Posted on 01/09/2025 8:05:49 AM PST by Red Badger
A recent study highlights that significant health benefits and molecular adaptations from fasting are detectable after three days.
Recent findings show that prolonged fasting triggers significant and systematic changes across multiple organs in the body. These results highlight potential health benefits that extend beyond weight loss, but they also reveal that these impactful changes only begin to occur after three full days without food.
Health Benefits of Fasting Unveiled
A recent study published in Nature Metabolism sheds light on how the body responds to extended periods without food, offering valuable insights into the processes occurring during prolonged fasting.
Researchers from Queen Mary University of London’s Precision Healthcare University Research Institute (PHURI) and the Norwegian School of Sports Sciences explored the potential health benefits of fasting, focusing on its underlying molecular mechanisms. Their findings lay the groundwork for future research that could lead to therapeutic treatments, particularly for individuals who may benefit from fasting but are unable to participate in extended fasting or follow fasting-mimicking diets like ketogenic plans.
Historical Context and Modern Techniques
For thousands of years, humans have adapted to survive without food for extended durations. Today, fasting is widely practiced for both medical and cultural reasons, with goals ranging from improved health to weight loss. Historically, fasting has also been used to manage conditions such as epilepsy and rheumatoid arthritis, demonstrating its diverse applications across time and societies.
During fasting, the body changes its source and type of energy, switching from consumed calories to using its own fat stores. However, beyond this change in fuel sources, little is known about how the body responds to prolonged periods without food and any health impacts – beneficial or adverse – this may have. New techniques allowing researchers to measure thousands of proteins circulating in our blood provide the opportunity to systematically study molecular adaptions to fasting in humans in great detail.
Detailed Observations from a Controlled Study
Researchers followed 12 healthy volunteers taking part in a seven-day water-only fast. The volunteers were monitored closely on a daily basis to record changes in the levels of around 3,000 proteins in their blood before, during, and after the fast. By identifying which proteins are involved in the body’s response, the researchers could then predict potential health outcomes of prolonged fasting by integrating genetic information from large-scale studies.
As expected, the researchers observed the body switching energy sources – from glucose to fat stored in the body – within the first two or three days of fasting. The volunteers lost an average of 5.7 kg of both fat mass and lean mass. After three days of eating after fasting, the weight stayed off – the loss of lean was almost completely reversed, but the fat mass stayed off.
For the first time, the researchers observed the body undergoing distinct changes in protein levels after about three days of fasting – indicating a whole-body response to complete calorie restriction. Overall, one in three of the proteins measured changed significantly during fasting across all major organs. These changes were consistent across the volunteers, but there were signatures distinctive to fasting that went beyond weight loss, such as changes in proteins that make up the supportive structure for neurons in the brain.
Expert Insights on Fasting’s Effects
Claudia Langenberg, Director of Queen Mary’s Precision Health University Research Institute (PHURI), said:
“For the first time, we’re able to see what’s happening on a molecular level across the body when we fast. Fasting, when done safely, is an effective weight loss intervention. Popular diets that incorporate fasting – such as intermittent fasting – claim to have health benefits beyond weight loss. Our results provide evidence for the health benefits of fasting beyond weight loss, but these were only visible after three days of total caloric restriction – later than we previously thought.”
Maik Pietzner, Health Data Chair of PHURI and co-lead of the Computational Medicine Group at Berlin Institute of Health at Charité, said:
“Our findings have provided a basis for some age-old knowledge as to why fasting is used for certain conditions. While fasting may be beneficial for treating some conditions, often times, fasting won’t be an option to patients suffering from ill health. We hope that these findings can provide information about why fasting is beneficial in certain cases, which can then be used to develop treatments that patients are able to do.”
Reference:
“Systemic proteome adaptions to 7-day complete caloric restriction in humans”
by Maik Pietzner, Burulça Uluvar, Kristoffer J. Kolnes, Per B. Jeppesen, S. Victoria Frivold, Øyvind Skattebo, Egil I. Johansen, Bjørn S. Skålhegg, Jørgen F. P. Wojtaszewski, Anders J. Kolnes, Giles S. H. Yeo, Stephen O’Rahilly, Jørgen Jensen and Claudia Langenberg, 30 February 2024, Nature Metabolism.
DOI: 10.1038/s42255-024-01008-9
I would advise working your way up to multi-day fasts. Start out doing 16-8, or 20-4 intermittent fasting for a period before trying to go longer.
Yes. pretty much just water, black coffee, tea. Water with minerals added is acceptable to maintain electrolyte balance.
There are variations available depending on your goals that allow for what are known as once a day ‘fat bombs.’
Monitor both blood glucose and ketone levels to be sure you stay at safe levels.
https://drmindypelz.com/a-beginners-guide-to-fasting/
A colonoscopy prep
It is not just for diabetics.
Depending on overall health, condition of your liver being able to process the fat, age...
Honestly, it is similar to the Rice Diet, which reversed extreme high blood pressure and allowed kidneys to heal, as well, but the fast has fewer calories and is only five days, while the Rice Diet is a short-term lifestyle change.
Three consecutive months of the Prolon approach appears to take 1.7 inches off your waist, while rejuvenating your cells (taking out bad components and cells and encouraging stem cells to step up and make new components and cells).
I expect to start it when we get our fresh foods used up, which would go bad during the fast.
This write up doesn't describe some of the good and potentially concerning things from fasting. A mouse study that was negative showed it helped some cancer cells go into overdrive for a bit, even though about every kind of cancer was negatively affected during the fast.
That same study, however, even said fasting 16 hours set similar processes up that could turbo charge cancers, so it was basically saying that if you don't eat all the time, you make existing cancer cells get mini-cycles of turbo boosts.
That just seems crazy to worry about, in light of so many doing well with each kind of fast, and not all dying of cancer. The mouse studies do not claim fasting triggers cancer—it just can encourage its rapid growth, once the refeeding starts. As fasting was always encouraged, even in Biblical times, I just can't see a concerning issue for the majority of people. Keep checking yourself for cancers by getting annual physicals and mammograms and looking for unusual signs on your skin and with going to the bathroom.
If I sleep 12hrs. does that work:?
Ketogenic electrolyte powder mixed with water.
Make sure you get the unflavored kind...no artificial anything.
You can’t take supplements other than some extra potassium...your stomach will reject them.
I did 96 hour fast twice a month rather than chemo after a tumor was removed. Cancer free for 3 and a half years.
Most I have gone is 4 days
Mr. b and I did a fast for 30 days. It did nothing but make us scarf down the best tasting burger in the world at the end. Can’t remember how much weight we lost but neither had to buy a new wardrobe nor notice any change in joints or whatever.
I remember some old 2000 year old book that had a lot of fasting in it... I’ll see if I can find it.
We eat dinner at 4 pm (my son works from 5:30 am to 2:30 pm).
I don’t eat breakfast until 6 am the next morning. I am losing about 2 pounds a week!
I eat my last meal at 8:30 pm when I get home from work and don’t eat anything else until about 1:00 p.m. the next day. And I don’t consume a lot of calories. I’m about 15 lb overweight. I never shed anything.
Bkmk
I have not done fasting, but on the weekends I do “one meal a day”. That being an evening meal. I don’t get hungry and have plenty of energy during the day.
I think it’s because I’m active duting those hours.
I would like to see the same thing done with people who were maxxed out on Mounjaro or Zepbound (terzepatide).
This second group would not be as hungry.
The panel of proteins when compared to the first one might show which proteins make you super hungry on a fast. Or which ones make you bounce back up weight wise after discontinuing the fast.
Ping
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