Knowledge, attitude and practice of therapeutic fasting among naturopathy physicians: across sectional national survey

Nair, Pradeep MK and Mohanty, Sriloy and R, Jainraj (2015) Knowledge, attitude and practice of therapeutic fasting among naturopathy physicians: across sectional national survey. Journal of Fasting and Health, 3 (4). pp. 177-182.

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Abstract

Introduction: Fasting is a common ingredient of naturopathic prescription in India. However no studies have been conducted to establish the use, approach of naturopathy physicians towards fasting.The present study, a cross sectional survey was conducted to assess the attitude, use, belief and understanding about therapeutic fasting among the naturopathy physicians in India.Methods: A 12 item e-mail based questionnaire was sent among 334 naturopathy physicians, whichwere designed to obtain demographic data, practice characteristics and multiple choice and multipleresponse close-ended questions along with an open-response final question. Survey questionnaire datawas analyzed using descriptive statistics via frequency distribution and cross tabulations. Results: A convenient sample of total 257 participants was collected. Majority of the respondents wereprivate practitioners with an average experience of 5 years. 50 of the total population confirms theuse of fasting in their daily prescription which is mostly for 1-5 days (54) and for all diseases (38.5).Physicians mostly prescribe short term mono fasting with fruits or juices (42.8) along with all othermodalities (61.5) to get desired effect. The end results of fasting therapy was quoted as satisfactory(51.7) whereas the misconceptions of the patients was a challenge for 1/3 and most of them find it easy to administer in adults (85). Conclusion:Naturopathy physicians use fasting as a first line management in almost all chronic andacute diseases. However there is a need for strengthening the evidence based practice to bestow bettercare.

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