9 ms·
I can’t go into too much detail here, but I interrupted a severe depression by fasting for two straight weeks. It’s hard to say why it worked — my friends assum
by alecst 2y ago
I can’t go into too much detail here, but I interrupted a severe depression by fasting for two straight weeks. It’s hard to say why it worked — my friends assume that the microbiome is implicated because of the dietary change. Plausible, but hardly a proof. This gives me at least one direction to look in.
- angst_ridden 2y agoThere is also a known phenomenon of "starvation euphoria." I don't know at what point of caloric deficit that kicks in, but it probably varies dramatically.
- mateus1 2y agoInteresting, I had a bout of depression that I believe started when I did a monthlong low carb low calorie diet (with doctors and nutritionist). Gut health is a huge factor.
- goda90 2y agoLow carb and low calorie for a month sounds rough in general. Maybe the depression could be attributed to exhaustion and a suppressed metabolism as well.
- stewarts 2y agoVery individualized. I have drastically better gut health, skin health, energy when on a low carb diet for an extended duration. Maintaining that diet for an extended duration, however, is always the challenge when others in the household do not follow it. Logically, I should stop being a baby and just power on with it. Or at least determine what in my "normal" western diet negatively impacts gut health/skin health and overall energy.
- digbybk 2y agoAs an alternate theory, I’ve always thought that deliberate, controlled suffering gives you a mood boost. Or rather, the relief after the suffering has ended. The theory is that it’s not good for us emotionally to be comfortable continuously. Maybe fasting is an example of that?
- pwillia7 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asceticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asceticism
- k__ 2y agoI read somewhere, if you fast, the body thinks you can't find food, so it gives you more dopamine to motivate you to find more.
- tcbawo 2y agoInteresting hypothesis. Mental acuity does seem higher while fasting. Is that a dopamine specific effect, or could there be a handful of hormones impacting mental state?
- chefandy 2y agoThat’s personality-specific. My Dad is like that and doesn’t understand why nobody else in the family gets off on self-imposed austerity. (He’s a great guy by the way — we all have our quirks.) He loves to say it’s a lack of discipline, but it’s not— I quit smoking after a decade-and-a-half of heavy smoking, lost 20% of my body weight on an 800 calorie per day ketogenic diet, worked many very difficult jobs, and did a number of other things that have required sustained discipline, as have others in the family. He doesn’t understand that the difference is that he enjoys self-imposed misery and the feelings of superiority he gets from it, which not only leads to a lack of balance in his life, sometimes strains his closest relationships.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- digbybk 2y ago“Enjoys misery” is an oxymoron I think. He enjoys joy, which he gets from doing difficult things. I’m just taking your dad’s side on this because I suspect I share some of his tendencies :)
- 2y ago
- simmerup 2y agoI cured my sugar addiction with a 2 day fast. I found it remarkable tbh
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- fredgrott 2y agofasting changes the population of the microbiome in your gi tract...
- francisofascii 2y agoYes. A long fast can reduce overgrowth of harmful bacteria that survives on a continuous supply of food. This paper mentions Morganella morganii, which is an example of harmful bacteria that thrives in a environment full of undigested proteins and carbohydrates.
- aszantu 2y agobeen collecting for a while, happy hunting https://github.com/cutestuff/FoodDepressionConundrum https://github.com/cutestuff/FoodDepressionConundrum
- ldoughty 2y agoI certainly agree there's a connection from the gut to the rest of our body (including mood) that we still don't understand... But I'm curious if you've done anything to rule out psychosomatic ? I saw a brief mention that you think there is a link to childhood experiences, which means you do agree there might be a mental connection... Have you tried a blind experiment at all? I could see it being relatively possible if you had someone prepare something liquid, steps were taken to conceal the flavor, and perhaps using a straw to limit how much you can notice.
