Starvation is the surest means of poisoning the body! Acidosis that occurs during fasting is very harmful to the body. Starvation as a method of getting rid of various “diseases” was very popular ten or fifteen years ago. Now it does not have so many fans, despite the fact that it as a method of treatment is recognized by official medicine. Perhaps this is due to the fact that this method was not as effective as its supporters wanted it to be.
Note:I can disappoint the author of this article, this is completely untrue. To get into some centers of therapeutic fasting people stand in line for years, if fasting would not be so effective, it certainly was not.
And some experts in the field of nutrition in general consider starvation not only not too useful,but even harmful.Thus, a scientist from St. Petersburg, Mark Jolondz, the author of seven books, united in the series “Medicine vs… Medicine”, states: “Bragg starvation is a misconception of the century! Bragg himself and his followers simply failed to notice the error that crept in.” According to Bragg, the toxins and slags that result from eating give what is known as acidosis. Smell, Bragg urged, how horrible your urine smells like acetone when you’re starving – it’s evidence that your body has been poisoned by food. But what causes this poisoning? Is it a vicious diet, as Bragg* claims? No, the poisoning is caused by starvation itself! Because starvation reduces glucose in the blood, and this leads to a deficiency of insulin. Lack of insulin leads to incomplete combustion of fat in cells. As a result, acetone bodies are formed, the excess of which is harmful to the body.
To be honest, I am generally against starvation as a means of recovery, because it often does more harm than good to health. The fact is that amino acids (proteins) are not designed to feed the body with glucose. Yes, glucose, of course, is obtained during the breakdown of these amino acids, but in addition to glucose, which goes to the urgent needs of the body, there remain nitrogen and sulfur, which the body also now needs to remove somehow. These nitrogen and sulfur are excreted in the form of urea, hydrogen sulfide and other slags and toxins. That is why unpleasant odors emanate from a starving person, that is why headaches and other signs of poisoning occur.
But that’s just the beginning.
The body begins to intensively use fats. There is an intensive release of fatty acids from the body’s fat depots and their active breakdown. Normally, fat in the body is fully oxidized, eventually giving water, carbon dioxide and energy. In starvation, complete oxidation does not occur, acidic breakdown products are formed. These products, resulting from the incomplete combustion of fat during metabolism in the body, are called ketone bodies (acetone bodies). In starvation, the level of glucose in the blood is low, there is little glucose in the blood, accordingly, the level of insulin in the blood produced by the B-cells of the pancreas inevitably decreases. Once again I will note this important feature of fasting – little insulin in the blood! Deficiency of insulin in the blood during fasting, leads to incomplete burning of reserve fat in the cells. An excess of ketone bodies is formed in the body (many of these substances are acidic in nature, so in case of insulin deficiency, acute acidosis occurs).
Increased content of ketone bodies in the blood causes poisoning of the body and, above all, the central nervous system. And this is far from harmless condition. In patients with diabetes, it is this state of acidosis contributes to the development of a serious complication – diabetic coma. It turns out that not nutrition, but starvation is the surest means of poisoning the body!
Note: When doctors – nutritionists say that fasting is a very bad method, what a horror, why people starve – it is not right. I can ask any doctor, what is the treatment foracute pancreatitis? Only starvation. Any doctor knows that. Because it is a methodology that really powerfully cleanses the body. Of course, it is a shame that such a venerable nutritionist as A.V. Faleev and “super scientist” Zholondz do not know the long studied and proven therapeutic mechanisms occurring during fasting. And it is very incorrect to compare pathological ketoacidosis in diabetes mellitus and a completely different process –self-regulated ketoacidosisoccurring during fasting, which naturally occurs in any living organism and is of great importance for them. So it is possible to agree to the fact that physical exercises are harmful, because there are cases when people, without training doing banal gymnastics, and earned a heart attack.
In diabetes mellitus, the absorption of glucose by the tissues is disturbed, as a result of which glucose accumulates in the tissues causing damage to them, from this we can conclude that fasting is the most physiological method oftreating diabetes.
● First, fasting gives your body’s own insulin-producing cells a chance to recover.
● Secondly, the body becomes accustomed to the use of an alternative, fatty, source of energy. Because in the neglected state diabetic patients are forced to come to this, fatty way of energy utilization, but then it is already a manifestation of the disease – a serious condition, diabetics called “ketoacidosis”. Patients with neglected form of diabetes smell acetone, as well as the mouth of a therapeutic starving person, but these are two different things.
