I came across an article today about intermittent fasting and wanted to share my own experience with it. I've included the link to the article at the bottom of this post.
I have been doing IF 18:6 for some years now, but lately had started noticing a lot of muscle weakness, inability to focus, irritability, extreme fatigue, and joint pain, as well as a significant increase in AFib episodes. I had also gained ten pounds since my last doctor visit, three months ago, which completely floored me. He asked me if I knew what intermittent fasting was and if I had ever tried it. I told him I was fasting every day for 18 hours. I decided to scale back on intermittent fasting. The first thing I noticed was that the AFib episodes decreased. Within a couple of weeks, all the other symptoms disappeared.
When intermittent fasting became "the thing," it seemed to be the cure-all for every ailment. If you were eating the Standard American Diet, you were likely overweight, your body was inflamed, your hormones were out of whack, and you were insulin-resistant. You needed to scale back to eating one or two meals per day and fasting for 18 hours or more to shift your body into a state of autophagy. Autophagy is your body's way of taking sickly, or otherwise non-functioning cells and either getting rid of them or recycling and regenerating them. There is much literature available on autophagy and what it does that I'll discuss in another post.
I developed atrial fibrillation after contracting Covid in late 2020. After doing a deep dive into how to heal my body naturally, I changed my diet and began intermittent fasting in 2021. Everyone on the holistic medicine community was recommending it. Of course, it had not been thoroughly tested. Many hypothesized that we should eat like our ancestors did. They ate infrequently and went for long periods with no food. They didn't fast on purpose. They ate when food was plentiful and went without when it wasn't.
Lately, there have been grumblings throughout natural medicine that perhaps intermittent fasting isn't all that it's cracked up to be, especially for women. Women's bodies, after all, are different. They are designed to hold onto fat and to support life. That's why it's harder for women to lose weight than it is for men. Intermittent fasting creates too big of a deficit. Eventually, the gains that we thought we were making by fasting for long periods of time were being lost.
I am not a medical expert. However, I think the information is compelling enough to warrant a reconsideration of whether IF is more harmful than beneficial. After reading this article, reviewing a number of studies, and listening to the experts, I doubt that I will go back to intermittent fasting. Our bodies require food to produce energy. Taking our fuel source away for an extended time is the same as expecting to drive the whole way across the continent on a 1/3 tank of gas.
The article below was written by Dr. Brad Stanfield. Dr. Stanfield is a general practitioner based in Auckland, New Zealand. I have been following him for quite some time and have a great deal of respect and admiration for him. I believe that he genuinely cares for people and wants to help them. I have learned a great deal from him about health and nutrition.
https://drstanfield.com/blogs/articles/longevity-experts-warning-fasting?_kx=YDuBjjadEJuOoKEVf8FOvvB0jJdVtoiaoavxACxueII.Ws2UjD
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