The #1 Danger of Prolonged Fasting You HAVE to Know About

Dr. Berg’s Healthy Keto and Intermittent Fasting Podcast

Dr. Eric Berg

Health & Fitness

4.6 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 9 October 2023

⏱️ 8 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Prolonged fasting is very beneficial to support a healthy body. However, there is one aspect of prolonged fasting that can be dangerous, and that’s what we’re going to cover today.

Prolonged fasting is when you fast for three or more days. The biggest danger of prolonged fasting is called refeeding syndrome. This can happen if a person consumes too much of the wrong foods too fast after coming off of a prolonged fast.

Rare complications of refeeding syndrome can include coma, seizures, convulsions, and death.

Refeeding syndrome typically involves malnutrition. Certain conditions cause a higher risk of refeeding syndrome, such as:

• Eating disorders

• Alcoholism

• Type 1 diabetes

• Starvation

However, the risk of refeeding syndrome is low if you aren’t malnourished going into a prolonged fast. As a bare minimum, when you start any type of fasting, you need to take electrolytes and B vitamins.

How to come off of a prolonged fast:

1. Consume foods that align with Healthy Keto®

2. Take electrolytes and B vitamins while fasting (you may also want to take cod liver oil, vitamin D, vitamin K2, and trace minerals)

3. Gradually consume very small amounts of food

DATA:

https://www.dietdoctor.com/fasting-an...

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You know, prolonged fasting is so beneficial for your immune system, or getting rid of cancer,
0:07.5	or brain health, or anti-aging, but there's one aspect of prolonged fasting that is
0:14.8	fairly dangerous. Okay, you could potentially die, and I need to make you aware of this. So
0:19.8	it's called refeeding syndrome. What is that? That's a situation where at the end of this
0:24.7	prolonged fast, let's say you fast it for four days, you eat too much, too fast, and the wrong
0:30.4	foods. Okay, that could be the problem. But before I get into this, I do want to point out something,
0:36.6	this usually involves someone who has malnutrition, someone who maybe has an eating disorder,
0:43.9	someone who is an alcoholic, someone who maybe has been a diabetic type one for a long period of
0:49.3	time, or someone who has been starving, okay, which is different than a prolonged fast.
0:55.1	But if you are following my recommendations, the risks of you having this problem are very,
0:59.7	very low, because you're not going into this having malnutrition. I always recommend when you
1:05.0	do fasting, any type of fasting, that you at least, as a bare minimum, take electrolytes,
1:12.4	and number two, be vitamins, because a lot of studies indicate people who have this syndrome,
1:17.8	usually have really poor nutritional reserves. But I don't know your situation, I don't know
1:26.7	how your diet has been in the past, I don't know what you're taking. So this video is very
1:31.8	very important for everyone who is prolonged fasting. Other than dying, you could potentially get
1:36.5	a coma, seizures, convulsions. But again, these things are rare. So here's what happens in this
1:42.5	situation. You're going to a long-term fast. Let's say it's three, four, five days or a
1:48.0	longer. Now, typically if you check the blood, the person's going to be fine. They're not going to
1:52.8	have any deficiencies of minerals electrolytes for any of these things, right? But you have to realize
1:59.3	that the great, great majority of certain minerals, like potassium, magnesium, phosphorus, are inside
2:08.4	the cell, not in the blood. So like 95 to 98% of those minerals are inside the cell. So as you're
	...

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