Immunity by fasting

Disease being victory for the disease germs over the host in the struggle for existence, there are only two ways of preventing it , reducing the striking power of the germs and increasing the resisting  power of the host. Both are preventive steps if taken before the disease breaks out, and curative after it begins. Of these two, the former step is difficult always owing to the complexity of relations between the infective agents and the individual host and the consequent elusiveness of the whole affair.

''Generally, it  has long been believed that well nourished persons are more resistant to the infection than those undernourished or wasted.

But this belief writes the editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association has been challenged repeatedly thus he continues, even as long ago as the American Revolutionary period, Michael Underwood  pointed out that infantile paralysis most often attacks the best nourished --' finest' -- children. Peptor Rous in 1911 showed that undernourished fowls are relatively immune to sarcoma virus. More recently, T.M. Rivers has suggested  THEORY TO EXPLAIN ' 'MALNUTRITIONAL IMMUNITY'' based on the assumption that undernourished cells are lacking in stored food materials necessary for the proliferation of viruses. Recently, D. H. Sprunt reported that prolonged fasting may cause a ten-fold increase in the normal anti-virus resistance of rabbits provided the animals have free access to drinking water during the fasting period.
     
That prolonged fasting may be immunologically beneficial   in certain virus infections if not accompanied by water deprivation is evident.
    
The rationale, here is that a fasting body is in want and so kept active and alert, and has the energy for assimilation and elimination spared for being used in resisting the invading germs.
   
Such fasting when repeated a number of times every year , makes the body accustomed to subsist on nothing but water-- a thing it has resort to when a disease really breaks out. These fasts are something like the mock fights a peace time army indulges in to keep itself fighting fit for the real ones. In fact , the best way of improving bodily resistance is to practice what we do if a disease really breaks out`. In other words, the body should be kept in readiness for food for days together as would happen during illness.

[The following appeared in the November issue of HEALTH , edited by Drs. U. RAMARAO and U. Krishna Rao, M.B.B.S., Madras ]