Who today has not already heard of fasting?
Fasting is by definition the voluntary or involuntary deprivation of food, which may be accompanied by a deprivation of drink. Partial fasting is an integral part of the practice of certain religions or spiritual currents.
From a medical and physiological point of view, the fasting period is considered to begin from the sixth hour after the last meal. Fasting activates physiological adaptation mechanisms that are the legacy of the slow process of evolution.
Fasting mobilizes the energy stored in the fatty tissues of the human body. The metabolism changes from the consumption of glucose to that of fats and ketones (carbon), thereby inducing
number of beneficial effects.
There are different types of fasts:
Total or partial, no food at all or only certain foods
With or without water, if there is no water consumption we speak of young dry
Continuous or intermittent, intermittently it can be done once a week for example
Of variable duration, a day, a week, ...
It can be preceded by a preparatory phase, reducing the quantities little by little
It may or may not be followed by a phase of gradual resumption of food
It can be associated with rest
It may or may not be performed under medical supervision, if medical supervision may or may not be governed by recommendations
In several studies, including the largest global study carried out on fasting in 2016 (on a total of 1,422 people, from 4 to 21 days), we are learning a lot more about this phenomenon.
The study led by Dr. Françoise Wilhelmi de Toledo and her team at Buchinger Wilhelmi (a clinic located in Überlingen, on the shores of Lake Constance, with a long tradition of fasting), demonstrated that their program of Fasting was a safe and well-tolerated approach to preventing age-related diseases and treating chronic metabolic disorders, but not only:
It causes significant weight loss, reduces waist circumference and lowers cholesterol and blood lipid levels
Fasting also normalized fasters' blood pressure and improved diabetes parameters, improving many factors contributing to cardiovascular health.
In addition it improved 84% of cases of serious diseases, such as arthritis, type 2 diabetes as well as steatosis and hypercholesterolemia, high blood pressure and fatigue.
It has shown with medical follow-up few undesirable side effects. Moreover, the latter could be treated easily and without interrupting the fast.
It can even help in prevention to self-heal, or to treat certain mental disorders such as depression and mental fatigue.
The term "autophagy" comes from the Greek "to eat oneself", it is the biological mechanism which allows our cells to eliminate their useless, defective or toxic constituents, and to recycle those which can be. This process is fundamentally important for living cells.
Today, researchers who study autophagy believe that cancer, Alzheimer's disease, autoimmune diseases, diabetes, cardiovascular or hepatic (liver) diseases... could be associated with defective autophagy.
The same degradation process can be used to effectively remove damaged proteins and organelles, to renew cells and remove debris, or also to prevent invading bacteria and viruses. A process that can be put in place automatically by the body from a few hours of fasting, and which strengthens around 4 p.m., while accelerating until at least 72 hours.
Fasting can therefore be, with appropriate medical monitoring, a method of prevention to maintain one's health, but also to treat certain diseases in a safe way and easily tolerated by the human body.
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