Intermittent Fasting With Long Fasts : Dangerous Or Beneficial
Intermittent fasting provides many health benefits, and most of them can be enhanced with long fasts. Research suggests that long fasts are beneficial for weight loss, promote autophagy, stimulate growth hormones and improve blood sugar control. But long fasts also have some downsides.
Throughout history, people have fasted for multiple days, for religious reasons, due to famine, or not being able to find food. As intermittent fasting has gained popularity in recent years, the effects of fasting for longer periods have been studied more closely.
Who Should Avoid Practicing 48 Hours Fast
The two-day fast requires taking a pause from food for 48 hours. This can affect people differently depending on their overall health and any underlying medical condition. People with diabetes should consult their doctor before trying any kind of fast since it can drastically change their sugar levels and affect how their medications act.
Pregnant and breastfeeding women are not advised to try the two days fast. People with eating disorders should also avoid the two days fast. If you take medications such as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, blood thinners, or blood pressure medications, consult your doctor before trying the 48 hours fast.
And again, follow your body, if you feel any unwanted effects, stop fasting. However, expect to feel hungry, maybe a bit fatigued, but take caution every step of the way.
Who Shouldn’t Do Extended Fasting
Both men and women have been practicing fasting since ancient times, for both health and spiritual reasons.
However, fasting can be detrimental to certain groups of people:
- Pregnant and breastfeeding women as they require higher than normal nutrient levels to nurture themselves and their babies.
- Those with a history of eating disorders, like anorexia or bulimia as fasting may trigger these tendencies.
- Anyone who is malnourished or with a BMI lower than 18.5.
- People on medication for example, insulin or blood pressure medicines. They would need to be supervised by a doctor.
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Does Fasting Cause Muscle Loss
According to studies, dating does not cause muscle breakdown if regular exercise is maintained.
In fact, fasting can have the opposite effect since growth hormone levels increase drastically, which naturally enhances muscle building and strength.
Many bodybuilders and athletes practice fasting and timed eating to increase muscle mass and reduce body fat.
What Happens In Our Body When We Fast
When we eat, our pancreas releases the hormone insulin. Insulin allows us to turn the food were eating into glucose and use it immediately as energy, and to store the rest as glycogen or fat.
When we eat often, our insulin levels stay high, and our blood sugar levels stay high too. When insulin levels stay high, were constantly using glucose as energy and storing excess energy as glycogen or fatwere not burning any stored fat.
In order to burn stored fat, we must allow our insulin levels to get low. This happens when we dont eat for a while. The glycogen we store in our body lasts for about 24-36 hours, after which the body transitions to burning our stored fat for energy.
This is how the trendy Keto diet works. After one to two days of fasting, our body fully enters the state of ketosis. In ketosis, low insulin levels stimulate the breakdown of fat for energy. Our stored fat is broken down into fatty acids, which are used by most tissues of the body as energy. The body also uses these fatty acids to produce ketone bodies, which are used by the brain for energy.
Autophagy also occurs when we fastthis was the topic of the article that originally sparked my interest in fasting. In 2016, Japanese cell biologist Yoshinori Ohsumi was awarded the Nobel Prize for his discovery of autophagy.
If you want to learn more about what happens in your body over the course of a 72-hour fast, I highly recommend watching this video by Dr. Eric Berg.
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Of Fasting For 48 Hours:
How to fast 48 hours?
A 48-hour fast is straightforward in theory: you simply give yourself a two-day vacation from eating. One popular strategy is to stop eating after dinner on the first day and resume eating on the third day.
During the fasting phase, you can still drink zero-calorie fluids like water, black coffee, and tea, contrary to popular opinion.
Drink enough water to avoid dehydration, which is one of the most serious risks associated with lengthier fasts.
Following that, its critical to gradually reintroduce meals. This prevents your intestines from becoming overstimulated, which can contribute to bloating, nausea, and diarrhea.
But During Starvation Things Are Very Different
When you practice intermittent fasting, your body reacts to what it sees as an environmental stress by changing the expression of genes that are important in protecting you from, well, stress.
We have a well-preserved starvation program that kicks our cell into a completely different state when food, particularly glucose or sugar, isnt around. With intermittent fasting and exercise, you activate the AMPK signaling pathway. AMPK or 5 AMP-activated protein kinase is the brake to mTORs gas pedal. AMPK signals the cell to go into self-protective mode, activating autophagy and fat breakdown. It inhibits mTOR. At the same time, while you are fasting the levels of a molecule called NAD+ begin to rise because you dont have the dietary proteins and sugars around that normally convert NAD+ to NADH through the Krebs cycle. NAD+, a molecule whose precursor is Vitamin B3, activates the sirtuins, SIRT1 and SIRT3. . These sirtuins are proteins that remove the acetyl groups we talked about above from histones and other proteins. In this process, the sirtuins silence genes related to cell proliferation and activate proteins involved in creating new mitochondria and cleaning up reactive oxygen species.
