How Intermittent Fasting Affects Your Body and Brain | The Human Body

Stars like Beyonce and Hugh Jackman have spoken out about following intermittent fasting plans to get in shape. How does intermittent fasting work? Here's what actually happens to your body and brain when you fast. Following is a transcript of the video.

How long has it been since you last ate? People who fast intermittently often eat within an 8-hour block, leaving 16 hours of fasting in between. During that 16-hour stretch, their bodies undergo an important change that sets them apart from non-fasters.

Here's how it works.

When you eat, you store some of that energy in the liver as glycogen. But after 10-12 hours of not eating, your glycogen reserves will be extremely low. As a result, you may feel more irritable than normal, a term scientists call "hangry."

The upside is — with little glycogen left — fat cells in your body release fats into your bloodstream. The fat cells head straight to your liver, where they're converted to energy for your body and brain. So, you are literally burning fat to survive.

Blood samples show that people who had fasted for 12-24 hours experienced a 60% increase in energy from fat, with the biggest change occurring after 18 hours. This is the benefit to intermittent fasting because it puts you in a state called ketosis. And it's why researchers think intermittent fasting could be the key to a longer, healthier life.

The process of burning fat releases chemicals called ketones. In the brain, ketones trigger the release of an important molecule called BDNF. BDNF helps build and strengthen neurons and neural connections in areas of the brain responsible for learning and memory. Which could explain why a boost in ketone production has been shown to improve memory in people with early signs of dementia in as soon as 6 weeks. Increasing ketones in the body is also a common treatment for patients with severe epilepsy.

You don't necessarily have to fast to boost your ketone levels. Introducing more fatty foods into your diet and cutting back on carbs can have a similar effect. A group of people who tried this method for 3 months not only lost weight and body fat, but also saw a decrease in blood pressure and a hormone (IGF-1) that is related to aging and disease.

But scientists have discovered that fasting increases ketone levels more. Ketogenic diets can increase ketones 4-fold whereas fasting has been shown to increase ketones by up to 20-fold. As a result, fasting — compared to a ketogenic diet — may have a stronger, more beneficial effect on overall health.

Yet many Americans who eat three meals a day with snacks in between never reach ketosis, and therefore aren't producing enough ketones to promote good health.

Fasting and ketosis have been a key to our survival from the beginning. They helped our ancient ancestors survive through bouts of starvation.

And today, they're becoming recognized as a way to help keep future generations mentally and physically disease-free.

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How Intermittent Fasting Affects Your Body and Brain | The Human Body

[andregarcia]

No one going to talk about Wolverine in the thumbnail

[cardorichard]

My best strategy for reaching ketosis, is to eat dinner by 6pm, and not eat until 12 noon the next day. It’s great because you’ll be asleep during most of the fasting period.

[villarrealmarta]

It also helps the individual gain more self control in all aspects of life.

[Kattar_Hindu]

Finally people will understand fasting doesn’t have adverse effects on body

Edit: Thank you for all the likes. I was 148 when I’ve put this up. Now sustaining at 70 kgs. At times intermittent fasting, having nutritious food helped me achieve this.

[mh-dope]

I've been unknowingly doing IF since high school, I'm 42 and people say I look early 30's. It helps that I'm not much of a drinker either, overall I feel the same as I did in HS able to do the same physical activities of my youth with the same vigor and enthusiasm. Genetics probably plays a part too.

[Sakura-kfqw]

IF is the wave. It is so amazing. I do 16/8 but have also done 23/1. I have so much more clarity and feel calm. Along with losing weight!!

[justnobody.]

Fasting lets the body regenerate and fights bad viruses and illnesses of the body instead of digesting food.

[FinestInstinct]

Been doing IF since March, and lost 84lbs. I started 16/8 and slowly graduated to OMAD (one meal a day). I feel fantastic and I am certain I will be able to sustain this for the rest of my life!

[masschad]

Modern science re-iterating ancient knowledge

[ramblin_man]

I'm down 15 lbs so far with a 20/4 IF schedule and it's calmed my anxiety and depression too 🙂

[minh]

i've fasted 16/8 and 20/4 interchangeably for a year now, and i feel lethargic and too full if i eat 3 meals a day

[christianbitar]

IF is the only possible way for me lose weight without starving to death. I wasn't genetically lucky, but thankfully this method excists..

[JamesExcell-InterJex]

It also kills cancer cells. For the obvious reasons, as you mentioned in the video, fat cells are burned for energy. Well, cancer cells would also fall into that category, of being burned off or pooped out.

[anthonybozzo]

They don’t even mention the best benefits

1) Being in a fasted state allows the body to autophage (clean up) senescent cells (your old cells that have accumulated junk protein products and have now stopped reproducing). Senescent cells are associated with ageing, and may be precancerous cells. Multiple studies, including a 2009 Nature review article, have looked at the association between fasting, aging and cancer. Several proteins such as SIRT1 and and HUR are known to be involved, and although the complete bio-molecular pathway is not yet identified, but current findings are promising. This is all related to the studies showing that calorie restriction (therefore fasting) reliably increases lifespan 30-50% across diverse mammalian species (rats, dogs, etc).

2) Being in a fasted state is when the recycling of old and defective mitochondria occurs. Mitochondria are your cellular power plant, there are thousands of them within each cell, and they convert glucose into ATP, the energy molecule uses by intracellular processes. Similar to senescent cells, old mitochondria have accumulated damage to their DNA as well as degraded proteins and, when defective, they produce more reactive oxygen species (ROS) than clean energy (ATP).

Overall, it seems our bodies are great at clean up and healing on a cellular level when they aren’t busy breaking down food and converting it into new proteins or fats.

:)

[talhahashmi]

The Best Part is--- When U Get Used 2 It, U feel Full So Quickly While Eating😘😘😘

[alwaysrae]

I have been fasting since early 2021. I normally do a 16:8 or 18:6 fast. It has changed my life. I went from 163lbs to 119lbs in about one year. I am a 26 year old female. I workout every day, not because I feel like I have to, but because my body wants to move every single day. I am in the best shape of my life. I have abs, my arms are toned, my legs are toned, my entire body just looks completely different. Yesterday I was in a bikini for the first time in 5+ years. I feel fantastic. Fasting also allows you to really tune into your body, I totally recommend it.

[Radknafeh]

I fast for Ramadan, which entails us usually fasting with no water or food for 16 hours and tbh not only do I lean out because I don’t over indulge when I break my fast but also I have a substantial amount of energy when the 14th hour hits and I have some of my best lifts

[AlchemicalForge]

I can go 2 days without eating and feel more energy as time passes.. It always baffled me. I feel best when i fast often.

[burry]

16 Hours into my Intermittent Fasting and I look like Hugh Jackman.


Thanks, Tech Insider.

[TheAmericanAmerican]

Kinda makes a lot of sense when you stop and think about how our ancient ancestors lived as hunters.
They would wake up in the morning and have to go out into the wilderness to hunt for food which could take hours, if not all day, to find pray/food. This activity was a daily intense workout for survival. Then they would eat and eat until it was dark/bedtime. Everyday the same thing for hundreds of thousands of years. Then it was only in the last 10, 000 years that we started farming and storing food, gradually getting less and less active compared to our hunter/gatherer ancestors as the centuries went by.
And now we are here today with “unlimited” food available to us 24/7 365 days a year, with hardly any kind of physical activity in our daily routine and we wonder why first world countries are so damn fat!!!