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Sthira, I've discovered everything tastes better after a short fast. But 10 days followed by a leather belt seems extreme. Hopefully it was made from organic untanned leather.

Mitch Hedberg:

"I went to a restaurant, and I saw a guy wearing a leather jacket, eating a hamburger, drinking a glass of milk. I said, "Dude, you are a cow. The metamorphosis is complete. Don't fall asleep or I will tip you over!"

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Thanks, but it's honestly not that difficult once I accept a few rules. The more important question to me is -- is this self-experiment of many fasts healthy for my body? In total for 2016 I've fasted for 62 days -- mostly short 3, 4, 5 days fasts. Ten was the longest. No wait: I did twelve days back in June. But I've no idea if this is good for me, and judging by my often low moods and terrible writing on this site, I'm not suggesting anyone follow my path. But between fasts I only eat non-processed whole plant foods, and I'm mostly vegan with the exception of my leather periodical table pants belt and cream in coffee (which I've decided to eliminate (again...))

62/365= 0.17 = 17% of the years spent fasting....

Yikes! Ha ragione! And the thing is the year isn't even finished. And the other thing is despite the fasts I don't appear to be aging any differently than my peers. Despite the determination you admire, I'm aging right on schedule. The other, other thing is: nothing slows aging. These are experiments, and I'm an extremist. And I do plan to start an intermittent fasting schedule. But you're making me pause. Yet what if I don't get hungry? Do I eat when I don't want food? I'm quite sure I don't have an eating disorder, but then again nothing is normal about my life. And normal, well, many people around me -- feeding themselves Mountain Dew and Doritos and RX Replacement Meal Bars to sustain themselves -- consider that they don't have eating disorders either.

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Sthira, I remember many years ago reading the classic literature on fasting, like the book from Dr Shelton. he said that best thing on a long fast is to start eating again when hunger becomes really overwhelming. That should happen after 2-3 weeks or more of fasting (in an healthy individual). One fast like that per year is guaranteed to utterly regenerate the system, providing you don't mind the weight loss (which is going to be recovered in a few weeks though). That's pretty much feasible for a fast-tolerant person like you seem to be. Then you might add shorter fasts according to need, but only when the system requires.

You don't get hungry, providing that's your natural body regulation, according to your discrimination, you don't eat. If, away from fasts you are extremely thin you may be starving yourself, or if your lab values are below thresholds, but I don't need to tell you this.

 

One caveat about long fasts, you should know what you are doing and be cautious about low pressure episodes and faintings. Refeeding should be done with extreme caution and patience.

I hope I'm not saying things already said in previous posts, or things too much obvious. There is some fundamental literature on fasting, like the cited Herbert Shelton, Upton Sinclair and others.

 

http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/30977.The_Literature_of_Fasting

 

Whereas intermittent fasting sounds more like a recent concept, promoted by Valter Longo, the 5:2 scheme and presently Jason Fung and many Paleo dieters and low carbers. I knew nothing about it until a few months ago.

 

 

No different aging? Are you sure? Can you determine the rate of aging of internal organs, of the immune system, of the nervous system? My gut feeling is that external aging may be governed prevalently by genetic makeup, like whitening of hairs, wrinkles (which are also related to sun and open air exposure...) and more.

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I wonder if our life expectancy might be similar to our height potential? 

 

As I understand it, researchers who have been studying twins, estimate that a person’s height is ~80% genetic and ~20% nutrition + environmental factors (i.e. disease).     [Combined Genome Scans for Body Stature in 6,602 European Twins: Evidence for Common Caucasian Loci]

 

Consider the Japanese:

Overall, they used to be much shorter than Northern Europeans. Now they are as tall. Why? Because they get more protein than their ancestors did. In other words, their new diet lets them live up to their genetic potential.”  [A new study identifies potential height genes]

 

On the other hand, the average height in the US is not significantly different than it was 50 years ago. Possibly suggesting there is an upper limit to height beyond which our genes cannot take us.  

