What Happens If You Fast For 100 Hours?

Hello Health Champions! Today we're going to talk about what would happen if you don't eat for 100 hours. And it's critical that you watch this video carefully because if you're like most people and you don't understand what happens in the body and the very idea of skipping a meal is terrifying to you, then you'll probably never experience the amazing benefits that you can get from fasting. And these benefits include things like weight loss, reduced inflammation, increased mental clarity, reduced insulin resistance, reverse type 2 diabetes, you can detoxify the body, you can improve longevity and even improve immunity. And all of these benefits come down to a handful of mechanisms that we really need to have just a basic grasp on. And I'm going to keep it simple for you. So we can improve insulin sensitivity, we improve hormone balance when we fast, we trigger survival genes, we can improve gut health, reduce inflammation and reduce oxidative stress. And perhaps the most important benefit that you really can't get very much of unless you do fasting is called autophagy and we'll get into some great detail on that. But fasting also comes with a few challenges. So the number one is fear. We're afraid of what might happen. We've been told that it's dangerous to fast. We're afraid of getting hungry. We're afraid of losing muscle and getting hypoglycemia where our blood sugar drops too low. Where do we get nutrients if we don't eat? And of course there may be some interruption of your social life. We also need to understand that fasting is not for everyone. Extended fasting is not for everyone. And there is also a risk that you might binge unhealthy foods afterwards. So how do we deal with these challenges? Well, it's pretty straightforward. For fear, you just have to learn the truth. If you understand how it really works, there's nothing to be afraid of. And that's what we're going to talk about in this video. Hunger, muscle loss, hypoglycemia and nutrient deficiencies. Those are things we're going to cover throughout the video. And when it comes to disrupting social life, that probably will happen. But realize that you're not going to do this type of fast, like 72 hours, 100 hours, probably more than two to three or maybe four times a year. So during that time, you just have to figure out, hey, how do I work around and how do I plan it into my schedule if I want all these benefits? And then it's not for everyone. So for small children, pregnant women, if you have a disease condition, if you're extremely thin, then you probably want to think twice about doing an extended fast. You can still do intermittent fasting, like maybe 16 hour fasts most days. That's not a problem for anybody. But longer fast, probably not so much. And there is also the risk that if you don't eat for a while and you look forward to food and you're used to eating all the time, then you might be binging unhealthy foods after. But it really comes down to what kind of food habits do you have? If you mostly eat to junk food and you get super excited and you get into this long fast and you dream about food the whole time and you have a bunch of junk food around the house, then yes, you will probably or possibly start eating a bunch of unhealthy foods and overcompensate. But if you already have good habits and there's only good food in the house, then that is not really going to be an issue. So what happens when you stop eating, when you start fasting is that first, you lose weight. Yeah, I'm sorry, it's terrible. I knew that you didn't want that to happen, but oh well. And this is because when you don't eat, you have to use stored energy. That's the whole point of storing body fat and excess energy on the body so that we can use it when there's no food available. And the body can store two things for energy. It's called glycogen, which is the form of glucose or carbohydrate. And we can also store fat. So in the beginning, if your body is used to using carbohydrate primarily, then you will start using up this glycogen and you can store about one pound of glycogen in your muscles and in your liver. And now something interesting though is that this glycogen is kind of like a sponge. It absorbs and binds water. So this one pound of glycogen is going to bind three pounds of water, which when you start using up the glycogen now, you'll also start releasing the water because there's no sponge there to hold the water. So as you burn through one pound of glycogen, you will most likely lose four pounds of body weight. And then gradually, as you start burning through that glycogen, you will also start using up more body fat. And here's how that works. So most people are adapted to eating large amounts of carbohydrates. And therefore, when you put carbohydrate in, that's the first fuel that your body needs to use up because really high blood sugar is dangerous to the brain. High or very low blood sugar can put you into a coma. So when your blood sugar is high, your body has to use that first. And therefore, if you are used to doing that, your body will start off burning a high level of carbohydrate and a somewhat lower level of fat. But then, as time goes on and you're not adding any new carbohydrate, your body will start to decrease the use of carbs all the way down to a very low level. And