- aszantu 2y agoI did have some experience with dog food, where I'd feed the dog and after a few weeks noticed joint pain. I'd not paid attention, but there were beets in the dog food. That was kinda blind until I noticed symptoms. I realized, I was licking the leftovers on the spoon before I washed it by hand. Not sure this counts as blind testing. Sadly it feels impossible to find a doctor in germany that knows what to do about it. The last success was with something like oxalobacter. For a few months now I could eat at least some salad, but seemingly that effect weakens over time. So I think I have found a probiotic that works, but it doesn't stick well. This article mentions genetic traits being connected to the biome. So I think I'll have to have genetic testing eventually, but I'm way paranoid to hand over my genes to some random lab.
- genter 2y agoI completely cured my severe anxiety and minor depression by eliminating wheat and sugar from my diet. I come from a family where everyone has digestive issues and some type of illness that is tentatively linked to the microbiome.
- thisislife2 2y agoFor how long, is the question though? Depression and anxiety are like the "common cold" of mental health suffering, and everyone endures it a few times in their life.
- genter 2y agoWell, it's been about 10 years. And I'm still a completely different person with absolutely no signs of it.
- settsu 2y agoYeah, no. Please further educate yourself before saying this out loud again.
- settsu 2y agoA lot of people who have no fucking idea what's it's like to have debilitating mental illness apparently.
- bjoli 2y agoThe lifetime risk of clinical depression is someething like 30% for men and 40% for women in the west. Recurrence is about 50% for people with one major depressive disorder occurence, and 80% for people with 2. That makes it more akin to something like cancer in western countries with regards to lifetime prevalence (but not recurrence)
- thisislife2 2y agoThat may be true for severe cases. But if you consider the checklists used to determine depression, it offers the results on a scale. For example, the Becks depression Inventory (BDI - II) suggests that the depression maybe either "minimal, mild, moderate or severe". Similarly the Burns Depression Checklist (BDC) tests identifies depression as either "mild depression, moderate depression, severe depression or extreme depression". Anxiety is also measured in a similar scale. The "mild or moderate" segment of depression, or anxiety, is what is said to be a more common short-term occurrence amongst all of us. Most of us manage to often deal with this kind of "situational" depression / anxiety due to some stressful event (losing a job, death, breakup etc.), on our own. But long-term and / or severe / extreme depression is what often requires an outside intervention.
- dfsegoat 2y agoDid you already exercise regularly?
- rapfaria 2y agoWould also want to know this, since one probably needs a lot of muscle to go through this 14 day períod, but those muscles would come from exercising, which also help reducing depression.
- willy_k 2y agoIIRC the body breaks down stored fat well before it breaks down muscle.
- alecst 2y agoYea, I'm in good shape. I commute by bike and was spending most of my free time at the gym.
- thisislife2 2y ago> It’s hard to say why it worked Behaviour therapy would say that it worked because you took some action to improve your life and counter the depression. (Even cognitive therapy says that small, meaningful actions can have a dramatic impact on one's depression). The motivation and action of fasting, and the positive and noticeable / observable physical effects of fasting changed your focus from your depression, which alleviated your depressive symptoms. Once depression alleviates, you start thinking more clearly (make less cognitive distortions in your thinking) which further leads to a 'normal' mental state of well-being (in an otherwise mentally healthy individual).
- skirge 2y agostrange, I guess bacteria wasn't happy at all during you fasting
- jb_briant 2y agoI wonder if people who are questioning if fasting 2 weeks is the main cause of interrupting your depression did ever fasted a week. Would you consider that you "cured" the depression?
- alecst 2y agoYea. Many of the comments hurt me to read. I'm trying to remind myself that they come from a place of curiosity and wanting to rule out confounding variables. But they do make a lot of assumptions about me and things I know and/or do. To answer your question: I hesitate to use the word "cure", because 3-4 months on, I'm starting to wonder if certain things have begun to slide back, or if it's just been a challenging week. Time will tell. A datapoint that I did not mention in my first post was that there was a negative, persistent, digestive side-effect that paralleled the positive mental changes. As that has faded, so have some of the noticeable mental changes. I'm still doing better, but maybe with less energy than a month or so after the fast. I hope not, but maybe this is something I'll have to repeat every now and then.
- e40 2y agoI wonder if shorter fasts between the long ones would make a difference? Ignore the hurtful comments. A good portion of people don't have much empathy for others, combined with the anonymous nature of this forum, makes people say hurtful things. Good luck on your journey.
