11 ms·

Anecdote, but this may explain why I feel so much healthier when I'm fasting regularly. Turns out, if you stop putting everything but water/salt in your body,

Anecdote, but this may explain why I feel so much healthier when I'm fasting regularly. Turns out, if you stop putting everything but water/salt in your body, there's not much left that causes inflammation.

legerdemain 5y ago
Inflammation is a basic life process, not a reaction to the food you eat. Inflammation plays an active part in wound-healing. Teething in infants has an inflammatory component. Systemic inflammation is ubiquitous during and following parturition in mammals. There is inflammation everywhere, it's as generic a word as "oxidation" and "metabolism."
- tartoran 5y ago
  That's like saying cell division is a basic life process and nothing can stop this process from going haywire, but what about cancer. It is widely believed that inflammation levels spike for certain foods and the overall effect on the body is not optimal to say the least.
  - JMTQp8lwXL 5y ago
    There's a middle ground: some is probably beneficial in certain cases, but you can have too much of a good thing-- then it's an issue.
    - tartoran 5y ago
      Yes, that is obvious. It is a natural process as much as apoptosis or cell suicide is.
- atat7024 5y ago
  Every time you eat, the body enters a state of heightened inflammation. This is well documented. Please don't spread disinformation.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - voxl 5y ago
    Two things: First, if this is as well documented as you say then you should provide such documentation as you seem to think it should be at the finger tips of others. Second, your comment doesn't actually counter the main point of what you are responding to. The point is that what "inflammation" means is too general. Even if it is true that you enter a "heightened inflammation" state when eating, that doesn't discredit the idea that inflammation as a category is being overloaded.
  - darkteflon 5y ago
    Pseudoscience schooling science.
    - andy_ppp 5y ago
      No, please do some research, even a cursory Google leads to many papers on this.
  - andy_ppp 5y ago
    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170116121912.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170116121912.h... For example suggests this is true...
    - atat7024 5y ago
      Yeah, honestly this is no different than real life. People don't want to be told that alcohol, sugar, too many calories, etc inflames the hell out of the body. So be it. Wait for your own wakeup call. I hope it never comes.
- rsync 5y ago
  "Inflammation is a basic life process, not a reaction to the food you eat. Inflammation plays an active part in wound-healing. Teething in infants has an inflammatory component. Systemic inflammation is ubiquitous during and following parturition in mammals. There is inflammation everywhere, it's as generic a word as "oxidation" and "metabolism."" Everything you have said is true. What I think you are missing is that there is both a per-calorie inflammation cost for all food inputs and a minimum inflammatory startup cost just to metabolize at all. More simply: 1000 calories spread across two meals will generate more inflammation than 1000 calories in a single meal. There are two analogies that I think are useful when thinking about this: First, introducing food inputs appears to be an interrupt for most other bodily activities - even very essential ones like sleep and reproduction, etc. You might consider how many hours each day your body spends not digesting. It doesn't take much to increase that by 50% or more... Second, electric motors like pumps and fans have failures ("deaths") that are much more accurately predicted by number of start-stop cycles than by the number of hours run. Startup is expensive for these devices and I suspect that startup is expensive for our food metabolism as well.
  - andy_ppp 5y ago
    Yes, also we know cell machinery operates in a different mode when the body is without fuel, it’s moves in a repair/conserve mode that includes preferential autophagy of damaged cells. It makes sense, eating used to be extremely dangerous so the body mounts an immune response including inflammation every time.
    - jk7tarYZAQNpTQa 5y ago
      > eating used to be extremely dangerous You're talking a very long time ago. Shouldn't that be already disregarded from an evolutionary POV?
      - MrBuddyCasino 5y ago
        > You're talking a very long time ago. We've made strong progress in food security in the last 100-200 years, not sure about before that. I suspect hunter/gatherers had it actually better than farmers. What time spans are you talking about?
- andy_ppp 5y ago
  No-one is say all inflammation is bad, just that constantly being in that state is really bad for you...
- nabla9 5y ago
  Inflammation is immune system response. Nothing to do with metabolism or oxidation.
  - keymone 5y ago
    You’re wrong, insulin is inflammatory hormone, google it.
    - nabla9 5y ago
      Googling ... Result: Insulin is anti-inflammatory and antiatherosclerotic hormone.
      - keymone 5y ago
        Ok, this is dumb, I meant to say there is connection between insulin and inflammatory processes (hence it is definitely connected to metabolism), insulin itself has anti-inflammatory effect, but insulin resistance and chronic inflammation are also linked. And I managed to say something completely opposite. Sorry.