at the same time, the stored fuel on the body is fat. So your body learns to use more fat. It switches more to fat. And if you are fully fat adapted and in a fast, like after 48 hours in or so, then you probably use about 95% of your energy from fat and about 5% from carbohydrate. And you don't have to eat that carbohydrate. It is already stored as glycerol, triglycerides in your fat cells. In the fat that you store, there's a little backbone of glycerol that can become carbohydrate. And that's about that 5%. So in the beginning, you'll mostly lose water because that glycogen can't hold on to the water anymore. But over time, you start using more fat. And during a three to four day fast, you'll probably burn through about one to two pounds of fat. Now, what a lot of people are worried about, and you may have heard this, is that when you go on a fast, then you become hypoglycemic, your blood sugar drops. And you start producing a bunch of cortisol. Because cortisol is a stress hormone that the body uses to try to raise blood sugar and increase gluconeogenesis, meaning to make glucose blood sugar from something other than carbohydrate. And we can do that from two things. We can do it from protein. And we can do it from this glycerol that we talked about that stored in the fat. And once you become fully fat adapted, that glycerol is enough. So what about this fear of hypoglycemia? Well, when you go on a fast and you start burning more fat, then your body doesn't need as much carbohydrate and blood sugar for the brain. But there's still a little bit going on here. So basically, if we say that we start at hypothetically this level, and then as we go through the fast and we don't eat, now we're probably going to have a little bit of an increase in cortisol. And over time, though, then we reach a certain point and the body is stressed because of we're not eating, so it has to make that blood sugar. But as the fat burning increases, now we don't need so much blood sugar anymore. And we'll come back and talk more about that. So now that cortisol drops again. So when people tell you that your cortisol is going to be elevated and very high throughout the fast, then it's very stressful for the body for that reason, that's not true. Because once you're fully fat adapted and you don't need the glucose anymore, then your body is not going to release cortisol for that reason. But here's another thing to keep in mind, that if you go gradually on a low carb diet before you do this fast, then this scenario is going to look a little bit different. So you're not going to start off with carbohydrates really high, because if you're on low carb, you're already fat adapted. So now your carbs are going to start probably down here. And you're already burning more fat than carbohydrates, because that's what you're giving your body in the diet. And now this carbohydrate is again going to drop down to about 5%, and the fat is going to increase to about 95. But there are very small changes. It's not so dramatic because that's what the body is already doing. And now the cortisol response is going to be much, much more much less. So just hypothetically it might go up a little bit and then it'll just settle down again because there's no big stress. You're already fat adapted. You're already having that metabolism in place. But then we get to what some people might think is bad news and that is that you'll probably gain four pounds back, three or four pounds as you start eating again because the four pounds you lost first were just glycogen and water. And once you start eating again, the body is going to go back to storing some glycogen and absorbing some water. So a lot of people now are going to say, hey, then that was a total waste. I'm not going to worry about it because I could lose a measly pound some other way. Well, that's not how it works. That's not what you're looking for. You are setting yourself up for success. You're looking for the momentum and the long term benefits. And then we want to understand hunger. That's probably the single biggest deterrent for people because most of us until we hear about this and give it a try, most of us have probably never gone a day in our lives without food. I know that was certainly the case for me. But there's two hormones insulin and gruelin that we need to understand. So insulin, first of all, is involved in fat storage. Whenever we eat, our blood sugar goes up. Insulin is released to take that blood sugar out of the bloodstream into the cell where the some of it is used and the excess gets converted to fat. So the trend, the tendency for insulin is to promote fat storage and not just fat storage, but lipogenesis, meaning making fat out of carbohydrate. And when we have high levels of insulin, when we come insulin resistant and we have chronically high levels of insulin now, we will have a tendency, we'll have some momentum toward fat storage. And what a lot of people don't realize is that if you have increased insulin, if you have chronically high levels of insulin and that promotes fat storage and prevents fat burning, then you're going to be more hungry than you would be otherwise because you store all that energy. But because of the high insulin, you have a lesser tendency to get it back. You can't really retrieve that with high insulin, your body prefers to go