gastric juices “.
For the next three decades doctors and medical professionals would regularly use fasting methods to help fight extreme obesity and successful medication to reverse effects of chronic illness , and the like . However it was taken to an extreme . Things like fluid and mineral intake were not taken into enough consideration , and unfortunately applied to a vast myriad of ailments . This Practice did much harm to some who didn ’ t need starvation but rather proper exercise and a healthy nutritional foundation .
Re popularized in the 1940s with more accurate studies carried out on obese subjects , showed the effects to metabolism as they underwent long stretches of fasting for weight reduction . The practice ultimately became a more accepted method to treat obesity . Fast forward to current times and inside the last decade , even more studies have been effectively carried out and the data provided from the results shows , undeniably , important and very beneficial properties of correctly applied fasting .
So we now know a brief history that is one of the early applications . Let ’ s get deeper into the understanding of the range of benefits of intermittent fasting . Now first off , the thing that is on the minds of those people when they think “ fasting ” is weight loss .
Body fat loss from correctly applied intermittent fasting has been shown in several human studies in recent times to be very effective . This is due to our over consumption of simple carbohydrates . The North American diet is rife with processed and nutrient devoid simple sugars and mechanically and chemically refined carbohydrates . When we eat sugars and refined grains like white flours and high fructose corn syrup and refined grains , they are quickly broken down into sugar , which our cells use for energy . If our cells don ’ t use it all , we store it in our fat cells as , well , fat . But sugar can only enter our cells with insulin , a hormone made in the pancreas . Insulin brings sugar into the fat cells and keeps it there . Between meals , as long as we don ’ t snack , our insulin levels will go down and our fat cells can then release their stored sugar , to be used as energy . We burn the carbs as energy . Again we are not really burning fat yet , we are just burning through the carbohydrates we ate .
So if we go into an intermittent fast correctly timed then our body releases the storage of carbohydrate energy from the fat cell , discouraging the body to accumulate more fat from the store carbs . Then we have the potential if our nutrition is on point and exercise in check to burn fat more effectively in our waking hours .
This links to another very positive health benefit which is insulin sensitivity , lowering our levels of insulin
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