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Dr. Jason Fung, who deals with a multitude of patients with kidney disease and diabetes in an interview talks about fasting as an alternative, healthier way to burn fuel.
“During fasting, you start by burning off all the glycogen in the liver, which is all the sugar. There’s a point there where some of the excess amino acids in your body need to get burnt as well.
That’s where people say, ‘That’s where you’re burning muscle.’ That’s not actually what happens. The body never upregulates its protein catabolism. Never is it burning muscle; there’s a normal turnover that goes on.
There is a certain amount of protein that you need for a regular turnover. When you start fasting, that starts to go down and then fat oxidation goes way up. In essence, what you’ve done is you switched over from burning sugar to burning fat. Once you start burning fat, there’s almost an unlimited amount of calories there. You could go for days and days.”
Periodic or intermittent fasting have been shown to increase testosterone and human growth hormone –two important factors in building and maintaining muscle mass PLUS the anti-aging effects of HGH not only turn back the clock internally, but externally as well. This muscle conservation stage has an expiration date though, usually after 10-15 days of extended fasting muscle deterioration may occur, BUT depending on how much body fat you carry (some people can fast longer than 30 days without muscle-wasting due to having excess body fat). A popular misconception in the health industry is that once we are in a starved-state, our bodies seek our muscle as fuel, but that’s simply not true–if it were, we would have been extinct a long time ago.
Here’s a few staggering insulin-related stats presented by the CDC that Americans are facing:
- 1/3rd of Americans have prediabetes (insulin resistance) or type-2 diabetes
- Prediabetes can blossom into type-2 diabetes in as soon as 5 years
- 40% of Americans are considered obese
- 1 in out of every 2 Americans have a chronic disease!
Any fast over 20 hours increases and maximizes cellular autophagy: a physiological process whereby the body starts cleaning out the junk in the cells that accrues from free radicals which ultimately age you and engender cancer tumors that can proliferate to major organs. In recent research, cancer and Alzheimers are now showing signs of being a metabolic disease (high blood sugar/insulin) rather than just a genetic disease. Although more research is to be done on the correlation between insulin/blood sugar and cancer, it’s safe to say that keeping a close watch on your numbers would be salubrious for longevity purposes. That said, giving yourself a long fast once a year to lower insulin could potentially rid any cancerous cells from accumulating. The graph below illustrates how when insulin drops, HGH increases.
Here are the benefits of doing extended fasts (4-10 days):
- Reduces inflammation
- Normalizes blood pressure
- Has the ability to reverse type-2 diabetes
- Neurogenesis (Creation of new brain cells)
- Fat loss
- Destroys any unwanted food cravings
- Increases energy
- Improves sense of well being
- Stabilizes mood from blood sugar regulation
- Reduces insulin which in turn lowers triglycerides and improves HDL cholesterol
- Increases immune function
- Reduceds the risk of cancer cell expansion
- Better, more restorative sleep
- Anti-aging benefits and cognitive enhancement. Helps with a cloudy brain
- Fights chronic diseases
- Fasting shows instant improvements for patients with rheumatoid arthritis
