Welcome to the Dr. Berg, Healthy Keto and Intermittent Fasting Podcast.

Now, your host, the man taking your health to a whole new level, Dr. Eric Berg.

Today we're going to talk about the relationship between fasting during Ramadan

and its immune effects. Ramadan lasts between 29 and 30 days

and you're required not to drink or eat anything just before sunrise to just after sunset.

This is a dry fast and what I mean by a dry fast is you're not drinking any water.

Now, before we get into the benefits, I do want to point out this one very, very important point.

If you look at some of the studies done on Ramadan, you're going to see some mixed reviews.

And I think the reason for that, because what you eat before and after you fast is going to make or break your success.

If you are eating a lot of junk food, refined carbohydrates, that is going to greatly inhibit these amazing effects that you could achieve

if you added keto-friendly foods low carb during the meals.

I mean, think about it. Key towns in general are anti-microbial.

When you do fasting, you actually decrease with cold cytokines.

There are different types of cytokines and cytokines are chemical messages that communicate between your immune cells.

There are certain cytokines that cause inflammation and those are the ones that we're talking about.

So it will decrease the trigger to inflammation. Also, it will stimulate something called macrophages.

A macrophage is a large cell that eats bacteria and microbes and viruses.

This is like a professional, what's called a phagocyte, which not just is like a garbage disposal, but it is a deadly killer.

And one of the first lines of defense for any type of invasion for microbes.

The more you can stimulate macrophages, the better the immune system.

Next thing is it will increase the microbiome. What is the microbiome?

That describes your friendly microbes in your body that help you.

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