From Fasting Saints to Anorexic Girls: The History of Self-Starvation is an intense history of eating disorders, patterns of the illness, and examples of how society has viewed food denial in different ways. The book covers the saints who abstained from food, Victorian hysterics, and tragic cases like the Welsh Fasting Girl. Men are covered […]
Chemotherapy Works Better With Fasting
Scientists have known for some time that intermittent fasting can help patients withstand higher doses of chemotherapy, reduce the side-effects, and protect normal cells against much of the damage done by the drug. A study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science in 2008 found that fasting for two days before chemotherapy protected […]
Massage Therapy During Fasting
Massage therapy consists of manipulating the superficial and deeper layers of muscle and connective tissue using various techniques to improve health and function, aid in the healing process, and promote relaxation and well-being. Massage therapy and other types of body work have a long history of being used during fasting. In Ayurvedic medicine, which dates […]
Holy Anorexia
Rudolph M. Bell compares modern descriptions of anorexia nervosa with the recorded behavior of some of the best-known Italian female saints from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. Bell argues that Clare of Assisi, Catherine of Siena, and other holy women were not only victims of a disease, but also in a way victims of a […]