Last Updated on November 9, 2023 by Fasting Planet
You had a hard enough time giving up food during a fast, and foregoing water as well has you struggling. You’ve decided it’s better to stick with water fasts for now, although you do wonder. Are you missing out on some benefits by water fasting over dry fasting? Is the latter really better?
Yes, dry fasting is better than water fasting for the following reasons:
- You may enter into ketosis faster on a dry fast than on a water fast
- Your digestive system could begin healing at a more rapid rate, reducing toxins in the body
- You might trigger the regeneration of tissue
- Your immune system goes through a self-cleaning on a dry fast
- You create a drier environment conducive to lessening inflammation
In this article, we will more closely explore the differences between dry fasting and water fasting. We’ll also expand more on the abovementioned benefits that you only get when you cut out water as well as food. You won’t want to miss it!
What’s the Difference Between Dry Fasting and Water Fasting?
First, we wanted to talk about what water fasting is in relation to dry fasting. It’s hard to understand the benefits of one over the other without being clear on what both of them are.
With both dry fasting and water fasting, you forego food. As the name tells you, when you’re on a water fast, you can drink water, but nothing more than that. When you get hungry, you drink. If you’re thirsty, you drink. Your body survives purely off water for a few days.
Should you decide to dry fast, you don’t even drink water. Now, as we’ve written about on this blog, you can either do a hard or soft dry fast. In case you missed that post, a soft dry fast allows you to use water in your day-to-day life, especially for hygienic reasons. In other words, you can brush your teeth, clean your face, and shower, but you’re not supposed to consume any water.
If you’re on a hard dry fast, this is the strictest type of fast. You can expose yourself to no water at all for as long as you endure the fast. That means no showering, no brushing your teeth with water, and no cleaning yourself with water.
Why Is Dry Fasting Better Than Water Fasting?
A dry fast may sound very difficult, but if you’ve already done other fasts before, it’s absolutely worth trying. While dry fasting does require a certain degree of willpower, the benefits you experience by cutting out water are multiple. Let’s talk more about those perks, which we introduced at the beginning of this article.
Faster Ketosis
Ketosis is a desired state and a main reason for fasting. By depleting your body of energy stores in the form of glucose, it has no choice but to begin torching your reserves of fat. As this occurs, your body makes more ketones, or liver chemicals. When you burn fat through ketosis, you lose weight and look better.
On a water fast, you’ll definitely enter ketosis within a few days because you’re not providing any extra sources of glucose energy to your body. However, some fasters have said they get into that ketogenic state on a dry fast even sooner than they do when water fasting.
When you think about it, this makes sense. During a dry fast, hard or soft, you’re not providing your body with anything. It gets no food nor water. This triggers the body to begin burning off fat faster as it’s not receiving any other sources of glucose to use for energy.
Improved Rate of Digestive System Healing
When you drive a car every single day for miles at a time over several years, what happens? It begins breaking down, right? The same is true of our bodies. Our digestive system works every single day in much the same fashion as that old car. It never gets a break because we never stop eating.
Even when you finish eating for the day, it can take hours for certain foods to be broken down and digested. Your digestive system is literally working around the clock each and every day to process what we put into our body.
A water fast puts less pressure on the digestive system since you’re not consuming any food. However, this means of fasting is not a total break for your body. You still need to digest water, meaning your digestive system has to keep working, just not as hard.
Only on a dry fast does your digestive system get a full, thorough break for a day or two, maybe more. This allows the digestive system to begin healing, making it healthier. It’s like when you take your car to a mechanic for a tune-up. Your digestive system will run better and continue to sustain its basic but crucial functions.
Fewer Body Toxins
There’s another benefit of giving your digestive system a rest, and that’s flushing your body of toxins. This will happen on its own during a dry fast as your digestive system begins its repair process. The toxins will leave your digestive system, passing through the intestines on their way out.
You’ll know your digestive system is undergoing this process if you look at your tongue and see it has a coating on it. It should be white and thick. You can try scraping the coating off with a toothbrush, but it won’t come off.
This may seem weird to you, but like we said before, it’s a good sign, as you know your digestive system is removing toxins and bettering itself. If you want to accelerate its progress, you can do a cleansing of the large colon, ridding yourself further of toxins.
Tissue Regenerates Faster
Your body continues to do more advantageous things when it doesn’t have much in its system. All the cells in your body come alive, triggering a self-cleaning mechanism that results in more energy when your fast ends and an overall healthier you. Your tissues participate in this as well, regenerating at a speedier rate. Even if you already had previously healthy tissue, it’s now fortified to be even healthier.
Immune System Self-Cleaning
The immune system plays a critical role in our health, warding off illnesses and keeping us feeling great. By foregoing food as well as water during your fast as you would with a dry fast, you do your immune system a world of good.
The GI tract gets a fresh layer of mucosal lining as well as a cleansing so it performs better. The blood vessels are cleared and the blood purified. The immune system is now in fantastic shape to keep you healthy.
Less Inflammation
As your body survives without water, you may notice increased feelings of warmth. It almost feels like a furnace within you is working, and in a way, it is. Once you deprive your body of water, its moisture absorbing abilities increase as you become drier.
It can be tough to sustain a dry fast, but when you do, it’s for the best. After all, dryness and inflammation don’t get along. Your body cannot sustain the inflammation if the environment is too dry, which it now is. Also, the microorganisms that cause inflammation need water, which they of course don’t have.
All this results in less inflammation in both your immune system and many other parts of your body.
Conclusion
Water fasting involves you consuming only water while dry fasting foregoes both food and water for a healthier body. Both diets can be strict and thus should be done with a doctor’s approval and perhaps even supervision.
If you can sustain a dry fast, hard or soft, it pays off big-time for your health. You’ll have less inflammation, a stronger immune system and bodily tissue, fewer toxins, and a higher-functioning immune system. You’ll also burn fat faster as you enter and stay in a state of ketosis. Best of luck during your fast!