and eat more. And then of course, the opposite of that is true that if you can lower insulin, then you can move toward fat burning and if you can burn the fat and release those fat stores, then you actually become less hungry. So we'll come back to that. But there's also a hormone called grelin. And that's your hunger hormone. And typically, what we think about is that grelin rises to make you hungry when your body is supposed to go and get food when it's supposed to hunt something down and eat something. And then as you have satisfied your body, then this grelin level drops to a low level and you're not hungry anymore until it's time to eat again. But it turns out it's not quite that simple because grelin is mostly habitual. So what does that mean? Well, let's say that you have grelin rise in the morning when it's time to have breakfast and then you eat and your grelin drops and you're not hungry. And then we repeat this a few times throughout the day. That makes perfect sense. But what happens is this is mostly habitual. The grelin rises to make you hungry as a habit to help you eat at the times that you usually eat. So if you usually have breakfast, lunch, and dinner, then those are the times that your grelin is going to rise. And it's like a program in your body. But here's the really cool part that if you get hungry and you ignore it and you just have a cup of coffee or a cup of tea and 30 minutes goes by, then your grelin is going to drop anyway. It's not going to stay high. Your body isn't evil and mean to you. It's not going to keep you miserable. It's just trying to get you, hey, let's see if there's some food out there somewhere because overall food is a good thing. It helps survival. But if there is no food around, it's not going to keep you miserable and keep that grelin high. It's going to drop down and try again later. So it's not as bad as people think just to ignore that hunger and go do something else, go for a walk, have a cup of tea, and that grelin will drop and you won't be hungry and you won't even think about it sometimes for the next day or so. But insulin isn't just about weight loss or hunger. In fact, it is the most important factor as far as most chronic degenerative diseases that we try to reverse with fasting. So when you have high levels of insulin, over time you become insulin resistant. And what we're trying to do then is to reverse that and become insulin sensitive. So how does fasting do that? Why is fasting unique in that regard? Well, your body wants to maintain a very narrow range of blood sugar. So when you eat something and your blood sugar goes up, now your body quickly releases some insulin to a similar to an appropriate corresponding level. And now this glucose comes back down into a normal range. And then this insulin also comes down into a normal range. And then we do that over and over. We do one more time and we do maybe three, four, five, six times in some cases. And of course the insulin goes up and down. But then we have our last meal of the day and we get down into this range. But then if we only fast for like eight hours, now this doesn't have time to get very low before we eat again. And especially if you're insulin resistant, if you have high levels of insulin, then this is not going to drop back down into a good level during just a single night's fasting. But when you go beyond eight and 12 and 24 and 36 hours, now the insulin keeps dropping for the duration of the fast. Because if you're not adding any new food, there is no reason for the body to release large amounts of insulin. It's going to level off at a baseline level where you just need enough to regulate your basic blood sugar, but not enough, not large amounts to deal with incoming food. And this is how long-term fasting, extended fasting beyond 24 hours is probably the most powerful tool to break through plateaus of high levels of insulin and insulin resistance. And when you do that, now you can start reversing type two diabetes. You can reverse hypertension in many cases. People try this and they say, Hey, blood sugar drops, but also my blood pressure normalized. And of course some of the tremendous benefits would be to reduce the risk of heart disease, reduce the risk of stroke, and reduce the risk of cancer. These are the big killers of mankind today. And all of them, even though there are other contributing factors, all of them are primarily metabolic conditions that we can improve the risk by becoming more insulin sensitive. And fasting will also reduce inflammation, which if you recall, heart disease, the primary risk factor, the primary mechanism is chronic, low grade inflammation that causes heart disease. So now we can start affecting these from many different directions. So let's talk a little more about heart disease because it's an important topic and people really need to understand some things. I want to illustrate this with a patient case. We had someone come through, they did some blood work. And in May of 23, they had a total cholesterol of 260. And then seven months later in January of 2024, very recently, they had dropped that to 190. And the LDL cholesterol, which is often called the bad cholesterol was from 160 and it went down to 108. And the vast majority of doctors and the vast majority of the general population would say that this was a great