Fasting has been a part of religious and spiritual practices throughout history. But was it a therapy for many differnet conditions? What benefits does it do to your body? What is the right way of fasting? What is the truth behind fasting?
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Is fasting a therapy?
Eating healthy foods may boost your immune system that protects you from external illness but what about something that develops internally like inflammation, cancer, etc which your immunity couldn't resist.
Thus here comes fasting the oldest practice in medicine. Many renowned physicians recommended fasting as an integral method of healing and prevention.
Fasting has been part of religious and spiritual traditions across the globe including Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Many renowned spiritual leaders fasted for mental and spiritual clarity, that includes Jesus, Buddha and Mohammed. Even in modern era the leaders like Mahatma Gandhi fasted for 21 days to promote peace.
Even today on earth there are countries like Central African Republic, Yemen, Chad etc that encountered many long periods of famine. It appears that most humans can survive for over a month on water alone.
What benefits does it bring to your body?
Whenever you eat a meal the energy from the food is stored in the liver in the form of glycogen and it's always tapped into first by our body. And it takes about 10 to 12 hours before you deplete the glycogen stores in your liver. So if you eat 3 meals a day you never deplete the glycogen stores in your liver, although if you exercise you can. Once glycogen depletes your body starts buring fats for energy and you produce something called ketone bodies. It turns out that ketone bodies are very good for your brain. It boosts up the energy levels of neurons.
"A little starvation can really do more for the average sick man than can the best medicines and the best doctors." - Mark Twain
Here are few takeaway, benefits of fasting;
reduces inflammation
reduces oxidative stress in organ systems of your body
energy metabolism shifts to fat (as explained in the above paragraph)
reduces body weight over time
Fasting kills cancer cells?
Fasting also has effect on cancer cells. There are many studies on mice injected with cancer cells. Before you know what studies say you should know that cancer cells multiply faster than normal cells because cancer cells are deprived of signals that say when to stop dividing, so they keep multiplying. These studies revealed something amazing, when mice were left starving, the cancer cells didn't get enough energy to futher multiply unlike normal cells that are slow in dividing and need less energy, thus cancer cells are killed. That's the reason, you might heard or come across few patients who come to their conscious about their cancer which is in last stage and never knew earlier. This is due to the type of food you eat, when you already have cancer cells and you ate junk food or food that helps the cancer cells to multiply faster than usual. Thus, one should eat healthy to avoid unhealthy health surprises.
Ash Gourd juice is found to treat cancer.
How it effects your brain?
As mentioned earlier the ketone bodies produced during fasting boosts up the energy levels of neurons. Fasting is a challenge to your brain and your brain responds to the challenge of not having food by activating adaptive stress response pathways that helps your brain to cope with stress and resist disease.
Exercise and intermittent fasting both increase the production of proteins in brain that are called neurotrophic factors. These factors promote the growth of neurons. This can increase the production of new nerve cells from stem cells at least in one region of your brain called hippocampus which is thought to be involved in storing long-term memories.
Do you believe in ghosts or demons? In ancient times people with epileptic seizures caused due to epilepsy back then were believed to be possesed by demons and they found if they take these people and shut them in a room with no food then demons will go away. The real truth behind this is that the ketones here are known to suppress seizures and infact ketogenic diets are used to treat even today.
Best fasting practices
Fasting is nothing but calorie restriction or no calories at all.
Fasting normal: Eating little or no food for extended time periods
Water only fast: Drink only water for long periods, typically can last from a day to a week.
For example: one 2 day fast each month, or one 2 week fast twice each year.
Intermittent fasting:
Daily time restricted eating: food is consumed only during a 4-8 hour period each day.
Alternate day fasting: eating no food or <600 calories every other day 5:2 diet: eating normally 5 days each week & eating <600 calories the other 2 days.
"In yogic culture an ideal time gap between one meal and another is 8-12 hours." - Sadhguru.
If you are more interested in knowing more about fasting and intermittent fasting, I recommend you to go read 'The 8 hour diet' by David Zinczenko. It says if you restrict the time window that you eat to 8 hours or less it will have health benefits also this time is long enough to shift the energy metabolism.
There is another book by Upton Sinclair titled, 'The fasting cure'. You can buy them from below links.
The master cleaner recipe
This recipe helps to detox your gut and digestive system. You can either have it everyday as first thing in the morning or have it on the day of fasting.
The lemon punch
Ingredients: 2 spoons of lemon juice, 1 glass of water, 1 pinch of rock salt or 1 spoon of honey
Now mix them together and have it slowly, do not gulp it down. Have it on empty stomach to gain the benefits.
The Crux
Thus one should inculcate the habit of fasting irrespective of age or gender. Thus not only keeps you in size but also keeps you fit mentally and physically. My kind advice, don't starve to death, if you never tried then better take your parents advice or just try intermittent fasting initially.
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