Intermittent Fasting

Typically it refers to not eating for at least 14 consecutive hours a day. However, not eating for 16 to 18 hours is likely closer to metabolic ideal. This means you are only eating your food within a six to eight-hour window.

The cycling of feasting (feeding) and famine (fasting) mimics the eating habits of our ancestors and restores your body to a more natural state that allows a whole host of biochemical benefits to occur.

In recent years, it's become increasingly clear that your body cannot run optimally when there's a continuous supply of calories coming in.

For starters, when you eat throughout the day and never skip a meal, your body adapts to burning sugar as its primary fuel, which down regulates enzymes that utilize and burn stored fat.

As a result, you start becoming progressively more insulin resistant and start gaining weight, and most efforts to lose weight become ineffective.

Importantly, many biological repair and rejuvenation processes also take place while you're fasting, and this is a primary reason why all-day grazing triggers disease while fasting prevents them.

Intermittent Fasting Considerations

While intermittent fasting is likely to be beneficial for most people, here are some points to consider:

Intermittent fasting does not have to be a form of calorie restriction — it’s a practice that should make you feel good. If your fasting strategy is making you feel weak and lethargic, you need to re-evaluate your approach.

Sugar cravings are temporary — your hunger and craving for sugar will slowly dissipate as your body starts burning fat as its primary fuel. Once your body has successfully shifted into fat burning mode, it will be easier for you to fast for as long as 18 hours and still feel satiated.

It is not advisable to practice intermittent fasting if your daily diet is filled with processed foods — while intermittent fasting may sound like a panacea against ill health and excess weight, it alone may not provide you with all of these benefits. The quality of your diet plays an important role if you're looking for more than mere weight loss.

It's critical to avoid refined carbohydrates, sugar/fructose and grains. Focus your diet on vegetable carbohydrates, healthy protein in moderate amounts, and healthy fats such as butter, eggs, avocado, coconut oil, olive oil, and raw nuts.

One of the reasons I've reverted back to advising caution with water-only fasting is because multiday water fasting is very effective at liberating stored toxins from your fat, which can cause problems if your detoxification system isn't properly supported.

It involves a base of intermittent fasting for 16 to 18 hours, and once or twice a week you have a 300- to 800-calorie meal loaded with detox supporting nutrients, followed by a 24-hour fast. So, in essence, you're then only eating one 300- to 800-calorie meal in 42 hours.

Using an infrared sauna and taking effective binders, like chlorella, modified citrus pectin, cilantro and even activated charcoal can help eliminate liberated toxins from your body and prevent their reabsorption.

Gradually easing into longer fasts will also help minimize most side effects associated with fasting, as will transitioning over to a high-fat, low-carb diet, to help your body to adjust to using fat as a primary fuel.

The so-called "keto flu" is often related to sodium deficiency, so it's recommended to take a high-quality unprocessed salt each day.

This will also help reduce the likelihood of headaches and/or intractable muscle cramps at night.

Another important mineral is magnesium. It's particularly important if you are diabetic, as magnesium deficiency is very common among Type 2 diabetics.

If you are taking medication, especially for your blood sugar, you have to make sure you talk to your doctor, because there's a risk your blood sugar may end up dipping too low. If you're taking insulin, and keep taking insulin while fasting, you could also get yourself into trouble.

If your doctor is adverse toward or unfamiliar with fasting, you'd be wise to find one that has some experience in this area so they can guide you on how to do this safely.

There are also several absolute contraindications to water-only fasting. If any of the following apply to you, you should not do extended types of fasting:

Underweight, defined as having a body mass index (BMI) of 18.5 or less.

Malnourished (in which case you need to eat healthier, more nutritious food).

Children should not fast for longer than 24 hours, as they need nutrients for continued growth. If your child needs to lose weight, a far safer and more appropriate approach is to cut out refined sugars and grains. Fasting is risky for children as it cuts out ALL nutrients, including those they need a steady supply of.

Pregnant and/or breastfeeding women. The mother needs a steady supply of nutrients in order to assure the baby's healthy growth and development, so fasting during pregnancy or while breastfeeding is simply too risky for the child.

Disclaimer: The information on this POST is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional advice. The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. All content, including text, graphics, images and information, contained on or available through this article is for general information purposes / educational purposes only, and to ensue discussion or debate.

Thank you …I periodically use heat restriction therapy to cleanse the liver, intestines, kidney and all body tissues. During the therapy I only performed a meal consisting of raw vegetables and berries, to sweep the intestines in one day, and the next day, hydrogenated water, sodium bicarbonate, vitamin C, vegetable juices and berries to improve hydration and assimilation of phytochemicals, vitamins and minerals. I repeat it 3 to 5 times, according to the manifestations of the therapy. Everything organic. 

IN some European countries such as Germany, France, Switzerland or Austria, doctors of alternative medicines recommend fasting as a method of healing instead of medicines.

In Spain we have the Büchinger therapeutic fasting clinics. It is estimated that around 65% of the body's energy goes to the organs related to digestion.

What fasting actually does is to create an enabling environment for the natural healing mechanisms to be put in place, without the intervention of external agents.

And, since the body knows how to heal itself at any level, the conclusion is that fasting helps rebalance the system at a general level. The body fasting, is delivered to tasks of "self-cleaning" 

Difference between caloric restriction and fasting.

The following conclusions are reached:

1. Caloric reduction as main: less weight loss, more loss of lean mass, less loss of visceral fat, more difficult to maintain weight, more hunger, higher insulin, more resistance to insulin.

2. Intermittent fasting: more weight loss, more lean mass gain, more visceral fat loss, less hunger, it has been used throughout human history, less insulin, less insulin resistance.

 idmprogram.com/difference-calorie-restriction-fasting-fasting-27/  .---

Want to add word or two?

The intermittent prolonged fasting has some positive effects on the inflammatory state of the body and on the risk factors of cardiovascular diseases such as homocysteine, CRP and TC / HDL ratio. 

www.karger.com/.../100954  .---

Fasting reprograms the use of metabolic substrates away from glycolysis and lipid oxidation, with implications for energy balance through reduction of malonyl-CoA production in response to hypothalamic neurons that regulate energy balance and the homeostasis of glucose.

 europepmc.org/.../pmc2954726  .---

Your comment ….?

Homo sapiens was a nomad and ate what was literally on the way. Hunting and fishing.

It has been over 10,000 years since a human being planted some wild grasses somewhere in the Middle East, some seeds of the Triticum species, which are what 2,500 years later gave rise to the tender wheat.

That was a fundamental milestone in the history of mankind. This first crop was the origin of agriculture, the germ of cities, the beginning of sedentary lifestyle and diseases.

Then varieties of rice were domesticated, cereals and vegetables and animals, such as pigs and sheep.

Cereals have been the cause of serious problems, for example, the Mayan civilization of the classical period went into decline, and it is believed that the cause was probably a virus.

Later, in medieval Europe, a series of humid summers were the perfect breeding ground for certain fungi that affected wheat, and caused a famine that killed millions of people.