Fasting therapy for functional gastrointestinal disorders

The fasting therapy (FT) was developed as novel and simple psychotherapy for psychosomatic diseases from our laboratory. FT consisted of 10 days of starvation with 5 days of re-feeding. FT requires an individual room in the health care utilization due to social isolation. Although FT has empirically been used in Japan, little has known about precise mechanisms on the efficacy of this treatment. However, there are some interesting findings to suggest that this treatment may be effective for functional gastrointestinal disorders. It was reported that FT brought not only reduction of physical symptoms but also improvement of psychological abnormalities in intractable patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Further studies should be needed to clarify this treatment can be one of powerful psychological treatments for functional gastrointestinal disorders and the other psychosomatic diseases.