FASTING & SELF-HEALING ABILITIES
Live long and healthy: Our tips for strengthening your self-healing powers
At Buchinger Wilhelmi we strongly believe in the self-healing abilities of our bodies. Our goal is to enable people to lead a healthy and fulfilling life. Therefore, our science department is researching just how to do that. Let us take a look at the current scientific approach to longevity and what the best ways really are to keep ourselves happy and healthy for as long as possible.
Is aging inevitable? A look at the current research
In the course of aging, all living organisms experience a decline in physiological function. Scientists have been researching how to extend our lifespan for a long time, with investors pouring billions of dollars into research projects.
We would argue, however, that the more relevant topic in our aging, modern society is the “healthspan”: Aiming for a life that is not only long but also healthy, without the burden of chronic illnesses like obesity, diabetes and cancer, which severely affect people’s quality of life.
In order to achieve longevity, there have been studies done on laboratory animals, for example by manipulating their genetic programming or interfering with body functions. Most approaches to lifespan extension try to find new drugs. This is very profitable for companies that can patent these new inventions. By contrast, the self-healing abilities of our bodies are a heritage of our evolution and cannot be patented. Relying on drugs isn’t ideal for several reasons: the dependence on drugs for treating illnesses is not sustainable, especially when they become unavailable for socioeconomic or political reasons or have severe side effects.
Easy strategies for healthy longevity
We would like to look at more simple and natural approaches when it comes to leading a long and healthy life. These “low-hanging fruits” focus on prevention rather than treatment. That includes:
- a healthy and nutritious diet
- sufficient exercise
- a healthy overall lifestyle with no smoking or drinking
- good sleep
- regular fasting
These are measures everyone can take, and they have been proven to significantly improve longevity. Such preventive measures sound like things that we intuitively know. But very often their impact is underestimated. For example: Did you know that according to research, being active and normal weight could mean living more than 7 years longer? Poor diets on the other hand lead to one in five deaths.
How our bodies can heal themselves
There is large potential within ourselves when it comes to healthy longevity. The self-healing abilities of our bodies can be stimulated. Our long evolution has equipped our cells with mechanisms to detect and repair damages on our genetic material (DNA), but also on dysfunctional cells. We also have detoxification mechanisms in many tissues that can be stimulated to inactivate and eliminate harmful substances. Our bodies are renewed constantly with new cells. The surface of our intestines is renewed every day. This is because most tissues have a pool of stem cells able to replace damaged cells – just think of the self-healing abilities of your skin: cuts and wounds typically heal within a few days.
Fasting to leverage these self-healing abilities
According to recent studies, sleep and fasting are unique functions of our bodies which allow cell regeneration, waste clearance and modulating energy metabolism. We can hardly emphasize enough how important sleep is for our bodies. A sufficient amount of sleep can even protect against neurodegenerative disorders. Meanwhile, chronic sleep deprivation is linked to many health issues and negatively impacts our mental and physical performance.
Regular long-term fasting
Regular long-term fasting has been shown to normalize risk factors for chronic diseases such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, elevated blood glucose levels, and fatty liver. It reduced damages of free radicals. Fasting can even lead to a rejuvenation of tissues through the activation of autophagy and the stimulation of stem cell divisions. Fasting also improves our physical and emotional wellbeing and can lead to healthy overall lifestyle changes such as a better diet or stress reduction.
Another large factor in healing our bodies is avoiding environmental pollutants. Pesticides can disrupt cell functions through oxidative stress, disruption of hormone functions, and alteration of the gut microbiome. Some chemical toxicants can also lead to an acceleration of aging. Overall, the exposure to toxic chemicals has been estimated to cost hundreds of billions of euros per year, and that is only in the EU.
Why solutions are urgently needed
Societies are having to deal with several global challenges. For example, the costs of illnesses such as nonalcoholic fatty liver (27.7 billion euro per year in Germany, France, and Italy combined) bear a large economic and societal burden that can be avoided. Pharmaceutical companies still search for a “magic bullet” instead of focusing on the effect of lifestyle interventions like fasting. We proved that fasting is perhaps the most powerful non-pharmacological intervention for the treatment of fatty liver diseases.
The self-healing abilities of our bodies can be leveraged at virtually no cost and are available to everyone. This has far-reaching consequences, even for ethics and ecosystem health, reducing the monopoly of big pharmaceutical companies and protecting the environment from pollution by harmful drug residues. This approach to healthy longevity also saves money for the national healthcare systems because it prevents illnesses rather than treating them.
We at Buchinger Wilhelmi aim to educate (visit our YouTube channel with lots of helpful tips and information) and enable people to leverage their own bodies’ self-healing abilities through fasting, exercise and positive lifestyle changes.
At our clinics you can immerse yourself in the full experience to get the most out of your fasting journey. If you would like to do a five-day reset at home, you can do so with our FASTING BOX.
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