 

 

Note: Shorter people may live longer, so full height potential may not be a good thing ....? :unsure:   [ Is height related to longevity?  ]

 

 

 

In any case, something similar may be true regarding our life span.  We can only optimize our nutrition and environment up to a point.  After that point, our genetics may rule the roost. 

 

If multiple long fasts improve the quality of your life, you win!  Otherwise …….

 

-Pea

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Thank you for the book list, McCoy, I'd like to read some of those. I really love to read about fasting while actually laying around and fasting -- it seems to add to the placebo effect!

 

Refeeding should be done with extreme caution and patience.

 

Hmm, I'm not so sure overly delicate refeeding is all that important (at least in my case of frequent short fasts). I end my fasts usually by steaming some greens (spinach often) with some olive oil and maybe some berries, then I feel great. And after a few hours I may just return to eating my habitual plant based vegan gig. Depends on the fast and how I feel. I'm careful, but refeeding is no biggie. If I gorge after a fast (and I've done this) then I suffer, and I learn: don't do that again. And by suffering I just mean a swollen stomach and maybe an urgent bowel movement.

 

Maybe the idea that refeeding after fasting is dangerous came from the starvation experiments from Minnesota? Or giving holocaust survivors chocolate bars? Quickly feasting after a long fast seems really dumb -- and my body will quickly reject big feasty ideas because my stomach shrank during the fast. Who wants to feast with a shrunken stomach?

 

Also, many who take up water fasts are frutarians and they fast much longer than I do. So when they refeed, they bring those fruitarian ideas into their refeed, then call it gospel. Maybe fruits are easier on "digestion" when refeeding, and so sometimes I do refeed using watermelon and grapes. Frozen sweet cherries OMG I crave them right now! But I really don't subjectively feel too differently after refeeding with watermelon or refeeding with steamed collards or broccoli...

 

If multiple long fasts improve the quality of your life, you win! Otherwise …….

 

-Pea

Yes indeed. It's an informed gamble, a hunch, a self-experiment, and who knows if multiple short fasts will do anything good for my body. But we all do know this: nothing exists today to slow aging and repair its cumulative damage. So until those tech advances outlined in SENs come online, fasting seems like a relatively safe and free place to hang out and await the miraculous science we're all hoping will happen.
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Mccoy, said:

Hi Cloud, I discovered that you probably are living not very far from where where I live in Italy, strange to come across another Italian in such a niche forum like this one. I saw the pictures of the Sognamondo camping site you linked in another thread, I drove by that place quite a few times and that's a pretty attractive site, in between the lagoon and the open sea.

 

 

 

Hello Mccoy, actually I live with my family in the North Italy, but my original place is in the South. The camping site is really nice, I think I and my family will return there every year! If next  year you are planning to go there make me know!!! 

 

PS have you watched the last year 's conference of Luigi Fontana at the Scuola Normale I posted some time ago? I did find it very interesting and tried also to make a summary for English speaking people, but you could do better than me...

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Satchin Panda just finished me off with 4 devastating words, which were "No coffee or tea".

 

 

 

I have just finished to read this very nice and enjoyable book, that reports the research of Satchin Panda and Mattson. 

 

The title is : 

Buddha's Diet: The Ancient Art of Losing Weight Without Losing Your Mind

https://www.amazon.com/Buddhas-Diet-Ancient-Losing-Without/dp/0762460466

 

As zen practioner I have find also the buddist part interesting and accurate and the title with that "not losing your Mind" is terrific! :-)

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Mccoy, said:

Hi Cloud, I discovered that you probably are living not very far from where where I live in Italy, strange to come across another Italian in such a niche forum like this one. I saw the pictures of the Sognamondo camping site you linked in another thread, I drove by that place quite a few times and that's a pretty attractive site, in between the lagoon and the open sea.