● Thirdly, the diabetic body on fasting becomes accustomed to easily tolerate hypoglycemia, i.e. fainting conditions associated with a sudden drop in the usually high blood sugar in diabetics. Often diabetics cross themselves off the list of fasting people saying that they cannot tolerate low sugar and fasting is contraindicated for them. The answer is simple. During fasting, the body switches from carbohydrate metabolism, on which all their diabetes is built, to fat metabolism. During fasting, you live on fatty acids, and all your blood sugar becomes just a meaningless indicator – it becomes unnecessary and your insulin-producing pancreas gets a chance to recover.
Well, now let’s look at the real facts, what really happens in the organism during therapeutic fasting (here the mechanisms of wet and dry fasting are the same, only during dry fasting all processes go in a shorter time) Metabolism in conditions of hunger is studied thoroughly. Biochemistry textbooks contain chapters in which starvation is “laid out”. The main task of the organism under starvation conditions is to supply organs and tissues with energy taken from internal reserves. Excitation of hunger centers by the principle of dominance spreads to the entire central nervous system, which activates the “control panel” of the endocrine and nervous systems of the body – the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus includes the most important gland of internal secretion, the pituitary gland, which begins to produce growth hormone (somatotropic hormone).
From this, a number of effects are observed in the body:
● activation of thyroid growth hormones relieves intoxication, i.e. antitoxic function of the body is activated;
● the regulatory effect of growth hormone on the pancreas inhibits insulin production. Glucose is produced by other enzymes that are produced by the calf muscles. This provides improved breakdown of glucose under photosynthetic conditions. As soon as nutrition is resumed, these enzymes immediately disappear;
● Growth hormone activates the synthesis of nucleic acids, which improve biosynthesis throughout the body. Nucleic acids promote better fat absorption and extinguish all allergic reactions. In other words, there is no protein antagonism during starvation;
● if there is no protein antagonism, the load on the immune system, which during this period rests and restores its functions, is reduced;
● growth hormone activates opiate receptors in the body, which begin to produce large amounts of narcotic substances (endorphins) and alcohol. The person feels comfortable and the craving for these substances disappears during the fast. During the first 5 – 7 days of starvation, and in subsequent times much earlier (3 – 5 days), the above mechanism works intensively in the body, creating a comfortable state.
Then there is no need to activate growth hormone and its production by the pituitary gland returns to normal values. This happens because another process – self-regulated ketoacidosis – is activated at full capacity. The essence of this process and its effects are as follows. In the starving organism, due to increased production of growth hormone, biosynthesis improves, which leads at first to increased breakdown of own fat reserves into their constituent parts. First of all, unsaturated fatty acids are formed, which are the basis for many vitamins, hormones and other biologically active substances. Naturally, thecells of the bodyon starvation immediately use them. But the end products of fat breakdown are organic acids, which are united by one term – ketone bodies. These ketone bodies, entering the bloodstream, change its acid-base equilibrium towards an acidic environment (acidosis). Some tissues (e.g., red blood cells, some brain cells, kidney cells) can work only on glucose. For them, the liver produces it from proteins (gluconeogenesis), and energy for this production is taken from fats. As a result of this process, the necessary glucose and ketone bodies – the product of “under-burning” of fats – enter the bloodstream. (This is the main source of glucose production; there are others, but their contribution is very small). Ketones serve as fuel for cells, it is practically a water-soluble form of fat, which is easily transported by blood to all tissues. For the heart, for example, it is the preferred form of fuel, it runs 28% more efficiently on ketones.
The average body needs about 200g of glucose per day. In conditions of starvation, the need for it is reduced to 120-130 g, only glucose-dependent cells are “allowed” to use it. All others switch to burning fat and ketones. The body, which receives a constant “feeding” with carbohydrates and is not accustomed to work on ketones, needs a few days for reorganization. Until it does, the bulk of ketones are excreted through the lungs and kidneys. We all have proteins coded in our genes for all occasions. It takes a few days to produce enough workers – (proteins that “know” how to handle ketones, it may take 30-40 days). During these days, potential fuel (ketones) is not used, discarded, stored fat reserves melt away like a frying pan. Then weight loss slows down – the body “learns” to use ketones as fuel and stops throwing them away.
It is clear that in starvation conditions, protein for glucose production is taken from the muscles (but this is not the first source). The approximate protein requirement for this process is about 150 g per day. This means that in 6 days of complete starvation you can lose almost a kilogram of muscle mass. In addition, the breakdown of any tissue produces carbon dioxide, which can be assimilated by cells or excreted through the lungs. Acidification of blood with ketoacids (fat debris) does not allow carbon dioxide gas to be fully eliminated from cells and it accumulates there. And as established by Academician M. F. Guliy, when changing the acid-alkaline equilibrium in the direction of acidic environment accelerates the process of assimilation of carbon dioxide by cells. Prof. M. I. Volsky found that the assimilation of air nitrogen by cells is also accelerated when the blood ALCP changes to the acidic side. Therefore, nitrogen, along with carbon dioxide, actively saturates the cells of the body and thus contributes to the improvement of biosynthesis of protein and other compounds.
