What happens if you don’t eat for 3 days?
Dr. David Strobel and I have included fasting in HELP: The Health, Energy & Longevity Plan because of the many benefits that arise from this practice that has been part of virtually all world religions and cultures for millennia.
Limiting when you eat, at least sometimes, can be just as important as what you eat.
We have produced many video learning modules for HELPcare and HELPcare Clinic members. For example, Dr. Dave goes into significant detail introducing and explaining Metabolic Syndrome in depth. We will continue to add to that library.
But we also occasionally feature video resources that others have produced, and that we think our members and blog readers will find helpful.
Today I'm highlighting a couple of videos from Dr. Sten Ekberg, a former Olympic athlete from Sweden who now is a Chiropractor near Atlanta.
In the first video Dr. Ekberg does a good job of explaining how human eating patterns have changed over the last 50-100 years and why that is a problem. That's good background, and then beginning at about the 6:45 mark he describes what's happening inside your body when you begin and as you continue a fast from 8 hours to 12 hours to 18 hours, when autophagy starts to kick in.
Autophagy, which means "self-eating," is a means by which your body does some internal cleanup and recycling of defective cell structures. And because glycogen is becoming depleted, your body switches to burning more fat, which leads to an increase in ketone production, or ketosis.
In the remainder of the video, Dr. Ekberg highlights the processes that kick in and deepen as you fast for 24, 48 or 72 hours. Hunger doesn't continually increase: it comes in waves, and if you drink water and set a timer for 30 minutes you'll typically find it has subsided. And after 48 hours of fasting the hunger is typically less intense than in the 36-48 hour time frame.
As Dr. Ekberg says, it's probably safest to work into these extended fasts gradually. If you're taking medications for diabetes, you should definitely be discussing your fasting plans with your doctor or other provider, who could help adjust your medications appropriately. Supplementing with minerals such as magnesium, sodium and potassium also is important in longer fasts.
As a bonus for those interested in a deeper dive, here's another version in which Dr. Ekberg goes into more scientific detail and also concludes with a helpful graphic representation of the timing of the various fasting effects, even out to a five-day fast.
While not exactly to scale, these graphs provide a good shorthand representation of the benefits, magnitude and timing of fasting-generated changes.
This helps to illustrate why Lisa and I have settled on a periodic 72-hour fast for overall health as well as for cancer prevention. As Dr. Ekberg shows here and discusses toward the end of the second video, after 72 hours most of the effects of an extended fast are well underway. The incremental benefits for extending beyond the third day aren't as high, so it seems 72 hours is a sweet spot.
For the last year Lisa and I have been doing one of these fasts every 2-3 months or so. And as I write this, I'm currently at the 24-hour mark in our latest one. I can't say we eagerly look forward to them, but they aren't as difficult as you might think.
And watching these videos again was helpful motivation!
If you want a fuller discussion on our reasons for this practice, I've written about our #3DayCancerPreventionFast practice several times previously on my personal blog, and have embedded videos from Professor Thomas Seyfried of Boston College, who has done excellent research in this field.
I hope these videos help you better understand the effects of fasting so you'll at least begin exploring it.
Whether you plan to try an extended fast or not, limiting your eating window to 10-12 hours per day is a good step to get started. Just eliminate the after-dinner snacking and wait to eat your first meal until the next morning.
As you flex your fasting muscles, you'll improve your insulin sensitivity, particularly if you combine it with a low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet. And after you've become adjusted to that new pattern, you can extend the fasting window further, perhaps waiting until noon to break your fast.
As Dr. Ekberg suggests, that 6-8 hour daily eating window is a good pattern to follow on a regular basis, with an occasional extended fast for disease prevention and even reversal.
One thing is certain: for at least the last few thousand years, our ancestors didn't have continual access to food as we do today. They also found it beneficial to sometimes intentionally abstain from eating.
Now we know much more about the biological science behind these benefits.
What has been your experience with fasting?
Metabolic health coaching is available through HELPcare Coach, helping people to reclaim their health and even reverse disease through lifestyle changes. This is included at no extra charge with HELPcare Clinic membership!
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I never tried fasting until I joined this community. Up until then, I would always wake up early and immediately eat breakfast. With Lee's tip of having a little cream in my coffee instead of a full breakfast, I can easily make it till noon for my first meal, which puts me in a six or seven hour window for eating, almost every day. I wouldn't have thought this was possible for me. I'd like to try a longer fast, but I'm going to have to mentally work up to that!
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2 ReactionsThat's a great start, @redbarnsal! Getting into that habit so it becomes normal can really change your perspective. Then you can gradually lengthen that fasting window until you're essentially at one meal a day without it seeming like a huge effort. Glad to hear that you're finding success with this!
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