What Happens If You Don't Eat For 100 Hours?

Hello Health Champions today we're going to talk  about what would happen if you don't eat for 100 hours and it's critical that you watch this  video carefully because if you're like most people and you don't understand what happens in  the body and the Very idea of skipping a meal is terrifying to you then you'll probably never  experience the amazing benefits that you can get from fasting and these benefits include things  like weight loss reduced inflammation increased mental Clarity reduced insulin resistance reverse  type 2 diabetes you can detoxify the body you can improve longevity and even improve immunity and  all of these benefits come down to a handful of mechanisms that we really need to have just a  basic grasp on and I'm going to keep it simple for you so we can improve insulin sensitivity  we improve hormone balance when we fast we trigger Sur survival genes we can improve gut  health reduce inflammation and reduce oxidative stress and perhaps the most important benefit  that you really can't get very much of unless you do fasting is called autophagy and we'll get  into some great detail on that but fasting also comes with a few challenges so the number one is  fear we're afraid of what might happen we've been told that it's dangerous to fast we're afraid of  getting hungry we're afraid of losing muscle and getting hypoglycemia where our blood sugar drops  too low where do we get nutrients if we don't eat and of course there may be some Interruption of  your social life we also need to understand that fasting is not for everyone extended fasting is  not for everyone and there is also a risk that you might binge unhealthy Foods afterwards so  how do we deal deal with these challenges well it's pretty straightforward for fear you just  have to learn the truth if you understand how it really works there's nothing to be afraid  of and that's what we're going to talk about in this video Hunger muscle loss hypoglycemia and  nutrient deficiencies those are things we're going to cover throughout the video and when it comes to  disrupting social life that probably will happen but realize that you're not going to do this  type of fast like 72 hours 100 hours probably more than two to three or maybe four times a  year so during that time you just have to figure out hey how do I work around and how do I plan it  into my schedule if I want all these benefits and then it's not for everyone so for small children  pregnant women if you have a disease condition if you're extremely thin then you probably want  to think twice about doing an extended fast you can still do intermittent fasting like maybe 16  hour fasts most days uh that's not a problem for anybody but longer fasts probably not so much and  there is also the risk that if you don't eat for a while and you look forward to food and you're used  to eating all the time then you might be binging unhealthy Foods after but it really comes down to  what kind of food habits do you have if you mostly eat junk food and you get super excited and you  get into this long fast and you dream about food the whole time and you have a bunch of junk food  around the house then yes you will probably or possibly start eating a bunch of unhealthy foods  and overcompensate but if you already have good habits and there's only good food in the house  then that is not really going to be an issue so what happens when you stop eating when you start  fasting is that first you lose weight yeah I'm sorry it's terrible I knew that you didn't want  that to happen but oh well and this is because when you don't eat you have to use stored energy  that's the whole point of storing body fat and excess energy on the body so that we can use it  when there's no food avilable and the body can store two things for energy it's called glycogen  which is a form of glucose or carbohydrate and we can also store fat so in the beginning if your  body is used to using carbohydrates primarily then you will start using up this glycogen and you can  store about one pound of glycogen in your muscles and in your liver and now something interesting  though is that this glycogen is kind of like a sponge it absorbs and binds water so this one  pound of glycogen is going to bind three pounds of water which when you start using up the glycogen  now you also start releasing the water because there's no sponge there to hold the water so as  you burn through one pound of glycogen you will most likely lose four pounds of body weight and  then gradually as you start burning through that glycogen you will also start using up more body  fat and here's how that works so most people are adapted to eating large amounts of carbohydrate  and therefore when you put carbohydrate in that's the first few fuel that your body needs to use  up because really high blood sugar is dangerous to the brain high or very low blood sugar can put  you into a coma so when your blood sugar is high your body has to use that first and therefore  if you are used to doing that your body will start off burning a high level of carbohydrate  and a somewhat lower