why does the subject of regular fasting never get brought up as part of a sound training regmien and healthy lifestyle?
there are so many benefits to your body by regular 24-36 hr fasting once a week that it would take more space than this thread could hold to get into every single one
do people lack the discipline to go without food for 36hrs?
do "athletes" think they will shrivel to nothing if they go 36hrs without food?
do people not think there are any real benefits?
Obviously there are certain situations like pregnancy, nursing and diabetes that would make fasting dangerous or deadly. and obviously young children need not apply.
But most of us who train hard and eat right and try to be in shape or actually maybe compete in some kinds of events would certainly be strong enough to fast routinely. I would even bet most people dont even have a clue as to how much clogged up toxins are in our livers and kidneys not to mention the pounds upon pounds of impacted fecal matter surrounding the lining of the intestines which not only restrics bowel movements but also prevents full digestion of foods and assimilation of vital vitamins and nutrients.
Keep in mind too that a huge percentage like 80+ of the body's "vital energy" goes just into digesting the food we eat. so if we were able to actually give our bodies a break every once in awhile and not eat not only could we do some serious de-tox but also get some serious rejuvenation time. youd recover from illness and soreness quicker. youll have more energy your hair and skin will be brighter and clearer. i could go on for hours
but why does something as simple as fasting get pretty much zero attention?
one reason i have though about is there is no money in fasting. for anyone. if every human in this country fasted 36hrs out of their week a lot of people and business' would lose a ton of money. plus if people were independently healthy on their own then we wouldnt be dependent on doctors who think there is a prescription for everything.
I can think of two sources who would back me. Paul Bragg who is now dead but died an accidental death at 96 and was in better shape than most people 60 years his junior and also Jack Lalane who could probably still outdo most of the people on this message board.
Medical science will never embrace fasting because it would hurt their business. Just like any doctor you go to with an ADD kid will never recommend a feingold (or similar) program before telling you to stuff ritalin or aderol down their throat. And will even go to the extent to tell you that a proper diet cant relieve behavior issues the way a drug can
The reason why we say that Feingold does not work is because the vast bulk of properly performed, researched, and reviewed research shows no significant benefit.
The research that claims effectiveness cannot be replicated by following their protocols independently.
This whole colon cleansing thing is the new Warrior Diet: makes wild claims unsubstantiated by science, has worshipful adherents who endlessly name-drop the various famous/fit/healthy people who do it, and is garraunteed to get a thread at least 25 posts--sometimes 100.
lol basically, ya. You know, doctors, the people who make a living knowing how your body works in great detail.
Saying there's no money in fasting is BS, there's TONS of books out there by people claiming that fasting does everything you say it does, and those books sell and make money. What they don't do is offer any substantive evidence for their claims. A group of uncontrolled anecdotes does not a study make.
"I can think of two sources who would back me. Paul Bragg who is now dead but died an accidental death at 96 and was in better shape than most people 60 years his junior and also Jack Lalane who could probably still outdo most of the people on this message board."
Jim Thorpe was born a better athlete than you or I. What makes you think guys like Jack Lalane weren't born to be healthier?
If a person absolutely gorges himself, he will probably feel crappy. Even if the food is healthy. Consistantly overeating probably isn't a good idea. Sometimes I'll just eat a banana for breakfast and a light lunch. That has most of the benefits of fasting without the not eating part.
what about this: apart from the last few thousand years of agriculture, humans have been hunter-gatherers without a guarenteed daily food-source. Therefore we have evolved with periodic fasting episodes, eg. when couldn't find berries, or failed to kill a rabbit one day, etc. So our bodies are designed to function with fasting. By constantly keeping our digestive system working on food, we are operating our system out of design parameters, which is a recipe for trouble.
Therefore it makes sense to fast for a day or so, once a week, or fortnight, or month. Its not long enough to lose muscle-mass or conditioning, but might just be what the body needs to stay in peak condition, or fight off cancers or something. Plausible, what do you reckon?
If that was the case, wouldn't there be non-junk science to support it?
Cro-magnon wasn't exactly an uber-athlete and didn't live long enough to worry about cancer or heart failure. Without refrigerators, cavemen ate whatever they could get their hands on. The ones who were good at hunting were the ones who survived.
