Fasting - What Approach is Best?

General
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For mild and moderate CFS and/or Long Covid, what fasting schedules have been successful?
Once or twice a week, 24 hour fast with water?
Once or twice a week, 36 hour fast with water?
For 1 week, daily intermittent fasting of 16-18 hours? Repeat monthly?
3 day fast with water? Repeat monthly?

Curious what has helped others…

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Hey! So as I see it, there is no data that definitely points to one method but people tend to report longer periods may be more effective than intermitted for example (from my perception of reddit / this community)

I myself have done two 35 hour fasts and do intermitted 16/8 fasting every day. I think it helped my digestive track q lot. But this might also be due to the fact that I’m eating MUCH healthier now!

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see this video on the Treatment Outcomes Survey

and the follow-up Patient Experiences Survey

The first survey strongly indicated that extended fasting was a top treatment. The second survey didn’t indicate that as much. There’s probably an edge to longer fasts, though you should work your way up especially because some people react negatively to fasting.

Dry fasting seems unnecessary (compared to wet fasting), but the data isn’t definitive. I would avoid cleanses and juice fasts, they seem to be worse than wet/water fasting. But again, data isn’t definitive yet.

There’s an old primer on fasting here.

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Hey tunn3l, thats amazing you IF every day! I dont think I could do that… impressive.
I’m leaning towards longer fasting periods as well. I tried doing a 23 hour fast monthly then went weekly and noticed small energy changes for the better. I just did a 36 hour and will do another tomorrow. Either I do 36hr twice a week for a month or two, or I try a 3 day fast monthly coupled with one 24-36hr weekly.

@ [glenn_chan], the videos dont fully answer my question - i’m looking for the frequency. For example the video says multi-day fast but is that one and done, monthly, etc.
So I guess it’s just try everything yourself and hope for the best.

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Oh the surveys didn’t go into that much detail regarding the number of fasts per month. It only differentiated based on the length of the fast:

  • intermittent fasting
  • One meal a day
  • 24 - 48 hours (or something like that)
  • More than 48 hours

I’d slowly work up to more than 48 hours. But don’t do the 30 day fasting stuff, that’s a little extreme.

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