Fasting
What You Need to Know
Fasting has been a hot topic in the natural health realm for a while now, and dates back well over hundreds of years. There is much evidence to support hat fasting can be very beneficial to maintaining optimal heath.
People fast for a variety of different reasons; biblical, spiritual, ketosis, anti-aging, overall health, etc. Each fasting interval, whether it be 12 hours, 18 hours, 24 hours, 48 hours, or more, has its benefits, but traditional fasting and the fasting of today have some key differences.
Traditionally, fasting involved an extensive amount of relaxation. During the fasting period, one would only participate in walking, meditation, or lying in bed. This helped keep the body in a parasympathetic (calm) state. One also has to keep in mind that over 100+ years ago, there were not well over 75,000 man-made chemicals in the environment, food, and in body products (just to name a few things).
In today’s society, in addition to all the man-made chemicals being inhaled, absorbed, ingested, and injected, we are also a very stressed society. Whether it is getting caught in traffic, being cut-off in traffic, getting the kids around, working, schoolwork, etc., these types of things often elicit an autonomic response of the sympathetic nervous system. Fasting when you are not at rest is that it after about 8-12 hours, depending on the person, your body will begin to think that there may be a famine and it begins to tap into your body’s fat reserves for energy. This process raises cortisol. So, when you couple this innate response with the additional increase in cortisol due to the body’s stress response, you can be causing more harm than good. The liver filters your blood every 6 minutes, so moving those pathogens out of your body is crucial.
Another aspect to keep in mind is that if you are fasting for more than 24 hours, you want to be sure to properly support your liver through the detoxification process of phase 1 and phase 2. If you are not doing this while fasting for more than 24 hours (remember, you should be at rest when fasting), then you could be preventing the body from efficiently detoxifying all the toxin build-up. So, while your body may be in an autophagy state, it can’t rid itself of what is not available to be removed. Additionally, if you are over 40, and especially if you are over 50, fasting inappropriately can also lead to muscle wasting. Go to my previous post below, to read more about proper liver detoxification support:
Tips to fast properly in today’s society:
Be sure if you are fasting, to be at rest. Make sure it is a day or two when you can lay in bed, meditate, lay on the couch and watch a comedy, etc.
Sip on hot water (feel free to add some lemon or lime), or ginger tea every 15 minutes or so. This will help move Lymph and drain toxins from the body.
Support the liver through phase 1 and phase 2 of detoxification, especially if fasting for more than 24 hours.
If experiencing Herxheimer type reactions (which no, that is not normal and don’t just keep pushing through), then start to easy off the detox slowly. Start with drinking some bone broth or light soup. You can try again later. Be sure you are getting the proper vitamins, minerals and amino-acids to support the liver.
References:
The 5 Stages of Fasting [Benefits + How to Make Easier] (fastingwell.com)
Drinking Water While Fasting: Is It Recommended? (healthline.com)
https://theresearchingmama.substack.com/p/liver-detoxification
Understanding the Phases of Liver Detoxification (equi.life)
Die-Off & How to Avoid It | Amy Myers MD
For more health resources, or to learn how to optimize your health, visit: Balanced Vitality
