Using sea salt water for fasting is a good way to take in your minerals while preventing most side effects of fasting. While water fasting is great, the added salts can keep you from becoming mineral depleted and preventing unwanted side effects.
Sea salts are made from evaporating sea water and are higher in minerals than regular table salt. The minerals in sea salt include sodium chloride with the other remaining minerals being potassium, calcium, magnesium, copper, zinc, and other valuable minerals.
Some clinical and lab studies show that fasting is the most powerful way to repair, trigger protection and help aid processes in the body. Fasting can improve most health ailments. It’s been used for thousands of years and can help everything from weight loss to anti-aging benefits and more. Sea salt water is a preferred fasting method but there are many forms of fasting we will cover.
Benefits from research with fasting
- Weight loss
- Reverse type 2 diabetes
- Anti- Aging
- Lower Cholesterol
- Increased Human Growth Hormone
- Reduces inflammation
Let’s get started
As mentioned above I use sea salt with water for prolonging my fasts. Everyone is different on how much is needed without side effects, remember that sometimes less is more.
Unless you want to hang out on the toilet for a few hours and want a laxative effect. I recommend trying it on a day where you don’t have plans just in case. Start with a small amount of salt and work your way up.
I’ll start out with one liter of water and will mix 1/4 of a teaspoon of sea salt. While water fasting is good for you, it can be tough for most to just fast on water.
Especially if your diet isn’t great and you’re not getting the vitamins and minerals your body needs to function optimally. I try eating lower carb before doing any extended fasts to help with insulin crashes.
Types of fasting include
- IF Intermittent Fasting– This is one of the most popular fasting routines, you will give yourself an eight-hour eating window or less. Most eat from 12 am to 8 pm while doing intermittent fasting or you could change the hours with what works best for you. It’s a great way to cut down on your calories by skipping breakfast and not eating after dinner or just before bed. Some people feel like they have to eat in the morning while others don’t. If you feel like you can’t go without breakfast and need to eat you could then move your breakfast eating window back to 7 am to 3 pm. Just because you are eating in a small window also doesn’t mean you can turn into the Tasmanian devil in the kitchen when it’s time to eat. You still need to eat the number of calories needed for you to lose weight.
- The 5:2 Diet– The man behind this diet is Dr. Michael Mosley, in general people grossly overestimate their caloric intake and their energy expenditure, I know I definitely did until I started tracking my calories. One of the best calorie counters is an app called my fitness pal, it’s an egg on the face moment when you realize how much you are overeating while in denial. It’s called the 5:2 Diet because you are eating the normal amount of calories for 5 days and the remaining 2 days you are eating 500 calories or less. This is another popular way of fasting and great for beginners who are looking to lose weight and get healthier.
- Eat-Stop-Eat Diet-Was created by fitness expert Brad Pilon, I think this fasting routine is great but probably not for beginners, you should definitely try to work up to it with that being said. You will fast for 24 hours once or twice per week. You can have coffee(caffeine helps curb appetite) without cream or sugar. Water or any other zero calorie liquids are acceptable. Remember nothing with calories while fasting!
- OMAD One Meal A Day-This is an extreme fasting routine where you will eat one big meal at dinner, usually within a few hours. There are a lot of great benefits that come with this way of eating. Ideally, it’s best to eat in the smallest window you can. This is a form of fasting that will take time to get used too. It is not recommended for beginners.
- The Prolon Fasting Mimicking Diet-This way of eating was created by Dr. Valter Longo, you can get the effects of a five day fast while enjoying certain foods. The foods have gone through clinical trials from USC and have been touted for its anti-aging effects. It’s been highly studied that the certain ratios of micro and macronutrients will help nourish you but the body will not recognize as food at the same time. On this five-day eating plan, Day 1 will start to prime your body and get into a fasting state and start to promote cellular optimization. On Day 2 is when fat burning mode begins and your body will go into Autophagy which is cellular recycling. Next, on Day 3 you will continue the cellular recycling and will reach a full state of Ketosis. Day 4 is when cell regeneration begins, at this point stem cell regeneration will begin. Lastly on Day 4 Stem cell regeneration continues and the body starts to heal from within.
