Mindful Fasting

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
― Rumi
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Anders
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Re: Mindful Fasting

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The aging velocity A that I described in an earlier post can be quantified. When A is greater than zero the body ages biologically. The larger the positive value of A the faster the aging velocity. With A = 0 the biological aging stops. And when the value of A is less than zero then the biological aging is reversed.

Intermittent fasting done correctly reduces the aging velocity. Is it possible to reduce A to less than zero and thereby reverse biological aging of the body? Interestingly enough the answer is yes at least as a potential because the stem cells in the body can rejuvenate themselves.

"Stem cells self-renew but also give rise to daughter cells that are committed to lineage-specific differentiation. To achieve this remarkable task, they can undergo an intrinsically asymmetric cell division whereby they segregate cell fate determinants into only one of the two daughter cells. Alternatively, they can orient their division plane so that only one of the two daughter cells maintains contact with the niche and stem cell identity." -- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 7408002080" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

"The thought of reversing the ageing process has tickled the human imagination for centuries. Despite the air of mystery surrounding the topic, rejuvenation occurs so naturally that we pay no attention to it — that is, when mothers give birth to offspring. ... Writing in Science, Katajisto et al.1 suggest that such rejuvenation may also be a characteristic of the stem cells responsible for tissue maintenance." -- https://www.nature.com/articles/521296a ... RE-2015052" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It's too early to tell (I haven't found any confirmation about it yet) whether such monumental stunt as reversing aging is possible with intermittent fasting. There are however already growing lists of shocking claims such as:

"16 Amazing Health Benefits Of Intermittent Fasting

1. Fat Burning And Weight Loss
2. Improves Diabetes Symptoms
3. Reduces Inflammation
4. Prevents Heart Diseases
5. Lowers Risk Of Metabolic Diseases
6. Improves Digestion
7. May Improve Sleep
8. Promotes Skin Health
9. Boosts Mood And Motivation
10. Promotes Brain Health
11. May Prevent Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, And Huntington’s Disease
12. Alleviates Asthma Symptoms
13. Fights Infections
14. May Improve Symptoms Of Autoimmune Diseases
15. Prevents Cancer
16. Extends Lifespan" -- https://www.curejoy.com/content/health- ... t-fasting/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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Re: Mindful Fasting

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The reason for drinking only water during the fasting periods in my mindful fasting is as Dr. Group said in a video that even the smallest amount of additives triggers the body to notice that there is food coming in. That hampers the body's ability to eat its own cells, and the very purpose of my fasting periods is that the body should focus on consuming damaged and dysfunctional cells.

And also from the mindfulness perspective it's important to only drink water. If I add stuff to the water or start cheating by drinking things like teas or diet sodas, then the mind interprets that as an attempt to reduce hunger and suffering by consuming those things. And that reduces the mind's ability to retrain itself into feeling content about the body consuming its own cells.
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Re: Mindful Fasting

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What if this whole intermittent fasting trend is just another misguided hype? In the past experts used to tell people who wanted to lose weight to avoid eating fat and exercise a lot. It didn't work! Now the experts are telling us that those advises were all wrong and what you really should do is go on a keto diet or do intermittent fasting. Why should we trust the experts this time? What if they are shills for the pharma and healthcare industry and are putting up just another smokescreen layer to keep people misguided to avoid losing customers? It's like a trillion dollar industry! And they have a humongous incentive to keep that monstrous sickness and death machine going.

My guess is that there might still be a smokescreen psyop this time in the form of promoting intermittent fasting methods that don't really work. For example most if not all the popular so-called intermittent fasting methods should be called intermittent diet methods, because they allow people to eat and drink all kinds of stuff and still call it fasting.

Still, there are white hats even in the pharma and healthcare industry and the scientific research related to fasting looks genuine and frankly impressive to me. So I believe intermittent fasting gives huge health benefits, maybe even with the popular lamer :mrgreen: methods.
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Re: Mindful Fasting

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Amen! Here is Dr. Longo, a leading expert explaining that much of what people today call fasting is insufficient. He said from about 18 minutes: "If you eat 500 calories twice a week you are not fasting [in the sense of fat breakdown, ketogenesis etc]."

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KGqo9z6fOE&t=17m[/youtube]

Longo also explained how damaged cells are the first to be removed, in bacteria, yeasts and in mammals. And things like rebuilding the pancreas in mice are caused by fasting switching on genes like in the embryonic state. To me this explains the fantastic lists of benefit claims. There is truth to those lists, but it's important to know how strong the effect is and how much of real fasting is needed to produce the results.

