Fasting Can Regenerate Your Immune System

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BRUTE
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Re: Fasting Can Regenerate Your Immune System

Post by BRUTE »

jennypenny wrote:
Wed Aug 29, 2018 6:04 am
The MCT oil had a surprising positive effect on glucose. Does anyone use it? If so, how?
brute has used MCT oil in coffee extensively, though he currently doesn't (mostly out of laziness, cream is just easier). unsure about effects on blood glucose, but the hunger suppression effect is absurd - brute managed to get into "bad side effects from low calories" territory several times without feeling any hunger or appetite whatsoever by fasting and only consuming coffee with cream/MCT oil (probably around 200-400kcal/day for 5-10 days in a row). so it's kind of a massive hack, but to be wielded with care :-/ brute had to stop doing it because he would get sick. probably immune system not being up to speed without energy.

technohead
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Re: Fasting Can Regenerate Your Immune System

Post by technohead »

I hear nothing but good things about fasting. I do intermittent fasting which is great for my digestion, gives it a much needed break from dealing with food being shoveled down the hatch every few hours.

BRUTE
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Re: Fasting Can Regenerate Your Immune System

Post by BRUTE »

technohead wrote:
Thu Jan 17, 2019 6:26 pm
I hear nothing but good things about fasting.
well, there's the part where death occurs if done for too long.

technohead
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Re: Fasting Can Regenerate Your Immune System

Post by technohead »

well, there's the part where death occurs if done for too long.
Your conflating fasting with anorexia. Two different beasts.

tonyedgecombe
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Re: Fasting Can Regenerate Your Immune System

Post by tonyedgecombe »

BRUTE wrote:
Thu Jan 17, 2019 11:05 pm
well, there's the part where death occurs if done for too long.
Proponents of nihilism shouldn't worry too much about that :lol:

BRUTE
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Re: Fasting Can Regenerate Your Immune System

Post by BRUTE »

technohead wrote:
Fri Jan 18, 2019 3:54 am
Your conflating fasting with anorexia. Two different beasts.
fasting == not eating. eventually leads to death. not conflating anything.

technohead
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Re: Fasting Can Regenerate Your Immune System

Post by technohead »

BRUTE wrote:
Fri Jan 18, 2019 5:39 pm
fasting == not eating. eventually leads to death. not conflating anything.
Oh, but you qualified it with "for too long". Swimming leads to death if done "for too long".

BRUTE
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Re: Fasting Can Regenerate Your Immune System

Post by BRUTE »

sure. that's why brute used the qualifier.

theanimal
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Re: Fasting Can Regenerate Your Immune System

Post by theanimal »

The Longevity Diet by Valter Longo discussed upthread is available for $1.99 on kindle.

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fiby41
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Re: Fasting Can Regenerate Your Immune System

Post by fiby41 »

Fasting and religion: There are various types of fasting.

Fasting from grains
Fasting from meat
Fasting from eatables
Fasting from foodstuffs grown below the ground
Nirjalā: waterless fasting (no food, no water.)

Fast can be held on various occasions and for various duration:

Ekadashi is the 11th day of every fortnight (after no&full moons.)
Example : Today is Jaya Ekādaśī and the type is fasting from grains (rice, bread, including pulses.)
There are extremists in every religion and for those considering Viṣṇu Kṛṣṇa Rāma or other avatāra-s as their most dear deity (Iṣṭa-devatā), every Ekādaśī is Nirjalā Ekādaśī .

Fasting from meat during a month of the rainy season. No trawling so that the fish population could regenerate.

2 times a week as EnigmaT120 said:
Based on deity for full-fledged fasting. No meat on Tuesday and Thursday is what my friends in school did and my mother being a communist would pack omelet. Had to use tact to prevent being ostracized.

theanimal
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Re: Fasting Can Regenerate Your Immune System

Post by theanimal »

I listened to Andrew Huberman's podcast titled: "Effects of Fasting and Time Restricted Eating on Fat Loss and Health" It is dense with information from the most recent studies on how fasting affects different parts of the body. I would highly recommend listening for those interested in fasting.

He also links to this study that has a table of ~40 different studies that looked at fasting (of various lengths) and their conclusions. Much of the podcast references and expands on the results from the studies within this table.

The following are my notes from the episode:

When you eat is just as important as what you eat. In most cases, you should eat during the period when we are most active (during the day). Meals during the nocturnal cycle can mess up hormone balance in the brain and negatively affect the circadian rhythm. Regular fasting windows during the day help regulate circadian rhythm as well as organ health. By eating unconstrained/around the clock you are making yourself sicker.

