Fasting: What are the Health Benefits?

Have you ever thought about trying fasting? It’s easy, doesn’t cost the earth, and can have powerful positive health effects.

In this article, you’ll learn about some of the health benefits of fasting as well as simple ways to incorporate it into your day.

What is Fasting?

The practice of fasting has been around for thousands of years. Fasting refers to going for a period of time without eating. Modern society has been conditioned by food manufacturers to expect food to be available 24/7, meaning many people eat out of habit rather than hunger. However, humans have evolved to survive for periods of time without food, for example in times of food scarcity, without ill-effects. In contrast, when given a rest from food, the body thrives.

What are the Health Benefits of Fasting?

In the absence of food, your body switches its fuel source from glucose to burning energy from fat. Other physiological changes occur in your cells, creating several health benefits. These include:

Promoting Cellular Cleaning

Initial studies on ageing in animals discovered those who were fed every other day lived significantly longer than those with food on tap. This may be explained by a process called autophagy.

If your cells are deprived of energy sources like glucose, they change from a growth stage to a repair process. The absence of nutrients stimulates the cells’ cleaning functions, known as autophagy. During autophagy, worn out parts of cells are recycled and cleared away. The process helps your cells to avoid accumulating waste products which would adversely affect their functioning. Therefore, autophagy helps reduce the rate of cellular ageing. Furthermore, it plays a role in decreasing chronic inflammation.

When food is available again, autophagy will turn off. Therefore, if you’re constantly eating, your body doesn’t have as much as a chance to enter autophagy.

Boosting Energy Production

Your mitochondria are the powerhouses of your cells. The process of forming new mitochondria is called mitochondrial biogenesis, and it’s stimulated by fasting (1).

Because they’re constantly producing energy, mitochondria are vulnerable to damage to their DNA. Therefore, it’s important old and worn-out mitochondria are removed and cleared away. This is done by a special type of autophagy called mitophagy, and this process again occurs during fasting.

Improving Blood Sugar Control

When food is not available, your pancreas will stop producing insulin, the hormone responsible for decreasing the amount of sugar in the blood. If you’re constantly grazing, sugar enters the blood all day long. This means the pancreas will be continually releasing insulin to keep blood sugar levels from climbing too high.

Over time, this can mean your body’s cells become less sensitive to insulin. It’s a bit like when a retailer is constantly bombarding you with advertising emails. After a while you’ll start to ignore them. Elevated insulin, over time, can lead to type 2 diabetes. However, reducing the availability of insulin for a period can increase cellular sensitivity to the hormone, and therefore improve blood sugar control.

Supporting Immune Health

Studies on fasting have found immune function can be improved by fasting (2). In addition, fasting appears to enhance the health of the gut microbiome (3). Healthy gut bacteria have a knock-on beneficial effect on the immune system.

Furthermore, in one study, perceived quality of life in patients with multiple sclerosis improved after they had fasted between sunrise and sunset during the religious period of Ramadan. This suggests fasting may have positive implications for auto-immune disorders (4).

Supporting Healthy Blood Fat Levels

Other studies have seen improved blood fat levels following periods of fasting (5). In particular, fasting has been found to reduce triglycerides, a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Fasting also seems to increase HDL while decreasing unhealthy types of LDL, ratios of cholesterol associated with reduced cardiovascular risk.

Other research has seen improvements in cognitive health following fasting, better digestive health and reduced blood pressure.

What are the Different Types of Fasting?

Water Fasting

This involves fasting for a day or more at a time every so often, drinking only water. It’s an intense form of fasting and is best carried out with the support of a practitioner, particularly when you start out.

Time-Restricted Eating

This means reducing your ‘eating window,’ the time period when you eat. You would, in other words, fast for a certain number of hours within a 24-hour period. Some people opt for 12, 10 or 8-hour eating window. If your eating window is 8 hours, you could have your breakfast at 10am and your evening meal at 6pm, for example. The best idea when first adopting time-restricted eating is to shift your mealtimes little by little while your body adapts.

Most people find time-restricted eating easy once they get the hang of it, because a good chunk of the fasting window is spent asleep in bed. Since everyone’s circadian rhythm is unique to them, some people find having an earlier evening meal suits them best. Others find eating breakfast slightly later is easier to fit into their day.

Help and Support with Meal Timing

Since fasting is no cost and accessible, it can be a valuable part of your healthy lifestyle toolkit.

We can help you navigate through the world of fasting to ensure it’s the right path for you. This is especially important if you suffer from chronic health issues or unbalanced blood sugar. To begin, we’d recommend an Integrative Health Assessment, a deep dive into your health, diet, lifestyle and goals, with the aim of discovering the root causes of your health issues. Following this, we’ll provide you with a personalised plan to take your health to the next level.