Just like the rather silly notion of “what do I eat to lose weight?” there is the equally silly notion of “what do I eat to cleanse?” In fact, fasting is the only valid cleansing mechanism. It gives your system a rest, allows your bacterial gut flora to readjust to normal proportions and even cleanses on a cellular level through a process known as autophagy, or “self eating.” From Wikipedia:
“In cell biology, autophagy, or autophagocytosis, is a catabolic process involving the degradation of a cell's own components through the lysosomal machinery. It is a tightly regulated process that plays a normal part in cell growth, development, and homeostasis, helping to maintain a balance between the synthesis, degradation, and subsequent recycling of cellular products. It is a major mechanism by which a starving cell reallocates nutrients from unnecessary processes to more-essential processes.
“A variety of autophagic processes exist, all having in common the degradation of intracellular components via the lysosome. The most well-known mechanism of autophagy involves the formation of a membrane around a targeted region of the cell, separating the contents from the rest of the cytoplasm. The resultant vesicle then fuses with a lysosome and subsequently degrades the contents.
“It was first described in the 1960s, but many questions about the actual processes and mechanisms involved still remain to be elucidated. Its role in disease is not well categorized; it may help to prevent or halt the progression of some diseases such as some types of neurodegeneration and cancer, and play a protective role against infection by intracellular pathogens; however, in some situations, it may actually contribute to the development of a disease.”
What this all means is that when you fast for more extended periods, your cells clean out and recycle your intracellular garbage.
There is new research being conducted having to do with starving cancer cells through fasting. Cancer cells can only utilize glucose, not glycogen or ketone bodies. Moreover, cancer cells are 20–30 times less efficient at glucose utilization than normal cells. Cancer cells are real sugar addicts.
There is also research on fasting as a way to mitigate the harmful effects of chemotherapy. Chemo is equally toxic to healthy cells as it is to cancer cells. Chemo is a war of attrition, in which one hopes to kill the cancer before killing the host. But not if the healthy cells and the cancer cells have undergone a prolonged fast prior to undergoing chemo. Researchers have demonstrated that fasting prior to chemo puts healthy cells into a protective posture (and perhaps compromises cancer cells due to the lack of dietary sugar) and changes the game from 1-to-1 attrition, to one of an important advantageous “kill ratio” of cancer cells to healthy cells.
I also cited this report in a post at Free the Animal:
“During the study, conducted both at USC and in the laboratory of Lizzia Raffaghello at Gaslini Children’s Hospital in Genoa, Italy, the researchers found that current chemotherapy drugs kill as many healthy mammalian cells as cancer cells.
“‘(But) we reached a two to five-fold difference between normal and cancer cells, including human cells in culture. More importantly, we consistently showed that mice were highly protected while cancer cells remained sensitive,’ Longo said.
“If healthy human cells were just twice as resistant as cancer cells, oncologists could increase the dose or frequency of chemotherapy.
“‘We were able to reach a 1,000-fold differential resistance using a tumor model in baker’s yeast. If we get to just a 10–20 fold differential toxicity with human metastatic cancers, all of a sudden it’s a completely different game against cancer,’ Longo said.”
I don't claim fasting will be easy the first, second, or even third time, but just like anything else, you get good at it and it becomes a familiar path. We've got millions of years of evolutionary adaptation that says our bodies are built for survival in very sparse and inhospitable conditions.
Fasting is the path to expressing those long dormant genes, and you will not believe how it will Free the Animal in you—and by this I mean a languid, content, focused animal, one completely free of rage, frustration, and other unhealthy toxins.
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