level of fat but then as time goes on on and you're not adding any new  carbohydrate your body will start to decrease the use of carbs all the way down to a very low  level and at the same time the stored fuel on the body is fat so your body learns to use more  fat it switches more to fat and if you are fully fat adapted and in a fast like after 48 hours in  or so then you probably use about 95 5% of your energy from fat and about 5% from carbohydrate  and you don't have to eat that carbohydrate it is already stored as glycerol triglycerides in  your fat cells in the fat that you stored there's a little backbone of glycerol that can become  carbohydrate and that's about that 5% so in the beginning you'll mostly lose water because that  glycogen can't hold on to the water anymore but over time you start using more fat and during a 3  to 4 day fast you'll probably burn through about 1 to two pounds of fat now what a lot of people are  worried about and you may have heard this is that when you go on a fast then you become hypoglycemic  your blood sugar drops and you start producing a bunch of cortisol because cortisol is a stress  hormone that the body uses to try to raise blood sugar and increase gluconeogenesis meaning to  make glucose blood sugar from something other than carbohydrate and we can do that from two  things we can do it from protein and we can do it from this glycerol that we talked about that's  stored in the fat and once you become fully fat adapted that glycerol is enough so what about  this fear of hypoglycemia well when you go on a fast and you start burning more fat then your  body doesn't need as much carbohydrate and blood sugar for the brain but there's still a little  bit going on here so basically if if we say that we start at hypothetically this level and then  as we go through the fast and we don't eat now we're probably going to have a little bit of  an increase in cortisol and over time though then we reach a certain point and the body is  stressed because of we're not eating so it has to make that blood sugar but as the fat burning  increases now we don't need so much blood sugar anymore and we'll come back and talk more about  that so now that cortisol drops again so when people tell you that your cortisol is going to be  elevated and very high throughout a fast and it's very stressful for the body for that reason that's  not true because once you're fully fat adapted and you don't need the glucose anymore then your body  is not going to release cortisol for that reason but here's another thing to keep in mind that  if you go gradually on a low carb diet before you do this fast then this scenario is going to  look a little bit different so you're not going to start off with carbohydrates really high  because if you're on low carb you're already fat adapted so now your carbs are going to start  probably down here and you're all already burning more fat than carbohydrates because that's what  you're giving your body in the diet and now this carbohydrate is again going to drop down to  about 5% and the fat is going to increase to about 95 but there're very small changes it's  not so dramatic because that's what the body is already doing and now the cortisol response is  going to be much much less so just hypothetically it might go up a little bit and then it'll just  settle down again because there's no big stress you're already fat adapted you're already having  that metabolism in place but then we get to what some people might think is bad news and that is  that you'll probably gain four pounds back three or four pounds as you start eating again because  the four lbs you lost first were just glycogen and water and once you start eating again the body  is going to go back to storing some glycogen and absorbing some water so a lot of people now are  going to say hey then that was a total waste I'm not going to worry about it because I could lose a  measly pound some other way well that's not how it works that's not what you're looking for you are  setting yourself up for Success you're looking for the momentum and the long-term benefits and then  we want to understand hunger that's probably the single biggest deterrent for people because most  of us until we hear about this and give it a try most of us have probably never gone a day in our  lives without food I know that was certainly the case for me but there's two hormones insulin and  gin that we need to understand so insulin first of all is involved in fat storage whenever we eat our  blood sugar goes up insulin is released to take that blood sugar out of the bloodstream into the  cell where the some of it is used and the excess gets converted to Fat so the trend the tendency  for insulin is to promote fat storage and not just fat storage but lipogenesis meaning making fat  out of carbohydrate and when we have high levels of insulin when we become insulin resistant and we  have chronically High high levels of insulin now we will have a tendency we'll have some momentum  toward fat storage and what a lot of people don't realize is that if you have increased insulin  if you have chronically