I’m sure most of you have heard of, thought about, and even participated in fasting, the act of food restriction for several hours a day has been a popular practice for many years. I personally know people that fast days at a time. There are a multitude of fasting methods.
Intermittent fasting has been trending lately and there are a few TV doctors touting intermittent fasting programs of their own. It is believed that restricting calorie intake for a certain number of hours, and for a specific number of days, may offer a wealth of health benefits such as controlling inflammation (a study in Nutrition Research), aiding in lowering blood pressure (in a study in Nutrition and Healthy Aging), may lower cholesterol (in a study in Obesity), and may even boost your immunity (in a study in Autophagy) along with healthy eating choices.
Something exciting happens when you start intermittent fasting, you induce the process of autophagy.
Autophagy is our body’s way of cleaning out cells that are damaged, so it can repair some and generate new, healthy cells. It’s an intracellular cleaning process that’s beneficial to our overall health.
“Autophagy is one of the first lines of defense against any virus and what essentially it does, it goes around cleaning out the excess in the system, and not eating, your body wants to get rid of extraneous cells,” according to Dr. Jason Fung, Nephrologist discussing the process on “Good Morning America.”
