Hey guys.
Dr. Axe here, Functional Medicine Specialist and Nutritionist and founder of DrAxe.com.
Today I want to talk about, is fasting healthy?
And this is a common question that I get.
There are really popular diet trends and fads out there today asking that question.
How about intermittent fasting or fasting in general?
And I can tell you this, fasting can be great for your health but if it's done wrong, fasting
can be dangerous and fasting can have side effects.
So you want to fast in the right way, so let me talk about all the benefits of fasting.
First off, fasting allows your body to rest.
In fact, the father of natural medicine, Hippocrates, one of his number one ways he helped patients
heal was through fasting.
Also, throughout books like the Bible, that's been used for centuries for spiritual enlightenment
and for growing closer to God and for the health benefits.
And also we know many doctors throughout time, and there are a lot of studies now showing
that things like intermittent fasting can naturally boost our hormones, can also let
your gut rest and so really supports detoxification healing.
So there is no doubt about it that fasting is healthy.
When you fast, the way you want to fast is a few ways.
One way is you can do full day fast or several days so you can fast one day or three days,
and that may include where you only eat dinner or possibly what you're doing is you're doing
like a vegetable juice fast where you're just doing some juices.
Or it might be something where you're just drinking water for a few days.
And doing that for short periods of time is completely fine, it's completely healthy.
There's therapeutic benefits.
Now, there are other forms of fasting where you would do that more than three days, and
at that point it can actually end up being pretty hard on your body and your system.
So at that point it's not really beneficial for your health doing it for a longer period
of time, where you're completely restricting your body of calories.
Now there's a new type of fasting that I think a lot of people are benefitting from today.
It's called intermittent fasting.
Even with this sort of fasting you don't want to overdo it and do it too long, but you can
do this anywhere from a period of 30 to 90 days and get major health benefits.
And, here's what intermittent fasting is.
Intermittent fasting is where you're taking a period of the day and you're not eating.
So most the time we wake up, we eat at 7:00 a.m., we continue to eat until 10:00 p.m.
And so really we're only letting our body rest, sometimes eight hours a night.
What you want to do instead is really take a four to eight-hour window and only eat during
that time.
So intermittent fasting, your first meal might be lunch at noon and then you eat again at
6:00, so really you're eating between noon and 6:00, getting all your meals in then.
And you can eat three meals; one at noon, one at three, one at six.
And then the rest of the time you're letting your body rest.
So you're getting the benefits of fasting, of letting your body rest.
At the same time you are getting nutrients during that time.
Now when you're doing intermittent fasting you want to make sure that you're getting
plenty of healthy protein, fat, fiber and nutrient-dense fruits and vegetables in your
diet during that time to make sure you're getting plenty of nutrients.
But intermittent fasting has been shown in some cases, when exercising, for men and women,
to increase human growth hormone by 400%.
So it can be great for hormones.
It's great because it lets your digestive system rest.
In fact, if you struggle with constipation or diarrhea or any sort of bowel issues or
leaky gut syndrome, intermittent fasting can definitely be beneficial.
Now you don't want to overdo it.
You want to listen to your body, but as I've said benefits of fasting can include weight
loss, hormone balance, improved digestion, detoxification.
There are many benefits of fasting.
Again, you don't want to overdo it.
Fasting is created to be done on a periodic basis, not for an entire life.
But again there are major benefits with fasting.
And if you want to learn more about fasting I encourage you to go to my website DrAxe.com.
It's D-R-A-X-E dot com.
I've got more great content there on the benefits of fasting and a more detailed approach on
intermittent fasting.
Also, hey, we're continuing to put out more videos.
Hey, you're welcome to subscribe here to our channel and be part of the Dr. Axe community.
Thanks for watching.