What Happens If You JUST Drink WATER For 100 Hours?

Hello, health champions. Today we're going to talk about what would happen if you did a fast and you had nothing but water for 100 hours. And why did I pick 100 hours because it is a nice round number, I like the number, and it's approximately four days. It's just a little bit over four days. And that's a time of fasting that most people could do very safely. If you don't have any health problems, if you have something going on, check with your doctor. But most people can fast for four days without really changing a whole lot. And we're going to talk about some of the things you want to think about. And if you fast for four days, you get the vast majority of benefits of doing a longer fast. And with longer fast, I mean more than 24 hours. And if you go on to about four days or a hundred hours, you get virtually all the benefits that you could get from a longer fast. And these benefits include things like autophagy, which we're going to talk about in detail. You get a significant drop in insulin. You get a significant boost in immune function. You even get some stem cell activation. And you improve your biome, your micro flora, the balance and quantity. And you get some gut healing. So we're going to talk through what happens on each day. So you really understand what the benefits are and what's happening in your body. So from zero to 24 hours, it's what we call the glycogen depletion phase. This is where you go from a fed state where you have eaten to where you stop eating. And now your body starts using up the glycogen. And glycogen is stored carbohydrate. It's just the form that your body stores extra carbohydrate. So when you eat your body breaks it down to glucose and then it starts linking it up into branches of glycogen. And you keep most of it in your muscles, but that glycogen is earmarked for the muscles that can never go out in the bloodstream again and become fuel for the brain. So what we're talking about is the glycogen in the liver. So when your blood sugar drops, now your body can release that glycogen from the liver and supply the brain and other tissues that need glucose. So your energy source in the beginning is going to be mostly glucose as you break down the glycogen, but gradually it's going to shift into fat. And sometimes when people talk about this, it sounds like in the beginning you're using 100% carbohydrates, which is not the case because even if you're breaking down glycogen for blood glucose and your brain is using virtually only glucose at that time, if we go on a scale from about 100% to zero and this here is about 10 and this here is about 90. Then we start off at about 50% of glucose and 50% fat. And then as we go, as we start breaking down the glycogen, now the glycogen is going to go down and the glucose usage is going to decline, whereas the fat usage is going to increase so that once we're well into this fast, we're going to be using about 90% of our energy from fat and 10% from carbohydrates or glucose. And toward the end of the 100 hours, we might actually be using as little as 5% of our energy from glucose and about 95% from fat. And there's a reason for that, which we're going to talk about. When it comes to hormones, there are three of them that are going to change significantly. And that's glucagon, cortisol, and insulin. And glucagon is the hormone that breaks down glycogen or stored carbohydrate so that we can make blood glucose out of it. Then next, we're going to have cortisol. It's going to go up slightly because cortisol stimulates glucose neogenesis, which means making glucose from other sources, such as glycerin, which we'll talk about, and from protein, from amino acids. And we're going to talk about that in some details, so you understand why that doesn't happen very much. And insulin is going to drop dramatically because the purpose of insulin is to get glucose out of the bloodstream. And if we're fasting, we're not adding any large amounts of carbohydrates or glucose. We're only maintaining a small baseline and that baseline is going to drop over time. Plus, we're going to get more insulin sensitive, so we need less and less. And there's going to be a drop of blood glucose over the course of the hundred hours. And the reason we're very interested in lowering insulin is that it is responsible. High levels of insulin are responsible for insulin resistance and type two diabetes and fat storing. Which is affecting about 80% of the world's population. And it is the central issue in most disease, most degenerative disease in the world today. We're also going to talk a lot about autophagy. And during day one, this is toward the end of the day, it just starts ramping up. And why are we interested in this? Because this is one of the biggest reasons that we do a fast. Because autophagy means self-eating. And if you don't add any new resources to the body, the existing resources become very, very precious. Especially the building materials. The fat kind of has the energy taken care of as far as the reserve, as a resource. But protein becomes very, very precious. So we increase the recycling and the cleanup. So we're upgrading everything in the body that can assist in that process. And some of the things we're recycling are dysfunctional proteins and cells. So cells and proteins and building blocks and things that are getting a little old and worn and rusty and decrepit. Now we start going out and finding them and breaking them down and reducing them to a much higher degree than we would normally if we just get more protein through food. Autophagy is also going to improve our immunity. And it is part of cancer prevention because cancer cells are some of these dysfunctional proteins and cells that we start recycling. And deep states of autophagy