9 replies to this topic

[Nate-2004]

I'm on my 4th round of my planned 6 month commitment to fasting for 5 days each month. 

 

I have been experimenting with various ways in which I can make it easier. Most of my issues are with hunger pangs, hunger in general, dreams and fantasies about food, smells that makes me think of foods, cravings, etc and on top of that, brain fog. 

 

I'm over 1.0 mmol/L with my ketone test by 48 hours into the fast, pretty consistently each time. I'm at 3.0 by 72 hours and often I hit 5.0 by 96.  I never tested where I'm at when I go beyond 110 hours but I might do that this time.

 

When I test my blood glucose throughout the day and especially where I'm feeling the worst of the issues I described above, it's incredibly low. I test anywhere from the 30's to the 40's in mg/dl.  I assume that either my body is having a really tough time with gluconeogenesis or it is struggling to adapt to using ketones. Either way it's bad.

 

My goals here, as anyone would expect, are autophagy and improving insulin function among other things that happen (supposedly) during a fast. Secondary goals are fat loss, and usually I just end up back at my goal weight which is fine, so I've been maintaining ideal weight, and anything else that might be helped by BHB. The life extending stuff basically, however minimal. It all leads back to that.

 

So a Redditor advised me to try half a glucose tab to help raise my blood glucose in these more difficult times of the day. 2g of glucose is only 8 calories, it shouldn't break a fast and probably wouldn't knock me out of ketosis, but I'm not super positive about that theory. Would mTOR be activated? Would I lose that AMPK activation? Would the primary goals be lost? Would I just end up more hungry instead of less? 

 

That's what I don't know and what I'd like to know. 

[Hebbeh]

I have reason to suspect the glucose would help alleviate the symptoms of low blood sugar in the very short term but very likely worsen symptoms in the longer term due to even worsening blood glucose swings. That said, the only way for you to know for sure is experiment.

[xEva]

I sorta agree with both opinions, i.e. it's better to help yourself along, while BG is too low, than ending the fast coz you can't stand how you feel. And it's also true that, once you eat something on a fast, first there is immediate relief but then, in another 15-30 min, you start thinking of it again. And you eat a bit again. And before you know it it's no longer a fast.

 

Years ago, there was a liquid ALCAR by Twinlab, It was in glycerin base. That was fantastic for this sort of thing. Too bad they don't make it anymore. Glycerin is better than glucose for this purpose. It is sweet and satisfies the craving, but it's also more natural on a fast, coz glycerol is what remains after the 3 FAs are stripped from fat, and then it's converted to glucose.  + it had ALCAR of course. After they stopped making it I tried plain veg. glycerin for this purpose and it worked well. A teaspoonful really helps you to get over the metabolic hurdle, when all you need a little push in the right direction. 

 

re will it break the fast, I think it depends:

8kcal once in 3-4 hrs, on that difficult 3rd day? -- why not.

8kcal every 15-30 mins? -- now that's almost eating, but if it's only for half a day or so to help you go further, I don't see why not.

 

 

Edited by xEva, 24 October 2018 - 02:21 AM.

[sthira]

I haven't fasted in a few months because my weight and energy just got too low. Plus work is throwing noise at me. Need energy to plug my ears and not scream. But right now I'm on day 2 of a 5 day fast, and finding it psychologically tougher going. Food is comfort, it's something to do, it's pleasure, it's energizing. For me fasting challenges are less about hunger and more about habit. We are in the habit to eat, and bodies expect consistent routine. Fasting breaks that. Suddenly disrupting habit brings up emotional stuff.

Keeping my mind occupied helps. Also remembering to stay hydrated. I'll splurge and drink some commercial kombucha on a fast, what the hell, why not. Sure it probably sends up BG and may interrupt ketosis, but who cares. We're still just metabolism-tinkering here by fasting. I seriously doubt diligence and devotion to this ancient practice is doing what we want -- to make us all mature hip teenagers again.

If I were to do something like ingest glycerine or glucose tablets, Nate, I'd probably just say screw it and return to eating. But if taking these helps you stay fasted and on target, I'd do it.

[Nate-2004]

I find the smells even worse, sometimes I think I smell food that isn't even there. Craving tons of things.