high levels of insulin and that promotes fat storage and prevents fat  burning then you're going to be more hungry than you would be otherwise because you store all that  energy but because of the high insulin you have a lesser tendency to get it back you can't really  retrieve that with high insulin your body prefers to go and eat more and then of course the opposite  of that is true that if you can lower insulin then you can move toward fat burning and if you can  burn the fat and release those fat stores then you actually become less hungry so we'll come back  to that but there's also a hormone called gin and that's your hunger hormone and typically what we  think about is that grin Rises to make you hungry when your body is supposed to go and get food  when it's supposed to hunt something down and and eat something and then as you have satisfied your  body then this grin level drops to a low level and you're not hungry anymore until it's time to eat  again but it turns out it's not quite that simple because grin is mostly habitual so what does that  mean well let's say that you have gin rise in the morning when it's time to have breakfast and then  you eat and your gin drops and you're not hungry and then we repeat this a few times throughout  the day that makes perfect sense but what happens is this is mostly habitual the Gin Rises to  make you hungry as a habit to help you eat at the times that you usually eat so if you usually  have breakfast lunch and dinner then those are the times that your grillin is going to rise and it's  like a program in your body but here's the really cool part that if you get hungry and you ignore  it and you just have a cup of coffee or a cup of tea and 30 minute goes by then your gin is going  to drop anyway it's not going to stay high your body isn't evil and mean to you it's not going  to keep you miserable it's just trying to get you hey let's see if there's some food out there  somewhere because overall food is a good thing it helps survival but if there is no food around  it's not going to keep you miserable and keep that grin high it's going to drop down and try  again later so it's not as bad as people think just to ignore that hunger and go do something  else go for a walk have a cup of tea and that gin will drop and you won't be hungry and you won't  even think about it sometimes for the next day or so but insulin isn't just about weight loss or  hunger in fact it is the most important factor as far as most chronic degenerative diseases that we  try to reverse with fasting so when you have high levels of insulin over time you become insulin  resistant and what we're trying to do then is to reverse that and become insulin sensitive  so how does fat fasting do that why is fasting unique in that regard well your body wants to  maintain a very narrow range of blood sugar so when you eat something and your blood sugar goes  up now your body quickly releases some insulin to a similar to an appropriate corresponding level  and now this glucose comes back down into a normal range and then this insulin also comes down into  a normal range and then we do that over and over we do it one more time and we do it maybe three  four five six times in some cases and of course the insulin goes up and down but then we have  our last meal of the day and we get down into this range but then if we only fast for like 8  hours now this doesn't have time to get very low before we eat again and especially if your insulin  resistant if you have high levels of insulin then this is not going to drop back down into a good  level during just a single night's fasting but when you go beyond 8 and 12 and 24 and 36 hours  now the insulin keeps dropping for the duration of the fast because if you're not adding any new  food there is no reason for the body to release large amounts of insulin it's going to level off  at a baseline level where you just need enough to regulate your basic blood sugar but not enough  not large amounts to deal with incoming food and this is how long-term fasting extended fasting  Beyond 24 hours is probably the most powerful tool to break through plateaus of high levels of  insulin and insulin resistance and when you do that now you can start reversing type 2 diabetes  you can reverse hypertension in many cases people try this and they say hey blood sugar drops  but also my blood pressure normalized and of course some of the tremendous benefits would be to  reduce the risk of heart disease reduce the risk of stroke and reduce the risk of cancer these are  the big killers of mankind today and all of them even though there are other contributing factors  all of them are primarily metabolic conditions that we can improve the risk by becoming more  insulin sensitive and fasting will also reduce inflammation which if you recall heart disease  the primary risk factor the primary mechanism is chronic lowgrade inflammation that causes heart  dis so now we can start affecting these from many different directions so let's talk a little  more about heart disease because it's an important topic and people really need to understand some  things