kossTKR 5y ago
Same here. It's the closest thing to an actual wonder drug i have ever come across. My skin clears up, brainfog disappears, the white in my eyes get brighter, etc. After reading a bit i have come to the same conclusion - if your diet is already extremely clean / bland, maybe you won't get the same effect, but for most people that eats lots of different foods, processed stuff, fast food, alcohol, harsh additives, fried/burned food etc. on occasion then i think you really need to give yourself a break at least once a month. For a minimum of 48 hours.
- wsinks 5y ago
  I'm here for it. You're saying that a water only fast for approximately 48 hours once every full moon helps out? I've done some intermittent fasting before (I think that's where you make sure you don't eat after 18:00 and only start at 9:00)
  - kossTKR 5y ago
    Yes, exactly how long probably depends on a lot of factors, but the benefits really starts for me after 30+ hours. Drinking water with potassium + magnesium + salt also helps a lot, to replenish electrolytes, but some people can manage without. Some people can continue workouts, others continue for 7+ days. It's all about experimentation. Atm. i start each week fasting and just fast for as long as it feels ok. Often 1-3 days. I would recommend 2 fasts per month 36-48 hours, and with electrolyte water for newcomers. Off course starting weight, activity level etc. is also important factors, i'm personally trying to lose some "corona weight" atm.
    - DoreenMichele 5y ago
      I really appreciate some of the detailed comments here, but I will caution people that if you have a serious medical condition you may find fasting is a lot harder on you than the above suggests it will be. If it benefits you, it may get easier over time. I have a serious medical condition. I used to routinely throw up when I was even just underfed for one day. It now takes longer than one day for me to start having strong reactions. Fasting and semi-fasting have been beneficial for my condition, but it was amazingly hard on me for a really long time and is still not easy. I tend to semi-fast for somewhere between one and two days (often around 36 hours) most months. I've done longer -- up to a week -- but two per month for a newcomer sounds like a lot to me and I assume that's because of how hard it is on me. So YMMV and probably will.
heavyset_go 5y ago
Fasting also has a significant impact on the immune system, causing it to downregulate certain immune cells and responses, and to upregulate others. The results you feel might not be from the lack of inflammation from food, but from a change in immune responses, some of which can reduce inflammation and other bad feelings.
gopalv 5y ago
> why I feel so much healthier when I'm fasting regularly. Considering this is Ramadan and fasting is pretty much on-topic, I notice a big difference between the religious fasts and the self-regulated ones. The ramadan fasting without water seems to result in a net weight loss between the morning and the first meal. On the other hand, people like me who do drink water/electrolytes, see our weight go up in the day from drinking water to compensate for the hunger. A small part of what you experience might just be reaching adequate hydration and dropping salt levels to a more healthy level over the day.
- mahkeiro 5y ago
  Ramadan is not really about fasting in the way science is studying it. During Ramadan people really eat a lot when it is allowed. It may be considered intermittent fasting...
treeman79 5y ago
Was in a massive Sjogrens flare. Stopped eating for a month. Collapsing aside, my inflammation was fixed. Did a month on sweet potatoes. Very boring but same result.
- cauliflower2718 5y ago
  Why sweet potatoes?
  - mkoubaa 5y ago
    Yeah why not cauliflower
    - nwienert 5y ago
      Okinawa diet is some 40% sweet potatoes and top percentile life span so can’t hurt.
      - foerbert 5y ago
        Sure it could. You can't just isolate some portion of a highly complex system and claim that the isolated portion will be beneficial in any similar system. Just for an extreme example to make the point - say some diet included a poisonous component as well as the antidote. Those eating the diet may well be just fine. However if somebody else simply looked at the poisonous part and copied only that, they would not do so well. I'm not saying sweet potatoes are bad. And I'm sure this was a somewhat flippant statement, but this is the kind of thinking we're very prone to and I think it's important to recognize when it actually tries to lead us down the wrong path.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        treeman79 5y ago
        Yea. Never eat only one food for extended periods. This was a pure desperation move.
agumonkey 5y ago
I cut antidepressant but I know how brain chemistry feels now. While I was doing the "one meal a day thing", whenever I felt hunger, a few minutes after my brain felt a bit like when I used pills. It's a very shallow anecdata but I can't help but to think about importance of the gut-brain axis.
ryandvm 5y ago
My experience with a 3 day fast was that for the first day it was no problem. I can generally ignore hunger pretty easily. But days 2 and 3 were just a brutal lack of energy. I have never felt so depleted as when I was finishing my 3-day fast. Other than that, I didn't really experience any positive benefits.
- vimy 5y ago
  Probably had more to do with electrolytes being depleted than hunger.

