You often hear the word fasting when it comes to weight loss or religious observance. It refers to a period of abstaining from food. You also have a daily fasting period when you sleep, which is also when the body works to repair itself.
Aside from losing weight, fasting has been found to be beneficial for helping to keep the gut healthy.
Why Gut Health Is Essential
The gut’s main acknowledged purpose is to digest food and distribute the nutrients to the body while separating and excreting harmful materials and waste. But more than that, the gut is essential for maintaining your overall health and well-being. Most of our immunity is developed in the gut, and essential hormones and neurotransmitter chemicals are produced with the help of the gut microbiome.
Gut microbiome pertains to the trillions of bacteria, fungi, and viruses that play a crucial role in your overall health and your digestion. When there is an imbalance in the gut microbiome, called dysbiosis, you may experience health problems.
These can range from mild but annoying discomfort through to various illnesses and serious diseases. From digestive problems to skin irritation to cardiovascular diseases and mental health issues, your poor gut health could be responsible for them. That’s why it is essential to keep the gut healthy.
Can fasting really help improve your gut health? Let’s take a look at that.
Fasting Can Help Detoxify The Body
Dead cells, fatty tissue, and other toxins can accumulate in the body. Fasting helps the gut to detoxify. When the gut is given a break from all its digesting tasks, it can divert its resources to cleansing and repairing.
Fasting Improves The Composition Of the Gut Microbiome
While trillions of microbes live in the gut, they need to be diverse in terms of species and types. That’s because they play different roles in the body, such as digesting certain types of foods and keeping you safe from foreign elements. Fasting is a good way to improve the composition of the gut microbiome, restoring the balance between good and bad bacteria.
‘Bad ‘ bacteria are usually only bad in excess. They increase their populations beyond what is healthy (for us) often due to poor diet. Fasting depletes their food source and they decrease in number to healthy ratios.
Fasting Helps Restore the Circadian Rhythm
It is believed that the gut microbiome has its own circadian rhythm, and disrupting it also impacts the composition of the microbes. When your internal body clock is messed up, the diversity of bacteria fluctuates. Fasting helps restore your circadian rhythm to keep the diversity balanced and the gut healthy.
Fasting Boosts Your Metabolism
Gut bacteria are essential elements of metabolism, the process by which your body burns food or stored fat for energy. Fasting helps boost your metabolism. It can increase the production levels of norepinephrine, a neurotransmitter that can promote weight loss.
Fasting Reduces Inflammation
Chronic inflammation is one of the major symptoms and contributing causes of severe diseases. An unhealthy gut can increase inflammation. When you fast, it can help ease the inflammation by reducing the growth of inflammatory cells, such as monocytes. Fasting puts these cells into “sleep mode,” so they don’t go to the bloodstream.
Fasting Heals The Gut Lining
A leaky gut, which happens when the gut lining is damaged, can lead to infections and illnesses. Fasting heals the gut lining by giving the gut a break from constant digestion. Digestion requires much energy, so when you fast, your body uses less energy. Then, the gut cells transition into repair mode.
Gut Health and Intermittent Fasting
Intermittent fasting is one of the popular ways to fast. It has gained traction in recent years because for many people it is a lot easier to follow and stick to than a traditional fast. Intermittent fasting is about going without food for a certain period and eating your normal meals in a given time window.
For instance, you can fast for 16 hours a day (which includes your sleep period) and eat normally within the remaining eight hours. You can also fast for two non-consecutive days a week and have your normal meals during the other five days. There are other intermittent fasting regimes, but these 2 are very popular.
Studies have found that intermittent fasting is beneficial in keeping your gut healthy and balanced. It also helps improve blood pressure levels, insulin resistance, and immunity.
One Last Thing to Remember
Fasting is not a magic solution. Before doing fasting for an extended time, it is still best to consult with your health care provider to make sure that it will work for you.