I want to illustrate this with a patient case we had someone come through they did some  blood work and in May of 23 they had a total cholesterol of 260 and then 7 months later in  January of 2024 very recently they had dropped that to 190 and the LDL cholesterol which is often  called the bad cholesterol was from 160 and it went down to 108 and the vast majority of doctors  and the vast majority of the general population would say that this was a great development  they would say that this person got a whole lot healthier he lowered his total cholesterol and  lowered his bad cholesterol but I want to tell you that these two markers are complet irrelevant  they are not the things to look at instead what you need to look at is the LDL particle count how  many LDL particles are there because when they measure LDL as 160 and it went to 108 they measure  milligrams per deciliter that's the total mass of LDL cholesterol but the risk has to do with the  number of particles because if you have larger number of particles then there's more particles  that can bump up against the inside of the blood vessel and slip through if there are some cracks  and some gaps and the other factor that matters is how big are these LDL particles and again this is  not the only factor or the two factors but these are in my opinion the two of the most important  and two that are very easy to look at and if we have small particles less Les than 20. 5 nanometers  then they're more likely to slip through the Gap so a large number of small particles are more  likely to slip through these gaps and cracks and cause plaques so here's what's really astounding  even though the total weight of the cholesterol went down dramatically and that might look like  a good thing the particle count the number of LDL particles actually went went up the total mass  went down the number went up so he increased his risk of heart disease but not only that of course  now you realize that these particles got a lot smaller so when we count the number of particles  under 20. 5 nanometers he had less than 90 before and he went to 699 afterwards so now you're  all wondering what did this person do between May and January well here's the thing he had been  on a Statin drug for 10 years and then he learned some things about nutrition and diet he wanted  to reverse his diabetes and he wanted to heal his body and support his body naturally so he went off  the Statin drug so in May of 23 he had been off of his medication for about six months and then he  went back to his medical doctor who ran some blood work and of course he didn't run the particle to  so he didn't learn the real risk factors and the doctor told him you have to get back on a Statin  drug so he did and officially based on mainstream criteria the numbers went down and everything  looked good but as you now understand he actually increased his risk for heart disease along with of  course some burden on the body with the burden of medication and side effects and so on so I'm not  saying that everyone is going to react this way I'm not saying that nobody should take cholesterol  medication but this person shouldn't at least not that kind but if you don't measure what really  matters then you'll never know so if you never had this done I suggest you get that checked  and I'll put a link down below where you can get some discounted blood work if you don't have  access to it because unfortunately most places will not cover these tests and it's called an  NMR cholesterol panel and I also made a course where I go into a lot more detail about not just  cholesterol but about everything basically that can show up on your blood test if you really want  to start understanding the body that'd be another good thing to do and I'll put a link for that as  well but now let's talk about how this relates to fast and again I'm not saying that everyone's  going to have these results but here's what happened to me last time that I did a 100 hour  fast which was a few months ago so we're going to compare the beginning and after a 100 hours  my total cholesterol went from 220 to 255 now how does cholesterol go up we hear that you shouldn't  eat foods that are rich in cholesterol because it raises your cholesterol and that may or may not be  true depending on the person and what you eat but I ate nothing and my cholesterol went up by a good  bit my LDL went from 146 to 169 I ate nothing and my cholesterol went up and that means it's not  really related to the amount of cholesterol in your diet it has to do with hormones and metabolic  balances and checks and Bounds and the fact that you have some cholesterol all stored in your fat  tissue that gets released but that's not a bad thing but like we said these markers are not the  ones to look at so let's look at the important ones and my particle count went from 1709 to 1222  and this is dramatic if you look at this my LDL milligrams per deciliter the mass and weight of  cholesterol went up I had more cholesterol but dramatically fewer particles so of course now  you understand that means they got bigger and the number of particles under 20.

