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Optimal fasting frequency


tanuki

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I was wondering how often do you make a full day fasting as I haven't seen any research regarding optimal frequency.
Right now I am on CR and IF with 8 hours eating window - do you think that adding on top of that 24-48 hours fast once a month(week?) would provide me any additional benefit?

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How do you ensure it during fasting, just by taking multavitamin supplement with 100% RDi?

Normally I have more than 100% of RDA for vitamins so I wouldn't worry about deficiency at fasting days though I am not sure if body has a storage mechanism for the minerals, I couldn't find much data about that

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On 2/8/2021 at 6:50 PM, tanuki said:

Right now I am on CR and IF with 8 hours eating window - do you think that adding on top of that 24-48 hours fast once a month(week?) would provide me any additional benefit? 

I believe longer fasts (3+ days)  would  very likely provide benefits not obtainable by shorter fasts.  Once a week would be excessive.  Once a month would be an intensive program.   Two or three times a year would  a maintenance regime.

Valter Longo:

Quote

A label that is now widely used by the media is “Intermittent Fasting.” I believe this represents a problematic direction because, like the “Mediterranean Diet” or “eating in moderation” it allows people to improvise and pick and choose periods of fasting that range from 12 hours to weeks, giving the impression that just because they all involve some period of “abstention from food” they are similar or equivalent and all provide health benefits. In fact, they have very different effects.

For example, if we consider fasting as the period necessary to switch from a primarily sugar-burning mode to a fat-burning mode, then only periods of abstention from food lasting two or three days or more can be considered fasting.

The same length of fasting appears to be necessary to trigger the activation of “regenerative” programs. [Eg. stem cell regeneration]

This does not mean that shorter periods of abstention from food cannot be beneficial, but that we should not use words like “Intermittent Fasting” to include interventions that are very different and have very different effects just like we don’t want to place in the same category walking for fifteen minutes and running a marathon.   The Longevity Diet (pp. 101-102)

 

Go here to see short video of autophagy expert Guido Kroemer stating that  based on his studies, it takes 3-4 days of fasting  to induce  serious autophagy in humans.

6 hours ago, tanuki said:

taking multavitamin supplement with 100% RDi?

You could do that,  but personally I wouldn't worry about it for a very short fast, if you are basically healthy.

Edited by Sibiriak
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9 hours ago, tanuki said:

How do you ensure it during fasting, just by taking multavitamin supplement with 100% RDi?

Normally I have more than 100% of RDA for vitamins so I wouldn't worry about deficiency at fasting days though I am not sure if body has a storage mechanism for the minerals, I couldn't find much data about that

I had just to say that because there is always the danger that fasting for health is taken as an excuse to indulge anorexic tendencies.

So, what I meant is that across the board the food intake must be adequate, in energy, macro and micronutrients, I would not worry about RDAs during fasts.

And of course the effect of short fasts as Sibiriak wrote, are different from the effects of longer fasts. Nobody knows what's the optimum fast. We only have estimates. And my considered opinion is that optimum fast varies across individuals. Valter Longo concept of 5 days is probably a reasonable estimate. And best of all, he provided methods to deceive the body by fasting while eating a little! his idea is devilish but apparently,  it works in many people.

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Interesting, I never tried a fast longer than 1 day, 3-4 days seems quite scary as my brain usually get foggy on the one day fast 😅
And I have heard about fast mimicking diet but personally I felt better if I don't eat anything at all during the fasting day than when I eat a little

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