- alecst 2y agoThanks, I appreciate that. And by the way, I had the same thought as you. I’ve been doing monthly 5-day fasts just to see what would happen. So far not much to report, but I’ll wait until 6 months have passed to draw conclusions.
- crdrost 2y agoAt the most extreme end of the other side, Buddhist monks, in addition to not eating meat (or, often, aliums like onions and garlic), also don't generally believe in dinner—they have to eat all their solid food for the day before noon, so you could view this as fasting for half the day every day. (There are some caveats... At least for the Tibetan monks I knew, morning prayer is early at like 5am and comes with a sort of pita bread and tea, bedtime is closer to 9pm, and during these 9 hours there will be more tea. With a little googling I am able to confirm that some of the "pita" (pao balep) is consumed at the lunch tea, and I think this is after the lunch meal, so it might be 1pm. I think there's none at the evening tea that you'd have around sundown? Also in terms of calories the Tibetan tea is “bulletproof,” consisting of a very long steep for the leaves to extract maximum bitter flavors, that get mixed with a bunch of yak butter and salt. So liquid calories are very much a thing for them.)
- lr4444lr 2y agoIf your depression remained abated after resuming a healthy diet, I'd say the microbiome hypothesis is intriguing. Otherwise I'd there are way too many complicating factors at work during a fast to dwell on that. Also, you could toy around with different fermented foods while making no other changes.
- e40 2y agoI assume it was a water fast. Did you supplement with anything? Did you have a doctor's supervision during the 2 weeks? How did you reintroduce food? I've always been fascinated by long fasts, but I'm scared to try them.
- martinsnow 2y agoNot eating for a couple of weeks won't kill healthy people. You don't have to waste your doctor's time unless you're old or frail.
- alecst 2y agoI had some electrolytes at first but ditched them on the third day. After that it was just plain water. If I had to do it again, I would take potassium and table salt throughout. I did have friends and my girlfriend with me for a lot of it. I didn’t do anything special to break the fast.
- euroderf 2y agoYup, potassium - or part of a banana. I've read that most deaths attributed to crash diets are caused by cardiac problems caused by potassium deficiency.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- FollowingTheDao 2y agoGood for you! This is how it all starts. By adding foods back slowly you may start to find what foods are a trigger for gut inflammation and depression. There is one medical diet, called the FODMAP diet you might want to look into. It helps you find what foods might be causing some bacterial in your gut to become imbalanced. I am not at all saying it is all you microbiome, foods may affect us in so many more way than only in the gut. It may be that not eating has lowered oxidative stress in your body allowing your mitochondria to recover and are now able to provide the energy you need.
- hellectronic 2y agoI commented above, Checkout Brain Energy by Christopher Palmer
- kouru225 2y agoInterrupted or fixed? And lemme get that regiment?
- carpo 2y agoI'm listening to Brain Energy by Christopher Palmer and he talks about this.
- agumonkey 2y agoHaving dealt with strange neurological states, i somehow got sensitive enough to perceive what could be changes in the gut microbiome (depending on diet, probiotics intake, antibiotics) these would have similar effect as change in serotonine based therapies, albeit short lived.
- magicAngelo 2y agoI think there are other plausible answers, and I'm generally skeptical of people who believe there are diet cure-alls, especially for depression. I'm not a psychiatrist, but I do have a bipolar 2 diagnosis. I only found out it wasnt a unipolar depression because I had a hypomanic episode. I can only describe a hypomanic episode as a wave of constant energy, and I've also heard it described as: 'being on meth for a week straight'. It gave me the energy to forego food for multiple days because I didn't feel the pain of hunger pangs. I also didn't sleep for a few days, not because I wanted to, but because I just had too much energy. I'm not a doctor, but hopefully this is an example of other places to look that aren't diet related.
- AIFounder 2y ago[dead]
- bettercallsalad 2y agoWhat was your fasting regime like? Did you have water only fasting for 14days straight? Meat only?
- JayDustheadz 2y agoVery interesting! Did you take in any vitamins/minerals? Did you drink coffee/tea (no milk/sugar of course)?