5 nanometers the  ones that would be damaged and damaging went from 351 to less than 90 and again less than 90 simply  means that there are so few that they have a hard time measuring and coming up with a number or they  don't bother because they're so few they just put less than 90 and one of the biggest factors in  heart disease and cardiovascular disease and what causes the particles to shrink is inflammation  and oxidative stress if we damage these particles they're going to tend to get smaller so let's  look at more factors about this inflammation so fasting can reduce inflammation and it can do  this many many different ways it will reduce the pro-inflammatory white blood cells so you have  all these white blood cells as part of your immune system and sometimes it's appropriate  to have more inflammation and sometimes less inflammation but fasting tends to reduce the  particular cells that promote inflammation so overall we get less inflammation it will act can  act as an immune system reset and if your immune system has a tendency to make a lot of these  pro-inflammatory then with a reset we can lower that chronic level of inflammation and a lot of  inflammation in the body has to do with the gut so when you don't eat any food now there's no  food to irritate so you reduce gut irritation and you're also not feeding the pathogenic gut  bacteria you're feeding all bacteria less but especially the pathogenic ones tend to like the  processed foods and the sugar but overall you're getting a break to give give your body a rest to  heal that gut and as a result you can improve your balance of your microbiome which can further  help in gut healing and if everything works a little better if you have a healthier membrane a  better biome now you can actually have less food intolerances you can start tolerating food better  because that's really all about how well your gut is doing it's not really you that's allergic to  food it's the whole environment in your gut that's allergic to food but there's even more ways that  you reduce inflammation with fasting you reduce free radicals and you reduce oxidative stress  when you don't eat because most free radicals and oxidative stress comes from processing and  burning through food another big factor is that you're increasing ketones when you're burning  through your fat stores your body upregulates ketones and they are anti- inflammatory and  this also helps with mitochondrial repair so mitochondria are little things inside your cells  that make virtually all of your energy 95% plus of all the energy that you use are actually made  by a little separate entity inside your cells and whenever you make energy when you burn food and  make energy you create free radicals and oxidative stress that's unavoidable but the healthier your  mitochondria are the cleaner that happens when you have old and sick and damaged mitochondria  it's kind of like rust it's like an old rusty car it doesn't burn clean at all it just fumes and  spews things everywhere but if you can improve the health of those mitochondria and repair them  now they're going to increase their capacity to make energy but also burn much cleaner and then we  have autophagy so even if you don't have a disease even if you are at your ideal weight autophagy  would be the reason to do this fasting anyway so autophagy means selfing but it doesn't mean  that you're going to start chewing on yourself it's not that type of self-eating it simply means  that when there are no new resources when you're not adding new resources to the body especially  protein then the existing resources become so much more precious and the body has to get better  and better and better at utilizing and making the most of those resources and as a result it will  increase its recycling ability it will perform cellular cleanup so that it can go out in the body  and look for things that are a little bit degraded some cells that that aren't so healthy some  misfolded proteins some bacteria anything that could be a resource the body just start looking  really really hard and as a result you actually improve your immunity because some of these things  that go out looking for things are part of your immune system your white blood cells and overall  you perform quite a powerful detoxification as through the mechanism of autophagy and here's  another way to think about autophagy I'm sure you've all heard the saying when the going gets  tough right the tough get going well when you're fasting then it gets a little tougher and now  your body has to get much much better and one thing that happens is it starts upregulating human  growth hormone this is a tissue building hormone it is a muscle sparing hormone any new tissue any  repair any growth that you want to make you need human growth hormone and during a 3-day fast  you could actually upregulate your levels of human growth hormone many many times some Studies  have shown like seven eight 10 times more growth hormone during a fast and this brings us to  one of the fears or concerns which is muscle loss some people say oh if you don't eat protein  you're going to lose muscle no you won't not sure short term and 3 4 5 days is short term if you  go from months and months yes you will reach a point where your body starts breaking down muscle  to turn into glucose but muscle is the last thing your body wants to break down because you need it  you need your muscles to propel the body and go find new food and that's why the body upregulates  this human growth hormone so dramatically to make sure that because it's it's muscle