Intermittent fasting, as well as longer water fasts, can have tremendous health benefits and improve many chronic health diseases.

Here are the main benefits you can get from fasting:

WEIGHT LOSS

Intermittent fasting allows the body to use fat as it’s primary source of energy instead of sugar. Fasting drains your body of its glucose reserves, its main energy source from food. Without glucose, you switch over to burning fat for fuel in a process called ketosis.

IMPROVES INSULIN SENSITIVITY

Insulin works to stimulate energy storage and increases both cellular division and inflammation in the body. Fasting has been shown to reduce insulin secretions and improve cellular insulin sensitivity. This results in the body better using insulin so that less insulin is needed when we do consume food. 

By reducing the overall demand for insulin, we reduce inflammation in the body and improve human growth hormone levels, or HGH (more on that below).

IMPROVES METABOLISM

Many people think that fasting will decrease metabolism. However, although this does happen with long term caloric restriction (this is the main reasons for weight regain after a diet), the opposite happens when you fast.

Fasting actually stimulates fat burning hormones such as human growth hormone (HGH) and norepinephrine that keep your metabolic rate optimized.

ENERGY EFFICIENCY

Fasting improves your body’s ability to burn fat on a regular basis and we call that being 'fat adapted'. As a fat adapted individual, your body will have the metabolic flexibility to easily shift from burning sugar when you consume carbohydrates in your meals to burning fat when you are outside of meals.

IMPROVES BRAIN FUNCTION

Fasting has shown to improve brain function because it boosts the production of a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF.) BDNF activates brain stem cells to convert into new neurons, and triggers numerous other chemicals that promote neural health. This protein also protects your brain cells from changes associated with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

IMPROVES IMMUNE SYSTEM FUNCTION

With no food in the digestive system, this makes room for more energy in the body – the digestive is one of the most energy absorbing systems in the body. Intermittent fasting is a terrific regulator of the immune system as it controls the level of inflammatory cytokines that are released in the body. 

CLEARER SKIN

Through reduced inflammation, autophagy and increased human growth hormone (see below).

AUTOPHAGY

Fasting also stimulates the process of autophagy, where the body breaks down old, damaged cells and abnormally developing cells to recycle for energy.

In order to get this benefit, you will need a fasting window of at least 14 to 16 hours.

The process of autophagy is part of the innate immune system and utilizes pattern recognition receptors to identify viral cell invaders.

Intermittent fasting stimulates autophagy processes, which restrict viral infections and the replication of intracellular parasites. This catabolic process helps the body rid itself of intracellular pathogens as well as abnormal cancer cell development.

This helps your body defend itself naturally against disease.

IMPROVES MITOCHONDRIA FUNCTION

The mitochondria are what produces energy within every cell of the body. The more well-functioning mitochondria we have within each cell, the more cellular energy we can produce. Chronic disease states are associated with an abundance of old and dysfunctional mitochondria, which causes fatigue.

Fasting and ketosis stimulate something called mitophagy, where our body breaks down older, more dysfunctional mitochondria and uses the materials to produce new mitochondria. We also increase the number of mitochondria within each cell.

By increasing the amount of healthy and well-functioning mitochondria in each cell, we produce a tremendous amount of cellular energy.

PROMOTES HEALING

When we eat food, we also increase inflammation in the body. We do this, even when we consume an anti-inflammatory diet. This is because the actual process of digestion stimulates inflammation. A healthier diet will produce significantly less inflammation than an unhealthy diet, but both will increase inflammation in the body. The harder the meal is to digest, the more inflammatory activity it will provoke.

In order to heal from an illness, we need as much energy devoted towards the immune system and tissue regeneration as possible. This is why when we are ill, we naturally lose our appetite. This is an innate mechanism of the body to influence us to fast so we can produce the proper environment for optimal healing.

INCREASES HUMAN GROWTH HORMONE

Fasting can increase human growth hormone by up to 2000% in just 24 hours. This hormone governs the cellular repair processes in the body. HGH creates changes in our metabolism that favor fat burning and muscle tissue sparing. It signals an increased focus on tissue repair where the body uses amino acids and enzymes to repair tissue collagen, which improves the overall functionality of the muscles, tendons, ligaments and bones.

STIMULATES STEM CELL ACTIVITY

Fasting has been shown to increase stem cell activity, giving our body very youthful cells that can provide a wide variety of benefits. Many people inject stem cells to help repair damaged joints. Fasting is a way to internally stimulate these stem cells to repair damaged areas of our body.

Please note that to get the benefits of stem cell regeneration, you will need to do an extended water fast of at least 72 hours.