Fasting for 3 days can restart the body's immune system?

"Yao Yao, why aren't you eating again today? You're losing weight every day and your body is breaking down."

"Mom, I'm not just losing weight, it's said on the internet that fasting for 3 days can improve your immunity and is good for your body," Yoyo said as she opened the web news for her mother.

Recently an article on the internet caught my eye. The content of the article shows that when the human body is fasting for 3 days, a survival mode starts to appear inside the body and the immune function chooses to replace the old and discarded immune cells to ensure survival energy, thus allowing the overall immune function of the body to recover.

Many people are confused about this. Isn't fasting a method of weight loss? How is it related to the immune system? Can fasting reboot the immune system?

Fasting can restart the body's immune system?

The American research team has made a study on this issue. Experts randomly found 600 volunteers and divided them into two groups, each group of 300 people. One group adheres to regular light fasting, a group of normal eating, after 3 years of tracking and investigation experts have made certain discoveries.

After 3 years of young fasting, the group had different degrees of reduction in the chance of chronic diseases, cardiovascular diseases, liver diseases, and gastrointestinal diseases, and the mortality rate was also reduced by about 15% than before.

Among the group who maintained a normal diet, nearly 1/3 of them had obesity problems, and an irregular diet also caused different types of chronic diseases such as cardiovascular diseases of them.

From the results of the experiment, it was found that adherence to light fasting for some time did reduce the prevalence of chronic diseases in some people, but due to the limited number of people in the experiment and the different constitution of each person, the results of the experiment have some limitations.

It is not possible to make a uniform judgment on the effect of fasting. There is no scientific theory to prove that fasting can reboot the immune system. Moreover, the claim of "rebooting the human immune system" is not correct, as the human immune system normally escorts us throughout our lives, and there is no question of "stopping" or "rebooting" in between. There is no question of "stopping" or "restarting".

Therefore, once again, it is unreliable to conclude that fasting for 3 days can restart the human immune system.

However, although it is not reliable to say that fasting can reboot the immune system, experiments have shown that regular light fasting does help to improve bodily functions and to reduce the risk of disease.

In response to this problem, a team of Japanese experts also conducted an experimental study: experts divided 600 mice into three groups: light fasting, normal eating, and a large amount of food intake, each group of 200.

After the experiment, it was found that the prevalence rate of mice with light fasting was 13%, the prevalence rate of mice with a normal diet was 37.8%, and the prevalence rate of mice with a large intake of food was as high as 88%.

Later on, researchers conducted experiments on men and women of different ages and found that during fasting, the body experienced a caloric gap due to reduced food intake, and immune factors replaced damaged cells to protect the body's health and produced new immune cells to guard against viral invasion. This shows that adhering to light fasting can rejuvenate the body and have some health benefits.

Although fasting is often mentioned, for most people, the specifics of how to do it are not well understood.

Fasting is mostly based on high vitamin and quality protein supplementation, along with plenty of hydration, and is often used as a way to lose weight. But unlike a hunger strike where you don't eat anything, fasting ensures a certain calorie intake, a minimum of 500 calories a day for women and 600 calories a day for men, which allows one to maintain vital activities.

Modern people to maintain a good body, many people will choose to fast, the following fasting methods are currently more popular.

First is the 16:8 fasting method, this fasting method has been introduced by many celebrities, that is, a day in 8 hours of eating and drinking without restriction, the remaining 16 hours in addition to drinking water without eating any food.

Next is the 20:4 fasting method, this is compared to the 16:8 fasting method, the time to eat is further shortened, only 4 hours to eat, and the remaining 20 hours to drink only water.

Finally, there is the 5:2 fasting method. This method is to eat normally five days a week, with or without continuous small amounts of food for two days, controlling energy intake by about 500 calories a day.

Correct light fasting can first of all speed up the elimination of waste and toxins from the body. Modern people consume more energy every day, and regular and reasonable reduction of energy intake can better promote blood circulation and allow the organs in the body to maintain better operation.

If the body is in a state of obesity, regular light fasting can reduce the intake of carbohydrates and promote the consumption of excess calories in the body to achieve the purpose of slimming and weight loss.

Excessive energy intake over a long period tends to increase excess fat and blood lipids, which increases a substance called "fibroblast growth factor" (FGF) and reduces the supply of oxygen and nutrients to the brain, resulting in memory loss and delayed reaction. Therefore, regular light fasting can reduce excess energy in the body and help activate the brain.

Although light fasting does have some benefits for the body, not everyone can try it. If you are a pregnant woman, a child, or a person who is weak or has a serious illness, you should still eat normally.

The reason for the widespread interest in this statement on the Internet is that as people become more concerned about their health, they understand the importance of immunity to the human body.

Why is "immunity" so important?

The immune system is one of the most important safeguards for human health, and immunity, as a kind of immunity of the human body, can make the human body function to defend against external diseases.

