40 Day Waterfast, Wish Me Luck!

[LLight]

A recent preprint on COVID19 is saying that:

"Of particular note, we found the alveolar macrophages with SARS-CoV–2 infection were expressing ACE2, a well-established receptor for both SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV–2 (Extended Data Fig.5). It was reported that SARS-CoV could occasionally be identified in the alveolar macrophages. In COVID–19
patients, the extraordinary aggregation and activation of these macrophages could occupy a central position in pathogenesis of the very severe “inflammatory factor storm” or “cytokine storm”.

Therefore, the spectacular infiltration and activation of alveolar macrophages in COVID–19, especially among patients with severe and critical stages of ARDS, might represent the shift of classically activated phenotype (M1) to alternatively activated phenotype (M2) of alveolar macrophages, whereas this shifted property of alveolar macrophages could contribute to the inflammatory injuries and fibrosis of respiratory tracts."​

If I'm reading this well and that their observations are conclusive, it's M2 macrophages that are involved in the worst cases of COVID19.

Interestingly, the transcription factor NFAT5 which is supposedly increased by dehydration and probably fasting too (also called TonEBP in the literature) tends to suppress the HO-1 enzyme in macrophages.

Moreover, the HO-1 enzyme favor the M2 polarization of macrophages (from the same publication):

"Here, we show that TonEBP suppresses expression of HO-1 by blocking Nrf2 binding to the HO-1 promoter, thereby inducing polarization of macrophages to the M1 phenotype."
​

Water restriction has been shown to limit the quantity of water from lungs in mice. Would it be sufficient to prevent edema in lungs?

 

[methylenewhite]

Did something change or are you joking?

I'm that desperate, I can't afford biological anti-tnf medication. I'm not eligible for any gov program to get financial support to buy biologicals treatment. I still think fasting is damaging, but probably it could give GI tract some rest to allow self-healing. For years they refused to give me IBD diagnosis, because I do not qualify for chron's or UC. I had IBS officially diagnosed for years, but recently they finally gave me "IBD unclassified" confirmation.

 

[Tristan Loscha]

I'm that desperate, I can't afford biological anti-tnf medication. I'm not eligible for any gov program to get financial support to buy biologicals treatment. I still think fasting is damaging, but probably it could give GI tract some rest to allow self-healing. For years they refused to give me IBD diagnosis, because I do not qualify for chron's or UC. I had IBS officially diagnosed for years, but recently they finally gave me "IBD unclassified" confirmation.

Diet background,and what did you try before?

 

[Tristan Loscha]

I'm that desperate, I can't afford biological anti-tnf medication. I'm not eligible for any gov program to get financial support to buy biologicals treatment. I still think fasting is damaging, but probably it could give GI tract some rest to allow self-healing. For years they refused to give me IBD diagnosis, because I do not qualify for chron's or UC. I had IBS officially diagnosed for years, but recently they finally gave me "IBD unclassified" confirmation.

I also saw impressive results of IBD type disease in mice by giving them flaxseed oil orally.
It reduced lesions remarkably,they autopsied them.
If you go that route,i would recc 20g to 40g of Flaxseed Oil per day,to meals,also 3g of Fishoil(lol).
I do that for Acne-type skin lesions and it actually works,impressively so.
I know what peat says about this,but he is the only one who disregards PUFA as poison.
Also oral egglecithin,it is sold as a supplement for IBD type disorder in germany.

 

[redsun]

I'm sure you guys are aware of this if you've looked into fasting, but I feel compelled to add this for any newbies:

Fasting rejuvenates the immune system, but that's after the period of fasting, during the refeeding.

But during the fast a huge amount of your existing white blood cells actually die off. This is clearly necessary, if they're going to be replaced. But it suggests that during the fast itself, depending on the infection / microbe, it may be immunosuppressive and may actually exacerbate the infections in the short term. Therefore people usually recommend you don't fast if you're experiencing an infection, and wait till its resolved first before fasting.

Long term, cycles of fasting make you more resilient to infections, by tilting the immune system in a direction that more closely resembles youth.

I got insanely sick when I decided to fast for 2 days I think 2 years ago. On the second day I felt an intense feeling of feeling ill. I know at the point I had to break the fast and I did with a good chunk of carbs, fats, and protein with immunity nutrients but it was too late. Sickest I have ever felt and ended up with whooping cough for weeks. And even before the whooping cough came on I got hit real ******* hard with severe cold/flu symptoms. Never had it so bad.