The ones who didn't bring home a dead animal starved to death.
as far as feingold program not working. again it all comes down to drug co and pharmaceutical company money makers. we had 2 pediatricians tell us that there were no proven long or short term health side effects to giving a child ritalin. this was maybe 18mo ago. now there is a lot of pressure on the FDA to black box this stuff as it is now being linked to heart attacks, stroke and sudden death. why is it that ritalin is used so liberally in the this country and so very sparingly in may other countries?
Eabeam: i would have to assume that you know what the feingold program is all about since you made the comments about it. why is it that doctors dont regard the fact that artificial dyes and additives can not only contribute to but cause ADHD and other issues? and why is it that drugging a kid is the first resort? I can tell you that our kid has changed 180deg when we implemented this program and when he does get into something that has red40, blue1, yellow5 etc his whole persona shifts hard and quick. And also because the FDA has such a strangle hold on everything in this country a "real" doctor would probably be breaking the law by telling someone they can treat a "disease" with anything other than an FDA approved drug. The FDA even tried getting simple VitaminC approved as a drug because it was being widely used to treat colds, same thing with echinacea and st.johns wort. Also why is it that ADD/ADHD was virtually nonexistent in our parents and our grandparents generation? More babies were breast fed, there were fewer foods loaded with artifical colors, flavors and preservatives and there was no ritalin making the drug companies billions of dollars that doctors could stuff down kids throats.
The reason why people don't see hard success with it is because boo hoo hoo it's so hard to stick to wah wah wah we cant go to McD's we cant just peel a piece of plastic and throw dinner in the microwave
Now back to fasting. If you cant do it or dont want to then dont do it. I just finished up a 1 1/2 that went from wed night 7pm to around noon friday. On friday morning I still went to the track and did 2x100m and 2x200m full speed and then went to the gym and did 2 sets of BW 20r squats, 275x6 for 2 sets of dead's and 135x2 clean and jerk along with a 12mph 1/2 mile sprint. I lost a total of less than 1 pound and actually had more energy than normal. The only negative I could comment on was the during the 200m sprints I did kinda lose my speed a little quicker than normal but that is probably to be expected with depleted glycogen stores. Why does everything have to be backed by some medical study for peole to give it merit? And for the comment about losing vitamin and mineral content then when you get up in the morning or before you go to bed drink a cup of water with 1/4 tsp of celtic sea salt and a vitamin supplement
any level of any of those substances is toxic imo.
also look at the ingredient label of a little bottle of red blue yellow whatever color of food coloring or vanillin sometime. one of the ingredients in propylene glycol...anti freeze.
do you eat only organic fruits? If not then you are ingesting pesticides like DDT every day. Washing them off does not remove them since the pesticides get into the ground which gets absorbed thru the plants root system so it essentially becomes part of the plant and you cant just wash it away.
Also doesnt it just make common sense that your body will actually recuperate better when you let it spend its energy on functions other than digesting food?
Also doesnt it just make common sense that your body will actually recuperate better when you let it spend its energy on functions other than digesting food?
This is the problem with psuedo-science. Everything is related to 'common sense'. Unfortunately, common sense is not very reproduceable in the lab, which makes it a bogus standard for judging just exactly how your body operates.
I'm not saying that lead, mercury, and DDT aren't toxic. Certainly they are. But when people like you use the word 'toxin' you don't specify these things. It's just a gerneric word that has little meaning.
And to add to the confusion, any number of beneficial substances can be toxic in the right amounts. Further de-valuing that word.
Americans' fear of chemicals has caused us at times to obsess needlessly about everything from hair dye and dry cleaning to coffee and artificial sweeteners, even though there's no proof that the small amounts of the chemicals in those products have harmed anyone.
Cancer death rates are actually declining in America.
That could maybe have something to do with us being more aware of chemicals.
And holy crap don't even get me going on articifical sweetners like the neurotoxin apsartame. you may as well sweeten your cola with rattlesnake venom. what is so bad about just plain sugar?
And why is it that "only a FDA aprroved drug can be used to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease" You can't actually think this has nothing to do with money? You want a cure for heartburn oh wait it's acid reflux disease now. Don't freaking eat what gave you the heartburn!
"And holy crap don't even get me going on articifical sweetners like the neurotoxin apsartame. you may as well sweeten your cola with rattlesnake venom. what is so bad about just plain sugar?"
Do I have to post that MIT study that showed no link between aspartame any problems at all again?