 

 

 

Hello Mccoy, actually I live with my family in the North Italy, but my original place is in the South. The camping site is really nice, I think I and my family will return there every year! If next  year you are planning to go there make me know!!! 

 

PS have you watched the last year 's conference of Luigi Fontana at the Scuola Normale I posted some time ago? I did find it very interesting and tried also to make a summary for English speaking people, but you could do better than me...

 

 

Cloud, Gargano is sure an excellent place where to spend the holidays and the whole of Puglie as well. I've been there a few days this year, don't know about next one and sure we can get in touch.

I never cease to be amazed by the olive groves who extend to the horizon. And by the ancient olive trees, 'the Queen' is one of the most ancient, with an estimated age of 1400 years, I'm going to link a pic, don't know if such trees bears olives and if they are tasty.

 

ulivo_michelle_obama.jpg

 

I'm going to search the link about Fontana, this forum has a little too many interesting things...

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PMID: 16517498 DOI: 10.1080/10715760500250182
 
 
Sorensen M1, Sanz A, Gómez J, Pamplona R, Portero-Otín M, Gredilla R, Barja G.
 

Abstract

 

While moderate caloric restriction has beneficial effects on animal health state, fasting may be harmful. The present investigation was designed to test how fasting affects oxidative stress, and to find out whether the effects are opposite to those previously found in caloric restriction studies. We have focused on one of the main determinants of aging rate: the rate of mitochondrial free radical generation. Different parameters related to lipid and protein oxidative damage were also analyzed. Liver mitochondria from rats subjected to 72 h of fasting leaked more electrons per unit of O(2) consumed at complex III, than mitochondria from ad libitum fed rats. This increased leak led to a higher free radical generation under state 3 respiration using succinate as substrate. Regarding lipids, fasting altered fatty acid composition of hepatic membranes, increasing the double bond and the peroxidizability indexes. In accordance with this, we observed that hepatic membranes from the fasted animals were more sensitive to lipid peroxidation. Hepatic protein oxidative damage was also increased in fasted rats. Thus, the levels of oxidative modifications, produced either indirectly by reactive carbonyl compounds (N(epsilon)-malondialdehyde-lysine), or directly through amino acid oxidation (glutamic and aminoadipic semialdehydes) were elevated due to the fasting treatment in both liver tissue and liver mitochondria. The current study shows that severe food deprivation increases oxidative stress in rat liver, at least in part, by increasing mitochondrial free radical generation during state 3 respiration and by increasing the sensitivity of hepatic membranes to oxidative damage, suggesting that fasting and caloric restriction have different effects on liver mitochondrial oxidative stress.

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  • 1 month later...

Study provides neuronal mechanism for the benefits of fasting

 

December 1, 2016

 

A study from the Buck Institute offers for the first time an explanation for the benefits of fasting at the neuronal level, providing a possible mechanism for how fasting can afford health benefits. Publishing on December 1st in Neuron, researchers used fruit fly larvae to uncover the presence of a molecular pathway that responds to nutrient scarcity and lowers synapse activity at the junctions between neurons and muscle cells. Specific effects in response to changing nutrient availability at the level of the synapse has not been reported before.

 

 

"On the one hand, our findings might sound counter-intuitive because we always think of fasting as being beneficial and here we have found blockage of a natural neuronal activity," said senior author and Buck Institute professor Pejmun Haghighi, PhD. "On the other hand, we think that we might actually be answering the question of why fasting is beneficial. Perhaps it's a good thing that when nutrients are unavailable, an organism reduces neurotransmitter release and thus saves a good proportion of its overall energy expenditure."

 

Additionally, Haghighi added, neurotransmission requires continuous orchestration of signal transmission steps and this stress could lead to accumulated damage in neurons. "Our findings suggest that one of the reasons that fasting is beneficial is that it gives the nervous system a break and calms things down," he said.