8 hour feeding window was studied based on human constraints. Maintaining these types of lab studies are very intensive and require the grad student/post doc to be present and ensure feeding occurs at the right time and that the subjects (in this case mice) do not have any food. Well, in the original landmark study the grad student’s SO told him that she didn’t want him away from home all day so they decided to put the study at 8 hours to keep healthy relations with his SO.
However, the 8 hour feeding window is not completely arbitrary and has been tested on humans in multiple studies and shown to be very beneficial.

First pillar of intermittent fasting is not to eat any food for an hour after you wake up and possibly longer.

Second pillar is for 2-3 hours prior to bedtime, you do not ingest any food or liquid calories.

Extending the daily fast past the first hour of the day extends the benefits of the deep fasted state from sleep. Someone who is eating within 2-3 hrs of bed time is not fasting during sleep. Huberman says that a schedule starting from 10 AM-12 PM and ending sometime between 6 PM-8 PM will work best for most people to achieve this purpose (8 hour window). Some studies suggest that eating (specifically protein) earlier in the day is more beneficial for maintaining muscle composition and/or growth, regardless of when during the day resistance training occurs. Data from Satchin Panda (my circadian clock) says that almost everyone underestimates their eating window by an hour or 2. So if you want a 8 hour eating window, you should focus on a 6 or 7 hour feeding window.

4-6 hrs improve insulin sensitivity, pancreas function, decrease evening appetite and oxidated stress etc. However they produce no change in body weight or tend to produce increase in body weight. Suggests that for many people this results in overeating. Not true with one meal a day, people tend to lose weight.

Huberman recommends an intermittent fasting schedule of 8 hrs and does not recommend below 8 hours, especially for people who train hard (physically or mentally). Below 8 hours seems to run the risk of poor hormonal health especially when one is faced with increased stress.

If you are shifting your feeding window, it takes about 7-10 days for your body to become accustomed to it. Dr. Panda recommends changing only about one hour at a time.

A feeding window that drifts around a lot during the week offsets a lot of the positive benefits of intermittent fasting, even with a short feeding window. For example, if you are strict about your 8-hour feeding window during the week but on the weekends it is longer and extends later, it is as if you are going to bed at a later time to your metabolic clock.

Things we can do to accelerate from fed to unfed (fasted) state:

-Glucose clearing- ie light movement or activity after feeding. Activities such as light walking for 20-30 min or even calisthenics such as air squats or pushups.
-HIIT ideally later in the day. Some studies have shown that glucose levels increase when performed earlier in the day. This is provided you do not ingest something after the training
-Some supplements such as metformin or berberine . Huberman says these are a double edged blade and if used should be used with caution.

Things that help reduce blood glucose (but do not sweep it out of the system like the above): cinnamon, lemon, lime, and sea salt.

Intermittent fasting has been shown to have a direct positive effect on the mucosal lining which improves the gut microbiome.

There is no black and white answer to what constitutes breaking of a fast. Much of it depends on when you ate and what you ate.
Drinking water, tea or black coffee will not break your fast. Eating one peanut when in a deep fasted state won't break your fast, perhaps even a handful of peanuts wouldn't break your fast. However, if you just ate recently, one peanut may break your fast. The technical answer would be to wear a continuous glucose monitor. The simple rule is that anything that involves sugar can break your fast. Some studies indicate that even 1 g of sugar can break your fast. If you eat purely fat, you are likely not breaking your fast.

ertyu
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Re: Fasting Can Regenerate Your Immune System

Post by ertyu »

This is intresting. I will listen to this. So it seems like based on data, OMAD is the way to go

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Re: Fasting Can Regenerate Your Immune System

Post by theanimal »

Kind of but still not really. He says that OMAD doesn't seem to have the increased weight gain that the 4-6 hour does but there are hardly any studies on it in general so hard to say yet definitively*. 4-6 hours he said is fine as long as you are aware that for many people it can lead to overeating. However, there are some studies that show that hormonal imbalances can occur in some circumstances for athletes and those exposed to high stress environments. He recommends 8 hour window as the best option, especially for athletes and those that train hard since it has all the benefits but none of the risks of hormonal balance issues with regards to cortisol, testosterone, estrogen and so on. In general, shooting for less than you want is ideal as people seem to unintentionally lengthen their eating period beyond what they desire due to life. I am running up against this very quandry as I type.. off to eat.

ETA: * For example if you look at the study I linked in the post above that has the table of some ~40 different intermittent fasting/time restricting feeding studies, the bulk of them are 8 hours. The lowest are a couple at 4 hrs and there are a couple at 6 hrs.