Dry Fasting-This is the most hardcore way of fasting. Doing dry fasting you need to not eat or drink any liquids for 24 hours or more. This means even brushing your teeth and taking a shower. The body will act like a sponge to the water and this is known as a hard dry fast. One day of dry fasting is equal to 3 days of water fasting. Soft dry fast where you can brush your teeth and take a shower so you don’t walk around smelling funky. You can’t have anything to eat or drink, NO LIQUIDS! While all fasting routines help you lose weight and have health benefits this is probably one of the most healing things you can do. It was started in religion and old cultures, a Russian doctor Dr. Sergei Filonov has brought it back to the mainstream. While all fasting helps to detox your body this takes it to another level. Your body uses a lot of energy on breaking down foods. Dry fasting is not recommended for beginners, remember to always consult with your doctor before trying fasting. This is not to replace the health advice of your doctor! Not everyone should fast and shouldn’t start out on the extreme end of fasting!
Weight Loss
Even though fasting has many benefits let’s give the people what they want, weight loss! It can be debated that fasting is the best way to lose weight. Your body will burn two sources for energy sugar and fat.
The body will use sugar before it uses fat for energy and you won’t be able to use both at the same time. By frequently eating and not giving your body a break you are constantly in a state of being a sugar burner.
Your liver and muscles store glycogen in them. Fasting and restricting calories will allow you to use up your sugar stores. When your sugar stores are all emptied you can start using fat for energy.
Sometimes people are often worried about losing muscle while they fast. This has been proven not to be true, well sort of. Some studies say that you will lose both muscle and fat while others say that you won’t lose much muscle if any.
The take home is if you lose too much weight to quickly you run the risk of losing muscle according to the studies.
Most studies have been done on obese population and it’s thought that leaner people won’t have as much of an issue with muscle loss. The way around this is to work out. If your exercising this shouldn’t be an issue.
Reverse Type 2 Diabetes
Once thought to be the diagnosis of a guaranteed decline in health has been proven not to be true thanks to Dr. Jason Fung. In many podcast interviews, he explains that type 2 diabetes is where the body has too much insulin or has become insulin resistant.
“The problem is we don’t treat diabetes as a dietary problem; we treat it with a lot of drugs, and that never addresses the root problem of the diabetes,” says principal investigator Jason Fung, MD, a kidney specialist at Scarborough and Rouge Hospital in Toronto, Canada.
While type 2 diabetes is a sign of health decline it’s very manageable and most of the time a reversible disease according to the latest research.
Ways to reverse this disease is by losing weight and fasting allowing the body to burn off the excess sugar and your cells will become insulin responsive again. Dr. Fung did an experiment with intermittent fasting because he was frustrated seeing so many diabetic patients with kidney failure.
“It occurred to me that fasting was an underutilized therapeutic option for losing weight,” he recalls. “I started doing this five years ago, and a lot of people got incredibly good results-it reversed their diabetes.
There is no nutritional value to sugar! While it tastes good and is highly addictive. It is a big contributor to diabetes, heart disease, obesity, inflammation, and high blood pressure.
High starchy foods should also be removed as they are simply long chains of sugars. This is coming from a guy who loves some potatoes. If you would like to improve symptoms from this disease adherence is key to continually improving your health.
By losing weight and taking breaks from eating can improve insulin resistance if you do. If you have diabetes you should consult with your doctor during a fast. This blog is for educational purposes only.
Key facts
“According to the world health organization
- The number of people with diabetes has increased from 108 million in 1980 to 422 million in 2014.
- The global prevalence of diabetes among people over 18 years of age has increased from 4.7% in 1980 to 8.5% in 2014.
- Diabetes prevalence has been increasing very quickly in middle- and low-income countries.
- Diabetes is a major cause of blindness, kidney failure, heart attacks, stroke and lower limb amputation.
- In 2016, an estimated 1.6 million deaths were directly caused by diabetes. Another 2.2 million deaths were attributable to high blood glucose in 2012**.
- Almost half of all deaths attributable to high blood glucose occur before the age of 70 years. WHO estimates that diabetes was the seventh leading cause of death in 2016.
