Fasting Destroys Muscle?

and your body started consuming it goes after muscle tissue and fat and then it switches to your organs you really start to feel the muscle tissues when your body's eating it it really becomes painful everywhere to understand whether fasting destroys our muscle we need to look at the stories of three different people what's weird is one guy fasted for 392 days but the guy who fasted for only 44 days had a lot more problems than him in fact if this guy lost muscle at the same rate that this guy did he would have died so

what made the difference to investigate the five big pitfalls with fasting whether you're doing three or even 10 days let's start in 1910 with the story of Claire Williamson Claire and her sister Dora Williamson had been excitedly reading about a doctor Linda Hazard who was saying fasting could cure pretty much anything you will feel happily free but captivating and that she was the only licensed fasting expert in the world one of hazard's tribs was allegedly tuning a 65-year-old woman of depression and chronic constipation with a 43-day fast around this time fast was becoming popular Dr

Edward dwey of the University of Michigan was promoting both intermittent fasting and prolonged fasting in his 1900 book The no breakfast plan and the fasting cure he claimed that farmers who skipped breakfast miraculously had more strength for the work he also described various people caring all kinds of ailments with long fasts many fasted for over 2 weeks and one man fasted for 60 days in December of 1910 CLA Williamson wrote a letter to supposed fasting expert Linda Hazard asking if Hazard could cure Claire's long-standing uterine issues Hazard replied saying that yes she could permanently cure

Claire's troubles with her fasting cure CLA and her sister Dora were eager to get started on their cure so while awaiting their trip to see Linda Hazard they began on a meager diet of mostly just vegetable broth and Breads in December of 1910 almost 3 months later on February 27th 1911 the Two Sisters finally got to meet the 43-year-old Linda hazard in person without any sort of examination tests or even a questionnaire Linda hazard immedi medely began the sisters on a strict fasting regimen which included plenty of exercise excessively forceful massages and unusually long anima

sessions up to 2 or 3 hours right away this sounds like an awful idea people suffer more sluggishness and muscle weakness than necessary during fasting because they don't take salt or electrolytes fasting will deplete your electrolytes but people do get through extended fast on only water further anemas also deplete electrolytes excessively depleting the body of salt and electrolytes can be dangerous as recently as February 2023 a 77-year-old thoman showed up at the emergency room with severe salt depletion after giving herself an excessive amount of enemas to relieve her constipation Dora Williamson actually fainted during one

of her particularly long animous sessions as for the exercise component of the Williamson sisters so-called therapy some exercise during the fast is actually a good idea well we're concerned about the muscle breakdown during the fast the thing is that eating or not the proteins in your muscles are always breaking down however healthy people or normally matching that muscle protein breakdown with muscle protein synthesis to put on muscle you just want to get your muscle protein synthesis higher than your muscle protein breakdown there are two ways to increase muscle protein synthesis the first is to eat

protein the second is to stimulate the muscles with exercise this highlights the importance of exercising during the fats to prevent your muscles from breaking down since you can't eat any protein but obviously at some point something has to give you can't just fast forever and preserve your muscles with exercise and Magic un fortunately the issue with the Williamson girls is that they were already quite thin before even meeting Linda Hazard it took just 17 days of fasting for Dora Williamson to become very gaunt and emaciated after a couple weeks of fasting one person commented that

the girls were so thin that their skin appeared to be tightly drawn over their bones like wet sheets on a drying line even then Linda Hazard continued to encourage the women to fast saying they were oh so close to being cured well it may sound hard to believe it has been confirmed time and time again that for most people hunger disappears or significantly reduces after about 3 or 5 days of fasting back in the 1900 the general rule of thumb as laid out by Dr Edward dwey was that people should stop fasting and eat something

when their hunger returns up in Sinclair's 1911 book The fasting cure Echoes this sentiment detailing how depending on the person the hunger would sometimes take more than two three or even 5 weeks to return a 2021 paper explains that there are three phases to fasting phase one is when you you switch from carbohydrate to fat as your main fuel source the body begins to spare protein which protects your muscles they say in Phase 2 you can coast along and body fed for fuel for weeks or even months for some people during this second phase hunger

should be significantly reduced however at least in animals when they get under 10% body fat phase three begins in phase three the body can't get enough energy from fat and begins to rapidly break down the muscles and organs for protein so it may be that hunger returning suggest you are entering this rapid protein breakdown phase and you need to eat something very soon actually the Williams and girls at one point were begging to be fed but Linda Hazard refused she said that they would die if they ate solid food the girls were so psychologically manipulated

that they willingly continued to fast while their bodies wasted away they eventually became too weak to walk after about 82 days straight of fasting Clare Williamson had lost more than half her body weight leaving her at just 5050 lb she died of starvation on May 19th 1911 Linda hazard's bad intentions became pretty obvious when it was discovered that she had made a fake of Claire's will so that Hazard would receive all of Claire's belongings she was even wearing one of Claire's dresses when a family friend came to rescue Dora 10 days after her sister's death

