Right… So you’ve already been fasting for most of the month, it might be getting a little trickier to find the motivation right about now, so we thought we’d give you some added motivation!
So here are five fantastic benefits your Ramadan fasting is having on your body:
1. Reducing insulin resistance and lowering your risk for/healing diabetes
Yep, that’s right. Within just a few hours of fasting your body starts to become more insulin sensitive again (another reason to be careful with the carbs at iftar), and over repeated days of fasting you begin to lower your risk for T2 diabetes. If you’re already on the diabetic spectrum, Ramadan fasting coupled with staying low carb (or keto) during your feeding window can begin to REVERSE your condition. If you’d like to learn more about how you can reverse T2 Diabetes with diet and fasting, check out this link (https://www.virtahealth.com).
2. Reduce inflammation throughout the body
Inflammation is being repeatedly shown to be the root cause of almost all disease. Our bodies become inflamed from a variety of things, including stress, environment, and importantly, eating foods our bodies don’t recognise, AND eating too much too often.
Ramadan fasting allows your body a break from the constant barrage of food and allows it to take some time to clean out what it needs to, and lower inflammation. Reducing your risk of chronic disease. Of course, this will be even MORE beneficial if you can manage to stick to a cleaner diet after the holy month.
3. Autophagy – Your cell’s healing system
After a few hours of fasting (experts are still not in agreement about exactly how many, and it’s certainly different from person to person) your cells activate the metabolic pathway of autophagy. This is the process where they begin getting rid of any ‘broken’ or waste material that hasn’t been working properly. They metabolise the dysfunctional bits in order to make room for new parts that DO work properly. This may slow the disease progression in degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, and help protect against cancer.
4. Improves cognitive function
Ever noticed that further into your fast you become sharper and clearer in your thinking? That’s because in the absence of food you are designed to become more competent, in order to be able to FIND more food in nature. Your body naturally sends cleaner energy to your brain in the form of ketone bodies, which it runs better on than it does on glucose (most of us carb eaters use this fuel most of the time). Your brain on ketones is even more efficient than it usually is, meaning you may experience some of your best creativity and your highest productivity while you’re fasting (a good tip to remember for important days in the future).
5. These all work together to -> Improve longevity
All the research on fasting points to the fact that it increases lifespan, consistently. In all longevity experiments, the single thing that increases lifespan more than anything else is fasting. It appears to be because the less your body has to work on digesting food, the more it can work on lowering inflammation, cleaning out the dysfunctional cells and generally healing itself. When food is present, most of your body’s resources go to digesting it, so giving it a break for an extended period each day gives it the best chance to heal, rejuvenate and stay young, healthy and well.
There you have it.
So, don’t give up now. You’ve been doing an incredible job this Ramadan, and we can say for certain your body is thanking you for it!
Radhika Sil
CEO & Founder
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