Has anyone tried extended fasting for relief?

I just watched a documentary on amazon prime called “Science of fasting” and it says that water fasting is helpful with improving and curing disease, especially chronic ones. It rids the body of inflammation, gives the gut a break, and detoxes and Purifys and actually makes you stronger instead of weaker. Seems counter intuitive, but the science seems to support it.

I am starting a 2 week water only fast. Was wondering if anyone else has tried this?

I couldn't even make it past 3 days... if you are really toxic, I think doing one of these long term fasts is one of the worst things you can do, as you have no nutrition to support your failing organs, nor do you have any binders to grab onto all those toxins that your damaged liver and kidneys can't process.

You could do daily "mini-fasts", like from 7pm to 11am, but you'd have to be in fairly good health to sustain a prolonged fast.

Marc

 

The third day of fasting is always the most difficult in a fast. You are supposed to feel awful at that point, but then on the 4th day it gets better. I have never fasted more than 5 days but that was when I was healthy.

When you did your fast did you take supplements too or just water?

I don't remember what I did, other than water.  This was 16 years ago, after all... :-)

Lol

Fasting would kill me. i'm already very skinny.
it's hard to gain weight for me.

I'm extremely thin too, and always had stomach problems (for decades...)

I was chronically ill about 10 years ago, no treatment was working (chronic lyme).

I was taking about 60 different substances a day (supplements, herbs, homeopathics) in order to keep going.

In my best days, about 40 different things.


At a certain moment, I felt no hunger anymore, kept losing weight, felt toxic, ill...

 I decided to stop eating just one evening.


Next morning, I felt a bit better, and as I was not hungry, I decided to skip breakfast.

Then lunch. Then dinner. I just took teas, no sugar.


Next day, I felt CLEARLY better. Less brain fog, more energy.

As I was still NOT hungry, I just kept on fasting, without ever planning to do that.


Third day, many symptoms had gone, my brain got clearer, I felt so energetic as I had not felt in months.

So I did the BAD decision to go JOGGING!!!

Due to extreme low body weight, no food, well, I felt like I was going to collapse.


I came back home, and ate a sweet pear. After a while, the energy came back a bit.

Then I decided to read about fasting. What it was, why was I feeling better, etc.

Well, jogging or physical exercise is bad idea, I learned.


So from day 3 to day 10, I only ate one fruit a day, drank teas or water, and saw how my urine turned from transparent to a color that I can only describe as Coke color.


I entered a strong detox mode, as I hadn't been for decades, since I had memory of.

Fasting made my body learn how to detox again. That is what I think it did.

It also helped my food habits change (I got hungry in the morning, instead of evening like I used to be).


But I agree with Marc, it is a strong technique.


Now I'm on a sort of diet too: I did about 1 month on carb-free, practically animal free, only RAW foods, that felt very similar to fasting.

But I had to change, around the 2nd month, when the weather got colder and now I'm taking animal protein again, and about 10% of carbs.

And I'm eating warmer foods too. But detox is still going on, like during a fast.


My urine is still very dark, which for me is a sign of open detox-pathways.

I continue on 100% gluten free, sugar free and eliminated all milk products from my diet.

All, including butter, yogurts, goat, sheep products...


since cold weather came, I added carbs but no more than 10%.
60-70% is veggie + fruit.
20-30% is protein.

In my case, it's the carbs that make my body go in a more lethargic metabolism.
Also gluten, milk, sugar, additives, processed foods....

The main reason I'm doing this sort of strict diet is that I keep loosing weight, with the years.
Slowly but surely.

I'm also on a parasite cleansing for the moment, that is also rough.

With the passing of years treating chronic diseases, I came to the conclusion that the gut is picture of the whole body: if the gut is bad, the whole body is bad.

If it's good, the whole body is also good.

A bit simplistic as a view, but I'm having some good results concerning clear improvement of food allergies, chronic inflammation (very reduced compared to previous years).

and my electrosensitivity is very low (compared to 6 months ago, for example).

As a summary, fasting was excellent for me, but I could only keep it for 10 days due to extreme thin body.

What I like with eating raw (or extremely controlled diets, like I'm trying now), is that I can keep doing that for MUCH longer.

My body is still in detox-mode, and I'm not hungry or in danger.


It's just a lot more work to eat 60-70% veggies + fruits and avoid carbs (eat only minimal).

It's also work to avoid milk products, as they are everywhere.

In my case, now that I cleaned my diet from milk for the first time, I feel a clear sign of inflammation after any consumption of milk products (when I decide to test or ... cheat).

