Cool, I’m on day 4 trying to go anywhere from 21-35 or whatever my body allows. Good luck man!
I would like to go the further I can, but I don’t think I’ll be able to do more than 21 days because I’ve already lost lots of weight and I wasn’t really fat to begin with. I’ll probably look at the end like a Jew liberated from a nazi concentration camp or like Christian Bale in The Maquinist (youtube.com/watch?v=H0fuHY4U1UA), but I’m willing to accept that if it means I can do something about my problem this way. Good luck to you too!
Any updates from people fasting? I’m on day 10 and doing ok hanging in there. I’m just wondering if anyone recently finished or is currently fasting? I’ve been reading and researching a lot and really believe in the body’s ability to heal itself.
Impressive. Keep it up man.
This is interesting. Fasting in this way forces the body to alter its behaviour and epigenetics. I would be skeptical of going beyond 10 days though before any food depending on your own body.
It can be useful in hypertension: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11416824
There is a correlation between global methylation and blood glycaemic and lipid profiles:
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22422454
Further evidence of potential ability to alter epigenome:
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21824486
jem.rupress.org/content/205/10/2409.short
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1113/jphysiol.2009.176156/full
If you consider this be careful.
wow man, very impressive and inspiring to see your dedication in this, good for you. maybe instead of continuing fasting, add some good kefir on a daily basis and start getting some of that good bacteria flowing through your gut and see how your body responds. if that goes well for a period maybe add a little quality protein and keep to a really healthy diet. the guys on this site recommend the paleo diet.
anyways, good for you man! keep up the good work and if you do continue just drinking water and nothing else, be careful and i hope you continue to improve. be well.
Ok i think i found why fasting might be beneficial and its might be to do with PPAR.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10359558
PPARalpha mRNA is induced during fasting in wild-type mice. The data indicate that PPARalpha plays a pivotal role in the management of energy stores during fasting. By modulating gene expression, PPARalpha stimulates hepatic fatty acid oxidation to supply substrates that can be metabolized by other tissues.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16168490
Recently, there has been a great deal of interest in the involvement of PPARs in inflammatory processes. PPAR ligands, in particular those of PPARalpha and PPARgamma, inhibit the activation of inflammatory gene expression and can negatively interfere with pro-inflammatory transcription factor signaling pathways in vascular and inflammatory cells. Furthermore, PPAR levels are differentially regulated in a variety of inflammatory disorders in man, where ligands appear to be promising new therapies.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17261635
PPARalpha also functions to control inflammatory responses by repressing the activity of nuclear factor kappaB (NF-kappaB) and c-jun in immune cells.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10955810
These results suggest that PPARalpha is found and functional in human prostate and is down-regulated by androgens. The role of PPARalpha may be to integrate dietary fatty acid and steroid hormone signaling pathways, and its overexpression in advanced prostate cancer may indicate a role in tumor progression with the potential involvement of dietary factors.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17550777
These findings demonstrate an unexpected role for the PPARalpha-FGF21 endocrine signaling pathway in regulating diverse metabolic and behavioral aspects of the adaptive response to starvation.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22537532
This study indicates that PPAR-alpha can contribute to the anti-inflammatory activity of simvastatin in SCI.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21554431
The present study provides evidence indicating the involvement of the saturated acylethanolamide PEA in ALLO synthesis through PPAR-α in astrocytes and explores the antioxidative activity of this molecule, confirming its homeostatic and protective role both under physiological and pathological conditions.
I just completed a 28 day water fast 3 days ago. Refeeding now. I plan to write up a full report in a new thread at a later date. All I’ll say for now was that it was easier than I expected and my weight went from 208 to 169.5 (which is way I had stopped).
P.S. an Accutane victim
In my case, I did 20 days of water fasting, which were completed a week ago. I can see lots of improvements already, but I want to wait a bit before posting about them because I still feel I’m in a transitional state with the refeeding process.
