Fasting for 3 days every 3 months gives me clarity—but there’s a right way to go about it.
By: May Pang
Tags: Health, Food, Intermittent Fasting, Fasting, Self

The Scientific Benefits of Fasting

The reason these make my favorites list is that these specific benefits are hard to reliably recreate any other way. They also seem to provide solutions where traditional treatment does not.

1. Activating autophagy (destruction of damaged cell components and pathogens)

This is my absolute favorite thing about fasting. If fasting only offered this benefit, it would be enough for me. After years of being a medical researcher and decades of learning about the human body, I still think this is one of the coolest things about the human body.

Autophagy (Greek for “self-eating”) is a natural, regulated mechanism whereby your body destroys misfolded proteins, clearly damaged cell components, and any pathogens. This process is believed to be a survival adaptation to lack of nutrients and can protect against diseases such as cancer and neurodegeneration. Your body can basically recycle damaged cells as fuel or building blocks for new cells by “eating itself.” How cool is that?

Created by the author

The best thing is that you can reliably trigger this mechanism by fasting. The process typically starts after about 48 hours without food and peaks at about 72 hours.

“Fasting is the greatest remedy, the physician within.” — Philippus Paracelsus, one of the three fathers of Western medicine

2. Creating emotional well being and spiritual calm

As a lifelong emotional eater, the research showing the influence of fasting on emotional regulation and spiritual wellbeing intrigued me the most. Studies on fasting had shown that many people reported a sense of euphoria from fasting. It is thought that fasting causes this by increasing endorphins or activating the BDNF (brain-derivated neurotrophic factor) pathway.

This effect is so powerful that short-term calorie restriction has even been shown to be a powerful therapy for treatment-resistant depression and anxiety. Participants of one study reported improved self-acceptance, autonomy, positive relations, environmental mastery, and personal growth.

I had spent my entire life relying on eating food to create a temporary and ultimately unfulfilling dopamine rush. Could not eating food provide an even better feeling which is more satisfying? Could it help me finally break my dependency on food to generate positive emotions? Better yet, could it create spiritual growth?

3. Improving gut microbiome

The importance of our bacterial microbiome to pretty much every aspect of our health has been a continuing hot topic in the scientific world. When you consider that the bacterial cells in our gut alone outnumber human cells by more than a factor of 10 — it’s hardly surprising.

The bacteria in our gut extract nutrients from our food, protect us from pathogens, synthesize vitamins and hormones, modulate our immune system, and more importantly, produce hundreds of neurochemicals that the brain uses to perform mental functions and regulate mood. About 95% of serotonin and 50% of dopamine (brain chemicals responsible for feeling good) are produced in your gut. The health of your gut microbiome is also key to the healthy regulation of hormones such as testosterone and estrogen.

The problem is that your gut population is incredibly dynamic. It can change with the last sandwich, sickness, or a round of antibiotics. Fortunately, fasting can actually have profound and long-lasting positive effects on the gut microbiome.

3. Enhancing mental performance and clarity

When we fast, the levels of norepinephrine (a molecule similar to adrenaline) as well as BDNF increases and enhances mental focus, memory, and cognitive functions in the brain. In an interview for Forbes, Dr. Jason Fung — arguably the leading expert in fasting — explains that it makes sense that our ancestors would have needed to be smarter when they were hungry. After all, they had to worry about finding food and not getting killed.

Apparently, fasting to have a mental edge is hardly a new Silicone Valley fad. The mathematician Pythagoras was known to make his students fast for forty days before coming into his classes so they would be at the top of their game.

Even Plato, had this to say about fasting,

“I fast for greater physical and mental efficiency.”

4. Reducing low-grade and chronic inflammation

Recent studies are indicating that our Western diet is likely to be causing most of us to be suffering from systemic low-grade chronic inflammation. This same diet has also been attributed to an increased prevalence of autoimmune or inflammatory disorders.

As most of us are likely unaware of where and how inflammation is occurring in our bodies, addressing it can often be tricky. The beauty of fasting is that it has been shown to improve a range of inflammatory and autoimmune diseases that affect multiple systems in the body including gut inflammation and rheumatoid arthritis.

5. Increasing metabolic flexibility

Metabolic flexibility describes your body’s ability to use different sources of fuel (glucose or fat) in order to adapt to a specific activity or environmental condition. It’s like turning your body into a hybrid engine. Lack of metabolic flexibility can contribute to the pathophysiological aspects of obesity, type-2 diabetes, and aging.

I’ve always wanted to improve the metabolic flexibility to improve athletic performance, especially for prolonged events. In turns out, cycling between fasted and fed states is one way we can improve metabolic flexibility.

6. Improving metabolic markers

Weight loss is likely the most common reason that most people attempt to fast. However, what most people may not be aware of is that fasting improves other markers that provide insights into your overall metabolic health such as total cholesterol, Low-Density Lipoprotein (LDL), triglycerides, and High-Density Lipoprotein (HDL). Numerous studies have even shown that fasting prolongs life.