Here in Paracelsus Clinic, in Switzerland, they believe milk is highly inflammatory.

In the past, I chose to ignore that, as I love butter.

Now I see their point!

Eating is a pain for me.
Nothing works. Tried all sorts of diets and supplements.
My health always gets worse.
I'm better without sugar and without milk products,
but too long without these make me become weak and
give a feeling of starvation, so then i eat 1 day some of those,
then stop again for a few days. I tried candida diets but they make it worse.
Diets dokters or naturopaths prescribed didn't work out.
I see in their reaction that they don't really know what to do.

Also, most i went to didn't seem too healthy themselves,
so how can they help me ?
And sometimes i saw their desk full of all kind of stones, but they
use wifi, cordless phones and wireless keyboards/mice.

Meri, sorry to know about that...

As I visit another forum for more than 10 years with SEVERELY chronically ill people, I know that some people get ALLERGIC or INTOLERANT to EVERYTHING.

Some even go test each of these foods and get allergic markers back to simply, everything. They are labelled with different disease names, one of the old labels went 'MCS = multiple chemical sensitivity'.

That usually follows a double problem: with food and chemicals found in houses, cars, clothes, etc.

It s getting more common than uncommon, unfortunately.

The BEST is to treat while you can STILL eat some things, because when it gets too bad, you react with inflammation to absolutely everything: if you eat, you hurt, if you don't eat, you die.

It is serious.

So BEFORE I went into that path, as my allergies / intolerances were going too high, I decided to take total control of my food again.

 It is paying back, as I can now eat all nuts - that I could not touch before - most citric fruits (still working on them) etc.

In my opinion, there is no single diet that is good, or bad. It is extremely personal.

Whatever works for you.

I'm fighting candida still eating fruits, while some people say fruits is bad.

I tried no fat diet: felt like dying. Some people say candida is caused by fat (in the liver).

I eat absolutely no added sugar, no gluten, and I know that ALL grains are hard to digest (in my case).

I do think that keeping starches (carbs) down to 10% is ideal for me. Like that, I feel nourished, not too cold, not starving.

I'm still afraid to weigh myself, so I won't do that for the moment.

In case you are really wanting to heal, I would avoid the 10 most allergenic foods (gluten and milk products are high in the list - just google, you'll find them), keep on a healthy diet of veggies (they usually are beneficial to most people), and build from there on.

More raw or not. Animal or not. Which animal, how much animal protein.
Fruits or not.


Another thing that I find is a MUST are FERMENTED foods.

 Daily varied fermented foods are like gold, in my opinion.

added sugar, in my opinion, is evil to everybody, no exception.


You need though a very high discipline, a bit like training in an Eastern martial arts discipline!!

Society and habit will always push you back to old habits!

Merializer and Jinna:

I had almost exactly the same experience, and I'm sorry that you have to deal with that.

Reducing sugar helps my concentration, and a low-FODMAP diet may help with stomach pain (but not consistently).

Maybe this would be worth looking into:

https://www.epilepsy.com/learn/treating-seizures-and-epilepsy/dietary-therapies/ketogenic-diet

I know of one guy who has seizures when he's near cell towers, and another with ES who had some benefit from anticonvulsant drugs as a kid.

its good .but for me difficult i guess

drinking warm water reduces blood sugar-tea too maybe--

i buy a lot of food i cant eat  it seems -has to stop

Karl, yeah, I already tried to go on this ketogenic diet.

The problem for me is the milk-products: butter, cream.

Milk products are on the top list of the allergenic foods. Or foods that cause inflammation.

One of the first foods to be avoided.

I LOVE cream and butter, but they do not love me!!!:)

The more I eat them, the more I go back to chronic inflammation (skin, gut, basically).
The more I get allergies.

So now I'm on low carb, zero added sugar, but high on veggies, high on avocados, high on fruits.
That suits me.

I gave up following any fixed diet as they do not fit my body.

I had to find out ONE BY ONE, each food I can eat, that won't increase my allergies or cause me inflammation.

In summer, I don't even have to pay much attention to food, as I feel so much better.

All my problems return by autumn, and stay with me until spring.

Food allergies though remain in summer too.

If you guys are starting to feel a bit anxious about food allergies, it is a good sign. Be wary, because if allergies increase, it can be life threatening.

Only when you live it, daily, you'll understand. It's absolutely NOT FUN.

While you can STILL EAT some stuff, try to find what works best for you.

I would NOT get fixed into ANY fixed diet, because I swear I did that, and in my case, NOTHING worked perfectly. Nothing.

