Top Tips for Flare Ups including Fasting

Any of us can suffer flare ups from time to time. A swollen knee or ankle maybe. A flare up is an internal activity, something has caused your body to react this way.  I get asked several times a week about what would be best to do and not to do, to help get the inflammation down as quickly as possible.

There will many of you who I haven’t seen for a while who also suffer these occasional flare ups, so to help you as well, I’ve created a simple list of top tips and provided an insightful look into the benefits of fasting.

Foods to Avoid

• Sugar
• Processed diary
• Alcohol
• Processed snacks
• Gluten

Food that helps

• Vegetables provide anti-oxidants which means they fight oxidation, free radicals and inflammation
• Also provides prebiotics for a healthier gut
• Eat 6 to 11 servings a day
• Drink more water

Fasting for Health & Longevity

This one may surprise you but please read on

Yoshinori Ohsumi, the 2016 Nobel prize Winner in Medicine, opened up a completely new field of science studying autophagy. It’s likely that you have never heard of autophagy and that does not matter. What matters is that mutations in human autophagy genes can cause disease. Ohsumi’s research over the last 40 years has shown that autophagy helps protect against inflammation and in diseases like dementia and Parkinsons. The perceived benefits of autophagy are so wide that there are more than 5,000 published studies a year across many fields of interest, including cancer and longevity.

So what is autophagy?

Our bodies rely on a steady energy source from the food we eat. During fasting or starvation, this energy source is switched off and this causes the body the switch energy production to breaking down protein in existing cells. Simply put, autophagy is a process of using energy stored in the body.

More importantly, while in this state of fasting,

our cells destroy viruses and bacteria and eliminate damaged structures.

 

How Long Do You Have To Fast To Gain Benefits?

It’s not as bad as you might think, so don’t think this is not for you.  A large body of research has shown that fasting for just 12 or more hours a day triggers autophagy. Now think about it, you fast every day anyway, that’s why you break your fast every morning. If you had your last meal at 6 pm and then breakfast at 8 am, that would be a 14 hour fast, more than enough for you to get the benefits of autophagy.

Clearly the trick is to make sure you have your evening meal early and no snacking after that. That’s tough for a lot of us, but let’s be honest, its only a habit anyway and habits are easy to break when you are determined.

Here is your reason to be determined.

A large amount of research into autophagy has shown a clear link to reduced inflammation, weight loss, improved brain function and better blood sugar control, the latter being directly linked to diabetes. Studies with Rhesus Monkeys eating only 70% of their normal calorific intake have been shown to live much longer and to be much healthier in old age. Without doubt the huge amount of ongoing studies are only going to expand this list of benefits.

For more on health in general, I recommend you visit www.bluezones.com

For more on autophagy click here