In our daily life, we can find that older people are more prone to diseases than young people, to a certain extent, it is related to aging, the immune function decreases, the resistance decreases, and therefore vulnerable to diseases.

However, with the improvement in living conditions, the resistance of young people to diseases has decreased. This is because with the improvement of living standards, our lifestyle is becoming more convenient, and the use of muscles is reduced, so "laziness" tends to make the body temperature drop.

Less exercise and low body temperature are the two main reasons why the body is attacked by disease, muscle is the body's main organ of heat production, responsible for producing more than 40% of the body's body temperature. Modern people exercise less, so the frequency of using muscles decreases, due to the lack of heat production in the body, and thus the body tends to feel cold.

Studies have shown that when the body temperature drops by 1 degree Celsius, the body's immunity decreases by about 30%. 50 years ago the average body temperature was 36.8 degrees Celsius, but today it has dropped to 36.2 degrees Celsius, and many people's body temperature is only about 35 degrees Celsius. This means that modern people have lost nearly 1 degree Celsius of body temperature and about 30% of immunity before.

When immunity is low, our body will produce many abnormal manifestations. First of all, people will often feel tired, many people are lethargic every day, and even if they do not do anything, they still feel very tired. Even if they get enough sleep, they feel sleepy and engaged in a little physical work, and they can't recover and relax for a long time and feel exhausted.

Secondly, it is often easy to catch a cold. Under normal circumstances, it is common for most people to catch a cold 1-2 times a year, especially when the seasons change or when there is a sudden drop in temperature, it is easier to suffer from a cold. But for people with low immunity, the number of colds is more than the average person, and each time it lasts for more than a week, and even the possibility of inducing bronchitis and pneumonia is higher than the average person.

After the immunity is low, some people's gastrointestinal digestion and absorption ability are weakened, obviously eating the same kind of food as others, others do not have discomfort, but they often have diarrhea, vomiting, and other uncomfortable symptoms.

Small wounds caused by bumps and bruises are inevitable in life, but they heal quickly. When the immune function decreases, the ability of wounds to heal is weakened, which is caused by a decline in the autoimmune mechanism and fewer platelet clotting factors.

Compared with young people, older people are more likely to have low immunity. Some older people may suddenly forget things and have memory loss, which may be a reflection of the decline in immune function, and if they are not adjusted in time, it is very likely to increase the chances of dementia.

Therefore, when the above symptoms occur frequently, we need to pay attention to promote the immune system and keep our immune function normal to keep the body in a healthy state.

On the one hand, if the immunity is too high, the immune system may mistake the pathogenic microorganisms to invade the body when inflammation occurs in some parts of the body, and then use its tissues as harmful microorganisms to attack, thus causing autoimmune diseases. Diseases like rheumatoid and lupus erythematosus are caused by an overactive immune system and require the use of immunosuppressive drugs.

In cases where the immune system is too strong or out of control, it is possible to "die with" the pathogen and win. That is, whether it is a virus, bacteria or normal body tissues and organs will be attacked. It is also called a "cytokine storm". Therefore, it is more important to keep the immunity stable than to strengthen it.

How to stabilize the immune system?

In your daily life, you can do the following to stabilize your immunity.

First of all, we need to ensure sufficient sleep. When the seasons change, many friends suffer from diseases related to the decline of the immune system, such as measles and shingles, etc. Adults need to ensure 7-8 hours of sleep every day, and sufficient sleep allows the immune system to repair itself.

Yogurt is rich in probiotics and can be a good immune booster, so drinking yogurt is also a good dietary choice, but try to use unsweetened yogurt, as too much sugar intake can create the risk of obesity.

Research has proven that honey contains a lot of antioxidants and can boost immunity, so drinking honey water regularly is also good for your health.

Protein is the raw material of immunoglobulin, if not enough intake, the immune system function will be weakened, usually diet, should pay attention to supplement protein-rich food, such as eggs, soy products, etc.

The U.S. National Library of Medicine pointed out in a report that exercise has the effect of "cleaning" lung bacteria, and helps enhance the immune system's ability to fight disease, so moderate exercise is necessary for sedentary modern people. Adhere to aerobic exercise for more than 30 minutes a day, you can maintain a beautiful body and health at the same time.

The old saying goes, "Smile for ten years less." Smile not only can make us feel good but also can make the blood, saliva, and other immune cells increase, stress release, and beneficial to the immune system to maintain stability. So, usually must smile more.

Light fasting as a way to lose weight does have some effect, and reasonable light fasting can also help us improve physical health. However, there is no scientific basis for the rumor on the Internet that it can restart the immune system.

To stabilize the human immune system, you need to make many adjustments in your diet and lifestyle, and we need to keep increasing our scientific knowledge to distinguish the truth from the falsehood.