 

I broke my fast this morning an hour later than the last fast, at 114 hours roughly. 

 

I've been testing my glucose a lot through this fast and this time instead of adding the glucose tabs I just stopped taking metformin as an AMPK activator. That mostly fixed the problem. I took aspirin instead on some nights and that didn't really make anything better or worse appetite wise but did get rid of a headache. I would also take apigenin and drink chamomile before bed, man I slept like a rock every single night and dreamed like crazy. 

 

So I think I can do without the glucose tabs, I should just reserve the metformin for mornings when I'm not fasting, mainly because my fasted blood glucose is always high for whatever reason except when I'm extended fasting.

 

I've also been measuring my glucose throughout the first refeed day and I've done this before as well. I noticed that my blood sugar really doesn't spike at all, the highest it gets is post prandial and it's 120 max, and that's when I push it with a big meal, starting with pumpkin seeds (3 servings), an apple with peanut butter and then a caesar salad wrap from downstairs at the bakery. That means insulin is functioning quite well despite not having any insulin in the last 114 hours.

 

Done with  my 4th fast in my monthly 6 month commitment and it feels good to only have two left this year. Then I'll probably switch to one day a week again or something like it.

Edited by Nate-2004, 26 October 2018 - 08:41 PM.

[sthira]

...When I test my blood glucose throughout the day and especially where I'm feeling the worst of the issues I described above, it's incredibly low. I test anywhere from the 30's to the 40's in mg/dl. I assume that either my body is having a really tough time with gluconeogenesis or it is struggling to adapt to using ketones. Either way it's bad.

And:

...I've been testing my glucose a lot through this fast and this time instead of adding the glucose tabs I just stopped taking metformin as an AMPK activator. That mostly fixed the problem...

Yikes! You didn't mention you were combining metformin with five days of fasting, or did I miss that little detail? How much metformin were you taking, and by how much did your BG rise after cessation?

Fasting alone may activate AMPK in lean, metabolically flexible humans, fwiw, but perhaps less so in obese metabolically inflexible people. Practice fasting might be one avenue for the inflexible.

Overall, what did you learn from this, the fourth of your six fast commitment? How did you arrive at the decision to do six fasts? Did you find no pleasure at all in these experiments? I may be an oddball, but after the initial few days of fasting my body adjusts and I find moments of joy in the experience.

[Nate-2004]

The only pleasure I find is the first meal I eat at the end. I wish I felt differently. However, this time at the end once again I found my tremor had greatly subsided as it always seems to.

 

Yeah I may have forgotten to mention the metformin. Stopping the metformin made my glucose shoot up about 30 points during regular measurements in the mornings and late afternoons. It also affected how high my ketones get too, instead of 5.0 on the fourth day I get 3.2. 

 

I learned that less is more if I learned anything. I'm not sure if I get more or less autophagy or the same without metformin, hard to say. I'm also not sure how aspirin affects the benefits of fasting, as I do know it affects the benefits of exercise.

 

Why six months? Because that's the same number of 5 day "fasts" that Longo recommends in the FMD and I believe that's what they did in the trials. That's not to say I won't continue beyond 6, I might switch to something else like alternate day.

[sthira]

If you keep practicing you may find pleasures, too. Especially if you see demonstrable ET pauses or improvements that sustain post-fast. I mean, there are reasons beyond masochism to fast. A kind of airborne emptiness arises quietly, like I can sense the body's humming life. But -- like running up hills is no fun, either -- with patience eventually you'll tune into the benefits.

I'm often disappointed when ending a fast -- that blunt return of chewing to dictated schedules, swallowing it all down, be a good little modern human, all of it down one hole and out the other. A distant goal of George Church, the Harvard geneticist, is to design our future, space-ready human bodies to need no food, or air or gravity. Meanwhile, fasting still has no health benefit peers.

[xEva]

Yeah I may have forgotten to mention the metformin. Stopping the metformin made my glucose shoot up about 30 points during regular measurements in the mornings and late afternoons. It also affected how high my ketones get too, instead of 5.0 on the fourth day I get 3.2.

 
 
Ha! That's why your ketosis was deeper than normal at this stage! You have not mentioned this before. And I though you were an outlier. 3.2 on the 4th day is normal. 5.0 is expected after a week or so. 
 
