bad 5-day water fasting experience

[Lenin]

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to share my negative experience with 5-day water fasting and check if anyone had anything similar.

A bit of background: I am 4/4, mid-30 male. I consider myself to be in good shape. I am 6’3”, 185-190 lbs. About 1.5 years ago I got bitten by the intermittent fasting bug and then by the “fasting cure” paradigm, in general. Not that I had anything in particular that needed curing, but I’ve embraced the idea wholeheartedly. So, over the past 1.5 years I’ve been trying to eat within a 10-hour window (I’ve never been a huge fan of breakfast anyways), as well as to avoid sugar and minimize carbs in general. Also, a year ago I tried a 3-day water fast, and this past week I finished a 5-day fast. Being a biohacker at heart, I decided to check my bloodwork before and after fasting.

Now, having been blessed with good health, the last time I had bloodwork done was 2 years ago. And until today I never had an issue with cholesterol or triglycerides. So it was quite a surprise for me to see elevated TC, LDL and TG levels. An even bigger surprise was to see these numbers rise AFTER fasting.

Another surprise was just how awful I felt during those 5 days of fasting. Even on the 3rd day of my fast I could barely get out of bed. By day 5 I had lost 11 lbs. (from 187 to 176) and couldn’t bring myself to run for more than 10 minutes (having been inspired by stories of people going to the gym on their multi-week fasts, I tried to do the same), while normally I run 3-4 days a week for 45-60 minutes.

Now, I don’t think I was dehydrated – I drank 3-4L of water daily and supplemented with sodium/potassium/magnesium. So I am very confused as to what could be the reason behind my body rejecting fasting so violently. Oh, and I had severe brain fog during fasting – it’s like I was half asleep the whole time. Not to mention easily irritated. I am also intrigued whether the past 1.5 years of intermittent fasting could be behind the rise in my TG/TC/LDL.

I did see some papers that report an increase in cholesterol after fasting:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/10539776/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2418277/

And yet others report the opposite:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15161775

Thanks for listening to my ramblings, and I would really appreciate any input!


PS: I am attaching my own TG/TC/LDL numbers before and after fasting, as well as over the past 4 years.

[Stavia]

Very interesting Lenin.
I've never gone more than 40 hrs. Just get palpitations and tachycardia at about the 24hr mark. And feel like I'm on speed! Brain racing.
George does 2 day fasts- he knows a lot about it all.

[Gilgamesh]

Lenin, thanks for the report! Very interesting! I've tried zero-calorie days in the past. I had a few-week stint of EOD fasting years ago. Like Stavia, I often had weird palpitations and felt crappy. But "often" is the puzzle: some days it worked out beautifully! I felt lean and sleek and energetic. Would go out and practically sprint a few miles. Other fasting days made think I was doing something horribly damaging to my body.

More recently, after much reading, and discussions with people in the Longo lab, I've settled on "quasi-fasting", or, as Longo calls it, "fasting-mimicking" dieting. What I had been doing: a 2-day pig-out, 1-day quasi-fast protocol (except recently the quasi-fast went from 400 cals. to more than triple that, because I was recovering from surgery). But from here on in, I'm going to try sticking to Longo's 5-day fasting-mimicking diet, and may or may not continue my 2:1 pattern. Longo's diet is: eat something like 800 cals one day, then a bit less the next four. (Adjust based on body size and, I'd say, activity level.) Then eat normally. Do the 5-day "fast" once a month. I'm on Day 1 one now. Not doing labs this time, but I'll try to next time.

There's a minor, possibly illogical, unscientific, yet not entirely irrational comfort to be found in the idea that a bit more than zero calories is the condition our bodies would have adjusted to, in the course of evolution, during a famine. Famines are rarely total. One would find and eat at least a few bugs or even leaves (from which one would derive a bit of energy), even during a famine.

