Fasting

By Callum @ AvocadoNinja

ARTICLE KEY POINTS

      • Our modern societies have transformed our surroundings to minimize and eliminate environmental stressors.
      • Short-term stress and mild stressors of the body actually very beneficial to us. This is called hormesis. It reactivates dormant bodily systems and strengthens our body and mind.
      • Hormesis can be used to build up your adaptive stress response, to the point where you benefit from many sources of stress.
      • There are many ways to activate hormesis, including high-intensity exercise, intermittent fasting, heat and cold, hypoxia, sun exposure and certain foods.

In this article, you will learn how, by exposing your body to mild stressors, it will activate ancient mechanisms to strengthen and optimize your body and mind. You can bounce back from daily stress, adversity, trauma, or physical setbacks, and find it easier to be at your best on a minute-by-minute basis. It is the secret to living a long life and living it well.

OUR MODERN COCOONS OF COMFORT

Our ancient ancestors were hunter-gatherers, traveling long distances on foot to seek food, avoid threats, and find shelter. In contrast, our modern societies have transformed our surroundings to minimize and eliminate environmental stressors like food and water shortages, temperature extremes, and physical activity.

 

We all know that chronic, long-term stress can seriously degrade our health. However, short-term stress and mild stressors of the body have the opposite effect. The classic example here is resistance training. By lifting heavy weights and causing intentional muscle damage, your body will respond by repairing the damaged fibers, building bigger and stronger muscles.

HORMESIS: MIMIC OUR ANCESTORS TO ENHANCE HEALTH

We can mimic specific aspects of the lifestyle of our ancestors, and in doing so, create a special kind of stress that is actually very beneficial to us. This is called hormesis. It reactivates dormant bodily systems and strengthens our body and mind.

 

You can use hormesis to become more powerful and more resilient to everyday life. You can bounce back from daily stress, adversity, trauma, or physical setbacks, and find it easier to be at your best on a minute-by-minute basis. It is the secret to living a long life and living it well.

ACTIVATE YOUR ADAPTIVE STRESS RESPONSE

Over time, hormesis can be used to build up your adaptive stress response, to the point where you benefit from many sources of stress. Scott Carney, author of What Doesn’t Kill Us, a bestselling exploration of environmental conditioning and the benefits of cold exposure, has this to say:

 

“Exposing yourself to thermogenic stress encourages growth, that could be psychological growth, which always happens when you’re undergoing stress. Or it could be what we call ‘hormesis,’ which is when you put yourself in a challenging situation and your body rises to the challenge by adapting. We’re talking about a ‘global’ change in your body here: metabolic changes which burn extra fat, but also psychological changes which can build resilience and fight anxiety.”

TYPES OF HORMESIS

Let’s look at how you can tap into hormesis and enjoy the benefits!

Exercise

One of the best types of exercise for increasing resilience is high-intensity interval training (HIIT). This has a very strong hormetic effect on your mitochondria, increasing your energy production and slowing aging at a cellular level. Truly, almost any type of movement will do you good. Walking after meals to get fresh air and help balance your blood glucose is also recommended.

Intermittent Fasting

Unlike our ancestors, we can pretty much eat whatever and whenever we like. However, from an evolutionary perspective, our ancestors faced starvation fairly frequently. In these situations, our body must run at peak efficiency so many beneficial systems, such as autophagy, ramp up.

 

This gave our ancestors a much greater chance of finding or catching something to eat. For us, fasting will help you live longer, makes your cells more resilient, protect your brain, improve cognitive function, and burn fat, to name just a few benefits. In our health system Momentum, we practice intermittent fasting, which balances the benefits of autophagy without the downsides. It also avoids pain and mental distraction.

Hot & Cold

Hot and cold exposure stimulate a whole cascade of positive changes in the body. Wim Hof managed to climb Everest in just shorts after tapping into this power!

 

The real secret to this is in heat and cold shock proteins. The body produces these in response to sudden changes in temperature to mitigate any damage. But they also protect your cells and kick-start your body’s repair process. For example, taking a cold shower will boost your body’s antioxidant production, and protect your body from inflammation and increase immunity. At the other extreme, heat exposure will strengthen cellular proteins and slow down aging.

Hypoxia

When you temporarily reduce oxygen to the brain, it responds by creating brand-new mitochondria. This increases your brain power, resulting in faster thinking. You don’t need high altitude training to achieve this result. In the Momentum Program, we use special breathing techniques to get the same effects and stimulate even more benefits.

Sun Exposure

Too much direct sunlight is obviously bad for us and carries skin cancer risks. But none at all is also bad for us. An appropriate dose of UV rays from sunlight (or a UVB light) will make your cells stronger and protect you from disease. It also creates vitamin D in your body, which affects over 1,000 reactions across your entire system. These include testosterone production, antioxidant production, and many more.

Food

Not having the ability to run away from predators, plants have different mechanisms to avoid being eaten, including the ability to create substances that are poisonous to insects and animals. Most of these substances should be avoided, but some are found in common foods at a very low dose, having a negligible effect on humans.

 

One of these substances is called sulforaphane, which is contained in cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli (and it’s even more potent in broccoli sprout juice, which you can get here). Eating this causes a mild hormetic effect on the body, in turn, creating a chain reaction of positive benefits in the body. Sulforaphane activates a special protein inside the cells (known as an NRF-2 pathway) that switches on the body’s production of antioxidants. This floods our system with a miracle molecule called glutathione (along with other antioxidants) and regulates and coordinates a host of protective responses in the cells.

STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE TO INTEGRATE HORMESIS INTO YOUR LIFE

By following the steps outlined in our Momentum program, you can easily integrate habits into your life that tap into all the benefits of hormesis.

 

Why not sign up to your Momentum Membership here and get your FREE 170-page book mailed to you, along with access to your membership area, which walks you through how to apply everything to benefit from hormesis, ignite your energy and create the life you deserve.

 

This will give you all the tools to create the habits that will start every day with a huge reservoir of energy and a powerful emotional state.


Statements made on this website are our personal opinion and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Information provided by this website or this company is not a substitute for direct, individual medical treatment or advice. It is the responsibility of you and your healthcare providers to make all decisions regarding your health. You can find our full disclaimer and terms of service here.