Fans of therapeutic fasting attribute to it a whole range of beneficial effects for the body: cleansing, renewal and even general rejuvenation. We decided to check whether this point of view has a scientific basis.

Therapeutic fasting is not dedicated to one ten sites And groups in social networks, they write about how to carry it out correctly books and remove video. Its practitioners describe their sensations: “It’s euphoria, joy, the feeling that you can move mountains. Wings appear behind his back. This cannot be expressed in words" - and results: “My face became clear of acne, age spots lightened. So much bile came out of me in ten days; it was clearly visible during the colon hydrotherapy procedure. Although I had not eaten for six days, waste and deposits of fecal stones continued to come out of me.” In the USSR, therapeutic fasting tried treat a whole range of diseases - from bronchial asthma to schizophrenia. Today is therapeutic fasting popular among “biohackers” - for example, his practices Pavel Durov. Adherents of alternative medicine promisethat fasting can cure AIDS, cancer and diabetes.

Therapeutic fasting refers to the refusal of food completely (or only solid food), and sometimes even water. It is carried out for several hours, one day, three days, a week and up to 42 days. Usually the process includes preparation, the fast itself and a gradual recovery from it. Therapeutic fasting as a method became popular back in the 1970s, it was actively promoted by Paul Bragg, who positioned himself as a doctor. Moreover, in fact, Bragg did not have a medical education, but worked as a school physical education teacher. Moreover, to visually prove the benefits of his method, Bragg added he was 14 years old, changing his date of birth, and claimed that he was a medalist at the Olympics in wrestling in either 1908 or 1912, which was also not documented. He promised supporters of his method an extension of life to 120 years, while he himself died at 81 from a heart attack. His ideas in the USSR promoted Yuri Nikolaev, author of the book “Fasting for Health,” who in 1981 opened the first department of fasting-dietary therapy in Moscow Hospital No. 68 and set as his goal the cure of mental illnesses through long-term fasting. However, clinical results reach I couldn't.

The second wave of popularity of therapeutic fasting came in 2016, when Japanese scientist Yoshinori Ohsumi received the Nobel Prize for his discovery and research of the mechanisms of autophagy. Autophagy (self-eating) - process, during which cells recycle their own components, primarily damaged proteins and organelles, dismantling unnecessary or dysfunctional components. Autophagy can also destroy bacteria and viruses that enter the body. Autophagy starts primarily by fasting, as well as intense exercise and limiting carbohydrate intake. It is important to note that the Japanese scientist spent his experiments on baker's yeast, he was able to isolate genes associated with the process of autophagy.

Another team of researchers from the University of Cambridge was carried out a series of experiments on mice. By triggering autophagy through genetic tools, drugs, or fasting, the mice lived longer and were generally healthier. There was also discoveredthat the process of autophagy "protects against diseases such as Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease and some forms of dementia." Although the Nobel laureate did not conduct such experiments on people, it was Yoshinori Osumi who became the idol of starving people to improve the health of the body, he attributed to even developing one of the diets with “effective cleansing of waste and toxins.” The scientist himself was not happy with such fame and repeatedly stated, that he “never claimed that fasting in the sense of diet promotes the process of autophagy.”

With the development of the popularity of therapeutic fasting, experiments and in public. Scientists selected 116 overweight volunteers, half of them followed intermittent fasting (16 hours a day without food, the rest of the time a limited diet is acceptable), and the other half followed a healthy diet without a time limit for consumption. After three months, the results were summed up: weight loss in both groups differed very little, with a slight advantage in favor of those who fasted for hours, while their lean body mass decreased significantly more, which can hardly be considered an advantage of their type of diet. Their cardiometabolic parameters also showed no benefit from this diet.

It is interesting to note that fasting and dieting affect not only the body itself, but also its descendants. The researchers conducted experiment on roundworms. The dieting generation was healthier and more fertile, but their descendants, if given unrestricted access to food, showed poorer health and lower reproductive rates. The effect was evident even in the fourth generation. Only those “great-grandchildren” who adhered to significant dietary restrictions were as hardy as the first generation. Thus, the starving ancestor worms “doomed” their descendants to the same diet if they wanted to stay healthy.

It has not yet been possible to conduct long-term studies on humans - the longest study planned should was to include two years of following certain types of nutrition, but the participants were not able to adhere to the diet for that long without violations.

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Olesya Gurova, Associate Professor, Department of Endocrinology, Sechenov University, notesthat “long periods of fasting are certainly harmful for people with gastrointestinal diseases. First of all, we are talking about peptic ulcers, gastritis, problems associated with impaired outflow of bile from the gallbladder. But there is another serious argument against any diet, including intermittent fasting. Unfortunately, they only allow a person to lose weight “once again,” but do not lead to a lasting effect of maintaining body weight. Moreover, each such “diet race” aggravates eating disorders, changes the metabolic rate and even affects the composition of the microbiota, which can only aggravate the problem of excess weight.” The position of experts at Harvard Medical School is similar - the only proven result of therapeutic fasting is count weight loss. True, they note that this method is not suitable for everyone. Alexey Kalinin, senior researcher at the N. N. Blokhin National Medical Research Center for Oncology, fails result: there are no high-quality studies on the benefits of fasting for treatment yet, and “intermittent fasting is akin to homeopathy.” With his conclusions agrees and the view of the National Institute on Aging (USA): “Despite numerous studies on calorie restriction and fasting, there is no evidence of the benefits of these methods for maintaining human health.”

At the same time limited number of studies showsthat fasting contributes to better tolerance of chemotherapy in the early stages of certain types of tumors, but there is no talk of curing oncology by fasting itself.

Thus, in the absence of contraindications, fasting most likely will not cause significant harm to the body, however, it is not entirely correct to call it therapeutic. To date, the only proven effect of this technique is weight loss. True, this principle is not the most justified for losing weight, since the loss of body fat is almost the same as with other diets, but the decrease in muscle mass is more significant.