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Slevin
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Re: Fasting Can Regenerate Your Immune System

Post by Slevin »

Just for the weight loss aspect (if you are considering that) There was a study recently published in the New England Journal of medicine comparing 8 hour eating window fasting with calorie deficits to just normal calorie restriction over the course of a year, and the outcome results were that there was no significant difference between the groups, implying that the mechanism by which people lose weight fasting is probably just a calorie deficit (and those fasting did not show any different metabolic results either). So fasting can be a useful tool for weight loss, as it helps a lot of people keep to the calori deficit, but mechanistically from that point of view, it’s probably just a gamification of calorie restriction.

Link to study:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2114833

prudentelo
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Re: Fasting Can Regenerate Your Immune System

Post by prudentelo »

Sclass wrote:
Thu Feb 15, 2018 3:14 pm
I’m in the fourth day. Cancelled lunch. This is more important.

Funny taste in mouth. Dry mouth. I’m a little stronger but going up the stairs requires effort unlike in my pre fast days. Thumb joints feel great. Hearing and vision seem more acute but it feels similar to THC intoxication if I can recall it. Still dreaming about food. Had a little insomnia last night but I just slept in. Blood pressure came in at 116/87 this morning. Shocking results. I wonder how long they’ll last. I’ll have to clean up my habits of course. I’m having visions of Kefta and Aloo Paratha...I’ll have a salad instead.

I’ve decided to end this tonight. I’ve made it close to four days. I’ll get more ambitious on the next go round in a few months. Right now I’m just freaking hungry. I’m going to start up slow tonight with some broth and fruit.

Never got to the “euphoria” part. Not too sure what enhanced brain activity would do to me given my abnormal mind. Happy with the blood pressure reduction without drugs.

Something that jumped out of the fog is that I spend a lot of time preparing food. I never realized it till I stopped eating. I literally freed up several hours a day if you include the shopping trips.

Thanks all.
Very interesting stories.

Did you blood pressure stay down? Joints stay good?

Do you fast now?

ertyu
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Re: Fasting Can Regenerate Your Immune System

Post by ertyu »

Also, out of curiosity, what is the longest water fast anyone on the forum has completed?

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Sclass
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Re: Fasting Can Regenerate Your Immune System

Post by Sclass »

No. I stopped doing this during the pandemic. My blood pressure would creep back up a month after fasting. I realized a lot of our culture revolves around eating and starving myself for three days a month just wasn’t working.

I got my blood pressure down to normal during the pandemic. We had a lot of time to experiment with food and I realized I could just cut my salt intake in half and my hypertension went away.

I also got cut off from some ethnic foods that were probably driving hypertension. Some of the curries I was eating out are heavily spiced with mild stimulants like mace and black cardamom. The really traditional stuff has a lot of spice and I may be sensitive. I kind of discovered this over the pandemic. We are what we eat.

I should look back into fasting because it’s supposed to have other benefits like immune boost.

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Re: Fasting Can Regenerate Your Immune System

Post by CS »

I did a five day water fast. In winter. Not a recommended time choice because I was cold!!! So cold.

Also, intermittent fasting has become such a habit that I was struggling to put on weight. I had to do a breakfast challenge to get my weight back into to BMI range of 18+. Eating frequency is powerful stuff.

My asthma has not been as scary since then, so overall, I think it was a good thing, but I’m going to be more selective about when, and also more careful about my starting weight. My vanity does not want to lose hair because I’m underweight. :D

Salt water helped the fast, btw. I can’t remember the details, but I’m sure a web search will turn them up.

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Re: Fasting Can Regenerate Your Immune System

Post by theanimal »

CS wrote:
Sat Oct 29, 2022 11:05 am
Salt water helped the fast, btw. I can’t remember the details, but I’m sure a web search will turn them up.
Dr. Fung in the "Complete Guide to Fasting" recommends similar to those struggling with a fast. IIRC, electrolyte levels can be thrown off with solely water consumption over longer periods (I think 48 hrs +). He says that you can add a little bit of salt to your water or 8 oz of bone broth per day without leaving the fasted state. I haven't tried the bone broth but have read that it helps people who are struggling with hunger pangs.

I instituted a practice of a 72 hr fast once per quarter this year and am on my final one of the year now. Each one gets easier for the most part, but all of them have been different. I have had incredible positive effects following the end of each fast. For me, it doesn't matter the time of year with regards to being cold, I am freezing starting from the end of the first day on.

ertyu
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Re: Fasting Can Regenerate Your Immune System

Post by ertyu »

theanimal wrote:
Sat Oct 29, 2022 12:35 pm
For me, it doesn't matter the time of year with regards to being cold, I am freezing starting from the end of the first day on.
Heatwave hack?? I will fast next time there is one. I assume electrolyte supplementation would be even more important in that case

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