How does this interact with intermittent fasting or low-carb diets?
And to answer your question . . . the difference is not subtle, so it's really obvious. For example, I was fasting last Sunday and did 6 hours of housework on a day I would normally play video games. I am fasting right now, and am destroying my work, doing chores on breaks, and cooking food for dinner. I can smell delicious food in the crock pot that I can't have for another four hours, and I do want it . . . but the desire is bothering me approximately as much as unwanted birdsong. Which is to say I barely even notice.
It's a heck of a thing. Everyone should try it at least once.
I've done 24 hour fasts several times and they basically just make me lose two days of productivity. One during the fast day because I'm completely worn down and another the next day as I'm still drained and takes a day of normal eating to get back to normal.
My first fast was 4 days when I was a teenager and it started as a joke "let's fast for the whole week then go to a buffet to see how much we can eat." That lead me to fast Monday-Thursday and we went to the buffet on Friday. Guess how much "clarity" that brought me? None.
A sense of clarity after three or four days is something a lot of people report -- certainly enough to say it is a real phenomenon. I don't know if the experience is universal, but it does seem to be quite common.
It's just that you are not speaking of fasting itself, you are speaking of a spiritual practice that incorporates fasting.
Besides, I have a ton of experience fasting, I fast very frequently, short fasts every week (1 to 2 days), long fasts every once in a while, when I feel like it. I enjoy the physical feeling of fasting. I was merely speaking about the very first time I fasted.
No, she is not (being married to her, I can speak with some authority regarding her intent.)
She does not fast as a part of a religious practice, but as part of a dietary one. And has likewise been reading dietary, not religious, guides to fasting. And it is a commonly reported experience for people to have a degree of increased focus/clarity on about day 4 of an extended fast. It can come in a religious/spiritual form, but can also simply be "man, I'm really on top of things today" -- as if the biochemistry of the body after 80-90 hours of deliberate fasting puts the brain into a mode of hyperfocus.
It takes about 48 hours to deplete your glycogen, that's where "3 days" comes from - 2 to deplete glycogen then a third for immune system regeneration.
I say, give it a shot for sure. It's a lot easier to do once you've done it before. I practice fasting regularly.
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There appears to be significant research indicating a dramatic drop in inflammation, improvements in insulin signaling, and a near total “reset” of immune function with fasts of 3–5 days. Abnormal and or pre-cancerous cells appear to be pushed towards apoptosis, which essentially selects for healthy cell types. In total this describes a process which should (in theory) reverse many of the signs and symptoms of aging while reducing the processes that appear to be at play in autoimmunity and cancer.
. . .
In a process called apoptosis, also known as programmed cell death, cells that reach a certain age are programmed to commit suicide. While this may sound kind of macabre at first, the process constantly renews cell populations, making it essential for good health. But when just some cellular components need to be replaced, a process called autophagy kicks in.
The word autophagy, coined by Nobel Prize–winning scientist Christian de Duve, derives from the Greek auto (“self”) and phagein (“to eat”). So the word literally means “to eat oneself.” Autophagy is a form of cellular cleansing: it is a regulated, orderly process of breaking down and recycling cellular components when there’s no longer enough energy to sustain them. Once all the diseased or broken-down cellular parts have been cleansed, the body can start the process of renewal. New tissues and cells are built to replace those that were destroyed. In this way, the body renews itself. But it only works if the old parts are discarded first.
Our bodies are in a constant state of renewal. While we often focus on new cell growth, we sometimes forget that the first step in renewal is destroying the old, broken-down cellular machinery. But apoptosis and autophagy are both necessary to keep our bodies running well. When these processes are hijacked, diseases such as cancer occur, and the accumulation of older cellular components may be responsible for many of the effects of aging. These unwanted cellular components build up over time if autophagocytic processes are not routinely activated.
Increased levels of glucose, insulin, and proteins all turn off autophagy. And it doesn’t take much. Even as little as 3 grams of the amino acid leucine can stop autophagy. Here’s how it works: The mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway is an important sensor of nutrient availability. When we eat carbohydrates or protein, insulin is secreted, and the increased insulin levels, or even just the amino acids from the breakdown of ingested protein, activate the mTOR pathway. The body senses that food is available and decides that since there’s plenty of energy to go around, there’s no need to eliminate the old subcellular machinery. The end result is the suppression of autophagy. In other words, the constant intake of food, such as snacking throughout the day, suppresses autophagy.
