I can wax poetic on this topic with a degree of authority, having completed numerous 72-hour and 96-hour fasts in my lifetime, most recently finishing one yesterday.
I try to do at least a few a year — although to be honest, it requires a massive amount of willpower that sometimes I haven’t succeeded in mustering as a mortal being with an appetite for satiation.
Fasting has been shown to confer numerous health benefits.
Via Current Medicinal Chemistry (emphasis added):
Fasting has shown promising effects in improving cardiovascular health markers such as blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and triglyceride levels. Additionally, fasting has been suggested to enhance insulin sensitivity, promote weight loss, and improve metabolic health, thus offering potential benefits to individuals with diabetes and metabolic disorders. Furthermore, fasting can boost immune function, reduce inflammation, enhance autophagy, and support the body's defense against infections, cancer, and autoimmune diseases. Fasting has also demonstrated a positive effect on the brain and nervous system. It has been associated with neuroprotective properties, improving cognitive function, and reducing the risk of neurodegenerative diseases, besides the ability of increasing the lifespan.
Imagine a single pill or injection that could do all of that; everybody and their mother would be taking it.
But they won’t, because a lot of people are weak and don’t have the stomach for long-term fasting, to sit with the discomfort and pull through — especially when food engineered to appeal to the human palate is more available than ever.
Related: ‘Ozempic Face’ Destroying the Hollywood Beautiful People?
This brings me to the truest benefit of fasting, which I have come to appreciate the most upon reflection while fasting with nothing much to do besides think about things: the willful self-deprivation for the sake of something more than hedonistic gratification.
The lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master.
—Khalil Gibran
The ancients appear to have had this figured out, as numerous religious texts, including Christianity, have promoted the practice as a means of spiritual attainment.
Feast on this:
Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?Isaiah 58:6
Why be an eternal slave to the visceral demands of the mind, when the yokes can be broken free, if only intermittently, with focus and intent?
’Even now,’ declares the Lord,
‘return to me with all your heart,
with fasting and weeping and mourning.’Joel 2:12
For the reasons I have touched upon here, I disrespect morbidly obese individuals who reach for quick fixes like Ozempic as a solution to their problems, when the real ones lie within themselves. Yes, the environment is laden with harmful chemicals that wreck hormones; fast food abounds; cars and other luxuries make not moving more than walking to the garage viable. But these are mere excuses; the power to transform resides within, and occasional fasting is an excellent way to get in touch with that transformative potential.
/Endsermon