Dora finally escaped and she survived Linda Hazard was found guilty of manslaughter and went to jail for only 2 years while clearly an insane con artist Linda Hazard did truly believe in her fasting cure in 1938 she tried to cure her own illness with fasting she continued fasting until she died of starvation now the contrast between Clare Williamson and Angus barbar story illustrates the first and most obvious Pitfall of fasting fasting too much or too often but what is too much well apparently for Angus an entire year wasn't too much angus's 382 day fast was

medically supervised and a case report was published on it he lost a total of 276 lb over his yearlong facts while the authors of his case report asserted that he indeed lost some muscle it wasn't to a serious degree they wrote that prolonged fasting in this patient had no ill effects so obviously the difference is that Angus had way more body fat than the Williams and sisters clearly someone looking like this should not have been fasting at all Dr Ted n put it pretty simply the thinner you get the less I like extended fasting the

leaner you get the more at risk you are of losing muscle when you fast really long or too often an ambulance will now take him to hospital am I going to be okay David Blain's 44-day fast illustrates the second Pitfall with fasting my bone mass index everything had decreased by about 33% I lost 60 lbs in 44 days but he lost much more muscle than he did Fat he lost an estimated 23 lb of muscle but only lost 14 lb of fat here's the thing if Angus Barbieri lost muscle at the same rate that David

blae did he would have died so what did Blain do differently the body actually has many specific ways it protects your muscle when you fast but if you wanted to lose as much muscle as possible during a fast you should lock yourself in a giant box and suspend yourself above London so that you can't exercise or walk like David Blaine did Tim FIS reported in tools of Titans that he lost 12 lbs of muscle mass doing a 7-Day fast the fast was clinically supervised and they specifically prevented him from exercising which is a terrible idea

when Tim did another 10day fast that included plenty of walking he certainly didn't lose any muscle at all you don't want to overdo the exercise during fast but not exercising at all is the second huge Pitfall with fasting that will make you break down more muscle than is necessary Jeff nippard explained in a video of his that Matt client of a friend of his was hospitalized from a Crohn's disease flare up he was unable to exercise during that time and he lost 35 lbs and most of his gains in Just 2 months of not working

out being unable to walk around or move much has been well known to rapidly atrophy your muscle for several decades in fact a study found that even though they were eating plenty of protein subjecting 10 men to strict bed rest had them lose an average of 3 lbs of lean mass in just one week on the other hand a 2017 study had men stop working out for 2 weeks and simply letting them walk around preventing them from losing any muscle now another question came up when I found this 108-year-old textbook on fasting it presented this

weird data that a man was supposedly stronger than usual 7 days after he stopped stopped eating then I came across a 2021 study on 16 men showing that their legs were much stronger than usual after 5 days without food this didn't make any sense so I decided to do a 3-day fast and see how much strength I lost not only did I not lose strength I was able to deadlift 22 lb heavier than the personal best I had hit 2 weeks earlier obviously you can't grow muscle by not eating so what's going on first let's

look at how the body protects your muscle during a fast as you can see from this 2012 study during prolonged fast Tes in protein breakdown decreases to less than half of what it is normally going back to Angus Barbary his case report shows that his plasma Ura dropped to less than half of normal which would suggest he was breaking down less of his muscle proteins for energy so what's going on is when you stop eating for about 8 hours or so most people's bodies would shift to rely mostly on the stored sugar or glucose in

your liver for energy around this time you'd start to get pretty hungry but your liver Can Only Hold On To so much glucose to maintain your blood sugar so what happens when your liver Runs Out out of glucose well let's talk about why I didn't go into a coma the other day your brain really cannot afford to have its fuel supply interrupted for even a moment that's why this paper noce that when your brain fuel your blood sugar drops below 49 you're at risk of having a seizure or going into a coma yet a couple

weeks back while I was on a diet of mostly steak butter and zero carbs my blood sugar dropped to about 39 but nothing happened I felt fine in fact some crazy scientists in the 1980s took guys who had been fasting for days and injected them with insulin to purposely Drive their blood sugar down now normally this is really dangerous if this was outside of a medical experiment they'd probably be accused of attempted murder after the injection one guy's blood sugar went all the way down to nine one individual getting down to nine Mig per destillat

you know for the non-clinicians in the room that level would cause coma in most people and you'd be very close to death they had absolutely no signs or symptoms of hypoglycemia or low blood sugar felt completely fine the thing is when you naturally deplete your glucose stores your body will generate an alternative fuel source called ketones ketones are made by breaking down fat of course ketosis is the so-called fat burning mode and ketones are in fact considered to be an extra energy efficient fuel for our bodies providing more energy per unit of oxygen used in