But this is an interesting observation, for those you may want to get into deeper ketosis quicker. Thanks Nate!
 
 

I'm also not sure how aspirin affects the benefits of fasting, as I do know it affects the benefits of exercise.

 
 Aspirin? What else your're taking on a fast? 

If you take aspirin to thin blood, ketones do a better job of it. If you take it for inflammation, fasting alone squelches inflammation. 

 

 

I'm beginning to suspect that the reason fasting just for a few days was so hard on you, because you took too many pills/supplements with it.  Common, Nate, list all the things you took! 

[Kalliste]

 

Aspirin Recapitulates Features of Caloric Restriction

The age-associated deterioration in cellular and organismal functions associates with dysregulation of nutrient-sensing pathways and disabled autophagy. The reactivation of autophagic flux may prevent or ameliorate age-related metabolic dysfunctions. Non-toxic compounds endowed with the capacity to reduce the overall levels of protein acetylation and to induce autophagy have been categorized as caloric restriction mimetics (CRMs). Here, we show that aspirin or its active metabolite salicylate induce autophagy by virtue of their capacity to inhibit the acetyltransferase activity of EP300. While salicylate readily stimulates autophagic flux in control cells, it fails to further increase autophagy levels in EP300-deficient cells, as well as in cells in which endogenous EP300 has been replaced by salicylate-resistant EP300 mutants. Accordingly, the pro-autophagic activity of aspirin and salicylate on the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is lost when the expression of the EP300 ortholog cpb-1 is reduced. Altogether, these findings identify aspirin as an evolutionary conserved CRM.

Keywords: acetylation, aging, autophagy, EP300, longevity, metabolome, salicylate

 

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm...les/PMC5848858/

 

 

 

Mechanism by which high-dose aspirin improves glucose metabolism in type 2 diabetes

Abstract

Recent studies have implicated fatty acid-dependent activation of the serine kinase IKKβ, which plays a key role in tissue inflammation, in the pathogenesis of insulin resistance. High doses of salicylates have recently been shown to inhibit IKKβ activity and might therefore ameliorate insulin resistance and improve glucose tolerance in patients with type 2 diabetes. To test this hypothesis, we studied nine type 2 diabetic subjects before and after 2 weeks of treatment with aspirin (∼7 g/d). Subjects underwent mixed-meal tolerance tests and hyperinsulinemic-euglycemic clamps with [6,6-²H₂]glucose to assess glucose turnover before and after treatment. High-dose aspirin treatment resulted in a ∼25% reduction in fasting plasma glucose, associated with a ∼15% reduction in total cholesterol and C-reactive protein, a ∼50% reduction in triglycerides, and a ∼30% reduction in insulin clearance, despite no change in body weight. During a mixed-meal tolerance test, the areas under the curve for plasma glucose and fatty acid levels decreased by ∼20% and ∼50%, respectively. Aspirin treatment also resulted in a ∼20% reduction in basal rates of hepatic glucose production and a ∼20% improvement in insulin-stimulated peripheral glucose uptake under matched plasma insulin concentrations during the clamp. In conclusion, these data support the hypothesis that IKKβ represents a new target for treating type 2 diabetes mellitus.

 

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm...cles/PMC150979/

 

It's probably correct to not over-do supplements while fasting. .

In case some supplements are actually harming you I think a fast might be a excellent time to let the body heal that too. 

 

 I like to start a fast with 500mg aspirin because that makes it easier to ignore cravings on the first day. 

I take 3mg of melatonin some nights to make sleep easier. Although MitoROS translates some of the effects so I try to avoid antioxidants in excess these times. 

 

Long fastings: Move slowly and leisurely. Do not become agitated. Talk in low volume. Take walks in the sun. Control your breathing. Mineral water. Block blue light in the afternoon. Walk barefoot on grass. 

 

I have never used enemas, but if you feel bad perhaps you should try that. Some people report back that headaches and such resolves after enema. 

 

Personally I have found it much easier to do a single weekly fast Sunday 17:00 -->Tuesday 18:00 with little trouble. Sometimes extended to Wendesday morning if that feels alright.