development. They would say that this person got a whole lot healthier. He lowered his total cholesterol and lowered his bad cholesterol. But I want to tell you that these two markers are completely irrelevant. They are not the things to look at. Instead, what you need to look at is the LDL particle count. How many LDL particles are there? Because when they measure LDL as 160 and it went to 108, they measure milligrams per desolate. Or that's the total mass of LDL cholesterol. But the risk has to do with the number of particles. Because if you have larger number of particles, then there's more. more particles that can bump up against the inside of the blood vessel and slip through if there are some cracks and some gaps. And the other factor that matters is how big are these LDL particles. And again, this is not the only factor or the two factors, but these are, in my opinion, the two of the most important and two, they're very easy to look at. And if we have small particles less than 20.5 nanometers, then they're more likely to slip through the gaps. So a large number of small particles are more likely to slip through these gaps and cracks and cause plaques. So here's what's really astounding. Even though the total weight of the cholesterol went down dramatically, and that might look like a good thing, the particle count, the number of the particles that are in the blood vessel number of LDL particles actually went up. The total mass went down, the number went up. So he increased his risk of heart disease, but not only that, of course, now you realize that these particles got a lot smaller. So when we count the number of particles under 20.5 nanometers, he had less than 90 before and he went to 699 afterwards. So now you're all wondering, what did this person do between May and January? Well, here's the thing. He had been on a statin drug for 10 years, and then he learned some things about nutrition and diet. He wanted to reverse his diabetes and he wanted to heal his body and support his body naturally. So he went off the statin drug. So in May of 23, he had been off of his medication for about six months and then he went back to his medical doctor who ran some blood work and of course, he didn't run the particle count so he didn't learn the real risk factors and the doctor told him you have to get back on a statin drug. So he did and officially based on mainstream criteria, the numbers went down and everything looked good. As you now understand, he actually increased his risk for heart disease. Along with of course some burden on the body with the burden of medication and side effects and so on. So I'm not saying that everyone is going to react this way. I'm not saying that nobody should take cholesterol medication, but this person shouldn't at least not that kind. But if you don't measure what really matters, then you'll never know. So if you never had this done, I suggest you get that checked and I'll put a link down below where you can get some discounted blood work if you don't have access to it because unfortunately most places will not cover these tests and they call an NMR cholesterol panel. And I also made a course where I go into a lot more detail about not just cholesterol but about everything basically that can show up on your blood test. If you really want to start understanding the body, that'd be another good thing to do. And I'll put a link for that as well. But now let's talk about how this relates to fasting. And again, I'm not saying that everyone's going to have these results, but here's what happened to me last time that I did a hundred hour fast, which was a few months ago. So we're going to compare the beginning and after a hundred hours, my total cholesterol went from 220 to 255. Now how does cholesterol go up? We hear that you shouldn't eat foods that are rich in cholesterol because it raises your cholesterol and that may or may not be true depending on the person and what you eat. But I ate nothing and my cholesterol went up by a good bit. My LDL went from 146 to 169. I ate nothing and my cholesterol went up. And that means it's not really related to the amount of cholesterol in your diet. It has to do with hormones and metabolic balances and checks and bounds. And the fact that you have some cholesterol stored in your fat tissue that gets released. But that's not a bad thing. But like we said, these markers are not the ones to look at. So let's look at the important ones. And my particle count went from 1709 to 1222. And this is dramatic. If you look at this, my LDL milligrams per desolider, the mass and weight of cholesterol went up. I had more cholesterol, but dramatically fewer particles. So of course, now you understand that means they got bigger. And the number of particles under 20.5 nanometers, the ones that would be damaged and damaging, went from 351 to less than 90. And yet, less than 90 simply means that there are so few that they have a hard time measuring and coming up with a number or they don't bother because they're so few, they just put less than 90. And one of the biggest factors in heart disease and cardiovascular disease and what causes the particles to shrink is inflammation and oxidative stress. If we damage these particles, they can attend to get smaller. So let's look at more factors about this inflammation. So fasting can reduce