Should I fast?
Fasting is the voluntary abandonment of food and sometimes also drinking.
Your doctor will ask you to take blood tests for fasting, without eating or drinking, for 12 hours, when your blood sugar and cholesterol levels will be at their lowest. In the West, fasting is perceived as a healthy and secular trend, but fasting has a long history and extends to almost all denominations.
Religious fasting:
The most famous religious fast is probably the Easter fast. It is practiced 40 days before Easter in many Christian trends, especially Orthodoxy and Catholicism. In them, fasting means not only reducing meals and abstaining from certain foods, such as meat, but also competing and having time for spiritual growth. Other people should not be offended by words or deeds. The Islamic faith fasts during the month of Ramadan by refusing to eat and drink from the rising of the sun until the setting of the sun. Eat in the evening and at night. By fasting, a Muslim gets closer to his God by giving up things he enjoys, such as food, drink, and sex, and by refraining from inappropriate speech, quarreling, and fighting.
Research results do not support fasting
A Finn is most often fasting to cleanse himself. Fasting is thought to give the gut a chance to rest and the body time to clear itself of waste products. As you feel lighter, your mind becomes more refreshed and energetic. However, the results of the study do not support the presumed health effects of fasting. Slag is excreted daily by the kidneys, skin and respiration. Fasting is a one-time event, and if you live most of the year with a strain on your body, a few days of cleansing is of no use.
Full fasting can also be harmful. When a person is not eating, he begins to use his own energy stores. First, the body consumes carbohydrate stores, glycogen, which is found in the liver and muscles. They are enough for a couple of days. Already during the first day of fasting, the liver begins to produce sugar, or glucose, from the amino acids and adipose tissue of the muscles. The problem with fasting is that the body breaks down meat quickly, especially in the early stages, when the brain’s sugar consumption is high and the breakdown of adipose tissue is slow. As the brain learns to use less sugar and more ketones from the breakdown of adipose tissue, muscle breakdown decreases. During 3-5 days of fasting, the sugar energy used by the brain decreases by 25%, from 440 kcal to 340 kcal / 24 h. At the same time, the use of ketones increases from 15 to 150 kcal / 24 h.
Fasting as a means of weight loss
Weight loss at the beginning of fasting is for the most part water. It is eliminated a lot because the breakdown of glycogen and muscle protein in the liver and muscles takes water with it. Water is also excreted by the kidneys because no salt is obtained from the food. A normal-weight man loses about 4 kg during fasting for the first five days and 3 kg for the next five days. A fat man would lose about 50% more weight. Up to 2/3 of the initial weight loss may be muscle tissue. After a week of fasting, weight loss slows down considerably. By then, muscles have learned to use fat and brain ketones more efficiently as fuel, and only then will muscle breakdown be reduced. The initial weight loss after the water is from the meat, and the fat has only burned a little. A long fast does not save even the heart muscle from muscle loss. In the past, it was thought that obese people would leave less muscle tissue, but apparently this is not the case.
In addition to muscle loss, another problem with fasting is the decrease in basal metabolic rate it causes. Basal metabolism decreases whenever muscle tissue decreases, but during fasting, metabolism decreases faster than would be calculated from muscle loss. Therefore, when you start eating again, you are very sensitive to gaining weight. When the weight is restored, it first starts to gain weight from the fat and only later does the muscle mass recover.
Low calorie food is a better option
It is true that when many are fasting, the feeling is lightened and the mind is refreshed. This happens almost every time a person loses weight. However, a safer alternative to fasting is a low-calorie everyday food that is high in the body’s building blocks, protein, and vitamins and minerals. Obesity researchers have also looked at whether fasting every other day would be helpful in weight management or maintaining health. Preliminary research suggests that fasting may have health effects for some people, but as long as no longer-term results are available, fasting is not recommended as a means of dieting.
Low calorie foods instead are recommended. It has been shown to prolong life in yeast, banana fly and rat. Even humans are likely to eat a little less than they need each day if they wanted to live very long. Of course, consideration for other people and good behavior would be part of our every day, not just fasting.
Social Plugin