Intermittent fasting: is it for everyone?

The topic of intermittent fasting is breaking records of popularity today. This can be judged even by the number of requests in search services. So, according to Yandex statistics, as of February 3, 2021, more than half a million people were interested in this technique for a month. In Google, the query “Fasting” (as this method is called in English) produces 67 million results. And experts are doing a huge amount of research to find out how hunger affects the physical and mental state of people and animals.

There is nothing particularly new or unexpected in the approach itself. Fasting periods have been practiced in many world religions for centuries and even millennia. People choose to refuse food both to maintain spiritual purity and to improve the body.

In the last century, fasting became popular thanks to propagandists such as Paul Bragg, who wrote the book “The Miracle of Fasting”, and Porfiry Ivanov, who created his “Baby” healing system.

After the Japanese biologist Yoshinori Ohsumi received the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in October 2016 “for his discovery of the mechanisms of autophagy”, intermittent fasting has entered a new round of popularity. According to the study, it is the abstinence from food that triggers this mechanism of “self-eating” of cells, and through it the self-healing of the body.

Jason Fang, a Canadian nephrologist, has become a modern ambassador for the use of fasting for weight loss and the treatment of type 2 diabetes. He is the author of six books, his bestseller The Obesity Code (literally – “Obesity Code”) was released in Russian in 2019 under the title “Wild Hormone”.

Three reasons to try intermittent fasting

1. The ability to reduce the calorie content of the diet without counting calories

With any diet, low-carb or low-fat, an important condition for losing weight is a calorie deficit. The most popular way to control calories is by counting, which is most often done using apps. But this method is psychologically exhausting and turns the life of a person on a diet into a quest, a dance around calories.

If you practice skipping one or two meals, the caloric content of the diet decreases along with the missed breakfast and lunch. There is no need for constant tedious counting, and therefore, for constant monitoring.

2. Starting the process of autophagy, self-healing

The topic of biohacking — life extension, improvement of physical and mental health by connecting natural mechanisms — excites many minds. And of course, “biohackers” could not pass by autophagy as an opportunity to push the boundaries of human capabilities and life extension.

It is worth noting that although there is now a lot of evidence for the beneficial effects of fasting, all studies were conducted on mice, yeast cells and fruit flies. Studies on the triggering and flow of autophagy in humans have not been conducted. No one knows how long it is necessary to abstain from food, how many days a week it is worth doing, what conditions must be created for all these mechanisms to start and act.

3. Remember the hunger, return to the roots

Practicing periods of abstinence from food is worth at least in order to remember what a real feeling of hunger is. Today, people have forgotten what hunger is, but, in fact, this is the only reason to eat. We find many other reasons to throw food – for the company, because it’s boring, because you have to have breakfast, because it’s a lunch break and there will be no other opportunity to eat, because you treated it and you can’t offend.

We seem to be afraid that somewhere along the road, on the highway, we will run out of “fuel” and we will just get up, faint. We eat in reserve – the same way we fill up our car when we see the 30% mark in the gas tank. This eating behavior has led to an obesity epidemic around the world.

It would be very good to skip meals from time to time in order to remember the “taste” of real hunger and further instill in yourself the habit of eating only when hungry.

To whom fasting is not useful and even contraindicated?

1. Pregnant and lactating women. During these periods, any stress is dangerous, and fasting is definitely the cause of physiological and sometimes psychological stress.
2. People with underweight. During fasting, the body switches to endogenous nutrition, that is, to its own internal reserves in the form of fat. With a lack of body weight, such reserves simply do not exist.
3. People who are in a state of physical and / or psychological fatigue. With hard work, exhausting workouts, adrenal fatigue syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome and other similar conditions, a person experiences stress. Additional stress in the form of fasting can provoke the development of disease states due to the weakening of the body’s immune defenses.
4. People with eating disorders. If a person has a predisposition to eating disorders such as bulimia, anorexia, compulsive overeating, impulsive overeating, food addiction, fasting can provoke an exacerbation. A relapse is also possible if the person is in remission.
5. People for whom long skips of food are contraindicated by a doctor. There are situations in which doctors prescribe frequent fractional meals, usually for diseases of the gastrointestinal tract. In this case, it is better to listen to the doctor’s instructions.

I am sure that many interesting discoveries await us, and I hope that we will learn more about the processes of autophagy and the impact of fasting on health and longevity. But the main thing is to act without fanaticism and armed with knowledge.