No surprise because no calories means immune system goes to ***t temporarily and if you interact with people at all like in school, work, gym... You will likely be susceptible to any little bug that you run into. You can easily maintain a healthy immune system with calorie restriction as long as you get enough zinc, vitamin C, and protein on a cutting diet. But zero calories means zero nutrients and this is especially problematic for nutrients you don't store as well.

 

[Tristan Loscha]

I got insanely sick when I decided to fast for 2 days I think 2 years ago. On the second day I felt an intense feeling of feeling ill. I know at the point I had to break the fast and I did with a good chunk of carbs, fats, and protein with immunity nutrients but it was too late. Sickest I have ever felt and ended up with whooping cough for weeks. And even before the whooping cough came on I got hit real ******* hard with severe cold/flu symptoms. Never had it so bad.

No surprise because no calories means immune system goes to ***t temporarily and if you interact with people at all like in school, work, gym... You will likely be susceptible to any little bug that you run into. You can easily maintain a healthy immune system with calorie restriction as long as you get enough zinc, vitamin C, and protein on a cutting diet. But zero calories means zero nutrients and this is especially problematic for nutrients you don't store as well.

this also.Body reduces a lot of nonessential stuff (immunity towards pathogens)to keep alive at all.
"zero calories means zero nutrients and this is especially problematic for nutrients you don't store as well"
this is so huge,forgot about that problem in this context,this is what wrecks anorexia patients,
they get severe deficiencies in no time,because starvation still needs all enzyme cofactors to cannibalize yourselph.
You will get confusion,and if you cant help yourself,no one will.Hospitals wont diagnose treatable causes lol.
Fasting equals braindamage,severely so,if not substituted carefully.Wernicke Korsakoff encephalopathy.
Starvation for 40 days is destroying people,go all other avenues and consider all other causes of symptoms before going that route.

 

[GutFeeling]

My dopamine and Gaba are sky high, serotonin is very low, so my calculations abilities, intuition and calmness are top tier at the moment.
The chances of your experiment killing you are 99,678%. not sure if you are serious but please don't do this. Milk, cocoa and sugar will solve all your problems my friend, independent of what they are

 

[LLight]

I got insanely sick when I decided to fast for 2 days I think 2 years ago. On the second day I felt an intense feeling of feeling ill. I know at the point I had to break the fast and I did with a good chunk of carbs, fats, and protein with immunity nutrients but it was too late. Sickest I have ever felt and ended up with whooping cough for weeks. And even before the whooping cough came on I got hit real ******* hard with severe cold/flu symptoms. Never had it so bad.

Not saying that this totally explains your experience but this is interesting nonetheless:

Symptoms of infection are caused by the body's response to microbes
A 2011 study, using a novel mouse model, showed that mice that were engineered to have a reduced innate immune response to the common cold actually showed less – not more – airway inflammation and bronchoconstriction (airway spasm) following infection.
According to the study's lead author:

In our study, we offer the first direct evidence that limiting the immune response reduces the manifestations of rhinovirus infection. In our model, cold-induced asthma flare-ups were caused by the body's immune response to the virus, not the virus itself. Chemicals produced by the immune system inflame cells and tissues, causing asthma symptoms such as cough and wheeze.

Marc B. Hershenson, M.D.​

Science behind immunopathology (MPKB)

Did you catch the disease during your fast, or did the fast improved your immune system response that created symptoms?
It's weird you fell sick so suddenly during your fast, weird.

 

[LLight]

I'm that desperate, I can't afford biological anti-tnf medication. I'm not eligible for any gov program to get financial support to buy biologicals treatment. I still think fasting is damaging, but probably it could give GI tract some rest to allow self-healing. For years they refused to give me IBD diagnosis, because I do not qualify for chron's or UC. I had IBS officially diagnosed for years, but recently they finally gave me "IBD unclassified" confirmation.