1910 an issue of the Los Angeles Herald newspaper had a column talking about the benefits of fasting they mentioned that the first three days days are the hardest and I think anybody who's done a multi-day fast would agree that the first 3 to 5 days are indeed the hardest this is likely due to the fact that your body is kind of in this limbo state where you're running low on glucose but your body's glucose stores aren't quite low enough to give the signal to start producing plenty of ketones finally on the third or fourth day

of a fast when your Ketone levels get really high you should have a lot more energy and hunger should significantly reduce so we would want to get out of this limbo Zone and get your ketones up as as fast as possible because ketones actually protect your muscles from breaking down they reduce protein breakdown in 1989 study found you can just inject ketones into people and will have their body hold on to protein more a more recent 2022 studies's cruel experiment revealed the potent muscle protecting effects of ketones they tied rat's tails to the top of

their cage so that the rat couldn't engage their hind leg as we know not stimulating the muscles will make them atrophy very rapidly they found that if they injected the rats with a ketone body before or tying them to the string this significantly protected the rat's hind leg muscles from breaking down one reason ketosis prevents muscle breakdown is because it reduces inflammation and inflammation is known to atrophy the muscle for example injecting men with the highly inflammatory substance LPS will break down their muscle however a 2019 paper found that they could substantially protect the muscle

from breaking down after an LPS injection by also injecting them with ketones so the third Pitfall of fasting is not getting into ketosis quickly enough a good way to make your fast way harder is to binge on carbohydrates right before your fast this will Top up your glucose stores and then it will take that much longer to burn off your stored glucose and get into ketosis actually the 3-day fast I did recently was probably my easiest one yet I had plenty of energy and not much hunger from day one because I was in deep ketosis

even before the fast started for about 2 weeks before I had been eating zero carbs and mostly just meat and butter another reason exercise is important especially during the early stages of the fast is that it will speed up how quickly you burn off that glucose and get into ketosis but you might be a wored that you couldn't possibly have any strength to exercise while you're fasting but as I mentioned earlier a 1915 textbook and a 2021 study found some markers of strength to be higher after 5 days without food also as I mentioned I

hit a deadlift PR on the third day of my fast now that's still just one guy one paper and 108-year-old textbook if fasting for 3 days was really the secret to get another 20 lb on your deadlift all strength athletes would be fasting by now now I wouldn't try to argue that you're going to build muscle during a long fast but one thing that might be improving strength is the reduction in inflammation in up in Sinclair's 1911 book The fasting cure he claimed that five cases of arthritis Were Somehow cured by fasting osteoarthritis can feel

like broken glass in your joints when arthritis pain makes the stairs feel like a summit arthritis is an inflammatory condition where the joints become inflamed and pain painful in fact a 1991 paper and a 2021 paper suggest that fasting can indeed improve arthritis symptoms further inflammatory proteins have been associated with decreased strength in adults the reason your muscles hurt so much when you have the flu is due to all the inflammation it provokes now maybe I would have hit that PR even if I was eating the most i' argue is that strength can be preserved

on a fast but if there actually is a strength increase during 3 five or even a 10day fast it might be thanks to the anti-inflamm fatory effects of ketosis now ketones indeed have various benefits but they aren't magic the longer you fast the more muscle you're going to lose in 2020 YouTuber Connor Murphy fasted for 40 days it was done under medical supervision and since it was for Spiritual purposes I presume he wasn't too worried about muscle loss he indeed lost plenty of muscle back in 1983 George kahill published a paper titled starvation where he

explains that when you go into ketosis the brain drastically drops its glucose requir Ms and can rely on ketones so muscle protein is spared however the body still requires a little bit of glucose for certain processes and it can make this glucose from fat or protein kahill says that fasting results in a reduction of protein breakdown from 75 G daily to 12 to 20 G daily now that's great but he didn't say it goes to 0 g so yes you're going to lose some muscle if you fast and you'll lose more the longer you fast

