Would You Go 2 Days Without Food for a New Immune System?
We’ve been engaging in prolonged fasting for religious purposes for over a decade but more and more, studies are showing that there are an immense amount of health benefits.
From the data, it’s looking like foregoing food for 48-72 hours does amazing things:
New research presents a fascinating discovery: the team gathered a group of participants and asked them, in the initial stages, to fast for 2-4 days on a regular basis over a 6-month period. The participants saw a noticeable decrease in the production of the enzyme PKA, a hormone which has been associated with an increased risk of cancer and tumor growth. Furthermore, the immune system of the participants appeared to get a complete overhaul.
Professor Valter Longo, PhD, the researcher of the study expressed his surprise with the study’s findings, stating, “What we started noticing in both our human work and animal work is that the white blood cell count goes down with prolonged fasting. Then when you re-feed, the blood cells come back. So, we started thinking, well, where does it come from?”
Professor Longo explained, “When you starve, the system tries to save energy, and one of the things it can do to save energy is to recycle a lot of the immune cells that are not needed, especially those that may be damaged.”
Thomas DeLauer has some great content on the subject:
The documentary Science of Fasting has some interesting case studies and data presented as well:
