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How does fasting during Ramadan affect the health of the unborn child? How big is the effect? Who is at risk? These questions are answered by American Muslim scientists who are conducting the largest health research experiment in 37 Islamic countries, including those in Central Asia.
Ramadan is one of the most important events in the life of a Muslim. The very strict fasting during this month (refusing water and food during the day) is one of the five pillars of Islam. In other words, it is binding on every believer. In Soviet times, public fasting during Ramadan, as well as praying in public places, was not popular. However, after 1991, fasting became more and more common in the Muslim countries of Central Asia, and the social significance of fasting has increased. Today, in some parts of Uzbekistan, it is considered indecent if a Muslim publicly declares that he refuses to hold religious beliefs. Injuried.
Theology and Medicine
Ramadan plays such an important role in the life of the Islamic world that it has attracted the attention of medical scientists. In fact, every year this month marks the intrauterine development of about 29 million children in Muslim families. This poses a huge risk to their health.
According to Muslim religious norms, women are not required to fast during pregnancy. However, according to scientists, most Muslim women around the world do not enjoy this privilege. testify Regarding the issue of fatigue during Ramadan for pregnant women (especially, Hypoglycemia And improved the level Ketones urine and blood).
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In general, modern medicine has long proven that the health of the mother affects the health of the child. And the mother’s health, in turn, depends on her nutritional characteristics during pregnancy. However, as new research shows, the embryo adapt Fasting during Ramadan could avoid lethal developmental traits. However, this does not negate other less obvious consequences. In particular, resources limited by fasting might be reallocated to favor the brain at the expense of the development of other organs.
Currently, there is a whole layer of scientific research at the intersection of medicine and religion. An associate professor at the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the National Research University Higher School of Economics commented specifically on the situation in Fergana. Irina Tsaregorodtseva.
— In recent years and even decades, there has been a large number of publications studying the effects of Quranic injunctions and prohibitions on the health and well-being of Muslims. The main goal of such studies is to provide a scientific and theoretical basis for Islamic teachings that do not have a direct basis in the Quran and the Sunnah. Most often, the authors of such publications are two types of researchers. The first are Western scientists of Muslim origin; for them it is important to rationally understand and justify the tenets of their faith. The second are Muslim theologians and jurists. In general, the latter refers to work already carried out by other researchers, but sometimes there are quite original studies, such as Iranian scientists, who can be both theologians and engineers or doctors. Given a certain “fashion” in this “Muslim studies”, it is worth paying attention to how they are evaluated by the scientific community and, first of all, monitoring the reaction of professional scientists who have won authority in their respective fields to these works (medicine, biology, psychiatry, etc. d.).
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General indicators
Seyed Karimi and Anirban Basu of Washington State University recently presented their work on this topic. They are the first scientists to try figure out Characteristics of the effects of Ramadan on growth of children born to fasting mothers.
A reasonable question arises: Why do we talk about growth specifically? In fact, this value serves as a universal marker that allows people to predict a child’s future health, cognitive skills, and even material well-being in adulthood. Decide 20% is genetic, and only 20% is environmental, including disease and maternal nutrition. In addition, the critical window for bone development that affects growth coincides with the critical window for vital organs (heart and kidneys). This is why height can be a good indicator of the impact of fasting on a child’s future health and the risk of cardiovascular disease or diabetes.
The researchers examined statistics from 37 countries where the Muslim population is at least 10% and reliable information is available on the mother’s religion and the child’s date of birth. Since Ramadan always “moves” according to the solar calendar, 30 years of data (a full cycle) were needed to complete the picture. The researchers excluded children whose height and birthday were not available from the sample, simplified the information to a single scale of material well-being, and finally obtained a sample of 308,879 cases (children aged 0 to 5 years). The alignment of Ramadan with the month of pregnancy and trimester was determined by calculating 270 days (the normal period of intrauterine development) from the date of the child’s birth. These time periods were calculated in hours and adjusted for the different lengths of daylight at different latitudes (the average duration of the sample was 9-13 hours). For additional control, what if the hypothesis about the effect of fasting on child growth does not work at all? – The scientists also studied how Ramadan affects the growth of non-Muslim children.
