Fasting is back in the news again!
Here are just two of the titles that have been sent to me via email over the last week:
“Routine Periodic Fasting Is Good for Your Health, and Your Heart, Study Suggests”
and
“Study: Periodic fasting good for health, heart”
So what’s going on?
Well the mainstream media has caught on to Dr. Ben Horne’s latest research.
Now, Dr. Horne is a friend of ‘Eat Stop Eat’ and we’ve exchanged emails, so I think it’s worth while to really examine his latest findings.
Firstly, Dr. Horne’s work is on 24 hour fasts, once or twice a week, almost exactly the Eat Stop Eat protocol (add in some weight training and it would have been perfect) so it is VERY relevant to us.
Secondly, it’s not just Dr. Horne – He’s among more than a dozen doctors with Intermountain Medical Center’s Heart Institute who discovered the most recent round of physiological benefits from fasting.
Alright so let’s take a look at what they found:
During 24-hour fasting periods, he found that Growth Hormone increased to an average of 1,300 percent in women and nearly 2,000 percent in men!
When growth hormone is elevated you are burning fat and preserving muscle – so finding this kind of rise in 24 hours is excellent news for us!
He also found that fasting, was also found to reduce other cardiac risk factors, such as triglycerides, weight and blood sugar levels.
Another bonus for us!
Now, according to the news article is was said that “Dr. Horne believes that fasting could one day be prescribed as a treatment for preventing diabetes and coronary heart disease.” Now to be fair, I haven’t actually seen or heard him directly say such a thing, but it is a logical suggestion in my eyes.
And, I should add in that Dr. Horne does caution that fasting may not be for everyone and I completely agree- anyone with a serious medical condition should discuss Eat Stop Eat with their doctor before they try fasting.
Now here’s the bad news – Even though this is even more support for the Eat Stop Eat lifestyle, it doesn’t mean Eat Stop Eat or fasting is going to go mainstream any time soon..or ever for that matter.
In fact, if it ever threatened to do so, it would be shot down VERY quickly – The smear campaign would be immense!
Food companies, supplement companies, food ingredient suppliers, pretty much anyone who in anyway makes money off of you eating does NOT want you to take a break from eating for 24 hours once or twice a week. It would be a financial nightmare.
So, While this research does add to the ever growing body of scientific research that supports our way of eating, it’s not going to change the fact that your friends or family or coworkers may simple never ‘get it’. More than likely, at some point they will give you a hard time about fasting. They will tell you that you need to ‘eat to keep your energy up’. They will push eating on you to make themselves feel better about how much they eat.
This is something we are just going to have to deal with
So here’s what I want you to do: Add this latest round of research to your ever growing support for Eat Stop Eat, but don’t expect it to prevent the funny looks you get when you tell people you are fasting. Also, when dealing with friends and family – share the concept of Eat Stop Eat with the people that are ready – The ones that want to lose weight. Do not bother discussing with the people who simply want to argue with you, it’s a waste of your energy.
BP