Ketones, also produced during fasting, work as deacetylase inhibitors . This turns on genes related to antioxidant processes and damage repair.
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How To Minimize Side Effects Of A 48
Several common fasting side effects can be prevented with proper strategies.
Fasting for extended periods can lead to dehydration if you dont drink enough fluids and consume electrolytes.
Sodium, magnesium, potassium, and calcium are essential electrolytes that can be quickly depleted if youre abstaining from food. Therefore, its best to supplement with these nutrients if youre fasting for longer than 24 hours.
Here are a few methods to prevent complications during your fast:
Summary: Its necessary to drink plenty of fluids during a 48-hour fast to stay hydrated. Keeping your mind busy can also stop you from obsessing over hunger.
Fasting For Optimal Health: Why Ive Been Doing 48
So I have been doing something I never thought that I would do, which is experimenting with prolonged fasting and intermittent fasting to help me get to a point of optimal health. While I did intermittent fasting before, I mostly stuck to intermittent fasting periods of between 12 and 14 hours a day.
Even though when I first started intermittent fasting I did lose fat, I basically hit a plateau that lasted for a few years. After almost two years of trying to lose fat without success and in a desperate attempt to clear my acne, I decided to really push myself. I set a health challenge at the beginning of the year to become the optimal, healthiest version of myself in 2020 and started with a 30-day intermittent fasting challenge where I had to fast for 16 hours or longer every day. I also wanted to do a few prolonged fasts on top of fasting intermittently, as they are great for longevity and optimal health.
To kick off my optimal health challenge, I started with a 72-hour fast a few days before the new year started. I went into 2020 fasting, partly because I wanted to do something really difficult, so that the rest of the year, whenever something felt like it was too difficult, I would be able to think back to my 72-hour fast and know that I can do anything, regardless of how difficult it is.
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The Effect Of Advertising
It’s not surprising that food companies recommend we eat 3 meals a day plus snacks they have a vested interest in us buying more and more food. I’ve heard many people say oh I’m just eating because it’s lunch time, I’m not actually hungry. Listen to your body for hunger cues rather than looking at the clock. Also well-meaning food advisory groups tell us that we need to eat 3 square meals a day, but then why do we have the machinery to go without food for so long, and why does it promote such amazing health benefits?
Break Your Fast Gently And Slowly
Your stomach needs time to adjust to digesting solid foods again, so easing back into eating is very important. Eat small amounts of simple meals for the first couple of days until you feel ready to go back to normal portions. Overstuffing your body post-fast can cause nausea, vomiting, or cramps, which defeats the purpose of fasting altogether.
Both human and animal studies have linked water fasting to a variety of health benefits, including:
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Could Delay Aging And Allow You To Live Longer
Several animal research on the possible longevity-extending effects of fasting has yielded promising results.
In one experiment, rats who fasted every other day lived 83 percent longer than rats who did not fast.
Long Fasting benefits have been shown to improve longevity and survival rates in animals in other research.
Current research, on the other hand, is still restricted to animal studies. Fastings effect on longevity and aging in humans requires more research.
Hour Fast: A Full Beginners Guide
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What is the 48 Hour Fast | How to Practice the 48 Hours Fast Safely? | How to break the 48 hours Fast | Benefits of the 48 Hour Fast | Side Effects of the 48 Hour Fast
You must have heard about intermittent fasting from various online sources and fitness influencers by now. This new form of dieting has taken the fitness world by the storm. Several people claim its various health benefits apart from weight loss.
Intermittent fasting has been further molded into different fasting regimens that involve fasting for a few hours and having food only during eating windows. The most common intermittent fasting pattern consists of 16/8, 14/10 intermittent fasting, OMAD, etc.
Compared to other intermittent fasting patterns, the 48 hour fast is the most prolonged form of intermittent fasting. During the 48 hours fast, a person needs to stop eating for two days while drinking only fluids to replenish their electrolytes. If you think it sounds a bit extreme, you are not alone. The 48 hours fast can be difficult for several people and involves careful monitoring.
This article will break down the 48 hours fast and answer your queries regarding this new diet trend. We will shed light on whether the 48 hour fast is safe and what you need to know before jumping on this diet train.
Lets get started.
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May Help To Prevent Neurodegenerative Diseases And Boost Brain Function
Several studies have revealed that fasting may have a profound influence on brain function, even though most research is done on animals.