G

[Stavia]

Thanks for the info G
I've actually been watching Longo's interview with Rhonda Patrick, and was about to check out what exactly the fasting mimicking diet is.
How did he arrive at this specific protocol?

[Gilgamesh]

How did he arrive at this specific protocol?

I don't know -- I will ask him. I wondered that, too: Why five days, why once a month, why ≈500-800 cals, instead of 300, or 1000? I do know part of what motivated him was the attempt to find something workable for people. I like the idea of concentrating the "pain"/"weirdness" of my health regimine. Next five days: I'm hungry and thinking about food a LOT! Then: no worries for nearly four weeks. That, instead of the lesser, but daily hunger and preoccupation of normal CR.

[Stavia]

Thanks G

[Julie G]

Welcome Lenin! Glad you persevered with our vetting process. I found it really interesting that a 5 day day fast caused your HDL to drop, your LDL to increase, and your triglycerides to rise over 30 points . I'm sure that's the opposite of what you expected. It would have been interesting to have had glucose and ketone checks throughout the experiment. FWIW, your experience somewhat overlaps with that of another member shared in this thread. He found that eating lower fat (overall calories) caused his LDL to rise in what he describes as a homeostatic mechanism. Certainly turns conventional thinking upside down.

[Tincup]

Hi Lenin,

A couple of thoughts. My experience is Tg's will increase with fasting. As to different experiences, it may depend on whether one starts with a high or low value before the fast. Mine tends to run around 0.67 (60 mg/dL) and will go to 1.08 (96 mg/dL) on a fast. I'm normally eating a low carb high fat modest protein ketogenic diet. Someone with high Tg's on a high carb diet would likely see a drop, as their body would not be making Tg's from the excess carbs. I talked with Dr. Gundry about this and that the only way I can get my Tg's below 50 mg/DL it to have a "Carb Nite." He said it is because I'm insulin sensitive.

Reading your description, it appears you were not keto adapted prior to this experiment. Your 11 pounds weight loss was likely mostly water weight. Your poor feeling sounds like "keto flu" to me. This is pretty normal. I fast 22 hours/day and a lot of my calories come from nuts (more details here). On a trip, I decided to drop the nuts for 6 days. I dropped 8 pounds in 6 days and wasn't fasting.

In the BBC video first link here, Michael Mosley fasts 4 days (water) under Valter Longo's supervision. I've watched a number of interviews with Longo. He doesn't think a water fast is doable for the average person. He also thinks is 4 day fasts are hard. On the other hand, I don't think he starts from a keto state, which changes how hard it is. Christa Varady (also linked in my linked post above) does every other day fasting with the fasting day being 500 calories for women and 600 for men (25% of normal, in her words). On the 5:2 diet, the 2 fasting days follow this 500/600 model. Longo also has assisted a company to create a company to make his FMD food (says he gets nothing out of it, but impression I have is he doesn't think people can do it unless you give them the food).

One interesting note, in an interview - I think this one, Longo mentions studies, both on rodents & humans with MS. After an 8 day fast at 200 cal/day he make a point that refeeding is important. It stimulates stem cells to rebuild all the systems - almost like a reboot. The study is here (free full access).

[Tincup]

When I keto adapted 7 years ago, I had a period of time where I felt fairly off. I recall trying to rock climb and my bicep would not contract! My muscles were out of glycogen and I'd yet to fat/keto adapt. A few months ago, I rock climbed for 5 hours in the summer sun on the third day of a water fast. Being keto adapted makes a huge difference, in my experience.

[Stavia]

Lenin I think George is right and you weren't ketoadapted. I've only gone 40 hrs but had no brain fog and could run no problem. I only got palpitations and tachycardia at 24 hrs as my ketones rose but didn't feel crappy as G said. I felt amazing and very clear head.
But I'm ketoadapted. I don't know if G is.

Your rapid weight loss might be from utilisation of a significant amount of liver glycogen plus associated water which means you had significant liver glycogen stores when you started the fast thus weren't in ketosis when you started.