You don't have Crohn's or UC but you may be interested by this:

Immunodeficiency and Autoimmune Enterocolopathy Linked to NFAT5 Haploinsufficiency

"NFAT5 expression is reduced in patients with inflammatory bowel disease

To determine whether the link between reduced NFAT5 expression and autoimmunity might be generalizable to other immune-mediated diseases, we examined NFAT5 mRNA expression in intestinal tissue biopsies from patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC), which together comprise IBD, are believed to result from an aberrant immune response to commensal gut microbes, leading to chronic intestinal inflammation. Compared to healthy controls, we observed that NFAT5 mRNA expression was significantly reduced in patients with active UC and CD (Fig. 7), raising the possibility that NFAT5 and other components of the osmoadaptation pathway may be dysregulated in IBD."

Some pathogens seem to be able to deactivate NFAT5: Cleavage of osmosensitive transcriptional factor NFAT5 by Coxsackieviral protease 2A promotes viral replication
"Bioinformatic prediction and verification of the predicted site by site-directed mutagenesis experiments determined that the NFAT5 protein was cleaved by CVB3 protease 2A at Glycine 503. Such cleavage led to the inactivation of NFAT5, and the 70-kDa N-terminal cleavage product (p70-NFAT5) exerted a dominant negative effect on the full-length NFAT5 protein. We further showed that elevated expression of NFAT5 to counteract viral protease cleavage, especially overexpression of a non-cleavable mutant of NFAT5, significantly inhibited CVB3 replication."

In my opinion: this reinforce the fact that Crohn's is due to pathogens surviving in your cells. They deactivate NFAT5 which downregulate your immune system.
You want to enforce NFAT5 activation. I think this could be possible by dry fasting and boron supplementation. It is rather independent from vitamin D.

 

[redsun]

Not saying that this totally explains your experience but this is interesting nonetheless:

Symptoms of infection are caused by the body's response to microbes
A 2011 study, using a novel mouse model, showed that mice that were engineered to have a reduced innate immune response to the common cold actually showed less – not more – airway inflammation and bronchoconstriction (airway spasm) following infection.
According to the study's lead author:

In our study, we offer the first direct evidence that limiting the immune response reduces the manifestations of rhinovirus infection. In our model, cold-induced asthma flare-ups were caused by the body's immune response to the virus, not the virus itself. Chemicals produced by the immune system inflame cells and tissues, causing asthma symptoms such as cough and wheeze.

Marc B. Hershenson, M.D.​

Science behind immunopathology (MPKB)

Did you catch the disease during your fast, or did the fast improved your immune system response that created symptoms?
It's weird you fell sick so suddenly during your fast, weird.

Immune system is severely weakened after 2 days but its still there. I also think because fasting does tend to cause some form of dehydration (due to loss of electrolytes and less desire for water, I know i drank less water) histamine rises substantially (which makes you want to drink and eat) and acutely high histamine causes overly sensitive reactions to anything which likely triggered my over the top symptoms despite immunity being weaker.

Bacteria or viruses that I come in contact with have an easier time proliferating and creating a foothold so to speak and less likely to be destroyed by immune cells.

 

[danishispsychic]

Add a daily coffee enema and a dry brushing sesh each day to make it even funner!

 

[redsun]

this also.Body reduces a lot of nonessential stuff (immunity towards pathogens)to keep alive at all.
"zero calories means zero nutrients and this is especially problematic for nutrients you don't store as well"
this is so huge,forgot about that problem in this context,this is what wrecks anorexia patients,
they get severe deficiencies in no time,because starvation still needs all enzyme cofactors to cannibalize yourselph.
You will get confusion,and if you cant help yourself,no one will.Hospitals wont diagnose treatable causes lol.
Fasting equals braindamage,severely so,if not substituted carefully.Wernicke Korsakoff encephalopathy.
Starvation for 40 days is destroying people,go all other avenues and consider all other causes of symptoms before going that route.

Ive read especially because on a fast you are eating almost entirely fat (your own) Your B2 requirement is actually higher then if you eat a mix of carbs and fat when eating normally. This is probably the case with any cofactor require to use fat for fuel. So anything needed to transport fat and burn it would be used more I believe.

One of these fruitarian type high carbers durianrider made a video talking about how all these water fasters end up regaining weight from fasting and gain even more on top of it. And mentions of course the obvious truth about how your hormones go down the abyss of course. I in no way agree with his diet and lifestyle, but truth is truth even if it comes from someone like him.



Also if you want to see how someone can become total trainwreck from fasting, check out this poor girl:



I remember running into her channel over a year ago when she was just done with a 54 day fast. I think it was barely a week after she broke she did another fast and kept starting them again because she is so screwed in the head by the fact of regaining weight when refeeding.

