Benefits of intermittent fasting

Fasting’s most obvious benefit is weight loss. However, there are a myriad of benefits beyond this, many of which were widely known in ancient times.

The fasting periods were often called ‘cleanses’, ‘detoxifications’, or ‘purifications’, but the idea is the same – to abstain from eating food for a certain period of time for health reasons. People imagined that this period of abstinence from food would clear their bodies’ systems of toxins and rejuvenate them. They were more correct than they knew.

Some of the purported physical benefits of fasting include:

• Improved mental clarity and concentration
• Weight and body fat loss
• Lowered blood insulin and sugar levels
• Reversal of type 2 diabetes
• Increased energy
• Improved fat burning
• Increased growth hormone
• Lowered blood cholesterol
• Prevention of Alzheimer’s disease (potential)
• Longer life (potential)
• Activation of cellular cleansing (potential) by stimulating autophagy (a discovery that was awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in medicine)
• Reduction of inflammation

Advantages

Fasting offers many important unique advantages that are not available in typical diets.

Where diets complicate life, fasting simplifies. Where diets are expensive, fasting is free. Where diets can take time, fasting saves time. Where diets are limited, fasting is available anywhere. Where diets have variable efficacy, fasting has unquestioned efficacy. There is no more powerful method for lowering insulin and decreasing body weight.