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Absolutely necessary: drink water. Also, if you have any medical conditions or plan to fast longer than 2 weeks -- seek medical observation. I would also sugg

Absolutely necessary: drink water. Also, if you have any medical conditions or plan to fast longer than 2 weeks -- seek medical observation. I would also suggest eating a tiny bit of vitamins, electrolytes and proteins, just for safety. Your organism cannot synthesize all proteins that are needed and can't produce vitamins (by very definition) even if it gets good at conserving them. For example tryptophan is precursor for serotonin and melatonin and cannot be synthesized by human body. You are risking depression and sleep problems without any intake of it. Also I am not medical professional. You should probably not base your health and safety on word of a layman dropping his opinion on HN:)

wodenokoto 5y ago
Why “a little bit” of vitamins? I would expect “top of recommendations if not more”
- lmilcin 5y ago
  Because something funny happens to organism on fast and it starts conserving absolutely everything. So what is recommended amount during "normal operation" is probably too much while your organism is in emergency preservation mode. Now, fast is no magic, the organism still uses up stores of various chemicals, just slower, so it still can "run out" of some things even if it still has a bunch of fat available for energy. One way organism can preserve chemicals is the simple fact it no longer has to digest stuff and then expell a lot of waste products. All of this is normally huge drag on your body, mostly on your liver. When on fast, that process is no longer necessary (mostly) and your liver gets much more efficient at the smaller number and volume of metabolic pathways. So when you are on fast and drop a vitamin, your body has not much else to do and will be very efficient at incorporating those vitamins into your body when normally most of these vitamins would not be used because the pathways necessary would be busy doing something else. It is also really funny to observe you can be not eating anything but still poop for at least a weak.
  - yownie 5y ago
    >It is also really funny to observe you can be not eating anything but still poop for at least a weak. Isn't that because the body will still be excreting dead red blood cells and other short term cells. I had read somewhere that's often the bulk of feces anyway plus undigestable fibers

wodenokoto 5y ago

Why “a little bit” of vitamins? I would expect “top of recommendations if not more”

lmilcin 5y ago
Because something funny happens to organism on fast and it starts conserving absolutely everything. So what is recommended amount during "normal operation" is probably too much while your organism is in emergency preservation mode. Now, fast is no magic, the organism still uses up stores of various chemicals, just slower, so it still can "run out" of some things even if it still has a bunch of fat available for energy. One way organism can preserve chemicals is the simple fact it no longer has to digest stuff and then expell a lot of waste products. All of this is normally huge drag on your body, mostly on your liver. When on fast, that process is no longer necessary (mostly) and your liver gets much more efficient at the smaller number and volume of metabolic pathways. So when you are on fast and drop a vitamin, your body has not much else to do and will be very efficient at incorporating those vitamins into your body when normally most of these vitamins would not be used because the pathways necessary would be busy doing something else. It is also really funny to observe you can be not eating anything but still poop for at least a weak.
- yownie 5y ago
  >It is also really funny to observe you can be not eating anything but still poop for at least a weak. Isn't that because the body will still be excreting dead red blood cells and other short term cells. I had read somewhere that's often the bulk of feces anyway plus undigestable fibers