What changes occur in the body during fasting?

What happens during fasting?

Our gastrointestinal tract is designed in such a way that it works in two modes - digesting food and cleansing the body. And when the process of digesting food starts, the cleansing process stops, and on the contrary, when the process of digesting food stops, the cleansing process begins. Thus, to start the process of cleansing the body, you need to stop eating.

How long after giving up food does the cleansing process begin? Everything here is individual. On average, the cleansing process is thought to start when we skip two meals from our normal diet.

There are many methods and types of therapeutic and fasting fasting. The practice of therapeutic fasting became known in our country back in Soviet times thanks to Professor Nikolaev, who noticed that his patients’ symptoms of schizophrenia were alleviated when they refused food. He did not follow the traditional method of force-feeding the patients, and decided to observe what would happen.

And these observations allowed him to defend his doctoral dissertation in 1960 on the topic “Unloading-dietary therapy of schizophrenia and its physiological basis.” Does fasting really have such miraculous properties? Let's try to look at the main advantages of fasting and understand what happens during fasting:

• Fasting helps you lose weight.
• Fasting allows you to experience the taste of food more vividly.
• Fasting starts the regeneration process.
• Fasting increases intelligence.
• Fasting: what happens in the body?

Stages

Stage 1. Food stimulation

• Lasts 2-3 days;
• weight decreases by 1 kg per day;
• problem areas are identified;
• autophagy starts;
• existing diseases worsen;
• a physiological shake-up of the body occurs;
• phagocytic and immune defense is enhanced;
• excess sodium and “dead” water are removed, swelling goes away;
• The LCD tract is completely cleaned.

Stage 2. First (increasing) acidotic crisis

• It lasts differently for everyone: from 3 to 7 days;
• weight decreases by 0.7-1 kg per day;
• We are actively working on problem areas;
• autophagy is gaining momentum;
• the processes of breakdown of fats and proteins are launched;
• the internal environment of the body is oxidized;
• homotoxicosis is occurring.

Stage 3. Compensation / adaptation

• It lasts differently: it begins from the moment the first acidotic crisis ends, and ends when the second starts;
• weight decreases by 0.5 kg per day;
• work continues to eliminate problem areas;
• the processes of autophagy and the breakdown of fats and proteins slow down so that reserves for internal nutrition last as long as possible;
• good health is noted;
• there is no feeling of hunger.

Stage 4. Second acidotic crisis

• It is impossible to predict when it will begin: for some - on the 15th day, for others - on the 25th;
• weight decreases by 0.3 kg per day;
• the deepest problem areas begin to be eliminated;
• the processes of autophagy and the breakdown of any fibers are accelerated;
• the body's only task becomes survival;
• health worsens;
• Nervous breakdowns and hungry fainting are often observed.

After the second acidosis, people usually complete the test. If not, then the stages of adaptation and another crisis are repeated.

Fasting helps you lose weight

This is the first and perhaps most obvious advantage. Fasting helps you lose extra pounds. Contrary to popular belief, extra pounds are not just fat, which in itself is not so harmful, except for the strain on the heart (we’ll talk about this below). But most often the problem is much more serious, and excess weight is caused by the presence of toxins.

The modern diet of most people, to put it mildly, leaves much to be desired, and this leads to the fact that the body simply cannot cope with the abundance of toxins that enter it with food. This leads to the fact that these toxins are not removed from the body, but are deposited wherever possible, and this leads to excess weight.

When losing weight, a person does not always lose weight quickly. This is determined by the metabolic rate. To speed up your metabolism, you need to combine fasting with physical activity. It is important not to overdo it - running 10 kilometers while fasting is clearly not worth it; even if food is regularly supplied to the body, it is a heavy load.

But 20-30 minutes of light physical activity a day can speed up your metabolism. Walking in the fresh air will also be beneficial. When we move, energy moves in the body, and this directly affects the rate of weight loss. Therefore, while fasting, lying in front of the TV is not the best idea.

Excess weight is not only not aesthetically pleasing, but, as mentioned above, it can be very detrimental to the cardiovascular system. This is evidenced by research results. And this is quite logical: excess weight is always an additional burden on the heart. And this is far from the kind of load that can be useful, as with physical exercise.