legerdemain 5y ago

Inflammation is a basic life process, not a reaction to the food you eat. Inflammation plays an active part in wound-healing. Teething in infants has an inflammatory component. Systemic inflammation is ubiquitous during and following parturition in mammals. There is inflammation everywhere, it's as generic a word as "oxidation" and "metabolism."

tartoran 5y ago
That's like saying cell division is a basic life process and nothing can stop this process from going haywire, but what about cancer. It is widely believed that inflammation levels spike for certain foods and the overall effect on the body is not optimal to say the least.
- JMTQp8lwXL 5y ago
  There's a middle ground: some is probably beneficial in certain cases, but you can have too much of a good thing-- then it's an issue.
  - tartoran 5y ago
    Yes, that is obvious. It is a natural process as much as apoptosis or cell suicide is.
atat7024 5y ago
Every time you eat, the body enters a state of heightened inflammation. This is well documented. Please don't spread disinformation.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- voxl 5y ago
  Two things: First, if this is as well documented as you say then you should provide such documentation as you seem to think it should be at the finger tips of others. Second, your comment doesn't actually counter the main point of what you are responding to. The point is that what "inflammation" means is too general. Even if it is true that you enter a "heightened inflammation" state when eating, that doesn't discredit the idea that inflammation as a category is being overloaded.
- darkteflon 5y ago
  Pseudoscience schooling science.
  - andy_ppp 5y ago
    No, please do some research, even a cursory Google leads to many papers on this.
- andy_ppp 5y ago
  https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170116121912.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170116121912.h... For example suggests this is true...
  - atat7024 5y ago
    Yeah, honestly this is no different than real life. People don't want to be told that alcohol, sugar, too many calories, etc inflames the hell out of the body. So be it. Wait for your own wakeup call. I hope it never comes.
rsync 5y ago
"Inflammation is a basic life process, not a reaction to the food you eat. Inflammation plays an active part in wound-healing. Teething in infants has an inflammatory component. Systemic inflammation is ubiquitous during and following parturition in mammals. There is inflammation everywhere, it's as generic a word as "oxidation" and "metabolism."" Everything you have said is true. What I think you are missing is that there is both a per-calorie inflammation cost for all food inputs and a minimum inflammatory startup cost just to metabolize at all. More simply: 1000 calories spread across two meals will generate more inflammation than 1000 calories in a single meal. There are two analogies that I think are useful when thinking about this: First, introducing food inputs appears to be an interrupt for most other bodily activities - even very essential ones like sleep and reproduction, etc. You might consider how many hours each day your body spends not digesting. It doesn't take much to increase that by 50% or more... Second, electric motors like pumps and fans have failures ("deaths") that are much more accurately predicted by number of start-stop cycles than by the number of hours run. Startup is expensive for these devices and I suspect that startup is expensive for our food metabolism as well.
- andy_ppp 5y ago
  Yes, also we know cell machinery operates in a different mode when the body is without fuel, it’s moves in a repair/conserve mode that includes preferential autophagy of damaged cells. It makes sense, eating used to be extremely dangerous so the body mounts an immune response including inflammation every time.
  - jk7tarYZAQNpTQa 5y ago
    > eating used to be extremely dangerous You're talking a very long time ago. Shouldn't that be already disregarded from an evolutionary POV?
    - MrBuddyCasino 5y ago
      > You're talking a very long time ago. We've made strong progress in food security in the last 100-200 years, not sure about before that. I suspect hunter/gatherers had it actually better than farmers. What time spans are you talking about?
andy_ppp 5y ago
No-one is say all inflammation is bad, just that constantly being in that state is really bad for you...
nabla9 5y ago
Inflammation is immune system response. Nothing to do with metabolism or oxidation.
- keymone 5y ago
  You’re wrong, insulin is inflammatory hormone, google it.
  - nabla9 5y ago
    Googling ... Result: Insulin is anti-inflammatory and antiatherosclerotic hormone.
    - keymone 5y ago
      Ok, this is dumb, I meant to say there is connection between insulin and inflammatory processes (hence it is definitely connected to metabolism), insulin itself has anti-inflammatory effect, but insulin resistance and chronic inflammation are also linked. And I managed to say something completely opposite. Sorry.