but when it comes to fasting people often forget the big picture and get too bogg down on what happens during the fast we need to ask what happens right after the fast for example testosterone is very important for building muscle and it goes down during a fast but as I discussed in another video my testosterone nearly doubled after I ate again after my fast now if we go back to the 2021 study that had 16 men fast for 10 days they found that indeed during the fast protein breakdown went down which Protected Their muscle some

but after the fast was over the protein oxidation stayed low even after 3 days of refeeding this means they could get the muscle protein synthesis stimulating benefits of eating protein at the same time that their muscle protein breakdown is being inhibited meaning it should be easy to put on muscle mass right after the fast personally this is why I think it makes the most sense to break a fast by slowly eating protein so you can quickly rebuild what you lost this is the fourth Pitfall with fasting not eating enough protein or calories when you are

eating now a 2021 study comparing intermittent fasting to a normal diet found that after 12 months the intermittent fasting people's muscles had slightly shrunk however the people in the intermittent fasting group were eating about 200 calories and 15 g of protein less than the other group so obviously it's easier to maintain muscle on more calories and protein what was interesting though was that while the intermittent fasting people's muscles physically shrink a little bit they had a 15% increase in bench press strength but the normal diet group only had a 10% increase in any case if

you're trying to fast and increase or maintain your muscle mass you need to be careful to eat sufficient calories and protein when you are eating this is one reason why I stopped doing one meal a day indeed it helped me lose plenty of weight but it was pretty hard to eat 180 g of protein in just one meal another reason it should be easier to put on muscle right after a fast is myostatin myostatin is a protein that inhibits muscle growth in fact Belgian Blue Bulls are very famous for being super jacked due to lacking

myostat in the study on people fasting for 10 days my satin went up on the first day of fasting but then decreased under Baseline for the rest of the fast and then it decreased significantly under Baseline on the first refeeding day and went down further to about half of Baseline by refeeding day three seems like it would be a good idea to hit the protein and the weights after you break your fast so the authors of that study concluded that at least when it comes to fasting for 10 days fasting combined with physical activity does

not negatively impact muscle function wter Longo a researcher who studies the rejuvenating effects of fasting has explained on Ronda Patrick's podcast that fasting is basically the trigger to Prime the body to regenerate once you start eating again then when you refeed the muscle is rebuilt I mean we have evidence for regeneration in mice we don't know yet in humans but certainly the people go back to the normal muscle mass he says that while you temporarily lose some muscle it will quickly be rebuilt upon eating again he says this is pretty big because it means that

fasting is a way to maintain lean body Mass while losing fat and volter Longo says that protein is important for triggering this regeneration process yeah there is no doubt that when you refeed you have to have sufficient protein to rebuild so the whole system of course is set up to uh give the signals to rebuild so while you will likely lose some muscle during a fast the body will quickly bounce back however there has to be a point where you break down the body and muscle too much by fasting too long or too often so

you don't want to overdo fasting personally with my body composition I don't think I would ever do longer than a 10day fast as you get leaner it becomes a simple fuel availability problem the obvious reason Angus barbari could fast so long was he was really fat as you get leaner and leaner you have less body fat that you can tap into for calories to support the body when your fat stores get too low your muscle starts to look extra tasty to your body and brain Dr Peter AA who used to be a huge proponent of

fasting said the reason he doesn't fast so much anymore was because he was losing muscle however he was fasting a lot doing a 3-day fast every month and a 7 to 10 day fast four times a year but he was also taking the longevity boosting drug metformin metformin has a side effect of making it harder to put on muscle and some data suggest it may even atrophy the muscle further older people may need to be more careful with fasting because as you age it is harder to build and maintain muscle now the fifth Pitfall of

fasting is not replacing electrolytes people do get by on only water doing long fast but it's much easier to keep your energy levels up keep your hunger down and get your exercise in when you're replacing those electrolytes you're losing salt is most important but potassium and a bit of magnesium are also very helpful this brings us to element which is the sponsor of this video I started using element even before they were sponsored to get my electrolytes during the fast about 2 years ago electrolytes aren't only relevant when you're fasting since electrolytes and sodium are

a big part of hydration and maintain the energy levels in general it can really help to replace the electrolytes you lose when you're doing a low car harp diet or when you're sweating a lot at the gym I often find my energy and focus is generally better throughout the day if I stay hydrated with plenty of water and an element pack here and there ele tastes great and there's no junk in it it's just a good balance of electrolytes sodium potassium and magnesium a bit of flavoring and some Stevia there's also a raw unflavored type

if you prefer if you go to drink lnt.com whatat I've learned you can get a free sampler pack with any purchase also be sure to try the new element sparkling it's a bold refreshing 16 oz can of sparkling Electro light water