Because during physical exercise this load is temporary, with subsequent opportunity for rest and recovery. In the case of excess weight, this is a constant load that simply wears out the heart. But this is just the “tip of the iceberg”. As mentioned above, excess weight is most often the cause of slagging in the body, and this can cause not only heart problems, but also many other diseases. Therefore, losing excess weight is an important task that fasting can help you cope with.

Fasting allows you to experience the taste of food more vividly

Food is a source of pleasure, as nature intended. When we eat food that we like, it triggers the release of dopamine. During fasting, the body does not receive this same dopamine, what happens? What happens is that the dopamine receptors become more sensitive, and then when we start eating again, we feel more pleasure from those foods that had become completely ordinary before the fast.

The typical principle of increasing the body's tolerance works here. Any pleasure we experience is a release of dopamine. For example, why do drug addicts have to constantly increase their dose? The fact is that the body developed tolerance to yesterday’s dose, in other words, it began to release less dopamine. And in order to get the same pleasure today as yesterday, a person is forced to increase the dose.

Much has already been said about the fact that food is, in a sense, a drug, and in this case this statement could not be more relevant, because the principle of getting pleasure from food is the same. You can easily see this for yourself. If you eat your favorite dish every day, in a month you will eat it like grass - without any emotions, and in another month you will hate it. On the contrary, if you refrain from eating your favorite dish for some time, then the feeling of pleasure will be much brighter. Because the body has become unaccustomed to this dish and, with its new appearance in the diet, reacts to this with a much greater release of dopamine.

Based on this, fasting can also help reduce the amount of food consumed. As mentioned above, when the body develops tolerance to one or another type of pleasure, it is necessary to constantly increase the dose so that this pleasure becomes bright and rich again. But this is a road to nowhere. In the context of nutrition, this leads to overeating, and the volume will grow exponentially.

And fasting can solve the problem. After fasting, your normal diet will give you a lot of vivid emotions and sensations, and you will feel it yourself. Moreover, you will begin to experience joy from simple, ordinary plant foods. And perhaps this will allow you to give up junk food.

How to start fasting

There are many different types of fasting, making it easy to find a method that fits your lifestyle.

Here are some of the most common types of fasting:

• Water fasting : Involves drinking only water for a certain amount of time, for example, one day (see One-day water fasting: rules, solution, contraindications).
• Juice fast : Allows you to consume only vegetable or fruit juice for a certain period of time.
• Intermittent fasting : Food intake is partially or completely restricted for a few hours to a few days at a time, with the normal diet resumed on other days (see Intermittent Fasting for Women: A Beginner's Guide).
• Partial fasting : Certain foods or drinks, such as processed foods, animal products, or caffeine, are eliminated from the diet for a certain period.
• Calorie restriction : Calorie intake is limited for several days a week.

There are also more specific types of fasting within these categories.

For example, intermittent fasting can be divided into subcategories such as alternate-day fasting. This practice involves eating every other day, or timing food intake, which entails limiting food intake to a window of a few hours each day.

To get started, try experimenting with different types of fasting to find the one that works best for you.

Summary:

There are many different ways to practice fasting, making it easy to find a method that fits into any lifestyle. Experiment with different types to find the one that works best for you.

Fasting triggers the regeneration process

Fasting triggers the production of growth hormone, which helps restore damaged cells and tissues. Scientists at the University of Southern California came to this conclusion during experiments on laboratory mice. Thus, a period of hunger in rodents triggered the production of hormones in the pancreas in their body, which led to the restoration of damaged cells and tissues, as well as rejuvenation of the body.

But that's not all. The study found that the rodents' blood sugar levels normalized, again due to the fact that the process of producing hormones in the pancreas, and in particular insulin, was launched. Thus, fasting can naturally restore the process of insulin production in the body and, therefore, cure diabetes without medication.

The process of triggering the production of hormones also leads to the fact that a person’s immunity increases. Californian scientists came to this conclusion. In their research, they discovered that during a three-day fast, the immune system is regenerated and, moreover, the process of formation of white blood cells, which are more effective in fighting disease, is launched: so to speak, white blood cells, version 2.0.

Thus, the myth that fasting weakens the body and should never be practiced during illness is nothing more than a myth. It is fasting that starts the process of activating the immune system and restoring damaged organs and tissues. Even simple observation of animals allows you to notice that as soon as they get sick, they refuse to eat for some time.

