Intermittent Dry Fasting
Hey guys,
So I've been doing a bunch of research on fasting as of late to try to understand exactly what happens during each stage of every type of fast, and what effects it has on your body, positive or negative. Long story short, I've kinda whittled it down to a few promising things and wanted to share and get any feedback.
One of the more radical (and intriguing) concepts I've come across is "dry fasting". It basically means going without food or water for whatever amount of time. There are many purported benefits and things that supposedly occur *only* when dry fasting and during no other fasting technique, so I wanted to see if there's supporting evidence. It sounds crazy given the importance and benefits of water and proper hydration, but any kind of fasting sounds crazy given that food in general is also sorta important. As with all things, the dose-response relationship applies. Things can be beneficial or harmful depending on proper or improper application. Suffice it to say the concept was very interesting so I did some digging.
Now, a lot of the same benefits will happen during a water fast. A good discussion on general benefits of fasting happened on SOTT radio already:
The Health & Wellness Show: Fast-inating Information About Fasting -- Sott.net
However, I was more interested in exactly how is dry fasting different - what can it do that a water fast can't do? Water fasting has been much more extensively studied, so we already know it's generally safe and does tons of awesome things for the body and the mind. I also looked at juice fasting but it essentially sucks - it's the weakest form of fasting and you're also carb loading which defeats the purpose of controlling your insulin, one of the major benefits of fasting. I wouldn't recommend it at all.
So it really just leaves 2 possibilities (not mutually exclusive) - water and dry. With water fasting it's simple. The easiest way to get into it is by getting keto adapted first, even if it's only for a week or 2 before the fast. Keto and fasting are close cousins. If you're ok with moderate protein and basically no carbs, your body can already use fat efficiently and you've already gone through any "keto flu" so it's super easy to transition into a water fast with the least amount of discomfort. It's also much faster because you don't have to take like 2 days to get through your glycogen stores first, bypassing that entire initial stage everyone else would go through. It's recommended to supplement salt, potassium, and magnesium during the water fast although not a requirement and depends on the person and extent of the fast. And when you're coming out of the fast, just eat easily digestible small portions for a few days to ease back into normality. It seems bone broth is a really good way to do this and you can start adding solid food in small portions with it as you go. Some recommend watermelon and other fruits but I wouldn't recommend it - you're spiking your insulin this way, and although it may work to offset re-feeding syndrome (gastrointestinal distress) just like with bone broth etc, in another sense it's like hitting a brick wall to stop your car because of the carbs/insulin spike. Just kinda defeats the point of fasting in a lot of ways.
So onto dry fasting then. Here's a good overview:
https://www.perfectketo.com/dry-fasting/
The world record is 18 days for no food/water. It's more usual to do it for periods of 1 day to maybe 7 days (after having worked up to it slowly with water fasting and shorter dry fast practice first, and always listening to your body and terminating early as needed). One of the main effects exclusive to dry fasting is producing water from your fat stores and cells. This is probably the only major difference vs a water fast, but it leads to many interesting effects. One of the main benefits of fasting in general is autophagy - where your body "eats" itself. It eats all the weak/broken cells for energy. My understanding is that because of the intense "survival of the fittest" competition created by fasting, the weak and diseased basically lose and are sacrificed. When re-feeding, the body uses stem cells to replace what was "eaten" with new healthy parts. Within 3 or 4 days of a water fast, for example, it has been shown that your immune system is essentially rebuilt from scratch using the above mechanism.
Dry fasting is supposed to do this even faster. It essentially makes autophagy even more intense by also having to create its own water by stealing a hydrogen molecule via ketosis from your fat and combining it with oxygen from the air to make very pure water. It has been mentioned, oddly enough, that this is the only way to truly replace water with "bad information" in your body with pure unprogrammed water - over time. This made me think of the C's session regarding water and its ability to store information and thus affect the body in a variety of ways. I'm not sure if this replacement truly happens to the extent claimed but it was interesting that the claim was even made to begin with.
Dr Filonov is a Russian doctor that has done probably more research into dry fasting than anyone else. He claims that dehygrated cells act as furnaces that essentially burn up toxins, accelerating detox. He has written a book in Russian (which I haven't read yet) called "Dry Medical Fasting - Myths and Reality", which is unprofessionally translated into English and available here in both languages: _
Dr Filonov - Dry medical Fasting - Myths and Reality - ebook at Fasting: Dry Fasting Support, topic 1819401
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https://spiritsciencecentral.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Dr.-Filonov-Dry-Fasting-Translated.pdf
I intend to give it a read and see what else I can learn. But in essence, Russians have done a lot more work and research into Dry Fasting than anyone else and they have retreats where people can go and do this under medical supervision.
It's a topic worth looking into, and I think if the information turns out to be sound, it would be an interesting thing to try. I intend to try "dry intermittent fasting" to be on the safe side until I learn more - essentially have a window of maybe 6 or 8 hours during which I drink water. My actual food window right now is even more restricted to maybe an hour within that period. I'll make sure to rehydrate well during that window and see if I feel anything different than only doing regular intermittent fasting with no water window limitation.
I'm curious if anyone has done any research into this topic or have any experience with it!