have been found to be able to break down and reverse some types of tumors and cancers. And we also want to talk about how our symptoms or how our experience changes through the 100 hours. So in the beginning we are naturally going to be hungry. We're going to have some cravings because the body is used to certain things. And if we change things up, it's going to wonder where they go. Let me have some of that. So we could also get some fatigue right in the beginning when the body doesn't know where the energy is going to come from. When we're shifting our metabolic pathways, the body kind of has to relearn and we might have some fatigue. You could also experience some lightheadedness, you could experience some mood swings, some headaches. And we're going to talk about some things that you could do to minimize these symptoms. Because for some people they can be very severe where it's difficult to fast and for other people, it's not a big deal at all. But if you know what to do, then you can absolutely minimize them. And now we're in today number two, 24 hours to 48 hours. And this is the ketosis face. Now ketosis, it started toward the end of day one, but now it's really starting to ramp up. And when it comes to the energy source, on day one we were mostly using glycogen for blood sugar. And now most of the glycogen is gone, so we have to get much better at using fat. So the body is going to use primarily fat from this point on. 90 to 95% like we talked about. Now the brain is a little different because it relies mostly on glucose in the fed state. But as we get further into the fast, now it's going to be a mix of glucose and ketones. And it's going to change the farther we go. As for the hormones, the insulin keeps dropping like we talked about. But there's a new one here, human growth hormone is starting to ramp up dramatically. And during the 100 hours, we're going to get an increase of about three to 500%. So this isn't necessarily during day two, but during the fast we're going to see those kind of levels. And the two things that growth hormone does that we're interested in during a fast is of course it helps us burn fat, which we need to generate energy. But it also preserves muscle so that we don't burn down the muscle to make glucose, which is super important if you're going over a day or two because you don't want to lose muscle just because you fast. And we're going to talk about some reasons why humans are really, really good at this, better than any other animal. And along with human growth hormone, we also see a dramatic uptick in BDNF. Brain derived neurotrophic factor. And neurotrophic is the key word here. That's like miracle grow. Neurotrophic means it grows brain tissue. It helps expand and generate brain tissue. And these two hormones, the human growth hormone and the BDNF, together they help with neuroplasticity. So whenever we learn something new, whenever we change a habit or learn a skill or adapt to something, we have to make new connections in the brain called synapses. And without these two hormones, we can't make those synapses. They're absolutely necessary for us to connect things. So when they go up by several hundred percent, that means our ability to learn and adapt increases dramatically. We also get a slight increase in epinephrine or adrenaline, which is going to help us generate some energy and to stay alert. We talked a lot about what a topology does. So I'm not going to cover that in detail. But during day two, it continues to accelerate. It goes into deeper levels of the topology. And we just continue to clear out these functional proteins and cells. The symptoms and experience changes a little bit here because now with the increase in ketones, we have a different source of brain fuel. So now a lot of people who have had some brain fog, they're going to see that diminish. And also the hunger hormone, Grelin, which had been rising during day one, because we stopped eating, the body says, "Hey, go eat something." So it makes Grelin to try to get us to eat. So day one is kind of the worst day in terms of hunger. In day two, we've gone longer. So hunger is still going to be there, but the body is realizing the, "Hey, you know, we don't want to just abuse the poor guy and stimulate his hunger if there's no food around." So even though we sort of have some hunger, the Grelin is going down now, which reduces the hunger. You could also start seeing some mild coldness in your extremities, in hands and fingers, because your body is trying to save on energy, save on resources. It realized there's nothing new coming in. So let's reduce expenditure just a little bit. But that's a temporary decrease. And a lot of people are worried about ruining their metabolism by fasting too long. But you're not going to do that in a four, or even seven, or ten day fast. But if you go like three weeks or more, now you could start creating permanent changes, and possible damage to your metabolism and your energy system. But on day two, when the body is starting to conserve some energy, it's temporary. And a lot of people during day two are going to experience increased mental clarity and focus. And a lot of that has to do with some of the stress hormones that we're releasing, like the cortisol and adrenaline, but primarily because ketones are going up. And that's an alternative and even a better fuel that burns cleaner, and we have less oxidative stress and inflammation in the brain now. On day three, everything continues. So now we are in full ketosis and in even deeper states of autophagy. And the energy source is basically all fat. And in the body, we store fat as triglycerides, which becomes very, very significant. And we can break down this fat, different ways. So we can get fatty acids out of it, which we can use for energy. We can