A woman obsessed with relying on fasting to cure all her ills including her obesity. Literal trainwreck and I even predicted that as soon as she was done with the 54 day fast she would only get worse. You check her channel now, still overweight and still just as obsessed with all these fads like no sugar and fasting.

This poor girl needs to get on a nutrient dense diet, and needs serious psychological help. Clearly has no aim in life and its really sad to witness.

 

[Tristan Loscha]

Ive read especially because on a fast you are eating almost entirely fat (your own) Your B2 requirement is actually higher then if you eat a mix of carbs and fat when eating normally. This is probably the case with any cofactor require to use fat for fuel. So anything needed to transport fat and burn it would be used more I believe.

One of these fruitarian type high carbers durianrider made a video talking about how all these water fasters end up regaining weight from fasting and gain even more on top of it. And mentions of course the obvious truth about how your hormones go down the abyss of course. I in no way agree with his diet and lifestyle, but truth is truth even if it comes from someone like him.



Also if you want to see how someone can become total trainwreck from fasting, check out this poor girl:



I remember running into her channel over a year ago when she was just done with a 54 day fast. I think it was barely a week after she broke she did another fast and kept starting them again because she is so screwed in the head by the fact of regaining weight when refeeding.

A woman obsessed with relying on fasting to cure all her ills including her obesity. Literal trainwreck and I even predicted that as soon as she was done with the 54 day fast she would only get worse. You check her channel now, still overweight and still just as obsessed with all these fads like no sugar and fasting.

This poor girl needs to get on a nutrient dense diet, and needs serious psychological help. Clearly has no aim in life and its really sad to witness.

I believe she is a mentally ill,amoral enabler.She is way too normal for a massive 54day-fast.
She isnt doing this.

 

[redsun]

I believe she is a mentally ill,amoral enabler.She is way too normal for a massive 54day-fast.
She isnt doing this.

I am pretty sure she did do the 54 day fast. Also I believe she utilized the popular snake juice (electrolyte powder) while on the fast so it wasnt a hardcore water fast like how you would think. It was also years ago. It likely made her mentally ill or just exacerbated the the pre-existing mental illness and fed (no pun intended) her eating disorder. Its possible she is way off now, I have no clue if any of her videos are genuine anymore.

 

[milkboi]

If you are interested by a theory on the role of infections on autoimmunity/CFS, I advise you to read about it on the Amy Proal website and its twitter account:
Interview with neuroscientist Michael VanElzakker: Vagus Nerve, ME/CFS, latent infection and more | Microbe Minded
Login on Twitter

She a researcher, affected by CFS herself, and has made progress by using immunostimulating strategies IIRC.

Paradoxically, under this paradigm, what makes you feel better in the short term is not necessarily what is better for you long term and vice versa. Your immune system fighting microbes may produce bad side effects.

Thanks I'll check it out. @Tarmander also posted an interesting antibiotic protocol for CFS. I feel like I have an infection year-round.

 

[LLight]

Some testimonies I've gathered from r/dryfasting (may be biased towards positive one as always on internet):

Spoiler: Testimonies

"I have cured my lower back pain. It wasn’t a serious pain, but I would always notice it when I sat down and stood up. My body has completely healed it.

All my skin tags have disappeared and I no longer get any tongue ulcers (which I used to get quite a few of) because of dry fasting.

I also cured cystitis. If I ate certain foods I would always get inflamed, it negatively affected my quality of life. Even foods that I loved I had to give up because they would cause me such a bad reaction.

But I went out for dinner today and I’m able to eat those foods again. I no longer have a bad reaction to them and it feels amazing."

______________________________

"The first time I realized that all this "weird talk about autophagy" was real was when I did a 6 day dry fast. It completely fixed a massive amount of digestive issues that I had been having for the past year. I honestly don't know if you need to do something insane like what I did but if you haven't done non stop OMAD then it can't hurt right?"