 

Dampening of synaptic activity occurred within three hours of removing nutrients from the larval food. The inhibition was pronounced, reducing activity by half. "It's really amazing that a change in nutrient intake can have such dramatic influences on neuron activity on such a short time scale," said the study's co-lead author Grant Kauwe, PhD, a postdoctoral research fellow in the Haghighi lab. "It demonstrates how quickly changes caused by fasting can occur."

 

Researchers have long wondered exactly how caloric restriction extends lifespan and slows age-related disease in a range of species, but the impetus for the current study actually stemmed from Haghighi's decades-long interest in understanding the molecular mechanisms that regulate neurotransmitter release at synapses. In particular, he has focused on a phenomenon called synaptic homeostasis, which is a way that neuronal circuits maintain activity within a set range to ensure stable and reliable communication.

 

 

In 2012, Haghighi's team published a paper showing synaptic homeostasis was controlled by an enzyme, the target of rapamycin (TOR), which plays a critical role in regulating lifespan in a wide range of organisms from yeast to mice. This finding connected on a molecular level how nervous system function and lifespan regulation are intertwined.

 

TOR plays many roles, but one of its primary tasks is to function like a wrench loosening and tightening the control of protein synthesis in response to nutrients, specifically amino acid availability. While previous evidence had suggested that fasting influences neuronal activity and neurotransmitter release, Haghighi realized that no research had linked TOR's known ability to regulate nutrients and lifespan with TOR's role in synaptic homeostasis.

 

To determine the molecular details about how nutrient reduction affects synapse function, Haghighi's team combined their genetic and molecular tools with imaging and electrophysiological techniques to see what happened when they changed the food composition of Drosophila larvae. At the basic level, their experiments were recording neuron activity in muscle, Kauwe explained. The synapse between a neuron and a muscle - the neuromuscular junction - of a fruit fly larva turns out to be a good model for studying how the nervous system works in general, which can be applied to other organisms, including humans.

 

The team started by restricting protein in the larvae's diet, since protein restriction was already known to reduce TOR activity. Surprisingly, they discovered that synaptic homeostasis was unaffected by dietary restriction, despite lower TOR activity. However, transient removal of food, called acute fasting, completely suppressed synaptic homeostasis within a few hours.

 

The team's further experiments delved into what else beyond TOR was involved to evoke the suppression. They showed genetically that there was an additional response coming from the transcription factor - Forkhead box O (Foxo) - which in turn enhances the transcription of one of the translational regulators: eukaryotic initiation factor 4E binding protein (4E-BP). Furthermore, it is the balance between TOR and 4E-BP that controls synapse stability.

 

Stability is a hallmark of healthy neuronal circuits and disruption of this stability in the form of increased activity at the synapse may lead to neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia or epilepsy.

 

"We might have some real insight into the advantages of dampening of synaptic activity that is caused by fasting," said Haghighi, for example, how fasting can be beneficial for epileptic patients, who can experience reduced seizures when restricting calories.

 

Kauwe and others in Haghighi's lab are exploring why such a change in the set point of synaptic transmission occurs so rapidly, and how dampening neuron activity might be beneficial in treating, or even preventing, neurodegenerative diseases. "I think uncovering this mechanism is an important basic discovery that could lead to tangible ways of thinking about design of therapeutic approaches for neurodegenerative diseases in the near future," said Haghighi.

 

 

More information: Acute Fasting Regulates Retrograde Synaptic Enhancement through a 4E-BP-Dependent Mechanism, Neuron, DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2016.10.063

 

Provided by: Buck Institute for Research on Aging

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Interesting to have more evidence of the omnipresence of mTOR as a metabolic mastermind in the human -mammalians' body.  

The scientific rationale is sure compelling. Fasting is a switch by which we can inhibit the activity of mTOR, which puts at rest many bodily functions, mainly related to anabolism, whereas the catabolic functions are awakened.

 

As far as I understand it so far, if David sabatini, Valter Longo and others are right, prevailing catabolism= longevity.

