Fasting for Your Health
Nov 5, 2020
Fasting for Your Health
Dating back to the 5th century BC, fasting has been an integral component of many cultures, and is still a notable element of worship during devout religious practice and tradition. Fasting has been used as a mode of healing for centuries - a concept made popular by Hippocrates, our father of modern medicine. However, the human body has always been capable of enduring long periods without food. When our ancestors were hunters and gatherers, our bodies were required to adapt to periods of both feast and famine.
Hundreds (if not thousands) of scientific research studies have been published over the past few decades indicating a wide array of molecular and physiological benefits of fasting. Suffice it to say, fasting is certainly not a new concept, but it is making an exciting resurgence today as an important component of our health and longevity regime.
To put it simply, our bodies prioritize digestion and reproduction above all other processes. We need to prioritize digestion because the end product of digestion is energy, the fuel we need for our body to actually function and move. We prioritize reproduction because we need to procreate in order to maintain our species. So, as far as our body is concerned, if either of these two processes are in action, they will always take precedence.
This is a hugely important concept to understand. In our current society, we have food and snacks available to us at all times. We are constantly eating or drinking calorically dense beverages which means our body never gets a break from digestion. If our bodies don't get a break from digestion, many other processes like cellular repair and autophagy (a process during which our body cleans out dead or malfunctioning cells) are put on the back-burner. If our body is backlogged with cellular clean-up, we fill up with toxins that can, over time, wreck havoc on our wellbeing and can even cause chronic disease.
Our body naturally produces cellular waste that we need to filter and excrete in order to function optimally. However, in our current world, we are also breathing in toxins from the air outside; we are eating toxins from our highly processed diets and the pesticides our food is grown in; we are producing toxins as a result of excess stress, and to top it all off; we are sleeping less and less which means we are willingly robbing our body of this critical time to rest and repair. Needless to say, our body has to work hard in order to maintain equilibrium. But if we are not giving ourselves some time to clean-up either via quality sleep or a fasting regime, we are likely to experience a myriad of symptoms including brain fog, fatigue, headaches, joint pain, digestive problems (the list goes on).
There are many different practices that fall under the umbrella of "fasting" (some of which I have detailed below), but for the purposes of this discussion, we will be talking about a fairly new concept called "fasting mimicking." Fasting mimicking was coined by my graduate professor, the "fasting evangelist," Dr. Valter Longo who also created ProLon. He has been studying the effects of fasting on human longevity for over two decades. He fully grasps the benefits of fasting on helping our bodies live longer, healthier lives; however, he also found a few pitfalls to traditional fasting that were not as optimal.
During traditional, no-food, water-only fasting, our bodies will first utilize amino acids before leveraging fat as a source of fuel. This means, it would be hard for our body to preserve our lean muscle mass, which is also very important for our overall strength and bodily structure. Additionally, there is some very strong evidence that points to water fasting resulting in decreasing metabolism over the long-term. This could lead to unnecessary weight gain in older age. Not to mention, fasting is just.... hard!
Dr. Longo uncovered the maximum amount of calories and macronutrients our bodies could ingest before prompting our system into think it's feeding. This means that with his Fasting Mimicking Diet, you are able to eat a very low calorie diet for five days with some food and nutrients that will trick your body into thinking it's fasting. So you will still get the benefits of cellular repair and autophagy without the pain and challenge of eating nothing at all. Probably more importantly, because this Fasting Mimicking Diet provides some important nutrients, it helps to preserve lean body mass and burn through excess fat storage instead. It's a win-win!
This fasting bio-hack has been shown to increase stem cell production by over 800% on days four and five. This is incredible! After day five, they've shown diminishing returns, making this five-day fasting diet truly effective and efficient. Since its creation in 2008, Dr. Longo and his team have found that brief cycles of periodic fasting-mimicking improved risk factors for chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer, multiple sclerosis and Crohn's Disease too.
I, personally, have done this fast several dozens of times. Each and every time I've done it, I've had a different experience. Even though you get to eat some food, it's certainly not easy. But this has fast has given me a chance for that regeneration that I may never have gotten from a more grueling water fast. I'm hooked for life!
To learn more about ProLon or to purchase yours today, click here.
In health 'n mellness,
Melanie
Other types of fasting:
Research is being done on the beneficial effects of other types of fasting as well including:
Intermittent fasting:
Time restricted feeding: restricting your diet to 12, 10, 8 or 6 hours of the day only while fasting for the other hours.
Warrior Diet: Mimicking habits of our warrior ancestors by fasting for 20 hours during the day, and eating only for four of those hours.
One meal a day: eating one large meal in a one hour window and fasting for the other hours.
The 5-2 Plan: Fasting for two non-consecutive, full days of the week and eating healthfully for the other five days of the week.
Alternating-day fasting: fasting every other day and eating healthy on the in-between days.