______________________________

"Many people don't subscribe to the 'hard dry fast' vs 'soft dry fast' thing. I'm fasting for healing, and let me tell you, healing I am, and majorly! I brush my teeth, wash dishes, wash my hands and... are you ready for this? Take Epsom salt (for additional detox and magnesium) baths, long beautiful hot baths, while dry fasting.I don't have spare weight to lose, but I do lose while dry fasting (my longest was 36 hours, going for 40 now), then make sure to gain it back, which is not that easy. However, the biggest benefit is in old injuries healing, as well as my arthritis, and my fibro is almost non-existent - I have SLE with a bunch of comorbidities, and all of them are showing significant improvements. But, what I notice the most right now is that I can no longer predict the weather through my joints - I used to give the best meteorologist run for their money and never failed. If my shoulder says it will rain, it will rain, you can bet your money on it. If my fingers say the weather will change, it will change. And then there are my arches... Well, were. None of this is true anymore, 5 weeks into daily 16hr dry fasting, 4 24 hours, one 36-hour, and now a few hours into a 40-hour attempt. I can no longer predict the weather, at all (and still haven't developed a habit of checking weather prognosis, leading to a few unfortunate incidents of being soaked and such). And all that with 'soft dry fasting'... majorly soft :)

But, it's your fast so I say follow your bliss - if it makes it feel more real to hard dry fast, go for it!"

______________________________

"A bit of backstory:I am obese - 300+ pounds. I also have Selective IgA deficiency which leaves me prone to infections in the mucous membranes of my body(sinuses, eyes, GI tract). Before it started fasting I had a C-Reactive Protein (CRP) level of 88. (Healthy levels are under 7). My doc wasn’t sure why but chalked it up to a combo if my weight & an infection yet to be found.

After 2 months of water fasting (including a 21 day), my CRP levels dropped to 77.

From August -October, I began experimenting with dry fasting. I most recently completed a 102 hour dry fast.

Just this week I got my newest lab results back. My CRP levels are down to 22!! This is amazing! I fully attribute it to dry fasting because, my CRP levels have remained high on previous diet attempts when I have been at a lower weight than I am now. As in they’ve never budged from the 80s before even with weight loss of over 150 pounds. Yet, in 3 months dry fasting has brought it down by a whopping 50 points!!

TLDR: I fully believe dry fasting had dropped my CRP levels drastically. :)"

______________________________

"I had an old shoulder injury that wouldnt go away.. had it for about 6 months.. it would lay dormant until i started working out again.. over and over.. I did a 3 day dry fast.. and it was healed 70%.. i was like .. i be damned.. did another dry fast .. and i havent felt injury wise since .. So i guess it worked on my shoulder."

______________________________

"The experience For the first three days it was mostly focusing on mindfulness and it gave me a sense of calming effect. Suddenly I wasn't so hung up I was doing something extream, just a fast with good mental space. On the morning of the forth day I had a high similar to psychedelics, I wasn't seeing anything but emotional I was completely free. I felt a deep sense of connection, a pure explosive expression was blossoming. I haven't felt that peaceful since my last mushroom trip and even though I was feeling symptoms, I surrendered to it, I let the experience take me where it wants to take me and it was beautiful and memorable. Around the 110 hour mark I knew it was fine to end it.

[...]

Back to baseline After eating relatively healthy, no processed stuff or sugar snacks, my weight settled at 187. A total of 6 pounds that stayed off for now. I'm still eating mostly salads and meats and ignoring sweets.

Other benefits

I noticed that my cravings are gone and my stomach isn't as bloated anymore. I've been on NoFap since I started and working feels amazing. I haven't lost any strength. I feel I can lift more but I'm sticking to a slow build up. My confidence is through the roof and I'm planning to do another dry fast again."

______________________________

"I had facial psoriasis and acne and would do back to back 48 dry fasts with 72’s thrown In alongside carnivore refeeds, I know longer have any skin issues."

______________________________

"It took me around two weeks for the fatigue symptoms to go away.

The benefits I am seeing are:

1/ increased sleep quality and energy. That is, I wake up before the alarm clock now and I don't wake up in the middle of the night anymore. I don't go to bed earlier either. And I have enough energy to punch through my day.

2/ decreased hunger. Compared to water intermittent fasting, I almost never feel hunger during my fasting window anymore. It's like dry IF is easier (for me) than water IF now.

3/ even better body composition, despite adding more carbs (rice, legumes more fruits, etc) to my diet. I wasn't overweight to begin with, and was already quite active before getting into IF (20+ years of martial arts). Despite that, water IF improved my body composition; let's say that I'd carry a six pack all year round thanks to it. Dry IF improved that even further. I have more definition everywhere now all the time, while eating carbs, fat and proteins all at once.