inflammation and it can do this many, many different ways. And we'll reduce the pro-inflammatory white blood cells. So you have all these white blood cells as part of your immune system. And sometimes it's appropriate to have more inflammation and sometimes less inflammation. But fasting tends to reduce the particular cells that promote inflammation. So overall, we get less inflammation. It will act, can act as an immune system reset. And if your immune system has a tendency to make a lot of these pro-inflammatories, then with a reset, we can lower that chronic level of inflammation. And a lot of inflammation in the body has to do with the gut. So when you don't eat any food, now there's no food to irritate. So you reduce gut irritation. And you're also not feeding the pathogenic gut bacteria. You're feeding all bacteria less, but especially the pathogenic ones tend to like the processed foods and the sugar. But overall, you're getting a break to give your body a rest to heal that gut. And as a result, you can improve your balance of your microbiome, which can further help in gut healing. And if everything works a little better, if you have a healthier membrane, a better biome, now you can actually have less food intolerances. You can start tolerating food better because that's really all about how well your gut is doing. It's not really you that's allergic to food. It's the whole environment in your gut that's allergic to food. But there's even more ways that you reduce inflammation with fasting. You reduce free radicals and you reduce oxidative stress when you don't eat because most free radicals and oxidative stress comes from processing and burning through food. Another big factor is that you're increasing ketones. When you're burning through your fat stores, your body upregulates ketones and they are anti-inflammatory. And this also helps with mitochondrial repair. So mitochondria are little things inside your cells that make virtually all of your energy, 95% plus of all the energy that you use are actually made by a little separate entity inside your cells. And whenever you make energy, when you burn food and make energy, you create free radicals and oxidative stress that's unavoidable. But the healthier your mitochondria are, the cleaner that happens. And you have old and sick and damaged mitochondria. It's kind of like rust. It's like an old rusty car. It doesn't burn clean at all. It just fumes and spews things everywhere. But if you can improve the health of those mitochondria and repair them now, they're going to increase their capacity to make energy but also burn much cleaner. And then we have autophagy. So even if you don't have a disease, even if you are at your ideal weight, autophagy would be the reason to do this fasting anyway. So autophagy means self-eating. But it doesn't mean that you're going to start chewing on yourself. It's not that type of self-eating. It simply means that when there are no new resources, when you're not adding new resources to the body, especially protein, then the existing resources become so much more precious. And the body has to get better and better and better at utilizing and making the most of those resources. And as a result, it will increase its recycling ability. It will perform cellular cleanup so that it can go out in the body and look for things that are a little bit degraded, some cells that they there aren't so healthy, some misfolded proteins, some bacteria, anything that could be a resource, the body just start looking really, really hard. And as a result, you actually improve your immunity because some of these things that go out looking for things are part of your immune system, your white blood cells. And overall, you perform quite a powerful detoxification as through the mechanism of autophagy. And here's another way to think about autophagy. I'm sure you've all heard the saying when the going gets tough, right? The tough get going. Well, when you're fasting, then it gets a little tougher. And now your body has to get much, much better. And one thing that happens is it starts up regulating human growth hormone. This is a tissue building hormone. It is a muscle sparing hormone. Any new tissue, any repair, any growth that you want to make, you need human growth hormone. And during a three day fast, you could actually up-regulate your levels of human growth hormone many, many times. Some studies have shown like seven, eight, 10 times more growth hormone during a fast. And this brings us to one of the fears or concerns, which is muscle loss. Some people say, "Oh, if you don't eat protein, "you're gonna lose muscle." No, you won't, not short-term. And three, four, five days is short-term. If you go for months and months, yes, you will reach a point where your body starts breaking down muscle to turn into glucose. But muscle is the last thing your body wants to break down, because you need it, you need your muscles to propel the body and go find new food. And that's why the body up-regulates this human growth hormone so dramatically to make sure that because it's muscle-sparing, you're not gonna use up any muscle. You're gonna use everything else first, all the debris. And as I said before, you don't really need the muscle to make glucose because you have 5% carbohydrates stored in the fat tissue, which is plenty to work during