How to do intermittent fasting?

During holiday periods or overeating, our microbiota is put under severe strain. The digestion process, one of the most energy-intensive activities for our body, is overactivated and exhausts our body. Thus, the metabolic energy usually dedicated to the repair, regeneration or purification of our tissues decreases. To allow our body to rebalance quickly, fasting, an ancestral practice whose origins date back to Antiquity, offers us its multiple virtues.

In this article we enlighten you: how to better eliminate toxins through the practice of intermittent fasting? How to eat better to support our metabolism and stimulate our natural beauty?

Between the intake of calories and the total absence of calories lies a cycle called intermittent fasting . During this break, we save around 40% of the energy usually dedicated to digestion. This cleansing of the body is automatic when it is not in the digestion phase. While on break, our body takes full advantage of this newfound energy to purify its organs and regenerate its cells. Our body is so well made!

In his work “Fasting”, Doctor Jacques Rouillier assures us that: “Rather than looking for the magic substance, the elixir of youth which will ensure us strength, dynamism and health (...) it turns out to be much more interesting to remove, to subtract, to reduce, to think “less” instead of “more”. To reduce our food intake. Completely. Temporarily. In a word: to fast.”

Moreover, fasting is an age-old practice and Hippocrates, father of medicine, already advised fasting in 370 BC. JC. This well-known phrase is attributed to him: “Let your food be your best medicine!” The practice of fasting is a completely natural and beneficial break for the body.

Biologically, we are not programmed to eat at the usual frequency and quantity set by modern society. In a word: we eat too much all the time.

According to Doctor Christian Mottet, Chief Physician of the Gastroenterology Department at Sion Hospital and Sophie Sierrot, PhD in Medical Sciences at the University of Oxford: “ During evolution, the human species was subject to frequent fluctuations in food intake: spring, summer, autumn, winter. Man's ability to survive this lack of food was a definite advantage allowing the species to survive. The human body has therefore developed a physiological response to lack of food. It adapts by reducing and changing metabolism, thus allowing vital functions to be maintained for as long as possible from the body's own reserves. ”

All animals naturally practice periods of fasting, too. This food deprivation is illustrated by the fact that they only eat when they are hungry - and not out of greed, boredom, or stress.

For the digestive system, it is therefore much more “natural” to take breaks through the practice of intermittent fasting, for example. Meals (or food intake, even in small quantities) 3-4 (5!) times a day are part of a cultural and societal functioning, but in no case a physiological need.

Intermittent fasting therefore appears to be a detox gesture, which can be weekly or daily.

When you fast, several things happen in your body on a cellular and molecular level.

Autophagy, literally “self-eating,” is the body’s process of cellular detoxification. During this, cells eliminate old proteins and dysfunctional cells that have accumulated. This is what makes it possible to reduce the risks of developing chronic diseases and increase longevity in better health.

According to Doctor Rouillier: “Therapeutic fasting, practiced and even prescribed by doctors in certain countries for more than a century, constantly re-evaluated by international scientific teams, makes it possible to treat diseases as different as high blood pressure, “asthma, diabetes, demyelinating conditions.”

Your body readjusts its hormone levels and makes stored body fat more accessible after about twelve hours. Insulin levels drop significantly and sensitivity to this hormone improves, while glucagon (insulin antagonist hormone) is secreted to combat hypoglycemia.