Symptoms after 36 hour fasts

Hello! I’ve been doing 36 hour (8pm-8am) fasts once every week or two for the past couple of months. I do IF too, but not religiously. Normally, I feel pretty good after a 36 hour fast, but two weeks ago, I had a severe migraine, where I was throwing up, heart pounding, dizzy, etc. which I woke up with on the morning I was to break it. (I’ve had a few of those in my life, usually after consuming several triggers.) This morning was the end of another 36 hour, and I woke with pounding heart, accelerated heart rate, dizziness and nausea. It lasted a good part of the day. Is this something I should be concerned about or could it just be coincidence? Googling it is bringing up a lot of different stuff, so I thought I’d ask here 🙂 I should mention I have a lot on my plate and on my mind right now, if that is relevant at all…

Answer

Congratulation, you’ve hit critical limit. Your blood sugar crashed (below 55 most likely) and your sugar stores were depleted. At this point, your body has trouble bailing you out. If you continued, you would risk doing harm to your organs.

You are either: Doing these fast too often without sufficient nutrition to support the fasts OR you have a monster in your pancreas called an insulinoma. I’m leaning towards the first one but it wouldn’t hurt to have doc review your concerns.You could buy a glucometer from pharmacy and check sugar levels throughout one of your fasts at home. Mainly checking at start and once symptoms start. That may give you some insight if you can’t get into the doc soon.

I wouldn’t do anymore fasts unless you have someone around you constantly that is aware of the situation and can act upon you potentially going hypoglycemic.