 

Another school of thought, cited by Michael Rae in another thread, contends that an abrupt switchoff of mTOR with its acute catabolic affect makes up a stressful factor not conducive to longevity. But, as logic goes, CR is another method mimicking fast and whose purpose is just to inhibit mTOR.

 

Actually, refeeding after a fast involves the activation of mTOR, inevitably, since we gain weight if we refeed correctly. Although this may be true about mTOR in the muscle cell tissues, and not in the organs since most weightloss is muscle mass loss. Whereas continuos CR sans fasting might involve a continuos OFF mode for mTOR.

early afternoon ruminations.

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  • 1 month later...

I know this thread has already kind of wound down, but I am in the middle of a 14 day fast (day 9) so if anyone has questions I can be a resource. Been at it for a couple of years experimenting with everything from Intermittent Fasting to Pure Water Fasting (previous personal record 7 days) and Fasting Mimicking.

Also, thanks for that podcast with Ray Cronise! 

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In 2016 I fasted a total of 92 days. That's about 25% of my days spent in a fasted state. Longest fast was 13 days. I really should know if this is healthy for me -- I feel great, light as a feather and super strong in the ballet leaping around. I'd like to get some blood tests done, it's just so much damned money for transient figures. I look at Al's years and years of meticulous numbers, and I wonder what was learned.

 

Anyway, I'll keep fasting and recording refeeding in COM in 2017 because I sense it's healthier (for me) than a continuously fed CRON diet. For what it's worth, fasting does nothing beneficial or detrimental to my longstanding battle against depression. Depression is straight up evil: be thankful if you ain't got it. But it's in my genes; my Jewish grandmother shot herself.

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Anyway, I'll keep fasting and recording refeeding in COM in 2017 because I sense it's healthier (for me) than a continuously fed CRON diet. For what it's worth, fasting does nothing beneficial or detrimental to my longstanding battle against depression. Depression is straight up evil: be thankful if you ain't got it. But it's in my genes; my Jewish grandmother shot herself.

 

First of all, congratulations for having spent 1/4 of the time fasting. That's a record as far as I know. That amounts to an average caloric restriction across the year, plus the side effects of stem cell rejuvenation on refeeding. Not to mention the rest and regeneration of the digestive system.

The above is not just to lift a little your mood from depression.

You sure have tried all the advised supplementation in these cases like DHA-EPA and so on, what about a ketogenic diet?

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You sure have tried all the advised supplementation in these cases like DHA-EPA and so on, what about a ketogenic diet?

 

My guess is that if depression isn't relieved during his longer fasts, then a ketogenic diet is unllikely to have an impact, at least looking at it in terms of carbohydrates.  And if the depression was aggravated by a lack of dietary fat which a ketogenic diet might correct, then the fasts ought to be making the depression noticeably worse. 

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I've not tried a ketogenic diet nor have I been inspired. But I do eat a lot of fat, fat that's mostly fancy-pants olive oil, organic nuts, seeds, avocados, stuff you eat, too.

 

Stepping aside, I don't think diet and nutrition have much to do with depression, at least in my case. If I could omega-3 or 4 or omega 24,000 my way out of it I would, if I could eat my way out of the pit, don't you know I would, immediately, if I could fast my way out, yes, dance or yoga or career-chase or bed-hop, travel, write, paint, sculpt, make hippie pottery, I would. Medications don't work, nor meditations, psychologists are sweet, they don't work, nor does CBT, psychiatrists, I've never met a psychiatrist who's hasn't seemed completely depressed, too, neither literature nor music help, being dumb doesn't help, not being smart, sigh, nothing: it's a disease of not sadness without a cure in sight.

