The Dark Side of Fasting (and Intermittent Fasting): Dr. Berg Explains

Is fasting dangerous? It can be. Check out the dangers of fasting and how to avoid them.

there are so many benefits to doing intermittent fasting but there’s also the dark side which I want to talk about too the benefits are weight loss cognitive improvements Focus attention memory or heart issue or whatever you’re going to find those will probably be a lot better but here’s a thing you need to know about intermittent fasting okay your avoiding food for a period of time and most of the things I’m going to talk about are not related necessarily to a 16 or 17 or 18 hour fast I’m talking about when you do prolonged fasting let’s say you’re doing it for 48 hours 72 or even longer this information applies more to that situation all right so here’s the thing the purpose of food is to not just get fuel for your body is to get nutrients from the food so if you are not eating because you’re fasting okay you’re restricting nutrients and if your diet is not providing all the nutrients okay you can end up with not just deficiencies but what’s called subclinical nutrition deficiencies and that can set you up for a lot of problems so virtually all the things I’m going to talk about are related to that one point so let’s first talk about the first one it’s called refeeding syndrome so let’s say you do this uh I don’t know three or four or five day fast okay and then you eat this huge meal not a good idea especially if you eat a carbohydrate meal and you have some type of pre-existing nutritional deficiency because this could be dangerous and you can have a lot of problems it’s always good and safe when you come off a fast to just have a little bit of food wait for a couple hours eat a little bit more and I wouldn’t do carbohydrates I would do a little protein maybe an egg or a little bit salad wait a little bit maybe have some nuts an avocado things like that but don’t do what I did I mean I was just like because I didn’t eat for a long period of time I over compensated I just ate a ton of food and I felt really good for about a minute and then I’m like oh my gosh I don’t feel too good I feel really sick my body from not eating just wasn’t used to that much food so break your fast with a smaller meal and gradually come out of it I will put a link down below for more details on that thing but this refeeding syndrome problem usually occurs if you know maybe you have a problem with anorexia or you’re a chronic alcoholic or you have some type of malabsorption issue where you don’t get enough nutrition because you have inflammatory issues in your gut or your elderly or you have advanced diabetes or even you’re on certain medications like antacids or diuretics that deplete you of certain nutrients or you just basically have a low vitamin B1 deficiency so that’s when you start having problems with the refeeding syndrome because we have this shift of fluid and electrolytes from inside the cell to the blood all right so that’s number one number two dirty keto which is basically you’re doing low carb but you’re not looking at the quality of the food you’re not looking at nutrients and like I said before it’s always this nutritional deficiency problem because when you eat junk food even if it’s low carb junk food the quality is not there the nutrition is not there it can set you up for more problems because you’re not eating and you’re restricting these nutrients even more like for example zinc your body has enough stored zinc to last like four days well let’s say you don’t get enough zinc from the diet which a lot of people don’t and then here you are going into this fastest situation and then you just magnified that deficiency in a zinc deficiency can show up as a weakness within your immune system it can affect your taste it can affect your vision it can affect your skin it can affect your stomach like gastritis things like that all right number three not taking nutrients while you’re fasting I always recommend taking at at least at a bare minimum electrolytes trace minerals and B vitamins but the point is if you don’t take these electrolytes and I’m also talking about sea salt and you’re fasting especially two three or four or five days you might have issues like feeling faint dizzy heard about people just passed out and also when you’re either on the ketogenic diet or you do intermittent fasting you’re running on ketones running on ketones increases the demand for certain nutrients like vitamin B1 and other B vitamins and even potassium which means you can also end up with something like keto fatigue or a keto rash or just weakness in general all right number four kidney stones kidney stones can occur for several reasons the most common one is uric acid stones and let’s say for example you’re doing in the ketogenic diet you’re doing intermittent fasting typically people eat a lot of almonds right and they might do some non-sugar chocolate or they also might do spinach all three of those are very high in oxalates and if you’re predisposed to kidney stones that could make it worse I would definitely avoid those Foods if you have a tendency to get kidney stones and I would also take lemon juice in your water and drink enough water like two and a half liters of fluid a day and that alone should prevent kidney stones now the other type of kidney stones is uric acid Stones it is true when you do long fast your uric acid goes up okay and then it comes down and stabilizes that’s not a pathogenic problem because uric acid is probably one of the most potent antioxidants in your blood and so it doesn’t mean that you’re going to have gout or some type of arthritis no it just means when you do a fast you may have certain chemistry changes occurring and one really good thing for uric acid just to kind of counter it when you eventually eat make sure you have big salads which I always recommend to kind of flesh out any type of uric acid that might be concentrating now this may become a problem if with a person doing uh carnivore but I have not really seen that being a problem somehow the body compensates and they don’t seem to have more problems with gout they have less problems with gout even though they’re doing a lot of animal protein which is interesting number five if you’re anorexic you’re going to have nutritional deficiencies so when you do intermittent fasting it’s going to create more of a problem so I don’t recommend intermittent fasting if you’re bulimic or anorexic but I do recommend the ketogenic diet for sure but not prolong fasting number six athletes that have not adapted to Fat yet okay so in this process of getting on keto you start adapting to keto which within like three days but then it actually takes one to three months to fully adapt to your fat metabolism right so to be fat adapted it takes a lot longer than what you might think so in the process and you’re working out you may not have adapted to Fat so when you exercise you might kind of have energy and then kind of come down but I will say over time there are athletes that have adapted to this fat over a period of months and man they can burn fat three times better than anyone else they can just go go so the point is that you have to give it more time and in the process of this adaptation you might want to adjust your workouts and training maybe right after you eat until you can fully fat adapt just as a side note too if you’re an athlete and you’re exercising and you don’t have enough a sea salt your muscles will be weak okay also potassium is very very important as well number seven if you’re a child okay not the best idea to do any type of prolonged fasting now let’s say you’re a teenager overweight like let’s say you’re obese well maybe you would just do like two meals but I would definitely start cutting out the snacking I don’t agree with this snacking all day long but the point is if you have three solid meals with a child and