, and even cause harm. One of these rules entails a strict adherence to a specific diet when ending a fast. This diet entails a very slow and gradual increase in the daily ration and the elimination of certain foods from it. There are two reasons to follow this diet.

The first and most apparent reason is that during abstinence from food, the digestive apparatus has a chance to rest and undergo significant changes. This is how the famous Soviet scientist, the founder of the modern Russian school of medical fasting, Yuri Nikolaev, describes this process:

“It is important to remember the main rule here: during dosed therapeutic fasting (especially medium and long-term), a change occurs in the gastrointestinal tract, similar to what happens during typhoid fever, the intestinal walls become more tender, cleaner, like those of a newborn baby. It would never occur to anyone to enter an operating room and throw a handful of dirt into a patient’s open wound. But something like this happens every time when, at the end of fasting, a person eats a plate of pasta with meatballs, thick meat broth, a piece of cake, etc.”

During the fast, the gastrointestinal tract adapts to almost complete rest, and reverse adaptation will take time. Depending on the duration of fasting, readjustment may take half to the full duration of a fast.

The second reason why a special diet is crucial in breaking a fast is less obvious. It follows from the experience of Russian doctors of the second half of the 20th century, who widely used fasting to treat patients in a clinical setting. In those years, doctors actively researched this method in order to find a non-drug way to treat severe chronic diseases, such as asthma, schizophrenia, stomach ulcers, hypertension and coronary heart disease. During the fast and the subsequent recovery period, the researchers meticulously recorded the patient’s health condition, metabolism, homeostasis, the sympathoadrenal system tone, examined the changes in the function of the adrenal cortex, thyroid gland and other endocrine glands. They determined that the recovery period has as much importance in attaining the therapeutic effect as fasting itself (A. Kokosov, S. Osinin). It is during the recovery period that tissue self-renewal takes place, their regenerative activity increases, restorative hematopoiesis processes intensify: the body is rejuvenated. The regenerative manifestations do not reach their maximum immediately, but after a certain latent period – approximately 10-20 days after the end of a fast (Yu. Nikolaev). These doctors’ experience suggests that adherence to an appropriate refeeding diet is required to maximize the therapeutic effect of fasting.

Thus, you should never act on a whim during the recovery period and focus on your own feeling of hunger. Otherwise, in the best-case scenario, you will not attain the desired result, and at worst, you will harm your body.

Emphasizing the importance of the recovery period, Yuri Nikolaev actually avoided the term “therapeutic fasting.” He preferred to call his method “unloading diet therapy” (abbreviated RDT in Russian), which included both parts: fasting (unloading) and diet.

Special diets for the recovery period, one of which is provided below, are not based on general considerations about proper nutrition. On the contrary, they are based on the experience of therapeutic fasting specialists observing the condition of patients who followed a particular refeeding diet in the end of fasting. Researchers have repeatedly observed a reversal of the therapeutic effect when the restorative nutrition regimen was violated.

There is no single “proper” diet to break a fast. Doctors have developed different diet options depending on the patient’s condition, concomitant diseases and the duration of abstinence from food. All of them are similar: gradual, based on milk and vegetables (for the first few days) and salt-free.

Below is a summary of recommendations for breaking a fast proposed by Yuri Nikolaev, who, being a psychiatrist, successfully applied the method of therapeutic fasting in patients with schizophrenia.