ketosis. Another thing that increases dramatically is another hormone called brain derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF. And that's basically miracle growth for the brain. And why does the body do this? Well, remember, when the going gets tough, the body gets better at everything. It needs to get better. So it needs to increase its ability to learn. It needs to increase its ability to adapt and find new solutions. And human growth hormone and BDNF are necessary for building tissue, which includes brain synapses. Anytime you learn something, it's because you rewire your nervous system. You're sending out new little tentacles that connect to other tentacles to create a neural network. And that's how we learn. So during your fast, you're actually better at learning, you're better at adapting. And one more way the body gets better is it improves survival, fasting triggers survival genes called sertuins. So even if you don't have a disease, these are very, very powerful reasons to do fast now and then anyway. But a lot of people are confused about how long does it take? That's a very common question, autophagy. When does it start? And like most things in the body, it's not like a cutoff. It's not black or white, like nothing up to this point and then it's all on. Instead, we want to think of it as gradual. Now, for the first 12 hours, you're probably not getting any autophagy hardly at all. And then up to about 72 to 100 hours, it's going to increase to a max level and then it's going to plateau. So depending on how your diet is, if you're high carb, if you're already fat adapted, if you're in ketosis, after 12 hours, you're probably going to have very little, but after 16, it's going to start kicking in just a little bit. Now, again, on high carb, you're probably not getting anything yet. And then as time goes, 24, 48, 70 to 100 hours, it gets to deeper levels. But you don't want to just think about this as how deep a level you reach, even though that's important. You want to think about how long am I in that state? Because the time there is like a multiplier. So if you're doing intermittent fasting and low carb, you're getting a little bit, probably a little bit of autophagy, for a few hours every day. And that's still significant because it's every day. But if you go longer fasting, like 24 hours, that would be more like a one meal a day. And then as you go longer and longer and longer, now you get to deeper levels, but you multiply that level by the time that you're in that state. Now, for the average person, there is no way to directly measure autophagy. This is very complicated to do in a lab setting, but there are some simple things you can check for yourself that give you a good approximation, a good indication of where you are. And ketones is one where if you are normal and you're eating like most people, you're probably going to be zero to zero point one. And this is ketones in millimoles per liter. And the ketone we're measuring is beta hydroxybutyrate. And there are urine strips, there are breathalyzers, but if you want to have a number that's accurate, you wanna get a blood test, and you can get this yourself. You buy a little keto meter and you buy these little sticks. And my favorite is keto mojo because they've been around forever and they're very reliable and consistent plus their reorder sticks are very affordable. So I'll put a link down below there. But then as you get into 12, 16 hours, it's gonna depend on if you're fat adapted, if you get any reading. So the average person might be at zero point two, they might start seeing something creep up, whereas if you're low carb or already in some level of ketosis after 16 hours, you're probably gonna start seeing one point five, something like that. And everyone's gonna react differently, produce different amounts of ketones, but as a rule of thumb, just to see approximately what you might expect, would be that after two days, you might see numbers in the two range, and three days in the three range, and after four days in the four range. So again, some people are gonna have more or less, but just to give you an idea of where it's heading. And the other marker you wanna keep an eye on is glucose. And again, it's gonna start off for a healthy person, probably around 90 milligrams per deciliter, if you wanna convert that to millimoles, you divide by 18 and you get five. And then as the fast keeps going, you're gonna see those markers drop, maybe 85, 80, 70, 60. Even if you get down to 50 or 40s toward the end of a fast, that's not a problem if you're feeling good. If you have symptoms of hypoglycemia, if you're dizzy, lethargic, lightheaded, then that's something they wanna keep an eye on, because if you get symptoms, then you probably wanna eat. But if you're feeling okay, then it's all right for the glucose to go down because the brain needs energy. And when you eat a lot of carbohydrate, your body's gonna burn the carbs first, and your blood glucose levels are always gonna be relatively high. But as you eat fewer carbs, the reason the body makes ketones is to provide an alternate fuel. And as carbs go down, ketones go up. Now there's an even more interesting marker. It's a ratio. So if we divide the glucose by the ketones, we get the GKI or glucose ketone index. And what we do here is we take five