and an ambulance will now take him to hospital in 2003 David Blaine ate nothing for 44 days leaving him dangerously depleted my bone mass index everything in the crease by about 33 I lost 60 pounds in 44 days but while I was finally time to eat he was entering the most dangerous part of his fast at the end of the stunt when I went to the hospital I almost went into shock starvation was killing thousands of people a day during World War II the people of the Soviet City Leningrad were suffering from widespread severe starvation
for a four-month period from 1941 the only food available to the citizens was about three slices of bread a day the bread was made from chemical wood pulp and milled wheat dust yet tragically when some survivors were finally given a proper meal this nourishment somehow caused them to die from heart failure on the other hand here's another weird phenomenon early last year I was pretty happy when my doctor reported that my testosterone was relatively high for my age but several months down the line when I got my first blood test at the start of a
five-day fast I was pretty disappointed to see my testosterone was half of what it was before I was anxious about the fast because I knew prolonged fasting could lower testosterone but to my relief my testosterone didn't change then I got another blood test six days after I started eating and I was really surprised to see that it had doubled to its highest level yet my five day fast is of course no comparison to a 44 day fast or brutal starvation but why exactly would eating provide benefits like raising testosterone after a short fast but literally
kill people who are far more starved in this video we'll take a look at exactly what happens during what I think may be the most important part of fasting eating again I keep trimming but with protein protein those are the importance of protein meats and eggs are high in protein which helps build red blood and strong muscles you may have heard of some opponents of fasting saying it's dangerous for reasons like testosterone goes down sperm count goes down cortisol the stress hormone usually goes up in my own blood results uric acid which causes inflammation went
up while I was fasting they should absolutely consult the medical professional your diet is going to kill people but by the same logic we might say that exercise is bad it increases inflammation and increases cortisol but after resting and recovering from exercise your inflammation and cortisol end up even lower than before way back in 1911 Upton Sinclair published in Cosmopolitan magazine two controversial articles that would eventually become a best-selling book The fasting cure there he described the several health benefits of multi-day fasts and he claims that how you break the fast is the most important
part this study found that five days of fasting increase people's cortisol but after five days of refeeding it was even lower than normal for me my blood tests showed that five days of fasting reduced a mark of inflammation called CRP but then my inflammation was even lower after eating again for six days my uric acid unfortunately went up during the fast but it was even lower than Baseline after I started eating again biologist Walter Longo explains that fasting and refeeding is a process of breaking down and rebuilding Anew he calls fasting the auto repair mode
so as I mentioned I got my testosterone checked three times right before my fast started one hour before I ate my first meal and after six days of eating my testosterone went from 421 to 424 but then it jumped to more than double at 887. now I had read about this phenomenon before a study from the year 2000 looked at U.S Army Rangers who undergo a brutal eight-week training course where they exercised seven hours a day sleep as little as four hours a day and eat about a thousand less calories than they need the researchers
said that for four weeks their testosterone steadily dropped to near castrate levels then when they were refed a sufficient amount of food their testosterone almost tripled shooting back up to normal levels in a matter of days a 1981 study had been fast for 10 days and then they re-fed for five days their testosterone decreased during the 10 day fast but once they refed four of the men Heather testosterone shoot up even higher than what it was before for the fast one man doubled his testosterone from 800 to 1600. so what is going on well fasting
can set the stage for your body to be able to grow back stronger when you reintroduce food as early as 1913 Dr sergius morgulis was interested in this phenomenon were temporarily starving an animal seemed to set it up to grow rapidly once you refet it in his paper the influence of protracted and intermittent fasting upon growth he cited research that claimed that chickens who are deprived of food and then refed grew to be heavier stronger and more solid while specifically noting that the increase in weight was not from fat now that's a hundred year old
study but in 2018 Walter Longo explained on a podcast with Rhonda Patrick that there's this growth factor called igf-1 that helps grow muscles and brain cells however when you temporarily reduce this growth factor through fasting Longo explains that this turns on stem cells and when you get the igf-1 back up by refeeding with protein then these activated stem cells replicate and multiply themselves to stimulate the growth of various types of cells generation of healthy cells there is a geof1 dependent yeah there is no doubt that when you refeed you have to have sufficient protein to
rebuild and also probably then I'm going to drive that gf1 so the whole system of course is set up to uh give the signals to rebuild so what's happening with testosterone where this gets interesting is what fasting may be doing to the production line of testosterone there's this hormone produced in the brain called gonadotropin releasing hormone GnRH that is key in testosterone production and initiating puberty GnRH acts on a specific part of the brain causing it to release two hormones that finally act on the testes to produce testosterone one of these hormones is LH luteinizing
hormone in a rare disorder where an adult man becomes deficient in GnRH his testosterone will be very low treating him with GnRH will fix this issue so you have this nice testosterone production line that starts with GnRH and you can in fact inject people with GnRH and this will increase luteinizing hormone and then testosterone well researchers did exactly this to find out how fasting affects testosterone production they injected people at GnRH before fasting and 56 hours into a fast what they found was that the longer the fast the more sensitive the body was to GnRH
