This is an overview of how powerful fasting is for various parts of your body.
BRAIN- Fasting stimulates BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor). It is like Miracle Grow for the brain. BDNF helps repair and regenerate neurons. Fasting also helps with stress resistance, neurogenesis (nerve support cells), mitochondrial production, and reducing inflammation. It helps if there is damage as in Alzheimer’s, or Parkinson’s.
BRAIN FUNCTION- Fasting helps improve the number of mitochondria, the energy factories in all body cells including your brain. You will have better memory. You will be able to focus. You will have better cognitive function.
INFLAMMATION- Fasting decreases inflammation, which is deadly inflammation on the different parts of the body. There is nothing more powerful than fasting to handle inflammation.
LIVER – Fasting helps improve your liver by restoring insulin sensitivity. That helps with insulin resistance, which causes high blood sugars, pre-diabetes and diabetes. Most people have insulin resistance and so insulin does not work that well. Fasting helps make insulin work. Your blood sugars are going to do better. Your absorption of nutrients is going to do better.
DETOXIFICATION – Fasting helps your liver function by detoxifying the body, acting as an antioxidant, reducing fatty liver, and lowering inflammation.
Both detoxification of the phase one phase two enzymes to take poisonous chemicals and turn them into water-soluble harmless particles as well as stimulating something called autophagy, which is your cells recycling mechanism to take damaged cells and make them new again.
ANTIOXIDANT NETWORK – Fasting helps increase your antioxidant network.
FATTY LIVER- Fasting reduces fatty liver. Your body takes the fat in the liver and uses that for energy and clears out the fat on the liver thereby increasing the function of the liver in the detoxification of hormones its metabolism of food in the storage of vitamins in the production of bile.
Fasting helps decrease inflammation in the liver as in conditions like hepatitis. If you’re going to decrease inflammation you’re also going to decrease fibrosis. That is scar tissue and fibrosis turns into cirrhosis.
GUT – Fasting helps improve the diversity of your gut microbes in the small intestine and the large intestine.
Fasting decreases inflammation in the gut. There are a lot of conditions that involve inflammation. It also helps reduce the inflammation in your gut that contributes to leaky gut syndrome.
Fasting helps prevent or decrease SIBO (small intestine bacterial overgrowth).
Learn more about SIBO: https://youtu.be/mkq_asOwBjUhttps://youtu.be/fOIjbB27enEhttps://youtu.be/UQESlxQKIm8
Fasting causes the survival mechanism of different types of microbes growing. Fasting helps make your microbiome your friendly bacteria live longer.
IMMUNITY – Fasting improves your immunity. It helps you become immune to pathogens by increasing the strength, size, and quality of white blood cells.
Prolonged fasts (72+ hours) help produce stem cells, which basically helps you grow a new and stronger immune system.
PANCREAS- The effects of fasting on your pancreas are huge. When you are eating 3-6 meals a day and snacking, you are constantly triggering insulin. That is creating damage in little cells in the pancreas that make insulin.
When you fast, you give your pancreatic cells a chance to heal and regenerate. Insulin starts working better. You start to restore insulin sensitivity.
That is why if you’re pre-diabetic, if you’re a diabetic, it is essential that you do intermittent fasting, (eating 2 meals a day with no snacking). Fasting is going to help your blood sugars.
To learn more, please watch; Is Intermittent Fasting Okay for a Diabetic?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4WnWzTnMEY
FAT – Fasting stimulates lipolysis, the break down of fat. If the fat cells are too big, too stuffed, they reduce in size and you start generating ketones, which are a great source of energy.
Your brain loves ketones. You get more energy from ketones than sugar/glucose. If you are resistant to insulin that condition improves. Fasting creates a faster metabolism, which is very different than starving or a low-calorie diet.
To learn more, please watch this video. Fasting and Slow Metabolism: https://youtu.be/ftijsgu6yb8
Intermittent fasting helps restore leptin sensitivity, which helps reduce inflammation and hunger.
LEPTIN- Fasting decreases leptin. You will find that the messages for hunger are going to go way down. Fasting also reduces inflammation, which is going to help you in correcting insulin resistance.
MUSCLE- Fasting helps you restore insulin sensitivity. Restoring insulin sensitivity helps your ability to create muscle.
Your insulin sensitivity is going to work better. Because insulin is anabolic, you have the ability to build up your muscles the more insulin works.
Fasting also causes your muscles to go into a state where they stop breaking down. It is going to help you prevent protein loss from your muscles.
HEART- Fasting helps trigger the parasympathetic nervous system (relaxation mode), which is the opposite of the sympathetic nervous system (stress mode). This helps with normalizing blood pressure levels and heart rate.
When people do fasting they feel calm, their heart relaxes. They are they are able to rest and digest better. Also, the heart rate comes down.
Fasting also helps with heart rate variability. Normally you have these heartbeats that are supposed to be on average of about 72 beats per minute. You would think in a healthy heart you need the same amount of time for each beat. That is not the case. The healthier the heart the more variable the heartbeat should be because variability helps you in the adaptation of certain things.
People with variable heart rates would be able to handle a lot of stress because they have more parasympathetic and they have a huge recovery backup system. The more rigid the heart is, the stiffer the arteries the less variance you have between the heartbeats.
Fasting promotes less blood pressure because things are more elastic. Fasting also increases stress resistance – your body becomes overall stronger and fit to survive. The heart becomes stronger to fight stress.
In summary, fasting creates beneficial effects. There are more effects such as the anti-cancer effects. Perhaps this video will convince you to try fasting yourself.
This Post has been condensed from Dr. Berg’s video, How Fasting Affects Your Body. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-cchLeHwrM
Dr. Berg is a chiropractor who specializes in Healthy Ketosis & Intermittent Fasting. He is the author of the best-selling book The Healthy Keto Plan, and is the Director of Dr. Berg Nutritionals. He no longer practices, but focuses on health education through social media. He has taught students nutrition as an adjunct professor at Howard University.
Disclaimer: The content of this email or Post is not intended for the treatment or prevention of disease, nor as a substitute for medical treatment, nor as an alternative to medical advice. Use of recommendations is at the choice and risk of the reader.
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