The only thing that my body loved was FASTING.

I have no regrets for doing that, but as I said, I can only stand that for 10 days MAXIMUM.

All my inflammation symptoms disappeared after day 3 or so. I felt great. The problem starts again after day 10, due to extreme lack of body fats. I need to go back to food.

That is why I decided to do a full fasting, then slowly, re introduce foods, ONE BY ONE, until I was sure they were not harming me.

It is paying back, but it is very hard, mentally, and socially. And it is a bit time consuming.

Thanks for the advice everyone.
Appreciate it.
It's all trial and error.
I hope we all find it.

Wow everyone thanks for the responses!

I tried fasting for almost 4 days. Only ate one meal during the whole time and took a few small things to regulate blood sugar and measured my ketones.

I felt AMAZING until the morning of day 4. Overnight my ketones shot up so high. I think my body did not adjust well to the switch because my body went out of whack with the switch and became way too ketonic. Like scary, my urinary testing strips were almost maxed.

I think maybe I could do it again if I continued to have just small meals while fasting so the ketone levels stayed low.

It was also very hard to start eating again, took almost 3 days to be able to down food normally again which was not fun.

Not eating was the easy part and it felt great, it was the high ketones and trying to get out of ketosis that was a bit of a nightmare. It was super scary. I had my heart jumping out of my chest for about 10 hours which was very painful and like hell.

I am now in the process of trying to get my body back in balance since Ketosis kind of knocked my organs out of balance. Despite going through hell for that one day I think my body is better for it. And next time I will know how to handle it better. I think its really important to have a meter to test your blood for sugar and ketones as well as make sure you are supporting with supplements all the systems that get out of whack and have extra strain with the switch to ketosis. Lots of minerals, electrolytes, supplements etc. I was surprised how quick my body went into ketosis and how long it took to get out of it!

I think fasting could be really helpful but considering the delicate balance many of us have we have to tread carefully. And as you all have suggested, there are different ways to fast. And it is hard I understand because most of us dont want to lose weight. That was my main concern as well because during just this short time I went from almost 120 lbs to 110 and now it will take some time to regain the weight again.

Congrats Super Laura for the 4 days.

Things start moving on the 3rd day, for most people.

But I don't think it's only the ketones the problem. There is the problem of getting extreme acid urine, then the mobilization of toxins that is MASSIVE and way too fast.

That is what I feel. Watch out for UTI: many people get that, because of such toxins.

So adding bits of fruits, or juicing after day 3 or so, is what goes gentler in my opinion.

Detox is massive, isn't it?

It does take time to go back to food. For me, my first fasting changed my eating habits until now, for good.

If I do not add my heavy metal - toxin binders, I feel more like dying than improving, so I do add chlorella, sulfur supplements, sage, green tea, DE, etc.

but I hope your body gets used to food fast!

what helped me was reducing food intake to 2 meals a day with no snacks in between.
i can get away with this because i don't have too much physical activity.
3 meals works some days, but a lot of time 3 meals are just too much for my digestive system
and causes big problems.
it is some kind of fasting.

I think this is not a bad idea Meri. It's like a small daily fasting.

(I'm going to Chimay, Brussels and around Louvain for Xmas!!)

I do think starving the body for some hours a day (not forever though) helps the body to enter again in detox mode, that we all need so much.

but if you take mostly veggies and low carb during cold weather, it gets harder with time.

At least, for me, it did, as I got too hungry, too cold.

My body got too stressed after week 4 or so.
 I then introduced back some animals, and in between re introduced small starchy meals.

My body does not like lots of starches, but my brain does (I mean, I keep THINKING about carbs at first).

After a while, the obsession ends.

The moment I go back to higher carb intake mostly due to laziness or social circumstances (I already eat practically no added sugar for years...), inflammation re-starts, fatigue re-starts, brain fog re-starts.

It's like a passport to chronic disease, in my case.


ONly in summer I can be more relaxed about what I eat, not in winter.

And the quality of things you take in these 2 meals count a lot to keep you nourished.

I'm reading the book of Anthony Williams called the Medical Medium, about 50 foods that have healing properties according to him.

He said to concentrate on foods that pass sunlight to our cells (like fruits that thrive in sun light).

Since this week, I started to concentrate on these fruits (like mango, oranges, very green leaves..).

Even frozen, it's fine. I'll let you all know if I feel some marked difference.

With Xmas in between, it will be hard though.

But for sure, I always get ill in winter, rarely in summer. It has to do with temperature and reduced sunlight, probably.