kossTKR 5y ago

Same here. It's the closest thing to an actual wonder drug i have ever come across. My skin clears up, brainfog disappears, the white in my eyes get brighter, etc. After reading a bit i have come to the same conclusion - if your diet is already extremely clean / bland, maybe you won't get the same effect, but for most people that eats lots of different foods, processed stuff, fast food, alcohol, harsh additives, fried/burned food etc. on occasion then i think you really need to give yourself a break at least once a month. For a minimum of 48 hours.

wsinks 5y ago
I'm here for it. You're saying that a water only fast for approximately 48 hours once every full moon helps out? I've done some intermittent fasting before (I think that's where you make sure you don't eat after 18:00 and only start at 9:00)
- kossTKR 5y ago
  Yes, exactly how long probably depends on a lot of factors, but the benefits really starts for me after 30+ hours. Drinking water with potassium + magnesium + salt also helps a lot, to replenish electrolytes, but some people can manage without. Some people can continue workouts, others continue for 7+ days. It's all about experimentation. Atm. i start each week fasting and just fast for as long as it feels ok. Often 1-3 days. I would recommend 2 fasts per month 36-48 hours, and with electrolyte water for newcomers. Off course starting weight, activity level etc. is also important factors, i'm personally trying to lose some "corona weight" atm.
  - DoreenMichele 5y ago
    I really appreciate some of the detailed comments here, but I will caution people that if you have a serious medical condition you may find fasting is a lot harder on you than the above suggests it will be. If it benefits you, it may get easier over time. I have a serious medical condition. I used to routinely throw up when I was even just underfed for one day. It now takes longer than one day for me to start having strong reactions. Fasting and semi-fasting have been beneficial for my condition, but it was amazingly hard on me for a really long time and is still not easy. I tend to semi-fast for somewhere between one and two days (often around 36 hours) most months. I've done longer -- up to a week -- but two per month for a newcomer sounds like a lot to me and I assume that's because of how hard it is on me. So YMMV and probably will.

heavyset_go 5y ago

Fasting also has a significant impact on the immune system, causing it to downregulate certain immune cells and responses, and to upregulate others. The results you feel might not be from the lack of inflammation from food, but from a change in immune responses, some of which can reduce inflammation and other bad feelings.

gopalv 5y ago

> why I feel so much healthier when I'm fasting regularly. Considering this is Ramadan and fasting is pretty much on-topic, I notice a big difference between the religious fasts and the self-regulated ones. The ramadan fasting without water seems to result in a net weight loss between the morning and the first meal. On the other hand, people like me who do drink water/electrolytes, see our weight go up in the day from drinking water to compensate for the hunger. A small part of what you experience might just be reaching adequate hydration and dropping salt levels to a more healthy level over the day.

mahkeiro 5y ago
Ramadan is not really about fasting in the way science is studying it. During Ramadan people really eat a lot when it is allowed. It may be considered intermittent fasting...

treeman79 5y ago

Was in a massive Sjogrens flare. Stopped eating for a month. Collapsing aside, my inflammation was fixed. Did a month on sweet potatoes. Very boring but same result.

cauliflower2718 5y ago
Why sweet potatoes?
- mkoubaa 5y ago
  Yeah why not cauliflower
  - nwienert 5y ago
    Okinawa diet is some 40% sweet potatoes and top percentile life span so can’t hurt.
    - foerbert 5y ago
      Sure it could. You can't just isolate some portion of a highly complex system and claim that the isolated portion will be beneficial in any similar system. Just for an extreme example to make the point - say some diet included a poisonous component as well as the antidote. Those eating the diet may well be just fine. However if somebody else simply looked at the poisonous part and copied only that, they would not do so well. I'm not saying sweet potatoes are bad. And I'm sure this was a somewhat flippant statement, but this is the kind of thinking we're very prone to and I think it's important to recognize when it actually tries to lead us down the wrong path.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - treeman79 5y ago
        Yea. Never eat only one food for extended periods. This was a pure desperation move.

agumonkey 5y ago

I cut antidepressant but I know how brain chemistry feels now. While I was doing the "one meal a day thing", whenever I felt hunger, a few minutes after my brain felt a bit like when I used pills. It's a very shallow anecdata but I can't help but to think about importance of the gut-brain axis.

ryandvm 5y ago

My experience with a 3 day fast was that for the first day it was no problem. I can generally ignore hunger pretty easily. But days 2 and 3 were just a brutal lack of energy. I have never felt so depleted as when I was finishing my 3-day fast. Other than that, I didn't really experience any positive benefits.

vimy 5y ago
Probably had more to do with electrolytes being depleted than hunger.