Is fasting good for you?

What is fasting? When fasting is mentioned, you will find most people associating it with religion and spirituality.

However fasting can be defined simply as the intentional abstinence from eating or drinking or both for a stipulated ammount of time for spiritual, religious or even Health and well being reasons.

In this article we will be disecting fasting and how we can reap the maximum health benefits from it.

History of fasting

We cannot divorce fasting from spiritual and religious practices. In ancient religions fasting was done mostly by priests in preparation for spiritual activities especially those that involved contacting the higher powers and gods.

Fasting was also a means to many native societies for spiritual awakeinng world in order to achieve a state of spiritual enlightenment by recieving visions.

In other religions fasting has also been used over the ages as an avenue of repentance. And as a form of prayer and scrifice to the deities worshiped.

History of fasting for health and wellbeing

Hippocrates from whom we name the doctors oath from, used to incorporate fasting into his treatment plan for his patients.

If you thought about it, in some certain disease states, one of the symptoms is usually loss of appetite. This is what most physicians came to observe and started recommending fasting as part of their treatment plans.

Types of fasts you can use for your health.

Away from religious practices, fasting is being adopted increasingly by people as means of healthy lifestyle in order to control cholesterol and blood pressure, for weight losss, for insulin and glucose level control among others.

This adoption of fasting has also led to the categorization of different fasting methods namely.

1. Time restricted feeding

This is a practice of achieving 12 hours and above of fasting by allocating eating time to a stipulated time window. This type of fasting can be in the form of

12:12 which is 12 hours fasting and 12 hours of feeding and one can modify the fasting and feeding ranges according to their own liking with a maximum being 23:1.

Others also term this method as a two meals a day model or a One meal a day model.

2. Alternate day fasting.

This model involves a 24 hour fast on alternate days where one fasts for 24 hours and has a feeding window of 24 hours during the next day.

Some people also tend to do prolonged fasts that last anywhere between 24hrs to 72 hours. These prolonged fasts tend to be abit difficult and need a lot of will power and tenacity to accomplish.

Benefits of fasting

Other than controlling insulin resistance, blood sugar control, cholesterol control, blood pressure control, weight loss and increasing brain function. Fasting can also help in controlling and delaying aging, help in cancer prevention or even improve its prognosis and improve brain function and prevent the degeneration of neurons through a process known as autophagy.

Autophagy is the clearance of damaged cells from the body using its own mechanisms in order to ensure that only healthy and rejuvenated cells remain. This mechanism has the ability to sweep out cancerous cells, plaqued cells on neurons and aged cells.

Autophagy is initiated after fasting for around 16 hours for most people and its peak is usually realized at 24-48 hours.

Is fasting harmful to you?

When thinking about fasting, one might be worried that it might have detrimental effects on the body. However to make the truth that the human body evolved to withstand fasting.

Before the introduction of agriculture, the human being depended majorly on hunting for the source of food. Now if you know anything about hunting you would know it is a hit or miss affair where sometimes you got food and other times you lacked it.

Therefore the body strengthened its energy stirage capacity through glycogen stores and insulin.

Therefore as long as you are well hydrated and you dont overdo the fast wmyou will be good to go. People that can exempt themselves from fasting are those who are pregnant or breastfeeding.

Fasting hacks

Did you know that when you are asleep you are in a fasting state?

You can use this information to your advantage in order to maximize the effectiveness of fasting for example if your bed time is at 9pm, if you dont take anything by 9am the next morning, you will have fasted for 12 hours. And if you pushed yourself just for an extra 4hours up to 1pm you will have done a 16 hour fast.

Slow steps are more effective.

Start slowly and increase intensity as you acclimatize to fasting. Jumping right into intensive fasting can lead to disappointment and loss of motivation since fasting is not a very easy feat. Therefore starting at short fasts and gradually increasing your fast times will in

Apple cider vinegar helps in reducing cravings during your fast. It also helps control blood sugar by managing imsulin sensitivity and helps suppress hunger.

Water intake during your fasting state is very important it keeps you satieted and water being one of the fuels for metabolism hence it will increase your fasting benefits.

Prioritize high protein meals over carbohydrates. Proteins increase satiety for longer and do not cause rapid insulin flactuations which in turn helps control cravings and excess hunger.