Upvas With Diabetes: How to Fast Safely This Festival Season

Every Ganeshotsav and Navratri, patients ask us the same question, usually a day or two before they have already started: can I keep upvas with diabetes? For most people the honest answer is yes, with planning. For a smaller group the honest answer is no, or not this way. The difference is worth a ten-minute conversation with your doctor before the festival, not after something goes wrong.

This guide covers the two risks that actually matter, why upvas food often pushes sugar up rather than down, and the specific situations where we advise patients not to fast at all.

The two risks, and they pull in opposite directions

The first is low blood sugar, or hypoglycaemia. If you take insulin or certain tablets, particularly the sulfonylurea group, going many hours without food can drop your sugar dangerously. This is the risk people expect.

The second surprises almost everyone: upvas food can send sugar sharply up. Sabudana khichdi, batata bhaji, rajgira ladoo and fried faral are largely refined carbohydrate and fat. A single plate of sabudana can raise blood glucose more than the regular rice-and-dal meal it replaced. So a patient can finish a fasting day with both a hypo in the afternoon and a high reading at night.

How common upvas foods behave

Talk to your doctor before you fast, not after

This is the single most important line in this article. Never skip, halve or shift your diabetes medicines on your own to accommodate a fast. Some medicines are safe to continue unchanged, some need the timing moved, and some need the dose adjusted. Which of those applies depends on what you take, and only your doctor can tell you.

Come with your actual medicine list and your recent sugar readings, and say clearly how many days you plan to fast and whether you will eat once or twice. A five-minute review is usually all it takes to make the fast safe.

When we advise against fasting

There are situations where the risk is genuinely too high, and where we would ask you to mark the festival in another way. These include:

• Type 1 diabetes
• Any recent episode of severe low sugar, or hypos you cannot feel coming
• Diabetes in pregnancy, including gestational diabetes
• Significant kidney disease, or being on dialysis
• An acute illness, infection or fever right now
• Poorly controlled sugars, or a very high recent HbA1c
• Living alone, elderly, where nobody would notice a hypo

Choosing not to fast for a medical reason is a legitimate decision, and one many families make quietly every year. Your health is the point of the discussion, and the choice is yours to make with your doctor and your family.

Recognising a low, and what to do immediately

Learn these signs, and make sure someone at home knows them too: shakiness, sweating, a pounding heart, sudden hunger, confusion, irritability, blurred vision or feeling faint.

If you get them, break the fast at once and take about 15 grams of fast-acting sugar: three or four teaspoons of sugar or glucose in water, or half a glass of regular juice. Wait fifteen minutes and re-check. Repeat once if you are still low, then eat something more substantial. Do not try to push through a hypo, and do not wait to see if it passes.

If someone becomes drowsy, confused, unable to swallow or unconscious, do not give anything by mouth. Call 108 immediately.

Practical rules for a safer upvas

• Check your sugar more often than usual, including once mid-fast
• Keep glucose or sugar sachets on you at all times, including during the procession
• Drink water steadily; dehydration makes readings and symptoms worse
• Anchor each upvas meal with curd, milk, paneer or peanuts, not just sabudana or potato
• Break the fast if you feel unwell, and treat that as sensible rather than as a failure
• Walk gently rather than skipping activity entirely, but avoid long processions in the heat

Before the festival starts

If you have diabetes and plan to keep upvas this Ganeshotsav or Navratri, book a short review before the first day. Our diabetologist and dietitians at Prudent International Health Clinic in Viman Nagar can check your medicines against your fasting plan and build an upvas plate that will not spike you. We are open all seven days, and walk-ins are welcome.