sparing you're  not going to use up any muscle you're going to use everything else first all the debris and as  I said before you don't really need the muscle to make glucose because you have 5% carbohydrates  stored in the fat tissue which is plenty to work during ketosis another thing that increases  dramatically is another hormone called brain derived neurotrophic factor or bdnf and that's  basically Miracle Grow for the brain and why does the body do this well remember when the going gets  tough the body gets better at everything it needs to get better so it needs to increase its ability  to learn it needs to increase its ability to adapt and find new Solutions and human growth hormone  and bdnf are necessary for bu building tissue which includes brain synapses anytime you learn  something it's because you rewired your nervous system you're sending out new little tentacles  that connect to other tentacles to create a neural network and that's how we learn so during a fast  you're actually better at learning you're better at adapting and one more way the body gets better  is it improves survival fasting trip survival genes called cin so even if you don't have a  disease these are very very powerful reasons to do a fast now and then anyway but a lot of  people are confused about how long does it take that's very common question autophagy when does  it start and like most things in the body it's not like a cut off it's not black or white like  nothing up to this point and then it's all on on instead we want to think of it as gradual now  for the first 12 hours you're probably not getting any autophagy hardly at all and then up to about  72 to 100 hours it's going to increase to a Max Level and then it's going to Plateau so depending  on how your diet is if you're high carb if you're already fat adapted if you're in ketosis after 12  hours you're probably going to have very little but after 6 it's going to start kicking in just a  little bit now again on high carb you're probably not getting anything yet and then as time goes 24  48 72 100 hours it gets to deeper levels but you don't want to just think about this as how deep a  level you reach even though that's important you want to think about how long am I in that state  because the time there is like a multiplier so if you're doing inter in fasting and low carb you're  getting a little bit probably a little bit of autophagy for a few hours every day and it's still  significant because it's every day but if you go longer fasting like 24 hours that would be more  like a one meal a day and then as you go longer and longer and longer now you get to deeper levels  but you multiply that level by the time that you're in that state now for the average person  there is no way to directly measure autophagy this is very complicated to do in a lab setting  but there are some simple things you can check for yourself that give you a good approximation  a good indication of where you are and ketones is one where if you are normal and you're eating  like most people you're probably going to be 0 to 0. 1 and this is ketones in in milles per liter and  the Ketone we're measuring is beta hydroxy beate and there are urine strips there are breathalyzers  but if you want to have a number that's accurate you want to get a blood test you and you can get  this yourself you buy a little keto meter and you buy these little sticks and uh my favorite is keto  Mojo because they've been around forever and they very reliable and consistent plus their uh reorder  sticks are very affordable so I'll put a link down below there but then as you get into 12 16 hours  it's going to depend on if you're fat adapted if you get any reading so the average person might  be at 0. 2 they might start seeing something creep up whereas if you're low carb or already in some  level of ketosis after 16 hours you're probably going to start seeing one 1.

5 something like that  and everyone's going to react differently produce different amounts of ketones but as a rule of  thumb just to see approximately what you might expect would be that after two days you might  see numbers in the two range and three days in the three range and after four days in the four  range so again some people are going to have more or less but just to give you an idea of of where  it's heading and the other marker you want to keep keep an eye on is glucose and again it's going to  start off for a healthy person probably around 90 mgram per deciliter if you want to convert that  to milles you divide by 18 and you get five and then as the fast keeps going you're going to see  those markers drop maybe 85 80 70 60 even if you get down to 50 or 40s toward the end of a fast  that's not a problem if you're feeling good if you have symptoms of hypoglycemia if you're dizzy  lethargic lightheaded then that's something that you want to keep an eye on because if it if you  get symptoms then you probably want to eat but if you're feeling okay then it's all right for  the glucose to go down because the brain needs energy and when you eat a lot of carbohydrate  your body is going to burn the carbs first and and your blood glucose levels are always going to  be relatively high but as you eat fewer carbs the reason the body makes ketones is to provide an  alternate fuel and as carbs go down ketones go up now there's an even more interesting marker  it's a ratio so if we divide the glucose by the ketones we get the gki or glucose Ketone index  and and what we do here is We Take 5 divided by 0. 1 we get 50 if we take the next one we see that  we get down to 4.