Intermittent fasting improved both brain function and structure in rats after 11 months of practice.
Fasting has also been shown in animal research to assist improve cognitive performance by protecting brain health and increasing nerve cell formation.
It may benefit the prevention of neurodegenerative illnesses since it can help alleviate inflammation.
Fasting may protect against and improve the outcomes of diseases like Alzheimers and Parkinsons, according to animal research.
More research is needed, however, to determine the impact of fasting on human brain function.
Regenerates The Entire Immune System
Researchers have found that making the body starve strengthens the entire immune system. It kick-starts the cells for the production of new white blood cells that guard your body against infection.
Also, the body gets rid of the damaged parts of the system during fasting.
Prolonged fasting uses stored glucose and fat as fuel. This process breaks down a part of white blood cells. Once the white blood cells become insufficient, the body induces the formation of new immune cells, promoting stem-cell-based generation.
Dr. Longo said that when we starve, the body tries to save energy. As a result of saving energy, the system recycles all the unwanted and damaged immune cells in the body.
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Downsides And Risks Of 36 Hour Fasting Once A Week
Although there can be quite a few potential health benefits of doing a 36 hour fast once a week, there are also some possible downsides and contraindications.
Fasting for 36 hours isnt always the most effective weight loss strategy for everyone, let alone the healthiest, depending on your mindset around food, medical history, and physiological and psychological needs.
Some fasting experts believe that one of the potential risks or downsides of fasting is that it can lead to compensatory overeating or binging after the fasting period.
Post-fasting binging can be due to the biological urge to secure more calories and compensate for the energy deficit.
There can also be an emotional/behavioral response to extreme restricting, wherein people feel like they have the liberty to eat a lot more because they were so disciplined sticking to a 36 hour fast and can now afford to ingest a lot more calories.
Either way, overeating after a fast can all but negate potential weight loss results if the overeating reverses the caloric deficit generated by the fast.
Additionally, even when the effects on fat loss are ignored, binge eating has negative health effects, as it often causes rapid and significant increases in blood sugar and blood pressure.
Aside from the risk of compensatory binge eating, fasting for 36 hours once a week is also not usually a good diet for those trying to improve athletic performance or do intense exercise training.
What To Eat After A 36 Hour Fast
What to eat after a 36 hour fast is a critical question, and will contribute to many of the 36 hour fast benefits.
When fasting for this long your body enters an intensive process of cellular renewal. Old cells are metabolized, stem cells are activated, and new cells are born.
Its important to feed these new cells with the most nutritious and nurturing foods, while also considering that your stomach has shrunk and your digestive enzymes may take some time to return to normal levels.
For these reasons we highly recommend bone broth with added tallow or ghee. Bone broth offers robust amounts of protein and a variety of beneficial anti-inflammatory compounds like glycine and arginine. 15
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How To Minimize Side Effects
Several common fasting side effects can be prevented with proper strategies.
Fasting for extended periods can lead to dehydration if you dont drink enough fluids and consume electrolytes.
Sodium, magnesium, potassium, and calcium are essential electrolytes that can be quickly depleted if youre abstaining from food. Therefore, its best to supplement with these nutrients if youre fasting for longer than 24 hours 90152-5/fulltext” rel=”nofollow”> 25).
Here are a few methods to prevent complications during your fast :
Summary
Its necessary to drink plenty of fluids during a 48-hour fast to stay hydrated. Keeping your mind busy can also stop you from obsessing over hunger.
The Five Stages Of Intermittent Fasting
. In this state, your body starts to break down and burn fat.
Some of this fat is used by the liver to produce ketone bodies . The two main ketones, acetoacetate and -hydroxybutyrate , serve as an alternative energy source for the cells of your heart, skeletal muscle, and brain, when glucose isnt readily available. Did you know that your brain uses up some 60% of your glucose when your body is in the resting state? During intermittent fasting, ketone bodies generated by your liver partly replace glucose as fuel for your brain as well as other organs. This ketone usage by your brain is one of the reasons that intermittent fasting is often claimed to promote mental clarity and positive mood ketones produce less inflammatory products as they are being metabolized than does glucose, and they can even kick-start production of the brain growth factor BDNF! Ketones have also been shown to reduce cellular damage and cell death in neurons and can also reduce inflammation in other cell types.
As their level in your bloodstream rises, ketones can act as signaling molecules, similar to hormones, to tell your body to ramp up stress-busting pathways that reduce inflammation and repair damaged DNA for example.
Within 24 hours, your cells are increasingly recycling old components and breaking down misfolded proteins linked to Alzheimers and other diseases . This is a process called autophagy.
breaking down old immune cells and generating new ones .
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