Fasting and Living Longer
How can you preserve longevity?
Fasting! Fasting is not a new phenomenon, humans have fasted for centuries. The difference now is we have food readily available everywhere! Every activity revolves around food from sports activities, theatre, movies, holiday parties, or just gathering with friends. The constant sugar spikes with eating frequently is desensitizing the body and decreasing the effectiveness of glucose and insulin, also known as resistance.
Blood sugar instability, or dysglycemia, further drives the need to eat every couple of hours for people who feel irritable or faint without frequent feedings! Lengthening the time in between meals is one method to reduce your total calories. Over time, this can help glucose and insulin to work more efficiently.
What happens when you fast?
More commonly we hear about fasting diets for weight loss. During fasting, the body utilizes glucose that is stored in the liver and muscle. After the glucose reserves are depleted, the body begins to burn fat as a fuel source. Along with decreasing fat stores, it also increases insulin sensitivity which makes fat stores more accessible furthering the potential for weight loss. It’s a win win!
Fasting induces cellular detox and repair through autophagy; the body’s mechanism of cleaning up cellular waste and damaged proteins that can trigger inflammation and contribute to illness.
Fasting increases growth hormone, known to improve energy, build muscle, reduce fat and repair healthy tissue. Growth hormone has been touted as the anti-aging hormone. Another anti-aging aspect of fasting is the induction of stem cell regeneration of immune cells. Dr. Valtor Longo is one of leading experts on the role of fasting diets and longevity. If you would like to read more on him please go to: https://valterlongo.com/daily-longevity-diet/
Types of fasting diets:
- 16/8 method: restricting your daily eating to 8 hours while fasting for the other 16 hours of the day. An example would be eating your first meal at 11am and finishing your last by 7pm.
- The 5:2 diet: consuming 500 calories (female) or 600 calories (male) on two non-consecutive days with the remaining 5 days a week as your normal diet.
- Eat-Stop-Eat diet: fasting for 24 hours on two non-consecutive days per week
- The Fasting Mimicking diet: 5-day meal program scientifically formulated to mimic the effects of fasting. I will be starting a 5 day fast on March 27th and will report my experience on the Renew Integrative Health Facebook page. Come check it out!
For those whom are dysglycemic as mentioned above, simply reducing your eating to just 3 meals daily with no snacking in between, can greatly affect your total caloric intake and slowly shift how your body is regulating glucose. Although fasting has many amazing benefits, it is not for everyone. There are certain medical conditions where you should not fast.
Following up with your healthcare provider is very important to determine your risk and create a plan that is best for you!
