Video

Transcript

you know prolonged fasting is so

beneficial for your immune system

or getting rid of cancer or brain health

or anti-aging but there’s one aspect of

prolonged fasting that is fairly

dangerous okay you could potentially die

and I need to make you aware of this so

it’s called refeeding syndrome what is

that that’s a situation where at the end

of this prolonged fast let’s say you

fasted for four days you eat too much

too fast and the wrong Foods okay that

could be the problem but before I get

into this I do want to point out

something

this usually involves someone who has

malnutrition someone who maybe has an

eating disorder someone who is an

alcoholic someone who maybe has been a

diabetic type one for a long period of

time or someone who has been starving

okay which is different than a prolonged

fast but if you are following my

recommendations the risks of you having

this problem are very very low because

you’re not going into this having

malnutrition I always recommend when you

do fasting any type of fasting that you

at least as a bare minimum take

electrolytes and number two B vitamins

because a lot of studies indicate people

who have this syndrome

um usually have really poor nutritional

reserves but I don’t know your situation

I don’t know

how your diet has been in the past I

don’t know what you’re taking so this

video is very very important for

everyone who is prolonged fasting other

than dying you could potentially get a

coma seizures convulsions but again

these things are rare so here’s what

happens in this situation

you go into a long-term fast let’s say

it’s three four five days or longer now

typically if you check the blood the

person is going to be fine they’re not

going to have any deficiencies of

minerals electrolytes or any of these

things right but you have to realize

that the great great majority of certain

minerals like potassium magnesium

phosphorus are inside the cell not in

the blood so like 95 to 98 of those

minerals are inside the cell so as

you’re doing fasting okay the body is

going to be releasing all these minerals

or electrolytes from the cell into the

blood to keep them at a certain level

that’s your body’s stable kind of

reference point always keep the blood

normal despite pulling nutrients from

the cells from your bone from your

muscles so when you get a blood test for

these electrolytes or nutrients you’re

not actually testing the inside of your

cells the intracellular you’re checking

the extracellular nutrients right in

your blood so you’re not going to really

know what’s happening inside the cell

unless you do a intracellular test

but if you’re fasting for any period of

time a lot of these nutrients don’t get

stored for a long period of time a lot

of them aren’t fat soluble okay they’re

water soluble so you may find in a

period of time they can go down pretty

fast especially if when you eat your

diet has been poor in the past or you

don’t focus on getting nutrient dense

foods then you decide you know what I

hear all these great things about doing

a prolonged fast I’m going to do a four

or five day fast you do the fast you

don’t take your electrolytes you don’t

take your B vitamins

and then it’s time to eat okay and you

just pig out you start eating all sorts

of things and lots of things like

carbohydrates sugar whatever at this

point you can develop What’s called the

refeeding syndrome okay and what is

happening is you’re very quickly raising

insulin not to mention being on that

four or five day fast your insulin

sensitivity has become extremely

sensitive those receptors are ready to

pull in these nutrients from your blood

very quickly and what happens is you

have this this rapid shift of

electrolytes specifically phosphorus

that’s the big one potassium and

magnesium sometimes calcium okay and all

of this shifts from the blood to the

inside of your cell to replace what’s

missing and you end up with extremely

low electrolytes in the blood and this

is what puts the stress on the heart

okay okay and this is what also can

increase edema and swelling because you

have this imbalance

you see when you’re fasting you have

very low insulin because when you have

low insulin you actually get rid of a

lot of fluid and sodium and with some

people it could be 11 20 pounds 30

pounds of fluid okay that’s a lot

but when you start eating okay and your

insulin stress going up you start

retaining sodium as well so this is

where you can get some edema as well all

of a sudden you’re you start holding

fluid and you’re you’re like what is

going on here and on top of that if

you’re eating a lot of carbs these carbs

are going to be converted into glycogen

and glycogen needs potassium

to store this sugar so you’re going to

use up a lot of this potassium from the

food you eat and not to mention all this

shift from the blood into the cells you

end up with a very low level of

potassium you’re also going to be

storing fat as well as protein and both

of those macronutrients need vitamins

and minerals as well so you deplete

those and you also deplete vitamin B1 in

a big way when you do carbs the

metabolism of carbs requires B1 as the

cofactor

and so anytime you eat carbs you just

deplete your B1 big time and one of the

big symptoms from a B1 deficiency is

memory loss okay and that can create

confusion it could create anxiety and a

whole host of other issues that relate

from all the way over here from

neurological problems to heart problems

and so that’s the Simplicity of what the

refeeding syndrome is so how do we

prevent this problem from happening well

make sure number one when you’re eating

you’re doing the healthy version of the

ketogenic diet you’re doing nutrient

dense foods number two take electrolytes

and the B vitamins as a bare minimum

while you’re fasting it might also be

good to take other things too like olive

oil to get you fat soluble vitamins as

well as your omega-3 fatty acids it

might be also good to take vitamin d and

vitamin K2 as well as some trace

minerals and that way you’re not going

to have malnutrition okay so it’s going

to help you and when you introduce food

you go slowly I’m talking about maybe an

egg okay and you wait a couple hours and

you eat something else maybe you have a

a little bit of soup okay wait a couple

more hours and do I don’t know some

sauerkraut okay and then wait a little

bit and do a little bit of nuts so that

first day you don’t want to do more than

like half of your normal calories okay

so let’s say you’re doing a thousand

calories on the first day and then you

slowly increase food the next several

days now this all depends on how long

that you fast

if you fasted for a long period of time

let’s say you fasted for 21 days or 30

days well you’re going to go even slower

than if you fasted for three or four

days

now just realize that when you’re doing

intermittent fasting like say one meal a

day you don’t have to worry about this

okay I’m talking about when you fast for

three four five days in a row so now

that you know the dangers and how to

prevent this refeeding syndrome

the next thing to really wrap your wits

around is the benefits of prolonged

fasting so I put that video up right

here check it out