Hey everyone! I am two weeks on Imatinib, and have been doing intermittent fasting since I was diagnosed one month ago.
I have seen a lot of great information here around fasting especially from @scuba. I wanted to ask if anyone has tried doing the water fasting while on Imatinib? And more specifically I wanted to ask what makes it bad for our stomachs? Sorry for a lot of naive questions, very new to it.
Thanks!
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Water fasting on Imatinib? Is it possible?
Imatinib causes stomach irritation which is minimized with food. Water fasting while taking imatinib will very likely create a horrible feeling leading to an inability to keep the drug from being expelled back the way it went down. The only way, in my opinion, to do a water/electrolyte only fast is to not take imatinib during that time or switch drugs (dasatinib does not cause nausea typically). I do not know the mechanism for why imatinib triggers nausea. An alternative is to follow a fasting mimicking diet (olives, etc.) which is low calorie/low carb and that might prevent nausea. It's not a true water only fast, but research shows it provides a similar effect.