When you think of fasting, the immediate benefit that springs to mind is the weight loss effect. You hear stories of people losing significants amount of weight by simply not eating (makes sense), but weight loss is actually only a small part of the benefits.
Fasting is a powerful tool for helping you to look and feel better. It can be diagnostic in nature, it helps your body to ‘take a break’ and when done for long enough, it stimulates a process called ‘autophagy’, which is your body’s way of doing a spring clean of itself.
In this article we’ll look at the research around fasting and look at a diarised account of what happens during a fast.
Defining Fasting
Before we go any further, let’s first of all define a fast. In this case we’re referring to fasting being abstaining from anything other than water and black coffee for a given period of time.
The reason this is important to define is because thanks to people like Dr Michael Mosely and his 5:2 diet, some people think of a fast as merely a day of eating less. This isn’t a fast in any sense of the word - it’s just a day of severely restricted eating.
The benefits we’re looking for from fasting come from a complete abstention from food.
Autophagy… What and Why
The body can be viewed in some ways as a complex manufacturing plant. It is taking in raw materials (food) and turning them into products (new cells, energy, waste products). As the factory is is working, some of the machines (cells) get worn out and damaged.
Autophagy is a process whereby the body cleans these cells out. For a definition, look no further than this from Medical News Today…
Autophagy is a vital process in which the body’s cells ‘clean out’ any unnecessary or damaged components.
It comes from Greek and the word translates as ‘self eating’. Evidence shows that the body not only removes these damaged and dead cells, but it also uses the useful parts to recycle into new cells. This is the first major benefit of fasting - the removal of dead tissues and the regeneration of new cells.
The research proves without any doubt that fasting is a very effective way to trigger the process of autophagy in the body.
Fasting reduces inflammation
There has long been a suggestion that fasting reduces inflammatory markers in the blood and can help to reduce general inflammation in the body. Previous much of these benefits were either anecdotal (felt by the individual, but not proven in a lab), or based on rodent models.
We now have research that shows a pathway linking fasting and reduced inflammation. Researchers have found that fasting inhibits sources of inflammation in the body, meaning there are profound effects on the recovery from injuries and illness. It also suggests that some diseases may be prevented in the first place, thanks to a lack of inflammatory trigger.
Using fasting to help treat and prevent cancer
Cancer is a tricky subject to cover, but there are so many different types of cancer, each with their own nuances and treatment plans.
What we do know is that certain types of cancer seem to respond to fasting as part of an overall treatment approach. That’s not to suggest that fasting is a treatment on its own by the way, but there is definite positive research linking fasting and effective cancer treatment.
There’s a suggestion that fasting may be an effective preventative measure against cancer, with some people suggesting lack of glucose provided by no food coupled with the autophagy triggered by fasting could be an effective preventative strategy. It’s important to note though that research into this is in it’s infancy and whilst it’s showing promise as an approach, it shouldn’t be taken as a given that it works.
Weight loss…
Now on to the one that most people think is the reason you should fast - the weight loss. Yes, fasting does help you to lose weight, and it does so for an obvious reason. Weight loss is simply a matter of calories in versus calories out. When you’re fasting, it’s easy to lose weight because you aren’t eating.
What we know is that fasting is an approach that can help weight loss in a couple of other ways…
It helps to modify behaviours. It teaches people that hunger is transient, so they don’t feel the need to eat every time they get a hunger pang.
The black and white nature of it means it helps people deal with food choices. When you’re fasting, there’s no food choice to make, so you can’t make a bad one!
Fasting helps to reduce hunger hormones, so people who fast tend to feel less hungry anyway. It helps overweight people control their appetite more effectively.
Whilst there are plenty of other dietary approaches that are effective for weight loss, it appears that fasting offers some interesting benefits that may help it be more successful for some people than other approaches.
What happens when you fast?
This depends on how long you fast for. Some people think they’d ‘starve’, but the reality is all of our bodies are perfectly equipped to deal with a fast. It’s harder psychologically than it is physically.
Hunger is transient though. It comes and goes, so whilst you think you’d get progressively more hungry as the fast goes on, the reality is nothing like that. You will experience periods of hunger that last around 10 minutes, but then they’d go and you’ll be fine again!
Once you go beyond 24 hours, you start to notice other benefits such as alertness, reduced aches and pains (as the inflammation dies down) and weight loss as your body gets rid of water and fat stores.
For a detailed account of what a three day fast feels like, read this here. It details what happened, what to expect and what the results were.
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