- Healthy diet, regular physical activity, maintaining a normal body weight and avoiding tobacco use are ways to prevent or delay the onset of type 2 diabetes.Diabetes can be treated and its consequences avoided or delayed with diet, physical activity, medication and regular screening and treatment for complications.”
Anti Aging
The latest research has found out that fasting provokes a molecule that delays the signs of aging in our arteries. A recent discovery may help protect against chronic diseases such as Cardiovascular disease, Cancer, and Alzheimer’s.
Scientists led by Dr. Ming-Hui Zou have proven that fasting, calorie restriction and can produce a certain molecule that promotes vascular aging.
Beta-hydroxybutyrate is a ketone molecule that is produced by the liver. Your body will use this molecule when all of your glucose stores are depleted. This is promising news in anti-aging health.
“We found [that beta-hydroxybutyrate] can delay vascular aging. That’s actually providing a chemical link between calorie restriction and fasting and the anti-aging effect.”
Dr. Ming-Hui Zou
Fasting helps repair cells through a normal process in the body called autophagy. Autophagy is much lower when insulin is in increased through normal eating and ramps up in times of fasting.
This is important because mTOR is the process in accelerating aging. A cleaning process will occur to remove the old sick cells from the body because this is believed to be the main staple in the aging process.
If mTOR pathways are high signaling in the body you could have a greater cancer risk. When mTOR signaling is low in the body your body will repair itself which is where Autophagy comes in.
Thanks to a Nobel prize winner in 2016 Dr. Yoshinori Ohsumi we now know about this. Autophagy is derived from Greek words meaning “self -eating.”
Think of the Pacman game, Pacman is roaming your body looking for dots and fruit to eat(old sick cells, viruses, and bacteria) to recycle.
When cells become sick and toxic as you age, that’s when a genetic disease can occur. Fasting can help raise your autophagy levels to that of a younger person.
When fasting for a few days or intermittently fasting, it is the most potent anti-aging method. It takes about 12-16 hours for autophagy to peak. Levels will decline somewhere around two days after.
Cholesterol
HDL Cholesterol(Good)- is associated with being protective against cardiovascular disease. The lower your HDL is the higher the risk you are for cardiovascular disease. Fasting can have a minimal drop in HDL. You want your HDL as high as you can get it.
LDL Cholesterol(Bad)- is bad because there is proof showing how closely related your LDL is with getting a cardiovascular disease if increased. It’s been shown in as little as 70 days you can lower your LDL up to 25% by fasting!
Triglycerides- are a certain fat found in your blood. You do need some triglycerides to supply the body with energy. While having too much can put you at risk for heart disease. When you eat your body will transfer over the calories you don’t need and store them in your fat cells to be used later.
Your cholesterol is connected to how healthy your heart is. Contrary to popular belief that low-fat diets are not the end all be all for lowering your LDL(bad) levels.
low-fat diets slightly lower your LDL(bad) levels and lower your HDL(Good) cholesterol! Can you really say that is improving your health?
Unfortunately, this is not recent news. Here is a study from 1995 with cholesterol levels of 50 participants were fed either a 22% or a 39% fat diet.
The low-fat diet group Cholesterol levels started at 173 mg/dl and at the end of the study levels dropped….drum roll…. to 173 mg/dl. The high-fat diet group didn’t fair well either.
Their cholesterol levels increased slightly to 177 mg/dl. With all of the low-fat diet, miss information here is a way to bring it down naturally, fasting! This study shows a strategy can have a serious impact on lowering your cholesterol levels.
HGH Human Growth Hormone
Human growth hormone is created by your pituitary gland. This hormone is key in cellular repair, growth, metabolism, muscle growth, injury recovery.
Higher levels of HGH will help reduce your risks of diseases. what you eat and your daily living choices can also have a big effect on your HGH levels. In this study, they found that fasting for 24 hours will almost double your HGH production versus a normal day of eating.
Intermittent fasting within a 12-16 hour eating window will also raise your HGH levels. There need to be more studies on how it will compare for a full 24 hours of fasting.
On a side note, there are other ways to increase this beneficial hormone. High-intensity exercises with little rest, getting into a deep sleep, and taking a melatonin supplement will help optimize your levels naturally.