Those who have pets have probably been convinced of this more than once. And all because animals have this at an instinctive level. But people have gone too far from their nature and therefore stopped hearing its voice.

Benefit

• Complete cleansing of the body;
• restoration of natural immunity;
• destruction of sick, pathogenic, defective, non-functional, obsolete cells;
• rejuvenation;
• complete relief from all diseases;
• noticeable weight loss;
• improvement of intellectual and creative abilities;
• increase in life expectancy;
• education of willpower;
• getting rid of addictions: alcohol, nicotine, drugs, food.

At the same time, the benefits of long-term abstinence from food are subject to scientifically based criticism from official medicine.

Fasting improves intelligence

During fasting, a phenomenon called ketosis occurs: during the onset of carbohydrate starvation of cells, the body begins to break down fat in order to provide nutrition. And according to Eric Verdin of the Gladstone Institute in San Francisco, this process leads to both an overall improvement in well-being and a positive effect on the brain. This is also confirmed by neurophysicist Mark Mattson from Johns Hopkins University. According to him, fasting has a direct positive effect on the activation of thought processes.

Animal studies tell us the same thing. Thus, during fasting, the animals’ memory improved. This was noticed while observing laboratory mice in a maze. An increase in the number of neurons in the hippocampus, the center responsible for short-term memory, was also noted.

The total number of neurons in the brain also increased by 30%, meaning brain efficiency increased by about a third. Such effects suggest a reduction in the risk of dementia and an increase in stress resistance by strengthening the nervous system.

Why is this happening? Most likely, this is what nature intended. Hunger is stress: if the body feels that the process of consuming food has stopped, this may indicate that resources have run out, which means that you need to connect reserve capabilities to search for them. This may explain such an increase in the efficiency of brain activity: it is simply necessary from the point of view of the survival of the individual.

Fasting: what happens in the body?

So, what happens to a person during fasting? First of all, this is a process of cleansing the body. There are two types of fasting - dry and water. During dry fasting, a faster process of cleansing the body occurs, but this type of fasting is a serious stress for the body, so for an unprepared person, such fasting can be very painful and even dangerous to health.

To prevent fasting from causing harm, it is better to master it gradually and start with fasting on one day. Such fasting is not therapeutic, but rather simply unloading, but at the initial stage it will be an excellent cleansing practice. If it is difficult to give up food for the whole day, you can start practicing a light form of intermittent fasting, which, in general, will not be perceived by our psyche as fasting.

The bottom line is that we try to fit all meals into 8 hours throughout the day, and for the remaining 16 we drink only water. This will allow you to painlessly accustom your body to temporarily refusing food, and then increase the intervals between meals.

However, fasting also has its side effects. For example, for children with low weight, fasting can be harmful, but for children with normal or overweight it will be beneficial.

Abstaining from food for two days causes irritability and aggression in a person, but at the same time has a positive effect on intellectual abilities. What can be advised in this case? Fasting is also a matter of habit. If for the first time there really are strong emotional outbursts during fasting, then as you master this practice, the person will become more and more resistant to stress such as refusing food.

The most important thing is to avoid fanaticism and not force yourself into severe austerities, and it is better to regularly practice daily fasting than to fast for ten days and then recover for six months.

Consequences

Official medicine warns that after a long fast, in addition to positive results, negative ones may also appear:

• after dry - dehydration;
• hypoglycemic coma, which can provoke a heart attack or stroke;
• weakened immunity;
• ketoacidosis;
• eating disorders;
• splitting and atrophy of muscles, connective tissue (bone, cartilage, fat), amino acids important for normal life.

A persistent increase in ESR after prolonged fasting may indicate the intensive development of new pathogenic and malignant formations, anemia and serious disturbances in kidney function.

Also, with prolonged fasting, irreversible processes are often diagnosed, which after its end can lead to disability and even death: atrophy of the mucous membranes of the gastrointestinal tract and destruction, death of nerve cells.

The most dangerous consequences for the brain are hypoxia, decreased mental abilities, and damage to speech centers (which can impair speech).

Whether to try or not is an individual decision for everyone, made together with a specialist consultant. It is advisable to carry out the first experiment in a hospital setting: there are now many health centers that prepare people for a multi-day abstinence from food, guide them through the entire process and help them exit without tragic consequences. It is highly undesirable to take this dangerous path.