it raised luteinizing hormone more and it raised testosterone more that's great and all but who's going to fast and then inject themselves with GnRH well remember how valter Longo was saying that when you eat protein after a fast it increases the growth factor igf-1 well there are several pieces of evidence from in vitro and animal studies that find that igf-1 stimulates the release of GnRH a 2021 paper in the journal neuroendocrinology lays out how igf-1 is suspected to play an important role in the onset of puberty as it induces the release of GnRH people who
have a genetic disease known as primary igf-1 deficiency experience delayed puberty and short stature to be totally clear it's not firmly established at Rising igf-1 after a fast is exactly what raises your testosterone and there are other ways fasting could raise testosterone in some people for example improving insulin sensitivity improving mitochondrial function or lowering triglycerides but the point is fasting seems to Prime the body to be able to increase testosterone production in some people when they eat again a 1991 study on Reese's monkeys found that after the monkeys fasted the bigger the refeeding meal was
afterwards the bigger the pulse and luteinizing hormone and the greater the Rays in testosterone in fact they found that you got much higher pulses of luteinizing hormone on a reef feeding day compared to a normal eating day so there's something about stressing the body with fasting and giving it nutrients to recover that provides many benefits exposure of cells are organisms to a mild stress can enhance the ability of the organism and the cells in that organism to more severe stress fasting researcher Mark Matson points out that exercise will provoke the growth of fresh new mitochondria
but this happens during the rest period after exercise he explains that while fasting increases our resistance to stress it's when we re-feed after a fast that makes the body rejuvenate and grow things like new mitochondria or brain cells so how should we break a fast to get the most benefits this phenomenon where people can die of a heart attack from eating after starving is called refeeding syndrome while meeting soldiers desperate to help the starving prisoners in the camps of World War II shared with him biscuits and chocolates from their own rations but sadly that food
quickly killed them in David Blaine's case after he was escorted away from his box by ambulance they started refitting him with Ensure Plus this stuff is basically a fake milkshake made with vegetable oils and a multivitamin tossed in here are the first ingredients water corn maltodextrin sugar milk protein concentrate and blend of vegetable oils if you're not aware of why I find the idea of drinking vegetable oils totally nauseating check out this video on why heart healthy vegetable oils are probably toxic and sure because you don't always have the time to eat right ironically the
authors of the clinical report on David Blaine themselves explain why a sugary oil shake after a fast is an awful idea they explain that when you eat again this causes a sudden rise in insulin and where the body had been carefully balancing the levels of electrolytes in your blood and cells this insulin rise causes the electrolytes to rush into your cells and sodium to rush out of the cell and into the blood the effect of this is that the blood is diluted and the volume of your blood increases and this leads to heart failure so
in this particular situation if a sunrise in insulin is the problem why not avoid feeding people of carbohydrate-rich meal after all carbohydrates are well known to induce a much bigger rise in insulin than fat or protein that Liquid Blend of sugar and vegetable oils they gave David Blaine has more carbs than a can of Coke Dr Bernard of the YouTube channel chubby emu has made two different videos about cases of people presenting to the emergency room with refeeding syndrome what did these people eat well first off they both simply ate way too much but it
was mostly carbs and sugars in one case a malnourished woman suddenly ate a huge container of cookies and another a woman fasted for seven days and then ate 23 bananas in Upton Sinclair's old book on fasting he talks about a man who broke a 50-day fast with tons of fruit half a dozen figs this led to intestinal abrasions that had him lose a lot of blood so the first obvious rule to breaking a multi-day fast is to eat slow along with taking it slow on the carbs you probably want to go light on the fat
as well I broke my five day fast right away with a fatty rib eye steak and my stomach felt a little queasy probably because my body wasn't used to having to produce bile to digest fats it wasn't much of an issue but I imagine it would have been much worse if I didn't have so much experience with fasting Upton Sinclair also mentioned people suffering from slight bile attacks from eating over fat beef but they quickly recovered by eating leaner beef so to get the growth benefits you'll want to eat protein after your fast so your
body can increase its growth factors to allow for Rejuvenation of the body as Walter Longo explained I'm not here to guarantee fasting is the secret testosterone hack there are still lots of questions like what's the ideal amount of protein to eat after a fast can you expect a testosterone rise after Reed feeding after just a one day fast but about three days and why did four of these guys get a boost in testosterone after fasting but not the other two the point is to say while it may be alarming that testosterone can drop during a
fast it should bounce back at least to normal when you eat again for David Blaine the 44 day fast probably crushed his testosterone but after he started eating again his testosterone Rose from 449 to 867 in 10 days 44 days is an extremely long fast obviously there has to be a point where you are fasting too much you need to balance your fasting with refeeding and nourishing your body just like you can over train with exercise you can of course over fast like Dr Mark Matson explains fasting and refeeding are both necessary to get all
of the health benefits now fasting can be daunting but to make it easier you can supplement electrolytes that's where this video's sponsor element comes in because a fast puts you in a low insulin State you can experience fatigue and extra hunger from the kidneys excreting electrolytes so adding electrolyte to your water can really bring your energy levels back up let me point out that you don't want to pound salt and electrolytes right after a fast because the spike in insulin from refeeding can cause too much electrolytes to rush into the cell I usually drink tons
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