Reduces inflammation
Inflammation in the body is thought to be a major driver in most diseases. Improve brain health by fasting, with an increase in mental disorders like depression and anxiety.
Many are turning to medication for treatment. While there is no one size fits all to treat these conditions you can improve your mood and your brain activity.
Side effects of fasting
Psychological distress– We have been conditioned to eat around the clock. Some are emotional eaters or just eat because they are bored. I’m guilty of all of the above.
It can be a challenge when you realize you don’t need to eat as frequently as you do when you are stuck in a habit. You can get more done in the day and not be controlled by consistently eating.
Binge eating is another big one when you break your fast, don’t undo all of the hard work you’ve done by stuffing your face. Give your body a break. Have a plan in place with what you will eat when you break your fast.
Blood sugar crash– you can get the effects of low blood sugar, getting dizzy or not feeling well overall. Make sure you are resting and staying hydrated. If you need to eat something low in calories to help you feel better you should do so.
After you’ve had a small snack you should try to resume the fast if you’re able too. Make sure you are staying hydrated with your salt water as well. If you have diabetes or any other disease, you should work with your doctor while fasting.
Headaches-This is probably one of the most common side effects. Some get headaches while others do not, they usually will go away within a few weeks.
This is where sea salt water can help with replacing lost electrolytes. If you are still getting them after a few weeks it could be an underlying issue in which you should speak to your doctor about.
Upset Stomach-You can get an increase in stomach acid. Your stomach is used to creating stomach acid to break down foods. Also, the classing hunger pains is another one, it will pass and your body will adjust to fasting over time.
Fatigue-This is another obvious one, you will be tired. It will lessen with time and you will be able to fast longer each time. Don’t plan on doing anything strenuous or working out until you are adjusted or feeling better.
Just rest for the meantime until you feel you are getting a few side effects. Just remember to stay hydrated and it will lessen most side effects. Drinking too much water can also cause you to flush out your electrolytes.
While these are some side effects there are many more. Every “body” is different and has different reactions to fasting. It also depends on how long you fast. Will determine what kind of a healing crisis or side effects your body will go through.
I caution you to start out by slowly working your way into fasting. It’s no different than working out, it will take time for your body to adjust but you will get there. Fasting is a stressor just like working out.
Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t make it through your fasts. I’ve failed many times during a fast but now it is much easier. It’s no different than getting good at anything, it takes practice!
Tips to help your fasts
- Staying hydrated is key, I make sure I add sea salt to my water to get electrolytes.
- Try staying busy, keep yourself busy and distracted, seems obvious but it will help.
- You can drink coffee or tea as long as there are zero calories, these drinks act as an appetite suppressant. (although in moderation especially if you are chronically stressed because it can be taxing on your central nervous system. I know boo to me.)
- People will think you are crazy for doing fasting, so keep it to yourself. There are plenty of online groups or health coaches who can coach you through it and keep you motivated.
- As mentioned before don’t beat yourself up because this will take time to get the hang of it.
Who shouldn’t try fasting
- You have an eating disorder
- People with diabetes
- If you are pregnant or trying to become pregnant and or breastfeeding
- Any organ transplant/removal
- People who are unhealthy and under doctors supervision
Remember to always consult with your doctor with any kind of fasting or changes to your health.
Bottom Line
There is just too much proof out there proving that fasting works and can work better than most practices. Fasting can improve your health and has helped me personally to manage my weight and my health.
Unfortunately, there is no one size fits all for everyone. However, you can get fasting like benefits by reducing calories significantly a few times a week if you are not able to fast. What is more important is finding something realistic that you can stick with long-term because adherence is key!
It’s been proven that we can lose weight but eventually we gain it back. This is why it needs to be something you can stick with long term.
Remember when you start fasting you need to start slowly. It will take time for your body to get used to eating in a window and fasting the other parts of the day versus eating a normal daily routine.
The normal time it takes is about 2-3 weeks to adjust. It’s best if you try a low carb diet going into the fasts so you can keep the hunger pains quiet down below.
Fasting is great for those whose bodies can tolerate it but you can still do other things. Improve your health by eating whole foods, getting good sleep, and getting some form of movement is still key.