 

Humor helps. Dumb and silly jokes. Being out in the trees or marsh or swimming in the foul ocean helps. The desert, those sharp defiant succulents growing under the worst of conditions, they help. The stars, the magnificence of up, that definitely helps, and dreaming of me and you in a pod being slung into infinity with nothing to do but stare at the marvels of slow motion explosions in the cosmos, yes, and so soon a VR headset with fake falling stars will provide the floating dreams into the night I'll never reach. The thought of cryonics helps: vitrify and bring us back when AI has finally figured out the black dog's bullshit.

 

I don't tell people that I fast. Doesn't just that disclosure of hiding sound suspicious of even more mental disorders? Very few people are accepting. It's hard to communicate hey I'm excited I'm fasting to even to the gentlest of souls. So it'd be nice to find a fasting community online that's not dominated by 15-year dancers with eating disorders. I hate being lumped in with the eating disorder people -- not because I stigmatize them -- rather because this fasting thing is just a temporary twist in my light: I'm fasting because it feels better than not fasting. Each time I fast, I extend it a little -- keen that I'm overdoing -- I inwardly say now I'll do a one day fast, then oops, I forgot to eat so it's two, and at two my body is so free and easy, light, like I'm nothing, and so three then four then suddenly it's a week. Then one morning I awake and my body says:

 

eat

now

 

and so I do, knowing this explanation sounds woo: listening to your own body is very wise advice.

 

I weigh much more now than I did while practicing CR. Isn't that odd? Longo has an explanation I believe.

 

Fasting makes me lose weight only while fasting -- weight comes right back up as my body attempts to store fat again for the hard times it thinks are coming.

 

But when I was on CR, back there in those days of 1,600, 1,650, 1,700, 1,850 calories per day, people asked me frequently hey what's wrong, aye, are you sick, are you anorexic, politely, what's happening, huh, we're concerned about you, and yet now no one says anything about my weight. I'm not severe bones hiding the poking within oversized clothes layers. Also I don't care as much what people think about me: is that a sign of aging? Or is that more mental instability?

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I'll keep sharing that I just climbed out of another peaceful 7-day fast (it wasn't strictly water only, I had coffee everyday). Every fast is a different fast just like you can't step into the same river twice kinda vibe. This fast was very easy -- nearly effortless -- and I kept thinking why stop now, I'm not hungry, I'm not weak, I'm not tired, if anything I'm too alert, too energized, I've too much energy, I need to calm down, spaz, I even donated two units of blood on day 4.

 

Someone wrote any idiot can fast, but it takes some fine skill to break that fast. And this is true for me. The fasting comes effortlessly and with joy; the refeeding, yikes, well, I'm finding that trickier. Trickier first because I'm really not interested in food very much. Not that I've lost all appetite, more like I've found a deep winter calm that I'm loathe to exit. Curled in darkness, a hibernation, like a leafless tree I feel like I'm over a frozen pond, sleeping, waiting, regenerating, fasting the mystery, like a gift that feels very natural during the winter season, it feels natural to just let go of food. Chewing, swallowing all that complicated chemistry, who want it. And breathing is deeper, less urgent, my heart rate is sometimes like 40, blood pressure sinks to 90/50, other metrics mysterious in suspension. Longo says something nice here: paraphrase: it's not the fasting that's doing the work, it's the body, there's a higher intelligence we don't understand through science yet. And he says the refeeding is key to fasting: fasting puts the body on hold, refeeding awakens it again.

 

So during refeeding, which I'm hesitant to break my fast, but I'm compelled, so I stick now to easily digested fruit like watermelon and papaya, berries, melons, citrus, anything juicy -- but these are summertime oranges from another continent, and as delicious as they feel with sharper buds now, that fruit feels somehow out of rhythm. Fruit may be easy on my reawakening digestion, I suppose, and so twirled together green smoothies go down nicely, too. For a few days after breaking a fast this is all I want -- nothing -- but sweet, juicy, summertime fruits are a distant second, so I eat them.

 

But if I could just go all winter eating almost nothing, I probably would. So it's society that calls me out, and making a living with my body is what prevents me falling into winter more deeply, from right on fasting winter happily away.