divided by 0.1, we get 50. If we take the next one, we see that we get down to 4.7, assuming that we are in some level of ketosis, and we have gotten our ketones up to maybe one. And these would be typical numbers in the beginning. So for an average healthy person who has good blood sugar control, but very, very little ketones, you're probably gonna start off with a ratio at 50. And then as you start making some ketones, this is gonna drop very quickly. And what they're found in some research is that for the truly really deep levels of autophagy, you wanna get that ratio down to about a one. And in some studies, they've found, if you get it down to one, that's where you can really starve a cancer. you can even start reducing or reversing or eliminating so. certain types of tumors. So as your levels of ketones increase, you're going to see these numbers change pretty quick because again ketones go up, glucose go down. If we divide, we seek faster changes. And these are pretty close to what I had last time that I did a hundred hour fast. I think I ended up with 55 or something in terms of glucose. And I think I was over five on ketones. But again, it's not a competition, but just roughly what you can expect to see. What about nutrient deficiencies? Well, even though your body needs nutrients, it doesn't need them every hour or every day. There are certain things that the body has reserves. We store fat for many, many months. A lot of the fat soluble vitamins will have enough for months. And even the water soluble vitamins and nutrients, you're not really going to need them every day. Missing a few days is going to be perfectly fine. Now, there's one exception. And that is something called electrolytes. Those are something that you really do want to supplement during a fast. And the reason is that electrolytes are charged particles that are dissolved in the water and water and electrolytes tend to follow each other. And if you remember, we talked about how as we burn through the glycogen, the glycogen is a sponge. And as we burn through it, it releases water that water flushes out and it takes electrolytes with it. The other reason is that when you fast your insulin levels drop and high levels of insulin will tend to increase the reabsorption to excessively reabsorb electrolytes. Now, before you can find a balance long term, when you get into a fast, if you've been at a very high level and you start fasting and your insulin drops, now that's one more way that you can start losing electrolytes and water. And the vast majority of symptoms and problems and challenges that people run into like fatigue and headaches and nausea, lethargy, lightheadedness, it is most of that is because they are losing too many electrolytes. And if you supplement some electrolytes, then most of that you will never experience. And the four main electrolytes that you want to make sure is in there is sodium, potassium, magnesium and calcium. These are the big ones. You need hundreds or thousands of milligrams every day. In some products, you're only going to find sodium and potassium in differing ratios. In some of the better ones, you're also going to see magnesium and calcium. So, of course, when I made my product, I included all of those. But I also put in something called trace minerals. And there is, between 70 and 80, I think I've seen 72 quoted. And these are other minerals, charged particles that you need in very, very small amounts like milligrams or micrograms even. And there's between 15 and 20 of these that are absolutely essential, meaning necessary for life. And most people, because of their depleted diet, are deficient. The vast majority of people are deficient in one or more of these trace minerals. So, it's just good to get a product that has all of that in it. But when I made my product, I didn't just want a good electrolyte powder. I wanted the ultimate fasting companion. So, I put in a couple more things. Manganese, bisclicinate, and zinc, L, carnazine. And those are both key-lated. It means they are bound to amino acids. They're more bioavailable. They're more food-like than just a salt. And Manganese is necessary for tissue regeneration and also blood sugar regulation. Both of those are, of course, super important during a fast. And zinc, L, carnazine has been shown to help in gut healing specifically. So, a lot of people are going to benefit from fasting in terms of gut healing. And then if you add these two things, then you're giving your body a little extra boost there. But it's also made for everyday mineral supplementation. So, you can just take one scoop a day. And on purpose, I didn't put a lot of salt, a lot of sodium in there because everyone has a salt shaker and salt is dirt cheap. So, as you eat food, you just sprinkle your salt on that. However, when you go on a fast of more than 24 hours and you don't eat any food at all, now you want to increase to two to four scoops of this electrolyte powder, because you're not getting any electrolytes and you want to add some salt extra to your electrolyte drink to make sure, because you're not adding any salt to the food. So, by doing this, you can eliminate the vast majority of complications and symptoms associated with fasting. If you enjoyed this video, you're going to love that one. 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