get ketones from these fatty acids. We can chop them up and put little units together for ketones that we can use for brain energy. And we can even generate some glucose from these triglycerides. So when we store fat, we store them as triglycerides, which is very, very significant because there is a portion here called glycerin or glycerol. And it has three carbons in it. We call that a backbone of the triglyceride. And then the body, when we store them, we attach fatty acids to this. So they're like little tails. So this component, this unit altogether is called a triglyceride. Where here's the glycerol, here's the fatty acids. So these we can use for energy at nine calories per gram, and we can turn these, like I said, into ketones. But this is three carbons. And glucose has six carbons. So if we take two of these, we can put them together into one glucose molecule. So as it turns out, the way we store fat, we store 5% of the triglyceride can be converted into glucose. And 95% becomes the fatty acids. So a lot of people say you can't make glucose from fat. And what they mean by that is you can't make glucose from the fatty acids. That's impossible. It's a one way street. You can make fatty acids from glucose. You can't go the other way. But you can make glucose from glycerol, which is part of the triglycerides. And this is very, very important. It's been the key for human survival. And we're going to talk about in a second how it's allowed us to have the biggest and most powerful brains in any animal in the world. So now these fatty acids are going to provide the majority of energy for the whole body. So all your body, all your cells, all your organs in general are going to be using these fatty acids almost exclusively. The ketones are going to go to fuel your brain. There are some other tissues that can use them. But this is the primary mechanism, the purpose of making ketones is that it's the alternative powerful backup fuel for the brain. And the glucose is going to also go to the brain, but it is mostly earmarked for some tissues like red blood cells who can only use glucose. They can't use fat or ketones. So these ketones are pretty remarkable in how they allow us to adapt. Because even though we're going to have a drop in blood glucose during the time of the fast, we might be starting at 90 or 100 and during the three to four days we'll probably drop down to 50 or 60. And if you measure blood glucose in millimoles, then you just divide by 18. But you're going to have a drop of probably 30 to 40%. And despite this, we can still maintain stable brain function thanks to these ketones. And together with the reduction in oxidative stress, because the ketones burn cleaner, now that's part of why we get some improved mental clarity and focus. But the ketones are also one of the biggest reasons that we get minimal muscle breakdown. That we don't need to break down muscle to get glucose because we already have 5% stored in the triglycerides that we can use very effectively for brain and red blood cells and a few other tissues. And this is the factor that has allowed us through evolution as humans developed to develop the big brains that we have. It would not have been possible without the ability to switch to ketones for fuel. So just to give you an idea of how this changes during the 100 hours, if yellow is glucose and the pink is ketones at time zero, this is how many percent of the brain energy that's derived from ketones. So when we start when the fed state basically 100% of the fuel for the brain comes from glucose. We're not already 12 to 16 hours in. And if you're fat adapted, if you're on a low carb diet, this is going to happen sooner. And if you're going from a high carb diet, then this may not have happened already. It might take a little bit longer, but 10 to 20% already from ketones. And then after 24 hours, we might be up to about 30%. Then after 36 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours and 100. So three to four days in, we are getting about three quarters. Most of the vast majority of the brain energy now is from ketones. And very interestingly, this ability to store body fat and then break it down and use it for brain fuel. Is unique to humans and bears. And humans do it because we have such huge brains. And the bears do it because they sleep for months. But all other animals pretty much are going to have to have smaller brains. They're going to have to keep eating. Or they're going to almost from the very beginning of a fast start breaking down muscle to turn into glucose. Because their brains can't run on ketones or to a very, very slight degree. And this may be why there's this notion that fasting hurts your muscle mass, that you start breaking down muscle very quickly. But humans have a bypass mechanism that works very well for us. But now during day three, autophody changes a little bit. Because at 48 to 72 hours, it peaks, which means the portion of autophody that is about the recycling, about retrieving. breathing resources, it has its highest level. It doesn't mean it's over, it's just that's the highest level. And then from then on, it goes more into the repair process and the rejuvenation process of tissues. And now we see a drop in inflammation, we see a drop in oxidative stress and in inflammatory cytokines. So these are the chemical messengers that signal inflammation. And we also get an immune reset. We're recycling the white blood cells, and then we start making new ones that are rejuvenated, they're younger. So it's like refreshing up our immune system. And we're also seeing an increase now in stem cell production, which is the cells that can diversify, that can differentiate and become different things. So you have liver cells, you have skin cells, and you have all these different cells. Well, the