He talked about 5 days of fasting needed for full ketogenesis mode. :( I have only 3 days in my mindful fasting. Fortunately he also said that the wanted effects start to happen a couple of days into the fast. And according to his own research and research done by other experts 2 to 5 days is enough to produce significant effects:

"Prolonged fasting (PF) lasting 48–120 hr reduces progrowth signaling and activates pathways that enhance cellular resistance to toxins in mice and humans (Fontana et al., 2010, Guevara-Aguirre et al., 2011, Holzenberger et al., 2003, Lee and Longo, 2011, Longo et al., 1997). The physiological changes caused by PF are much more pronounced than those caused by calorie restriction or fasting lasting 24 hours or less in part because of the requirement to fully switch to a fat- and ketone bodies-based catabolism after glycogen reserves are depleted during PF (Longo and Mattson, 2014)." -- http://www.cell.com/cell-stem-cell/fulltext/S1934-5909(14)00151-9
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Re: Mindful Fasting

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In one article (I don't have the link) a distinction was made between intermittent fasting and periodic fasting. When it's about prolonged fasting, longer than 48 hours I think, then it's called periodic fasting instead of intermittent fasting.

That's good, because then I can call my mindful fasting a periodic fasting method. In this way I avoid mixing it with the controversial term intermittent fasting.
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Re: Mindful Fasting

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Here is someone who already has done a fast similar to one of my fasting periods.

"My Experience Doing A Prolonged Fast

Intermittent fasting is becoming extremely popular and for good reason. For most, fasting most consists of the abstinence from food for 16, 18 and sometimes 24 hours. There’s a new trend going around which tells people to fast for between 48-120 hours and so I put this fasting protocol to the rest." -- https://thestoicbody.com/experience-prolonged-fast/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I haven't read too much of the article to avoid biasing my own experience, and it's only one 3-day cycle it seems.
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Re: Mindful Fasting

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I thought that I had made a mistake and that the 48-120 hours fasting needed was for mice, not humans. :oops: I now found that it's also for humans, whew.

"Results of a new study on mice and a phase 1 trial of humans suggest that prolonged cycles of fasting - for 2-4 days at a time - not only protect against toxic effects of chemotherapy, but also trigger stem cell regeneration of new immune cells and clearing out of old, damaged cells." -- https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/277860.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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Re: Mindful Fasting

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It's possible to plug in all kinds of mindfulness practices in combination with the periodic water fasting. In my case I will focus on inner body awareness practice in the form of just putting attention on how my body and mind feel from time to time during the day. Sitting meditation for example would be too tedious for me.

Dr. Longo warned about water fasting and said that it can feel like torture psychologically to not have anything to eat. Water fasting is almost always done in controlled clinical situations, and it can be dangerous to do it by oneself, he said. Something like that.

One thing the mindful fasting can do is to reduce the psychological suffering. And to support the mind it's important that one feels safe about fasting. When doing water fasting the body actually becomes more resilient and protected. That makes the mind feel safe. The healthy cells go into a protection mode and the damaged, dysfunctional and cancer cells are unable to enter that mode. So when the body starts chewing on its own cells it's the unprotected cells that get consumed first, which means the junk cells. And that makes the mind willing to do the fasting. Instead of just observing the mind suffering by not having anything to eat, conscious attention is put into the body to allow the cleaning up of junk cells, thereby removing the conflict between the mind and the body.
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Re: Mindful Fasting

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There is a lot of excellent research being done in medicine and biology. And for example drugs and diets could possibly enhance the effect of fasting. It may take many years for that kind of research to become available as supplements and medicine on the public market.

Would it be possible to experiment oneself with additives in the water? Why for example not put Himalayan or table salt in the water in an attempt to help the body? Because I suspect that the chance is overwhelming that the additives will stop the body's own protection mode during water fasting. It's enough with all that's already in tap water and bottled water. Even distilled water has things like lead in it I have heard. So in my experiment I will stick to only water.
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Re: Mindful Fasting

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For fun, one can make a rough estimate of the aging velocity A that later possibly can be made into a serious metric.

A = aging velocity where A>0 means that the body ages biologically, A=0 means that the aging has stopped and A<0 means that the aging is reversed.

H = the percentage of healthy cells in the body.

W = the percentage of weak cells in the body.

As an initial guesswork the following formula is defined:

A = (W - 10%) / H

So for example if a person has 50% weak cells and 50% healthy cells, then his or her aging velocity is:

A = (50-10) / 50 = 40/50 = 0.8

In order for the person to stop the biological aging the percentage of weak cells W has to be reduced to 10% resulting in:

A = (10-10) / 90 = 0/90 = 0

To be able to reduce the weak cells that much with the mindful fasting method might be too optimistic, but the first goal is to at least reduce W over time.
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