Fasting is one of those lifestyle methods that have shown to decrease inflammation [1] [2], boost levels of the body’s own growth hormone (hGH) [3], and reduce body fat [4]. This means that a particular type of fast might reduce your recovery time from sickness and workouts, increase your muscle growth and make you leaner.

“Eating clean will make fasting the next day a lot easier.”

Before starting any kind of lifestyle changes, always ask yourself if it might worsen your current physiological health or if it would impact negatively on any medications you might be taken. When in doubt, get a health professional to share their view. This can’t be understated, as by ”fast” covered in this article, it is meant to limit your consumption of food and drinks during fasting hours to only water.

The way to go is to start easy and see how you feel. Start with something called time-restricted feeding [5]. Simply the 12/12 fasting regime. That means only consume water during 12 hours of fasting and leave a 12-hour window for eating, during a 24-hour cycle.

This type of fasting will be your base for all other types of fasting. This should, as research shows, be what all people apply in their daily life for a healthy progression throughout their lifespan [6]. Mainly because we have this built-in mechanism in our body that makes it healthy for us to fast.

 

 

Reference

[1] Faris MA, Kacimi S, Al-Kurd RA, et al. Intermittent fasting during Ramadan attenuates proinflammatory cytokines and immune cells in healthy subjects. Nutr Res. 2012;32:947–55.

[2] Lavin, D. N., Joesting, J. J., Chiu, G. S., Moon, M. L., Meng, J., Dilger, R. N., & Freund, G. G. (2011). Fasting Induces an Anti-Inflammatory Effect on the Neuroimmune System Which a High-Fat Diet Prevents. Obesity, 19(8), 1586-1594. doi:10.1038/oby.2011.73

[3] Ho, K. Y., Veldhuis, J. D., Johnson, M. L., Furlanetto, R., Evans, W. S., Alberti, K. G., & Thorner, M. O. (1988). Fasting enhances growth hormone secretion and amplifies the complex rhythms of growth hormone secretion in man. Journal of Clinical Investigation, 81(4), 968-975. doi:10.1172/jci113450

[4] Varady KA, Hellerstein MK. Do calorie restriction or alternate-day fasting regimens modulate adipose tissue physiology in a way that reduces chronic disease risk? Nutr Rev. 2008;66:333–342.

[5] Longo, V. D., & Panda, S. (2016). Fasting, circadian rhythms, and time restricted feeding in healthy lifespan. Cell Metabolism, 23(6), 1048–1059. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmet.2016.06.001

[6] Manoogian, E. N., & Panda, S. (2017). Circadian rhythms, time-restricted feeding, and healthy aging. Ageing Research Reviews, 39, 59–67. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.arr.2016.12.006