These days poor health largely comes down to some sort of inflammatory condition in the body. Before the 1940’s the main cause of death and disease was infection, but modern sanitation and medicine have largely eliminated most of this in America allowing us to live long enough to have the inflammatory conditions catch up with us. Systemic inflammation is usually a slow process taking decades to damage our health. But this process is speeding up each year as the number and kind of chemical poisons in our environment keeps increasing.
One of the core inflammatory cycles in our body involves insulin – the hormone that shuttles carbs(sugars) and some proteins into muscles, the liver, and fat tissue after we eat. Insulin is the key that opens the doors of the cells to let the nutrition in so the cells can make energy and build themselves new parts.
But what happens if we eat too much? The cells fill up and start shutting down their doors from the inside. It is really unsafe to let all that food just float around in the blood stream until the cells decide they are ready for more, so we have fat cells that can just store the extra food. We pump out some extra insulin to force open our fat cells and we simply get fat storing that extra food. Normally we will use up that extra stored food when we have not eaten in quite a while, like overnight.
Even worse is what happens if we eat too often. When we eat only two or three times a day, insulin is pumped out for about an hour to do its job and it slowly decreases back to almost zero in two to three hours. Most of the day the body does not have insulin running around, which is good because high levels of insulin promote inflammation.
But when we eat snacks, we keep kicking up the insulin levels, which irritates the cells and makes them try to ignore the insulin – which is insulin resistance. This produces the vicious cycle of resisting insulin, which initially just keeps shoving more and more food into the fat cells until even the fat cells say enough is enough and they start resisting the insulin. The body can’t allow all that food in the blood stream so it keeps ramping up the levels of insulin produced to force the cells to take on more food, which in turn keeps ramping up the inflammation. As the inflammation increases it starts destroying healthy body tissue. Depending upon which tissue gets attacked the most, we generate disease names like heart disease, dementia, diabetes, cancer, and so on.
So how do we get off this merry-go-round to disease? The answer that has been used for thousands of years is fasting. Going completely without food for days to weeks helps to reverse this nasty process. It allows the fat cells to start to empty out so they can feel ok about acting as a reservoir for excess food again. While you are fasting there is no need for your body to release any insulin, because there is no dietary food in the bloodstream that has to be cleared. With no insulin around, the cells can relax their resistance and inflammation can settle down. In the body most every hormone acts this way. If we have too much of the hormone for some reason, the target cells become resistant by shutting down the hormone receptors on the cells surface. For most hormones it takes about three weeks of diminished hormone levels for the receptors to reset and become sensitive to the hormone again.
Recently this understanding is being applied to diabetes patients, and if their diabetes has been around for less than 10 years most of them cure their diabetes permanently with a three week fast. Those with longer duration diabetes have more severe damage that takes a lot more work to heal. Dr. Fung first brought this to my attention with his work on his diabetic kidney disease patients. He started fasting them and got excellent results. Word of his success is spreading far and wide, as this ancient cure is being re-discovered.
Many people have asked “wouldn’t simply loosing weight achieve the same result?” The answer unfortunately is no. When you go on a calorie restricted diet and/or increase exercise, the insulin levels stay high. There is a threshold you have to cross (approximately 600 calories) before the body goes into the “fasting state.” Once it does all sorts of amazing things start to happen. Inflammation decreases, blood sugar normalizes, your immune system rejuvenates itself, the brain clears out tangles and plaque, and stem cells flood the system to rebuild tissues.
This magic caloric number has given rise to the fast mimicking diet to achieve the type of results we see with fasting while still eating what amounts to loads of vegetables. Both protein and carbs have to be as low as possible while fiber and a little fat are all you really consume.
Fasting can be done for as little as 14 to 16 hours daily (intermittent fasting), 24 hours (dinner to dinner), 36 hours, a 5:2 plan (2 days fasting per week), or for any greater length you like or need. The record in this country is 382 days of water and vitamins only. The big benefits start showing up when you fast for more than 3 days in a row.
I have been fasting since I was 18 years old as a freshman at UC Davis. My first fast was a two-week water only fast. It was amazing and empowering. I had no idea that I could do such a thing. I tried it based on an article I had read in Scientific American during my senior year in high school. After the second day my hunger went away and I felt clearer headed and more at ease than I had ever felt before. I would still go to meals at the dinning commons with my friends, but simply was not interested in the food. As I write this article, I am finishing my second week of a fast – cleaning up after the holidays.
Fasting is really simple – just don’t eat. Drink plenty of water and you will be fine. It saves you money and time and actually gives you more energy and brain clarity. Occasional emotional hunger sensations come up, but disappear within 15 minutes. Some water is all I need to chase the hunger away.
The only hard part of the fast is the first two days getting into the fasting state. Your body chemistry has to switch over to burning fats instead of sugar for energy, but you can cut out the difficulty by getting into a fat burning state before you start a fast. Spend a week eating only fats, fibers, and some protein without concern for calories consumed before you start a fast and you will have already done the hard part without it being hard. I would do this step whether I was about to do a water only fast or a fast mimicking diet.
More next week on building a body rejuvenating eating plan using the principles for lowering insulin resistance.