Why intermittent fasting is beneficial | Fusion - WeRIndia

Most religions around the world have their own rituals for restrictive fasting. Christians restrict their diet during Lent, Muslims fast throughout the day during Ramadan, and Hindus have various fasting rituals for their festivals almost year-round. Scientifically speaking, intermittent fasting has incredible health benefits.

Intermittent fasting is the technique of fasting for twelve to eighteen hours per day, including sleeping hours. Food can only be eaten during the remaining hours of the day. These are some of the excellent health benefits of intermittent fasting.

Intermittent fasting helps burn off excess fat. Since fasting takes away the body’s main source of energy, it will instead take its energy from stored fat. Fasting can be even more effective than dieting in helping burn off excess fat stores.

Fasting helps improve the body’s metabolic system. When the stomach is empty, the body can focus more on regulating the digestive and excretive systems. This also helps burn excess fat, even without performing rigorous exercises.

Intermittent fasting can improve the body’s sensitivity to insulin. This is the hormone that is responsible for regulating the body’s levels of blood sugar. However, people with type 2 diabetes become resistant to insulin. Therefore, fasting can help prevent type 2 diabetes.

On a practical level, fasting helps the day become simpler. Food often occupies a person’s mind throughout the day, with worries about what food is eaten and how much food is eaten. With intermittent fasting, one or two meals are usually eaten per day instead of three. This gives more freedom to do more productive activities throughout the day.

Fasting can significantly improve eating habits. It helps prevent binge eating and regulates mealtimes, since both overeating and irregular eating times can put the body under unnecessary stress. With intermittent fasting, one can decide when to fast and when not to, therefore allotting certain set hours where one can eat.

Intermittent fasting can boost the body’s BNDF (Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor). This helps improve the health of the nervous system and can also help prevent Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.

Fasting helps improve the immune system.

Since the body is not as preoccupied with digesting food, it can focus on attacking any diseases or infections in the body.

This can help the body become more resilient to illnesses and can even help prevent cancer.

Image Credit: Jean Fortunet / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/1.0)

Image Reference: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fasting_4-Fasting-a-glass-of-water-on-an-empty-plate.jpg