A woman in her 40s may have suffered irreversible brain damage and remains hospitalized with “severe malnutrition” as a result of being on a strict diet of fruit juices and water for three weeks. She now weighs less than 40kg (88 LBS.).
According to the Chadashot News12 report, the woman remains hospitalized in Sheba Hospital at Tel Hashomer, in Tel Aviv, following the diet plan she received from an “alternative healer”.
She was instructed to ingest only water and fruit juices and was rigid in her compliance for a three-week period.
As a result, she was hospitalized on Friday, March 29 in serious condition, diagnosed with “severe malnutrition”, with doctors reporting there was a severe electrolyte imbalance as a result of existing exclusively on fruit juices and water. After being hospitalized for three days, doctors fear her brain damage may be irreversible.
It is added that the field of “alternative healing” in Israel is without regulation, and anyone wishing to present themselves qualified as such appears to be able do so, with many lacking the credentials to do so.
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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10 Responses
Refuah shlaima to her and….
An אזהרה to anyone even contemplating such an absorbing and unbalanced starvation, nutrition-lacking diet
For 3 weeks: Water, Juice (sugar and Vitamin C and some other vitamins.) No fat or protein. Of course she will be very sick after 3 weeks. This does not take a medical professional to know that.
What kind of ailment did this woman seek help for?
Alternative Medicine is just a general heading. It does not mean the person she went to was a reputable doctor. It doesn’t state if he had any certification or degrees.
No doctor would put a patient on a water and sugar and some vitamins diet for that length of time.
This is not Complementary Medicine or Integrative Medicine.
Who wrote the heading for this article? Yes it was good to put alternative in quotations.
This woman got alternative advise verses medical advice. This was not science based medicine. This was intentionally harmful advise for an unknown ailment.
I hope the woman will have a complete recovery,!
The info. In the article se med very incomplete and vague so I read more about it in another Jews news source. I don’t know why the author at YWN chose to write a sensational article lacking content rather than an informative helpful one.
Here is the other news source. Great article!
The woman is thought to be suffering water intoxication, or hyponatraemia.
That’s where a person has low levels of sodium in the blood.
Sodium, or salt, is vital for the body, because it is responsible for regulating the fluid levels inside and outside cells in the body.
When salt levels drop too low, fluid moves into our cells and that causes them to swell.
When that happens in the brain, it can cause potentially life-threatening damage.
Excess fluid accumulation in the brain is called cerebral oedema, which can affect the brain stem and cause central nervous system dysfunction.
In severe cases, water intoxication can cause seizures, brain damage, coma and even death.
Normally it occurs in people during sporting events like marathons or people who have suffered from stomach upsets and who try to rehydrate with water rather than electrolytes.
But it has been known to result from this kind of extreme “detox” diet too – albeit in very rare cases.
“Any suggestion that the human body can be detoxed with a juice cleanse is incorrect. We are naturally designed to remove toxins using our liver and kidneys – a juice cleanse won’t perform such a detox,” leading Harley Street nutritionist and author Rhiannon Lambert told The Sun.
While there’s no evidence that detoxing necessarily does much good to you, there’s no evidence to suggest it’s that bad either.
In fact, for some people, it probably does work as a healthy eating kickstarter.
But if you have a history of disordered eating, then denying yourself any solid food is going to be an incredibly bad idea.
Nutritionist Sarah Flower told The Sun that she’s not a fan of fruit juices as they’re “pure fructose.”
“We all want a magic bullet to lose weight very quickly.
“We get fat after years of eating the wrong type of foods and all hope to shed this within days or weeks, which in reality is just not feasible.
“I prefer my clients to adopt a long-term diet change rather than these quick fixes which bear little or no relation to health. ”
While any drastic diets aren’t healthy, Sarah points out that we don’t know the ins and outs of this particular case.
“We don’t know if there were additional supplements taken to help balance nutrition and especially electrolytes – it is assuming they weren’t added.”
That’s not to say that fasts can’t play a role in weight loss.
Sarah says that while she advocates real food in her clinic, she promotes intermittent fasting for some of her clients.
“But this is normally 16-hour fasts which are normally done from the evening meal until mid-to-late morning, not three weeks!”
Corrected typos:
The info. in the article seems very incomplete and vague so I read more about it in another Jewish news source.
does NOT sound logical that after all of 3 weeks on a water and fruit juice diet she should have brain damage. How many refuseniks, and protesters, fasted for longer than that with just water and juice and nothing happened to them?
And one can add that due to their expertise many of these “alternative healers” take large sums of money, in cash of course. Many of them also heavily push the idea to the frum community as after all, it says ushmartem al nafshoseichem. A healthy diet consists of eating everything in reasonable amounts. That includes salt, sugar, oil, meat, fish etc. etc. unless of course a trained qualified doctor advises otherwise.
Chulent Kigel Kishker Galer Shmaltz – that will soon get her brain back to full power.
Let the healer himself try this diet he suggests for others.
Why is it that so many Israelis are into alternative medicine? There are also so many who are anti vaxxers. What happened to the “Am…Chacham?” Why does a nation who can send a rocket ship to the moon have so many primitive minded people?
While I may believe there is something to these alternative manners of health care, there is also a whole lot of delusion, snake oil, and limited anecdotal data. Over the past many years, Poskim have weighed in on the subject, and many have paskened that it is ossur to pursue these avenues as they are not validated scientifically. In the face of the dangers involved, it would also be pikuach nefesh. Yet, the advocates deny fact and logic.