Those who deal with Naturopathy, or people who have chosen health food regimes, often associate normal diet, chosen on a constitutional basis, with monodieta or fasting periods.

During a monodieta, daily nutrition consists of a single food such as rice, grapes, strawberries or other vegetables. These periods can last a few days, the least "drastic" periods even a few weeks.

The duration of fasting, on the other hand, is generally shorter, from one to three days, up to a maximum of ten days.

Some people undergo dry fasts, ie without any food or water intake, but it is a practice that can lead to health problems and therefore should never be performed without the supervision of a fasting doctor .

Some people do fasting from one to three times a year, some even several times a month, others do it after some nutritional extravagance.

In any case, the aim is to detoxify the body, physically and also psychologically. These practices make it possible to free the intestines by regularizing their functions, to recover more quickly from an illness, from flu fever, to feel lighter in body and spirit.

This practice, which has always existed, has an invigorating effect; Shelton, an American doctor, argued that, thanks to the autolysis processes that occur during fasting, " tissues are eliminated inversely in proportion to their usefulness, so fats and 'unhealthy' accumulations, such as cysts, fibroids are lost first, etc, and then the other fabrics, "for which he proposed short-lived but repeated fasts.

Usually, except in specific cases, as a Naturopath I propose a weekly monodiet day, which can be set up by taking exclusively fruit (at least two kilos) for a day.

The most effective fruit is grapes, and this monodieta can last for three days, if there are no particular health conditions.

Even the macrobiotic regime recognizes the value of fasting, but proposes a monodieta based on cereals (usually brown rice) and with very little water.

This diet has a fairly short duration, between seven and ten days, provides a very low dose of heat, carbohydrates and proteins, offers more or less the same benefits as a fast but without stressing the body with strict rules and without requiring a great effort of will to the person, even if it can be monotonous and not suitable for everyone, while the weekly day of monodieta based on fruit and vegetables in general can be performed by all healthy or convalescent people, without problems.

For specific metabolic diseases, it is always necessary to seek advice from the treating physician and the reference professional naturopath.