On this basis, ketone bodies begin to be metabolized by the body, converting from keto acids to amino acids. The increasing ketoacidosis only facilitates this process. As a result, not only the CO2 and nitrogen in the body, but also the nitrogen from the air is better assimilated! Further increase in ketoacidosis leads to increased fixation of carbon dioxide by cells, hyperpolarization of cell membranes and increased biosynthesis, as a result of which the increased formation of ketone bodies is balanced by the production of amino acids from them. This usually occurs on the 5th – 8th day of fasting (and earlier in subsequent courses) and is called the acidotic peak (crisis), after which the acidic environment of the body is kept at the same level. It is during this period that the biosynthesis of human cells is similar to the biosynthesis of plant cells – the human cell is completely unblocked to assimilate carbon dioxide and nitrogen from the air! This eliminates the problem of conditionally essential amino acids.
Qualitatively improved cell biosynthesis produces such substances by itself and in the amount that it cannot produce on the food regime! This determines the fact of full internal nutrition of a person on starvation. It is known that carbon of carbon dioxide, being converted into carbon of organic substances, gives two molecules of oxygen plus additional energy, which is formed by the reduction of carbon. This is what regulated ketoacidosis is and the effects caused by it. If you starve yourself cyclically and constantly activate biosynthesis by doing so, the body can exist much better on simple food than if you saturate it with “balanced” proteins and other substances.
But more recently, the unique mechanisms that occur in the body during ketosis have still been discovered.
Scientists who study theaging processare absolutely convinced that one of the forces that accelerate fading and physical aging are protein breakdown products that accumulate in cells, preventing them from functioning properly. When such residues accumulate in large quantities, they literally crowd out the active elements of the cell, thereby killing it. The further this inexorable process continues, the more and more cells function weaker and weaker, so that eventually we, as a biological unit, break down and die. There are other processes besides cellular breakdown products that affect the rate of aging, but if we can make progress in at least clearing the cells of debris, then we can help the cell, and by extension ourselves, to function better and for a longer period of time. Our cells have lysosomes chemical formations to remove waste. Cellular debris absorbed by lysosomes is broken down into individual amino acids, which are then launched into circulation and used to resynthesize other, functional proteins. The process of transporting waste proteins to the lysosomes is regulated by intracellular enzymes specifically designed for this purpose.
As long as the enzymes are working at the right level, garbage does not accumulate. But, as it was shown in the article of the scientific edition of Nature, aging processes make themselves known. And in view of aging processes, even random errors in protein synthesis under the influence of such enzymes lead to the fact that some of them cease to function. Inoperative enzymes then not only do not help the transportation of debris into lysosomes, but they themselves become such. It’s not hard to guess how this all ends over time. So how can we slow this process down and clean the cells of debris? – By being in ketosis for an extended period of time. And how do you stay in ketosis for long periods of time? By fasting or following a low-carbohydrate diet. How does ketosis act as a cell sanitizer? A paper published last year in the Journal of Biological Chemistry answers this question. Ketones stimulate the process of CMA autophagy. What is CMA? It is a cellular process that is involved in removing proteins, organelles and foreign bodies from the cytosol (the water component of the cell) and transporting them to lysosomes for destruction. Why does the body need ketones to stimulate CMA? It’s very simple.
Ketosis is one of the indicators of prolonged fasting
In continuous ketosis during fasting, the brain is signaled to store both glucose and protein. The body begins to conserve glucose, signaling many organs and tissues to use ketones rather than glucose as an energy source. The conservation of protein is accomplished by using less of it for glucose production, because in the absence of dietary carbohydrates (which happens in starvation), the body produces glucose from protein. Thus, by switching to ketones, protein stores are conserved. In addition, for this purpose, the body also controls that the protein for glucose formation comes from pathologic tissues. And can you think of more irrelevant sources than unnecessary waste products drifting around the cells? The ketones themselves stimulate the CMA process to kick-start the recycling of protein trash for glucose needs. And isn’t Nature wise after that? So, all that is needed to restrain aging processes is to conduct systematic therapeutic fasting, unloading days, or follow a low-carbohydrate diet, which will allow nature to do its job, sweeping out the garbage from the “cellular nooks”
If we briefly summarize the beneficial effects of the above physiological mechanisms on the body:
● in the repair of the legacy apparatus
● Improvement of biosynthesis, restoration of enzyme systems of the body (improves immunity, digestion)
● Restoration of cell membranes (they become shaped like young cells and cell barriers are restored)
● Increased cell number and quality in the gastrointestinal tract
● elimination of fat and excess cells