 

Embarrassing admission: I once thought breathatarianism is probably coo-coo-clocked pseudoscience, and guess I still do, but I understand inedia a little better now, and think I like a winter flirtation with it. Like snow falling silently.

 

But after a few days of refeeding on fruit I'll must return to eating heavier winter foods like root vegetables and dark spices and cabbage soups and stews, crucifers and probiotics and what mushroom might grow in the cold, damp darkness of a sinking winter?

 

I plan to keep exploring one 5-day fasting period per month, I'll plan 12, but I also know myself pretty well, and I know I'll extend each fast out from 5 to 6 maybe to 7 to 10, and from there I'll take it as it comes. Starvation, I think, might be peaceful, easy, even pleasurable suicide exit when it comes time for that -- I never understood that idea, but letting go can feel quite natural.

 

Meanwhile, low weight limits me from socially from climbing ever dangerously down. I really don't know how Michael Rae functions at 115 pounds. For me, at 130, the nadir of each fast, my body just feels too much like air, too "vata" as the Ayurvedists will scold, mine will lower her eyebrows and wag a craggy finger: "Vata Imbalance" she hisses.

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Sthira, as a young lad I strove to reach your present capability to withstand fasts. Alas unsuccessfully. You wrote some very interesting considerations which bespeak of an obvious systemic adaptation. Your body might have become very apt to recycle aminoacids or other nutrients, scavenging efficiently whatever it can.

Or your material body might have adapted at distilling 'prana', the life energy of Hindu philosophy, from water, air and lightwaves. The metaphysics of fasting describes such capabilities.

 

By the way, what's your stature? to me the nadir of fasting would be much below 130. Reasoning in BMI units allows comparisons to be made. And I am also curious to the kind of physical activity which your job entails.

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  • 1 month later...

Regarding water restriction, I did a cursory search of Pubmed for "water restriction" where wasn't much.

I couldn't find any lifespan studies of rodents comparing water restriction or "time restricted drinking" to ad lib access to water.

I have asked Professor Luigi Fontana about that. His response:

mini_617545luigi.png

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  • 8 months later...

I recently began intermittent fasting.  On Tuesdays and Thursdays of every week, I drink water only.  I also take vitamins.  I am concerned that all the vitamins I take (Vitamin C, D, Resveratrol, Fish Oil, Niacin, Arganine, DHEA, a Multi Vitamin, and Curcumin) could trick my body into thinking it is eating, thus preventing me from enjoying all the benefits of the fast.  Does anyone have any insight into my concern?

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Micronutrients are not comparable to macronutrients, although some compounds like caffeine during fasting, with its ergogenic effect, might prevent the body from fully switching into the repair & manteinance mode.

 

Probably you don't need to take vitamins while you are fasting and can keep taking' em on the feeding days. On the other side, Valter Longo during his FMD (highly CR 5-days regimen) suggests to take vitamins...

 

I personally wouldn't take them, lest there is some slight interference with the metabolic mode we are striving to boost by total fasting.

 

By the way, that sounds like a pretty good schedule, providing you are able not to overindulge in between fast days.

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Vitamin D levels don't change rapidly so you could take more when not fasting and skip it while fasting.   Vitamin D supplements typically contain oil and I'd also likely skip the fish oil and arginine (amino acid) as these are all caloric.  Though I expect the effect is small from all combined and it likely doesn't matter a lot.

 

I would consider consuming salt/electrolytes while fasting which typically increases their excretion.

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Thank you both, Todd and Mccoy, for the advice.  I have decided not to take any vitamins on fast days.

 

Mccoy, I have managed to control the impulse to gorge myself on non fast days.  I am eating a plant based, whole food diet that most closely resembles the mediteranean diet.  I have lost about 23 lbs. in 7 weeks and my body fat percentage has dropped from 26% to just over 20%.  I hope to get my body fat percentage down to about 10%.  

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