stem cells can become, it's an early version that can become any of those things. So if you want to do a deep repair, then and rejuvenation of a tissue, that's when we want stem cells. And they start to really kick in here at the end of day three. And as far as brain health, we talked about the BDNF, the miracle grow and the human growth hormone that we need to make synapses. And they keep increasing pretty much throughout the four days, even though they've pretty much plateaued at their highest level. So this further allows neuroplasticity, learning, and adaptability. So a couple of interesting things about your physiology on day three is that now you're in deep ketosis. And there's different types of ketones. There's one called beta hydroxybutyrate, which is the one that you use for energy mostly. But there is one also acetone is another ketone. But you're mostly just breathing that one out. And as a result, because these reach pretty high levels now, you can have what's described as a fruity breath. And if you measure something called the glucose ketone index, meaning you measure your glucose in millimoles, you take milligrams, divide by 18. And then you measure usually ketones in millimoles. If you divide the two, then at this point by day three, you're typically going to have a ratio above one, which means there's as much ketones as there is glucose in the blood at any given time. And we talked about you could get some mild coldness and extremities on day two and three. And this is also that it's possible to get some electrolyte imbalances become more significant. And as a result, then you could get dizziness and muscle cramps and lightheadedness and so forth. But what most people experience at this point is that because your ketones are getting even higher, then your brain fog is going to reduce further. The grill end keeps going down just like day two, but now you really kind of pass the hump that on day three, a lot of people really don't feel any hunger at all. If they feel something, it's usually because of electrolyte imbalances where they feel a little dizzy or lightheaded. Most people are going to see an improved mental clarity and focus. And some people are even going to report a feeling of lightness or euphoria. And euphoria is kind of a state of bliss. It's where you're feeling really good, really joyous for no particular reason. And now on day four, we said that autophagy peaks at the end of day three, so on day four, it's actually going to slow down a little bit. It doesn't go away just a little bit less. And now the body shifts more into repair. And now during day four, the stem cells keep increasing and supporting this regeneration and deep healing. So we get an immune system rejuvenation. The old white blood cells are replaced with younger fresher ones. And we get tissue healing at a very deep level. And one such tissue that can heal is in the gut. So a lot of people have problems with their intestinal lining and leaky gut. So this can be greatly helped by fasting. And especially, there's a nutrient called zinc L-carnazine that has been shown to assist and support this process very, very powerfully. And we get a significant increase in sirtoin gene activation. And the sirtoins are genes that promote DNA repair and longevity. So there's some anti-aging benefits here. And the human growth hormone also keeps increasing during day four. And of course, like we said, it helps prevent the muscle loss. So it allows us to feed the brain without sacrificing muscle. And human growth hormone along with the sirtoins both support anti-aging and longevity. And usually a lot of people will see a continued increase in mental clarity, in energy, and stable mood. They feel a very deep calm and some more possibly of this euphoria that I mentioned. Also, a big reason a lot of people do fasting is to reduce systemic pain and joint inflammation. So a lot of people are going to see shoulder pain and knee pain and back pain go away at this point also. And for the ones who make it today for, they're going to usually experience very, very little hunger. The body really doesn't signal hunger anymore at this point. But there are also some potential risks and considerations that we want to keep in mind. And basically, the rule is if you don't feel good, then stop. Eat something or at the very least have some salt or some electrolytes. And then if that doesn't help, then you start eating and go back to it, maybe try later. So one thing we talked about is electrolyte imbalances. And that is probably the biggest risk or problem that we face with a longer fast. And if we get electrolyte imbalances, then we could experience dizziness. In some cases, even heart palpitations or fatigue, we could experience orthostatic hypertension, which means that your blood pressure drops when you stand up. So you could get light headed or even pass out. And that's from a couple of different things. It's if your adrenals were a little bit weak to start with, they can't increase the blood pressure fast enough when you stand up. And now during a fast, if you've lost some electrolytes, there's not enough fluid for the blood vessels to squeeze around. If your fluid level has dropped because of electrolytes, now it's harder to keep that blood pressure up also. And you could experience some cold sensitivity, like we've mentioned, which could be unpleasant, but not necessarily dangerous, or a reason that you have to stop. But I wanted to mention the muscle breakdown also, that we have so many mechanisms that we've talked about, the human growth hormone and ketones as a reserved fuel, that it doesn't happen much. However, there's a couple of times that you want to watch out for it. If you're already very thin, your body doesn't want to break down fat if you don't have much