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>Fasting is the universal method of allowing the body to heal itself This sounds like folkloric nonsense.
by fromthestart 8y ago
>Fasting is the universal method of allowing the body to heal itself
This sounds like folkloric nonsense.
- RobertRoberts 8y agoIt's how wild animals that are wounded or sick heal. How is this "folkloric nonsense"?
- alistairSH 8y agoAnimals fast on purpose to facilitate healing? Do you have a source for this? I suspect some are forced to fast because they are too injured/ill to obtain food. A positive impact from entering a massive caloric deficit when the body is actively burning calories is counter-intuitive.
- JulianMorrison 8y agoThe positive impacts of fasting are supposedly due to increased efforts by the body to scrounge and scrape for calories, which up-regulates processes that have the effect of clearing undesirable built-up matter/cells/etc.
- beagle3 8y agoAnecdotal: Not GP. I don't remember where I read it about wild animals, but my dog would have the occasional "low energy, don't want to play" day, followed by a couple of days of not eating, and then being super-energetic when he went back to eating. On one of these occasions, I took him to the vet, who said he had a fever, likely of viral cause, and that him losing appetite was perfectly natural and likely helping him heal. When I'm sick I lose my appetite (and don't eat, sometimes for a few days). Don't you lose your appetite when you are sick?
- fromthestart 8y agoSometimes I also get constipated when I get sick. Should I start practicing fecal retention?
- beagle3 8y agoThe logic of your argument eludes me. lack of will to eat --> not eating until will returns --> feeling better is supposed to be analogous to lack of ability to poop --> trying not to poop --> ? somehow?
- alistairSH 8y agoNo, unless I'm so sick I just sleep all day, I'm usually extra hungry.
- dorfsmay 8y agoCheck writings by Valter Longo. The two principles are autophagy during the fast getting of bad cells (precancerous, etc...), and hormones typically only present in kids during growth periods reappearing during refeeding (eating after fasts longer than a few days).
- davebryand 8y agoWhen you try it for yourself, you realize that it's not.
- fromthestart 8y agoThat's exactly the mentality that keeps wives' tales circulating. How often do home remedies "work" because of placebo and/or simply time?
- davebryand 8y agoOk, don't try it. :) Wive's tales and home remedies still circulate because they often work. Of course, you're not going to read that on Hacker News because it's biased by people wearing modern American blinders that don't have the humility, courage, awareness or something else, to just try for themselves. I was that way until I tried psychedelics, meditation, pranayama breathing, lucid dreaming and many other alternative modalities just two years ago. All love--good luck on your journey!
- fromthestart 8y ago>American blinders that don't have the humility, courage, awareness No, it's about having some degree of scientific rigor, as opposed to blind anecdote.
- davebryand 8y agoScientific rigor is not just about gathering people as lab subjects, experimenting on them and publishing your findings in peer reviewed journals. In my experience, the strongest science, where the deepest knowledge arises, is by systematically performing experiments on yourself. This isn't possible for all things, but it's 100% available for fasting. Thanks for the conversation, best to you.