Fast Like a Girl: A Woman's Guide to Using the Healing Power of Fasting to Burn Fat, Boost Energy,and Balance Hormones
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When your health falls apart, you need just one person to believe in you and give you hope.
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The signs someone is struggling with their metabolic health are clear: High levels of blood sugar, triglycerides, low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, blood pressure, or an increasing waist circumference are all telling you that your metabolism is struggling.
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one of the most famous fasting studies revealed that a three-day fast can kill precancerous cells
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Eighty percent of all autoimmune conditions occur in women.
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This is the root cause of metabolic syndrome, which is defined as having three out of five of the following components: obesity, high blood pressure, high blood triglycerides, high blood sugar, or low levels of HDL cholesterol. When reports emerge showing that only 12 percent of Americans are metabolically fit, we know we have a collective health problem.
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Cortisol can also rise when you are overexercising, trying to force your body into a state of health.
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Called the “thrifty gene” hypothesis, it speculates that this genetic coding still exists in us today.
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research shows that it takes about eight hours after your last meal for your body to shift to its fat-burning system.
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Decreased mTOR
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Decreased protein synthesis
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but the more often you access this fat-burning state, the more repair can happen in your body. It’s much like sleep. When you are getting consistent sleep, your body has a chance to heal at a deeper level than when you are awake.
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Ketones are an organic compound the liver makes when your blood sugar drops.
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Ketones are reparative, meaning they will go to certain tissues in your body and regenerate them. Specifically, they repair nervous tissue.
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This is incredibly helpful with any neurodegeneration that may have occurred in the brain. Ketones have the power to regenerate damaged neurons that carry information throughout your brain, improving your memory and ability to retain new information, as well as giving you increased focus and mental clarity.
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The rise in ketones also triggers the release of a calming neurotransmitter called GABA. This neurotransmitter has an anti-anxiety effect on your brain, leaving you feeling more relaxed despite not eating any food.
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The sneaky part of a virus like COVID-19 is that once it enters your cells, it shuts down autophagy so that it can replicate faster. Fasting can help restore autophagy’s ability to shut down viral replication. The
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The last key feature of autophagy is its ability to repair your mitochondria. Known as mitophagy, this is a healing response triggered by fasting in which your cells will eliminate dysfunctional or damaged mitochondria, counteracting degeneration and inflammation that can lead to an array of common health challenges including cognitive disabilities, muscle weakness, chronic fatigue, and impairments in hearing, vision, and liver and gastrointestinal function.
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glycogen. There are three key places your body puts this excess sugar: muscles, liver, and fat.
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Once inundated with sugar, your liver becomes inefficient at these pivotal jobs, which can lead to diabetes, fatty liver disease, and high cholesterol.
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Like it does with extra glucose, your body has to store this excess insulin somewhere, so it packs it away in your liver and fat.
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Growth hormone production peaks at puberty, then makes a slow decline until it completely stops at 30. Ask
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Growth hormone performs three key functions. The first is that it helps you burn fat, especially around the midsection. The second fabulous process that growth hormone provides is muscle growth. Have you
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decreasing blood sugar levels stimulates your body to make growth hormone fivefold, giving you back that youthful feeling.
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Obese individuals not only need more dopamine to feel the satisfaction of food, but as they age they have less dopamine receptor sites available to receive the dopamine.
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On the third day of a water fast he saw something miraculous happen: Old, worn-down white blood cells died off and a new, energized group formed. It was a reboot to the immune system that anyone going through chemotherapy needs. That happened because of the release of stem cells into the bloodstream at 72 hours of water fasting.
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Two of the most abundant bacteria phyla you have in your gut are Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes. Research is proving that obese individuals have more Firmicutes than Bacteroidetes, causing them to store more of their calories as fat.
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According to Dr. Emeran Mayer in his book The Gut-Immune Connection, when microbes move farther away from the gut lining, better glucose regulation is achieved. This is called microbial geography, and fasting
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fasting created a significant decrease in hemoglobin A1c, an indicator of blood glucose levels, and C-reactive protein, an indicator of inflammation. Very
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Somewhere between the 12- and 15-hour mark, as your body is making energy by burning fat, ketones flood your bloodstream. The first place those ketones go to is your brain, turning off hunger and giving you a boost of physical and mental energy. Your cells begin to move into a state of autophagy, repairing, detoxing, and regenerating themselves. As
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energy you get from eating is often dependent upon the quality of the meal you put together. High-carbohydrate meals might give you an immediate burst of energy but then can cause your energy to crash soon after.
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like to think of autophagy as a dimmer switch that slowly gets turned on around 17 hours and reaches its brightest peak at 72 hours.
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thecal cells
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When you are in a fasted state for 24 hours or more, it’s long enough to get a burst of stem cells released into your gut to repair its inner mucosal lining, which may have been damaged from years of chronic inflammation.15 This
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order to trigger the release of that stored sugar, you may have to stay in a fasted state longer than 24 hours, and clinical experience has shown me that 36 hours is the magic number.
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Cholesterol is made in your liver. When your liver has been dealing with high influxes of sugar, inflammatory fats, and toxins, you will often see your cholesterol levels rise. The liver also makes ketones. Longer fasts, like a 36-hour fast, can not only jump-start the liver’s ability to make ketones but also repair the liver so that it stops overproducing cholesterol.
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Often when a woman goes onto a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet, she will see her cholesterol rise. This indicates that her liver is congested and needs some fasting help. Research plus clinical experience has proven
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Doing this length of fast once a month can often be the cholesterol solution you’ve been looking for.
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Stem cells that are revitalized as a result of three days of water fasting aren’t there just to repair your immune system. Stem cells can repair any injured body part, making this a great length fast for combating chronic musculoskeletal injuries such as arthritis. In my clinic, I have seen this length of fast work like a charm for the most stubborn injuries. In recent years, stem cell injections have become a trend among aging athletes who are trying to overcome the chronic degeneration that can occur to joints from repetitive exercise. These stem cells can cost up to tens of thousands of ...more
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liver cells anywhere from 150 to 500 days to completely replace themselves.
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foods that support liver health, like bitter vegetables such as dandelion greens or radicchio, and you now put this vital organ into both healing and metabolic healing states.
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Recent discoveries from researchers like Thomas Seyfried, author of Cancer as a Metabolic Disease, have challenged this theory, stating that it’s not our genetics that cause disease but rather malfunctioning mitochondria.
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Glutathione is your master antioxidant, credited with reducing oxidative stress, lowering cellular inflammation, improving insulin sensitivity, regenerating skin, helping with conditions like psoriasis and diseases such as Parkinson’s, and having an overall positive effect on cardiovascular health.
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One form of fasting called alternate-day fasting increases the expression of an anti-aging gene known as SIRT1.
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brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF for short.
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estrogen to slowly build within you until it reaches its peak somewhere mid-ovulation (around day 13).
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Instead of your body preparing to make estrogen, your body ramps up to make progesterone. You may feel supercharged during ovulation, but as you enter this stage you may experience a dip in energy and mental clarity.
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Premenstrual
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Depending on when you ovulate, your progesterone levels usually hit their peak six to eight days after ovulation.
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progesterone is very influenced by cortisol. If
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You have two areas in your brain—the hypothalamus and pituitary—that balance all the hormones in your body.
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When insulin surges in the body, that signal goes back up to the hypothalamus, which tells the pituitary to shut off production of estrogen and progesterone because the crisis is still brewing.
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