Conversely, when mTOR is dormant— when it’s not being triggered by increased insulin levels or amino acids from ingested food— autophagy is promoted. As the body senses the temporary absence of nutrients, it must prioritize which cellular parts to keep. The oldest and most worn-out cellular parts get discarded, and amino acids from the broken-down cell parts are delivered to the liver, which uses them to create glucose during gluconeogenesis. They may also be incorporated into new proteins. It’s important to note that the dormancy of mTOR is only related to short-term nutrient availability and not the presence of stored energy, such as liver glycogen or body fat. Whether the body has stored energy is irrelevant for mTOR and therefore for autophagy.
This is why the strongest stimulus to autophagy currently known is fasting, and why fasting alone, unique among diets, stimulates autophagy — simple caloric restriction or dieting isn’t enough.
Fung, Jason; Moore, Jimmy. The Complete Guide to Fasting: Heal Your Body Through Intermittent, Alternate-Day, and Extended (p. 151-153). Victory Belt Publishing. Kindle Edition.
My advice is just give 3 days an initial shot to see what it's like.
You can also work directly with the author's foundation at https://idmprogram.com if you prefer.
With that said, he doesn't really talk about three to five day fasts much. It's kind of a suboptimal length. He talks about 24-48 hour fasts for weight and diabetes control, and 7-14 day fasts as cancer preventatives. The former is recommended multiple times per week, and the latter is recommended once per year. But again -- it depends on who you are and what your goals are.
I stopped keto after a few months reaching my target weight, and was irritable and unfocused for 2-3 days.
The other thing I've noticed is that I have much more patience with my kids (4 and 7) when I'm on keto. I can take them grocery shopping with me and they don't drive me insane, etc.
Obviously my impressions are not data, but I thought I'd present them here because it seemed counter-intuitive to me that significantly restricting carbohydrates would result in high blood sugar levels.
First, you're not going to get really accurate measurements unless you've calibrated your meter against a set of venous-based lab blood draw results, across bands of glucose levels. Second, unless someone describes that they are taking their measurements on the same time of day each day, under the same contextual conditions, then it's tough to separate out the measurements independent of the context.
Example: someone says they take a measurement at 11 am every day. Sounds good, except if they don't reveal they drink a Starbucks sugar-coffee a couple hours earlier on their way into work, then it gives the wrong impression. On the other hand, if someone says, first thing in the morning, I wake up and take a measurement, eat nothing, only drink water, do no activity more vigorous than getting ready for work, and measure again one hour and two hours later, then you have a better baseline to compare against.
What you really want to see to establish your impressions as data are multiple keto-adapted people wearing Dexcom 5 CGMs, calibrating periodically with a meter that meets your typical glucose testing range with the greatest accuracy [1]. Then throw those people out of keto-adaptation, measure their ketones as they come back into keto, and compare their glucose levels.
I'm only a data point of one, but I've been keto-adapted so long that the Ketostix urine test strips can no longer detect my acetoacetate-based ketone levels (when you are keto-adapted long enough, you need to measure beta-hydroxybutyrate and not acetoacetate as ketone markers). I'm Type 2, but controlled without medication through diet and exercise. My one and two-hour post-prandials are below 100 mg/dL, usually below 90 mg/dL. I test upon waking up, two hours after waking up to measure dawn phenomena, then every 1-2 hours while water fasting until I break the fast, some time between 1100-1500h, when I use a six-hour feeding window to get in at least 200g of protein and as much leafy greens as I can handle. Then I test again before going to bed.
My keto diet level is 20g net carbs per day. Empirically, when I break out of keto to verify whether or not it is still a factor in my ongoing treatment, I can go as high as 150 post-prandial, and I get a headache. There are definitely diabetics who test higher on keto than off keto, but they are in the minority; it would be interesting to find out if the keto community participants who you read about are diabetics or not. I'm convinced that based upon my personal experience that was guided by the outcomes reported by other Type 2's however, that most (not all) pre-diabetic and diagnosed Type 2's can revert their condition and control it with significant lifestyle changes for a long time before resorting to medication at a very late stage in life, if ever.
[1] http://integrateddiabetes.com/2016-blood-glucose-meter-compa...
It became disruptive enough that I gave up IF on work days and now practise it only occasionally on holiday or weekends. That said my gut flora (see the new research on how gut flora influences the brain [1]) might be reliant on simple carbs and sugar (I have a coffee + pastry habit).
As somebody with a family history of addiction, I can confirm that I get all kinds of cranky without my carbs. Imho some brains just crave those constant dopamine kicks, losing all impulse control in the process, carb intake seems to play a role in that whole dynamic [0][1].
A couple of years ago I did some "metabolic balance" diet which was very low carb for a couple of months, mostly to treat my migraines. After initial irritation, I felt really good physically but I had a constant craving for all the tasty carb stuff, like white bread/noodles, wearing me down mentally. I don't think I could live like that for years.