What’s your progress looking like Living dead?
This is so interesting! I don’t have ED but I have tons of muscular pain… do you think fasting would help for those of us who do not have sexual side effects?
Thanks!
Eric
Hey, please do report back to the topic about how the fasts went, whether helpful or not, when you’re ready for it. I mean i don’t want to pressure you into early replies or anything but just letting you know that people are interested of the results.
Does anyone have an answer or idea for my actual question?
I feel bad because I have very little time to write right now since I’m on a trip and I can’t spent lots of time on the internet. Don’t worry, I’ll make the post about my fast after the trip because I feel I have a debt towards the site. To answer Eric’s question, a fast can help with non sexual symptoms as well. For instance, in my case, my sleep greatly improved and I no longer have foggy thoughts. It seems that some muscle injury I had from weight lifting is now healed. What I read is that during the fast your body will feed on stored greases, but also on dead and abnormal cells, so things that for some reason we’re never able to heal might heal during the fast. It’s probably not what you’re talking about when you ask about muscle pain. I don’t know what would be the cause of unexplainable muscle pain, but I would guess that you still have the drug in your system and a long fast should detoxify your body from the drug and the symptom should go away. I’m not a doctor, but I’m guessing from what I’ve read and from my fasting experience. I think in my case my nervous system was fucked up by the presence of the drug and it was making me very sensible to things that would not affect normal people. Anyway, I’ll give details in the post about my fast.
Looking forward to hearing more. Do you still take medications/supplements on a fast? What about working out?
Eric
Very cool to see people brave enough to go through this! I hope you had as good or better improvements than I did. I think you’ll continue to see improvements over the weeks as you start to replenish your body - give us some reviews!
This is an interesting thread. I already posted a year ago that I had libido improvements after fasting. More specifically, I had a very high libido. The problem is that I wasn’t fasting by choice. I was soo sick that I didn’t eat for some days. After these days I was back to normal and had a very high libido. This happend to me twice, but after some days the effect faded away. I wasn’t able to reproduce this by now.
I’m not shure if the PFS syndrome is the same for all of us. All I can say is that finasteride messed up my digestive system. At the moment I have no libido, but I can have erections. Since my last fasting attempts i took lot’s of supplements(vitamins, zinc, etc.) which helped me to get rid of brain fog and at the moment I can live a rather normal life. I still suffer from fatique and lack of motivation, but my ability to focus has improved.
I believe, that fasting alone is not the cure. For my part, I think my body was lacking nutritients and maybe I have to fix my digestive problems to get back to normal.
Do you have digestive problems?
@PhoenX- I don’t have any digestive problems.
Very low libido, flat emotions, reduced sensitivity, and ED are my most troubling issues.
I actually did a 7 day water fast in April. Had a pretty good morning wood 2 days after it ended and got my hopes up that I was going to see a bit of permanent improvement; I didn’t.
Maybe my fast didn’t last long enough to help.
The worst “side effects” from the fast, besides hearing people bitch at me for not eating, were muscular weakness and waking up in the middle of the night. On the other hand, I had plenty of energy at the same time, which seems odd.
The fast itself really wasn’t that bad of an experience, but was still another disappointment for me.
You should check out “leaky gut syndrome”. Basically by eating grains (bread, pasta etc) over a long period of time can cause them to leak into your bloodstream and cause a host of problems very similar to what you’re experiencing. Your body treats it as an invader and turns on immune functions which could shut down your libido.
Simple test: Cut out all forms of grains (carbs are ok but no grains of any kind) for a week and see if libido picks up. If it does then you’re on to something. Science has shown us that more than 50% of the population is allergic to eating grains and don’t even know it.
Here’s more information :
articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/01/21/grains-causing-gut-leaks.aspx
This is not medical advice I’m giving and I’m not a Dr!
Mind if I ask what your current typical diet is? How many carbs / calories / sugar daily do you estimate you get on avg? Anything about your diet might help.