NCT03443739

Effects of Fasting in the Bahá'í Faith

Medical And Psychological Effects of Nineteen Days of Intermittent Religious Fasting for Followers of the Bahá'í Faith- an Observational Study

• Status: Completed
• Phase: —
• Study type: Observational
• Enrollment: 145 (actual)
• Sponsor: Charite University, Berlin, Germany · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 69 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

The aim of the study is to find out the effects a specific religious fast (i.e. Bahá'í fast) has on certain metabolic parameters, hydration, psyche and circadian clock. In a follow-up questionnaire series in 2019 we want to additionally validate a specific questionnaire for Bahai fasting, which was developed in 2018.

Detailed description

Followers of the Bahá'í Faith worldwide follow a yearly fasting tradition, where they fast intermittently for nineteen days. The intermittent fast is defined as abstinence from any food, drink and smoking from sunrise until sunset. These nineteen days are always in March and so do not coincide with climatic extremes in any country worldwide. This makes this kind of fasting a good model to study the psychological and medical effects of intermittent fasting in humans.

Conditions

• Health Behavior
• Healthy

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Intermittent Fasting	Intermittent Fasting with abstinence from food and drink daily from sunrise to sunset for nineteen consecutive days in March 2018

Timeline

• Start date: 2018-02-19
• Primary completion: 2018-04-30
• Completion: 2019-07-31
• First posted: 2018-02-23
• Last updated: 2022-12-14

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Germany