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Feb 2024
7m 25s

Why Fasting Is MORE Important than Diet

DR. ERIC BERG
About this episode

In this podcast, I’m going to share why fasting is the most important thing you can do for your health. Your body has survival mechanisms that are activated when you’re fasting. Through fasting, every part of your body starts to improve.


To start intermittent fasting, you should first eliminate snacks. Second, eliminate breakfast and only consume lunch and dinner.


Once you get into an intermittent fasting routine, the health of your pancreas begins to improve. Frequent eating and poor diet keep your pancreas hard at work releasing insulin.


Many people will have normal blood sugar for years while high levels of insulin go undetected. Over time, this leads to insulin resistance, prediabetes, and diabetes.


Intermittent fasting repairs and protects the beta cells of the pancreas, helping to decrease insulin resistance. Because you’re not eating as frequently, your digestive system also has a chance to relax between meals.

An ideal intermittent fasting pattern to start off would involve 18 hours of fasting and two meals around 12:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. Many people drop down to one meal a day which can help correct a slow metabolism, decrease inflammation, increase endogenous production of antioxidants, and combat insulin resistance.

Prolonged fasting offers even greater benefits! Prolonged fasting strengthens autophagy—the recycling of old, damaged proteins into healthy tissue. Prolonged fasting also allows your body to repair and clean out damaged mitochondria through a process known as mitochondrial biogenesis.


Prolonged fasting strengthens the stimulation of stem cells, which is why some people use prolonged fasting as a remedy for cancer.


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