14 Day Water Fast - My Improvements

Thank you livingdead.
I’m interested in knowing how your sexual sides are doing because you didn’t say much about it: the gains on sexuality have lasted? Is the gain really noticeable? Did you have prostate/pelvic/perineal issues and did they improve?

My main problems were that I couldn’t get good erections like before and it was very hard for me to have sex twice in the same evening. I think I have normal erections now. I do usually wake up with an erection now, and it wasn’t the case before the fast. As with having sex more than once, I remember having sex thrice a couple of months ago and I wasn’t taking tongkat ali at the time. Since my crash while back, I haven’t been able to do it more than twice, except when I was taking tongkat ali.

ok great, I’m happy for you! considering you ended your fast 7 months ago, it’s really a good result. What I can’t understand is if Itermittent Fasting can mimic the effects of a prolonged fast. We know, from reported experiences, that prolonged fasting can reduce or eliminate scars, which is very important in many of us, expecially for those diagnosed with fibrosis of any kind. If IF can do the same, then it’s truly positive.

What you read is that long fasts are more radical, but maybe you can make up for it in the long run since by doing intermittent fasting with a 4-hour window for instance, during one year, your body is in fasting mode a lot more time than if you are doing two long fasts a year. As I understand, the idea of intermittent fasting for health is kind of a new thing, so there’s less information than for long fasts.

I believe it’s the contrary, there is poor scientific literature on prolonged fasting, for what I could find. That was a practice of alternative medicine, so what has been write about it stands in books.
It is possible however that the effects of IF sum up, I don’t know. I would like to understand this before going one year on IF without having similar potent effects. Here’s something interesting

Quick question,

If your fasting is it best to stop taking vitamin supplements and any medication that is not essential ?

Maybe there’s more scientific studies on intermittent fasting, but my impression is that you’ll find more things on specific health problems that were cured with long fasts, whereas on intermittent fasting, what you usually see is information on general health improvement based on cholesterol levels, blood pressure, cancer incidence and so on. Maybe it’s just that I didn’t do as much research on intermittent fasting, but I didn’t stumble upon so many testimonials of people saying for example: I had this hip problem and it’s all gone after 6 months of intermittent fasting. I was thinking that it doesn’t mean that you can’t get this type of result with intermittent fasting, because maybe it’s just because it hasn’t been around for so long and there’s not as many books published on the subject as for long fasts. .

Can you elaborate on the ketone chart?

Mark2012, I think fasting is the only way to get better without taking supplements or drugs. For instance, I was going to the gym or either was running almost every day since I’ve stopped fin and it makes me feel better, but I know that in my case, it’s not sufficient to fix things.

All medications should be stopped and this is for sure unless you HAVE to take them. Sometimes drugs are suspended withing the first week of fasting. As for the supplements, some say yes, some say no, but conceptually you want your body to eat from itself, scavanging for nutrients. If you provide them from the outside it is to be expected that you loosen this effect. Among the experts i feel there is more accordance on the fact that they should be avoided.

Livingdead, I agree, what bothers me somewhat is that we know somewhat what happens in the body during IF, but we don’t know what happens precisely (or at least I couldn’t find anything about it) during prolonged fasting, so we cannot make a comparison. It is true we know more experiences of prolonged fasting than IF. But well I guess the most potent approach is to go on IF, good diet, exercise, relaxation, then boosting with prolonged fasting once or twice per year.

Do not get me wrong, I’m not really an expert. But well, our brain normally is fed by glucose. I know that during a fast, the brain starts to feed from ketones. This behaviour has been associated to the fact that we could have not developed a similar massive brain without it. In conditions such as fasting and exercise, more ketones are realeased on the bloodstream. However you can see from the chart that fasting for 24 hours doesn’t excessively increase the bloostream concentration of ketones when compared to a high fat diet or exercise. And from my point of view, this wouldn’t be in accordance to the claimed potentiality of IF. However, it’s always more complicated than we expect, and there is enough evidence that IF is health-genic.
In fact, even if there’s not all that increase, it’s still 3 times the value of a normal diet. Not comparable however to the 3mmol/l of a high fat diet. So “if” ketogenesis is our scope, probably going on a high fat diet (please don’t let me say it) in a IF regimen and doing regular exercise, could possibly tremendously boost ketogenesis. It’s all speculation though.
Exercise in any case activates similar mechanisms of IF. Possbily more potent. I am quite sure that exercise and IF are to be done together to boost all the effects. If the point is getting rid of possible fibrosis, stressing the body to make it scavange in the extracellular matrix too, this is the destination. Adding fat might only be an easy source of energy and may (who knows) prevent this scavanging mechanism.
These things should be asked to experts though.

Does fasting do much for sexual sides? It seems like it’s awesome at clearing up mental sides, but I feel like those are going away on their own in my case.

From the relatively poor experience pfs sufferers have with fasting, it apparently helps on sexual sides (you can review this thread) to an extent variable on the condition of the subject and from the type of fasting done. From a theoretica point of view, I honestly don’t see how it couldn’t help. Strong possibility that it reduces fibrosis/scarring, improves neuronal health, reduces inflammation to an extent that no drug can achieve and without their side effects, boosts GH, activates autophagy, and so forth…

No meds, no nothing. Just water.

A couple friends of mine are on a Ketogenic diet atm. They love it. I was drunk on new years talking to them about it, so I’ve only a hazy recollection of the purported benefits… I think the one guy was having migraines, but that makes sense then.

Upon researching intermittent fasting, it appears I’ve been more or less doing that for years without realizing it. Maybe that will help me out. lol

I report some extracts from a web article of alternative medicine (not obviously those to trust the most but well…it has some references, and I suggest reading it all)

yogamag.net/archives/1981/em … fast.shtml
Psychophysiology of Fasting
Dr. Swami Karmananda Saraswati, MB, BS (Syd)

Ref
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/964029
karger.com/Article/Abstract/287392

This one is a more in depth analysis. Very interesting.
yogamag.net/archives/1981/emay81/jap.shtml

I went on a strict ketogenic diet for around 6 months and found it lowered my T3 levels (I had bloodwork done). After I added in about 100-150 carbs a day they went back up (I had bloodwork done again to prove it). I had good energy on the ketogenic but I wouldn’t recommend anyone do it long term, you won’t have that “pep” in you like you will when you have carbs, or at least not in my case.

Still doing well BrongFogBoy? thank you!

I’m going to have some time to kill between losing my current job and getting a new one. I think during that time I’m going to try a fast. I really don’t want to try any pharmaceuticals and potentially make my symptoms worse, so fasting seems the best bet. I would love to try a month but I don’t think I’ll be able to go that long. I’ll report back if I go through with it and what my results are. I’m going to shoot for at least 12 days.

YOU CAN TOTALLY FAST FOR AS LONG AS YOU WANT DUDE!!!

longer = more benefits; what have you got to do in between jobs, satisfy stupid hunger by eating stupid food? hunger is a curse!!!

I am very, very underweight to begin with. If I get too thin I can seriously hurt myself. But I’ll definitely push it as far as I can.

Hey “fast dudes” (HEH HEH HEEEEEH), you say that for one to do water fasting, one should study all kinds of material in regards of it etc. - what did YOU guys use to learn about this? Could you give a hand with this? I’m interested in this but would definitely use some reliable, experienced sources so that I wouldn’t need to spent the time I could be using to reading the rmaterial to SEARCH the said material.