Benefits of Intermittent Fasting


 

Benefits of Intermittent Fasting

  1. Changes the function of your cells, genes, and hormones

When you go into intermittent fasting, it puts a stress on the body. The body then adapts to that stress.  Example, if you are lifting weights by changing the strength of the muscle, or the bones begin to adapt, your body will adjust and adapt to the stresses that are put on it.  

If you reduce your caloric intake with intermittent fasting, your body goes into a temporary – but very healthy – preservation mode.  It begins to optimize all of the body’s functions, including cellular. It turns off bad genes as well as helps to balance your body’s hormones as it begins to optimize how your body’s functioning on the inside. Fasting puts your body into this state of stress a little bit, so that it begins to optimize and become more high efficiency.
 

  1. Losing Weight

Of course, if you are not eating regularly, you are going to lose weight – because you are not going to get the amount of calories in your body.  To lose weight effectively, you must understand you need to get the right nutrients in your body. The right nutrients is consuming high fat, which will also help the hunger and the blood sugar from dropping.  Some research says that in a period of three to four weeks, on average, people are losing about 3-8% of their body weight and 4-6% of inches off their waist.
 

  1. Decreased risk for Diabetes

What does it tell you when inches are coming off the waist? It means that your stress hormones are becoming more balanced, and your cortisol is not driving this response system in your body. It is decreasing your risk for diabetes.  What research is also showing us is that with diabetes over a short period of time, there is a 20-31% decrease in the insulin usage and insulin need within the body. If you are a diabetic, you need to be a little bit careful and not just go diving into fasting right away, because the reality is if your blood sugar starts to drop, and you are adding medication onto that it could be a very dangerous situation. You want to make sure you are being supervised while you are doing this.  But, intermittent fasting can help reduce the risk of diabetes in somebody who has been predisposed for it, or has some insulin resistance going on. It can really help to minimize someone getting diabetes.
 

  1. Decreased Inflammation and Oxidative stresses in the body

Digesting food is a very complex process for the body. It takes a lot of energy for the body, and it does create some inflammation in the body. By giving the body a longer time between meals it allows the body to heal on the inside and giving the body to rest.
 

  1. Improves Heart Health

Intermittent Fasting  improves heart health because it is decreasing the inflammation and oxidative stresses systemically throughout the body. When you start to look at reducing the inflammation, it will reduce it in the blood vessels.  It will also help to reduce cholesterol within the body, because the body’s not going to have to produce compounds to decrease the inflammation – you are doing it by not inflaming it.
 

  1. Cellular Repair

If you have a broken metabolism, or your energy machinery in your body is a sugar burner instead of fat burner – intermittent fasting can help to repair at a cellular level.  The cellular repair can begin to happen when your ketones (which is a byproduct of burning fat) will be used as energy instead of glucose.

Autophagy begins to happen when your ketones and your glucose levels becomes close to 1:1 (Blood Glucose/18 : Ketone) with each other.  When your body is in autophagy, it starts to “kill off” bad machinery (cells), machinery that’s not working correctly. It starts to repair the metabolism and creating all brand new machinery for your system.
 

Is it possible to reset and repair your metabolism? Absolutely.  The more broken you are – the longer it will take you to repair your metabolism.  With intermittent fasting and getting into a state of autophagy – which is the state your body actually repairs itself – you can repair your metabolism back to a younger and more healthier state again.
 

  1. Repairs the Brain

When your body goes into the state of autophagy, or very close to it, your brain begins to repair. Research shows that when your body is at this state of high ketones and lower blood sugar – it actually begins to produce its own regenerative medicine and sends those regenerative medicine to start repairing and regrowing neurons. You will see an increase in brain-derived neurotrophic factors, showing that the nervous system is beginning to repair itself with intermittent fasting. Research also shows that with the brain repair, this is helping people with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Dementia, and some of the neurodegenerative diseases that are out there today.  Intermittent fasting is having a huge impact on helping these people.
 

  1. It prevents cancer

When you are not eating (intermittent fasting) your body still needs a fuel source.  It uses a fuel from fat called ketones. For fuel source – there are two options – your body can use sugar or fat for fuel. Now, sugar is very dirty. It is very easy to get (but it is not as efficient as ketones and fat in the body.) Cancer’s cellular metabolism only uses sugar for fuel.  When your body has a lot of sugar, it is going to drive more cancer production in the body. If you already have cancer, you decrease the sugar production, and increase the ketones, your body is going to naturally start to starve off the cancer inside.
 

  1. It may prevent Alzheimer’s disease

The studies that are out there with Alzheimer’s and ketogenic diet/intermittent fasting, shows that there has been a dramatic improvement in people who suffer with Alzheimer’s in helping to reduce, or improve the function of that disease.
 

  1. You will Live Longer!