left of it. So if you're thin, you have a low body fat percentage, then it could start going after the muscles sooner. And also up to 100 hours, you're pretty safe. But if you go longer than 100 hours and you're thin, now that could be a problem. So keep that in mind. If you're thin, then you could probably fast up to 100 hours. And if you like to have even more fasting benefits, then you can repeat 100 hours fast, maybe every couple of months, or every three months, or something, rather than doing an even longer one. So there's a couple of things you want to do to minimize discomfort and problems and risks. And one is to get fat adapted first. So the whole thing during the first day is that you go from a carbohydrate or a mixed fuel diet from glucose and fat into almost all fat. But if you've already taught your body how to burn fat, how to burn more fat than carbohydrate, now you're halfway there. It's not going to be a very painful transition. And the easiest way to do at least part of that, at least get part of the way there, is just to eat a low carb diet for three to four days before you start the fast. And low carb would be less than 50 or less than 30 grams of net carbs per day. And the other big thing that happens is we call the first day the glycogen depletion phase. But if you're fat adapted, then you're already much, much better at using glycogen. You use it way more efficiently because you don't need it as much. It's more of a backup than a primary resource. Because if you're fat adapted, you're going to use mostly fat anyway. You're already going to be at 70, 80, 90 percent fat usage. And then your body doesn't need the glycogen. And the glycogen is going to last much longer. But because you're fat adapted, you're still going to get into ketosis faster. So that transition is going to be so much smoother. But perhaps the most important and the easiest thing to do. you, if you're going to fast over 24 hours, is to supplement with electrolytes. The most important mineral electrolyte you want is sodium. And then after that, you also want potassium, magnesium, and calcium. So sodium, you get plenty from table salt. So when you eat food, you always have enough sodium if you salt enough. But then the others could be more questionable. And then when you stop eating all together, now sodium is the most sensitive. It's the one that gets flushed out first. But when I saw that there was a lot of people fasting, a lot of people had issues with electrolytes, but also the fact that there wasn't really a good product on the market, I developed one specifically for fasting. It's like your fasting companion. It has all of these in it in very specific ratios, but I also put in trace minerals, which is a mix of all the other minerals that you need in smaller amounts. But I really wanted to put in a couple of things to really support all of the processes that we've talked about in this video. So I also added manganese bisglicinate and zinc-el-karnazine. And the ending here means that they are bound to a protein to an amino acid, and that makes them what we call "keylated." So with that, they're easier to absorb and they have a higher bioavailability. So I made this powder so that the dose for normal everyday use, you could just take one scoop a day. And it's a little bit low in sodium because normally when you eat, you get enough salt, like I said, just from salt in your food. But when you fast, you want to take a lot more. During the four days, you want to probably go up to four scoops a day if you're a larger person or maybe two or three scoops if you're a smaller person. And that's going to make sure that you get a good amount of all of these things that we talked about. And your fasting experience will probably be vastly improved. So let me just elaborate a little bit on the zinc-el-karnazine and the manganese bisclicinate that I put in my product you like because they're pretty fantastic nutrients. The zinc-el-karnazine supports immune function and gut repair. And especially the gut repair, it's been studied to do. And this is something that's already happening during the fast with autophagy and these deep repair processes. So if we can add some nutrients to assist it, now we can get even better fasting results. This version of zinc enhances autophagy. It supports the BDNF. It makes these possible. It accentuates it and it's necessary in some cases for these to function. And the manganese bisclicinate is involved with metabolism. It helps balance glucose utilization and it is needed for fat burning. Furthermore it increases antioxidant production inside the mitochondria. And you mitochondria, those are your energy centers, your energy factories, if you will. And because that's where the energy is produced, that's where you have the most oxidation. That's what we do when we make energy. We oxidize the fuel. So there's a lot of oxidation and sometimes we describe it as rusty and polluted inside these mitochondria. So something that happens during autophagy is that we get rid of, just like the white blood cells, we get rid of the old ones and we make new ones. So we do that with mitochondria also called mitogenesis. And if we add this manganese bisclicinate now, we can improve that antioxidant activity inside the mitochondria and make them burn even cleaner. And the manganese also supports connective tissue, which means joint and bone health, which is something else you're repairing joints during your fasting experience. But don't take my word for it, give it a try and see what it will do for you. If you enjoyed this video, you're going to love that one. And if you truly want to master health by understanding how the body really works, make sure you subscribe, hit that bell and turn on all the notifications so you never miss a life-saving video.