Boy under attack
The results were pretty shocking: There was a direct correlation between a mother’s fasting during Ramadan and her boys’ growth at age three or four. The fact that the effects didn’t show up in earlier years is consistent with the hypothesis that fasting has a delayed effect (unlike starvation and other severe deprivations, fasting gives the embryo some chance to adjust). The study authors stress that boys may suffer more from fasting because they are biologically more vulnerable.
Looking at specific indicators, a mother who fasted for thirty days during Ramadan reduced the height of a four-year-old boy by an average of 3.2 millimeters. If she fasted during the second trimester, the effect increased to 4.7 millimeters. Fasting had the strongest effect in the third month (7.3 millimeters on average), the fourth month, and the sixth month – when cartilage begins to form. Tubular boneA separate, but statistically significant association was found between the child’s height and fasting during the first month of pregnancy. This may be because the mothers were not yet aware of their new status and kept their fasts to the maximum.
However, the researchers point out that there is nothing fatal about this addiction. For comparison, let’s take the following example. As a result of the Ethiopian drought in 1984, the height of children born to women who suffered from starvation was reduced by an average of 30 mm (calculated when the children were already 17-25 years old), and as a result of the floods in Ecuador in 1997-1998 – 46-60 mm (for children aged 4-6 years). Obviously, the consequences here are fundamentally different. Fasting in Ramadan is equivalent to severe but not catastrophic material deprivation. Thus, pest damage to French vineyards from 1863 to 1890 reduced the height of children born at that time by 6 to 10 mm.
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Higher mania – lower height?
Karimi and Basu specifically included in their sample different countries with different cultural types, political organization, proportion of Muslim population and natural conditions. Due to incomplete statistics for each specific country, they divided these countries into relatively homogeneous macro-regions – West Africa, East and Central Africa, North Africa and the Middle East, South Asia and Central Asia. The latter includes Bangladesh, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Maldives, Pakistan and Uzbekistan. Unfortunately, it was this group (along with West Africa) that produced the most statistically significant relationship between Ramadan fasting and children’s height. In these countries, fasting by expectant mothers in the second trimester of pregnancy reduces the height of the child by an average of 9.1 mm – however, this effect is not as severe in Kyrgyzstan or Uzbekistan as in Bangladesh. However, the scientists warn that their sample size is not enough to draw reliable conclusions about the regional characteristics of the impact of Ramadan on reproductive health. For this, they believe, local studies at the level of individual countries would be better.
The question naturally arises: does the described effect depend on the degree of religiousness of the mother? As already mentioned, according to the rules of Islam, pregnant women are exempted from the obligation to fast. However, a large number of studies have shown that show Regarding the determination of expectant mothers to fast during the holy month. Obviously, environmental pressures and the overall level of Islamization play a key role here. In countries where Muslims make up more than 50% of the population, a clear impact of Ramadan on children’s growth is evident. In countries with an Islamic minority, these effects are not observed at all (at least at a statistically significant level). This conclusion is also confirmed by the materials of a large survey conducted by PEW Research in 2012. Muslim respondents were specifically asked whether they fast during Ramadan. It turns out that the dependence is most pronounced in countries where more than 90% of respondents gave a positive answer to this question, in sharp contrast to countries where the rate of Muslim fasting is less than 90%.
Delay Effect
Scientists say that the harm of Ramadan to children’s health is not obvious. And it is precisely because of this lack of obviousness that this harm becomes more dangerous. If the weight of the child after birth obviously depends on the mother’s nutrition in the last months of pregnancy, then the growth and the formation of important organs are related to the first six months – and this influence is difficult to recognize during pregnancy. Maternity hospital.
However, unlike other impacts on mothers and children, the “Ramadan effect” is avoidable. “Unlike natural and man-made disasters, whose occurrence is independent of human choice and often unpredictable, the effects of Ramadan are linked to individual decisions. Therefore, this effect is avoidable, especially since pregnant women are exempted from fasting in Islam,” the researchers stressed.
But if religion allows pregnant women to fast in advance, why do they fast? Because, apparently, they do not know that this practice harms the health of the child, they are not aware of their right not to fast, and finally, they do not want to fast later – as compensation for not fasting during pregnancy.
The scientists recommend involving religious authorities to actively and continuously educate women about their rights. They also offer another suggestion: creating special spaces in workplaces during Ramadan where pregnant women can gather to eat without disturbing those who are fasting.
Artem Kosmarsky, Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences
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