And all the numerous benefits of water IF still apply. Really, so far, I see zero downside to dry IF besides the fact that it was super hard (for me) to get into."

______________________________

"I had pretty severe hormonal acne and weirdly out of sync periods (like they would either come 1.5 months apart or they would come 1.5 weeks apart) up until a year and a half ago, shortly after doing two 24 hour dry fast in the Vegas summer. whatever hormonal issues I was having the dry fasting definitely cured it."

______________________________

"my hemorrhoids were gone and never returned after a 5 day soft dry fast"

______________________________

"Heres my story.

I developed a pain i estimated around my pancreas and waited a couple weeks before going to ER and they ran an ultra sound. Didnt see anything, all other tests came back normal. I told them I was convinced it was pancreatic cancer. They said, usually peoples skin turns yellow with that. So being non-yellow but still in pain, went home disappointed.

Still in pain, I came across dry fasting and how animals fast when they are injured.

I dry fasted for two days.

On the third day I took a poo. It was a black log. Not like old blood cells but like witch hat black but still in good looking poo form.

Pain disappeared.

Thats my dry fast story. Havent done it since but I think I will try it again soon to see what other benefits I can get."

______________________________

"I just completed a 7 soft dry fast and I lost about 32 pounds. I am a woman. My toe was broken a while back and I couldn't sustain pressure on it for long. I can complete pirouettes and arabesques without wanting to shoot my self. My scarring from acne also healed. I used melano cc and snail mucin so that my have helped. My textured skin and hyperpigmentation cleared as well. Fountain of youth? For me, yes."

______________________________

"I usually fast for 48 hours at a time. The results im seeing are 1~ so much easier physically and mentally than water fasting, feels more natural to just let my body take care of the fat to make energy and water. 2~ I feel like a completely different person, like all my cells were reborn, my thinking is sharp, my sprints are quicker, My mood has improved by the week it seems. I heal much quicker now. Teeming with energy! 3~ Ive been chubby my whole life (like 35 pounds over weight) and pretty much fixed that in one month. My tastes have also changed. I use to go for heavy carbs and sugar but those choices don’t sound good to me anymore. 4~ Ive learned to just think for myself and just try what I think makes sense, no more scrolling for answers endlessly. Im honestly shocked at my life in the last month alone. I feel like Ive found the holy grail for what works for me"

Totally wrecking them and their immune systems.

 

[methylenewhite]

You don't have Crohn's or UC but you may be interested by this:

I'm supplementing boron in boric acid form started from 1ml 3% which equals 5mg boron, recently I upped it to 2ml.

What do you suggest? Appreciate your input.

 

[LLight]

I'm supplementing boron in boric acid form started from 1ml 3% which equals 5mg boron, recently I upped it to 2ml.

What do you suggest? Appreciate your input.

I'm not a "guru" as it is called here so I would prefer that you arrive to your own conclusions based on the studies Not that I don't like to help people but because all of this is an hypothesis of why dry fasting could work and I have no medical education.

If it happend to me, I would try intermittent dry fasting first, and then try prolonged dry fasts if IF hasn't produced any results.

Like I mentioned to @milkboi , curing autoimmune/chronic diseases (involving latent infections) may create immunopathologies (which means accentuated symptoms, for example more fatigue) that's also why it's your role to decide the extent of potential additional symptoms you are prepared to have. That's also why you need to be fully in agreement with the principles of it and not just relying on what I said, otherwise you will quit tomorrow.

Your doses of boron are still a bit low, you have a margin to increase it I think.

 

[Goobz]

A recent preprint on COVID19 is saying that:

"Of particular note, we found the alveolar macrophages with SARS-CoV–2 infection were expressing ACE2, a well-established receptor for both SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV–2 (Extended Data Fig.5). It was reported that SARS-CoV could occasionally be identified in the alveolar macrophages. In COVID–19
patients, the extraordinary aggregation and activation of these macrophages could occupy a central position in pathogenesis of the very severe “inflammatory factor storm” or “cytokine storm”.

Therefore, the spectacular infiltration and activation of alveolar macrophages in COVID–19, especially among patients with severe and critical stages of ARDS, might represent the shift of classically activated phenotype (M1) to alternatively activated phenotype (M2) of alveolar macrophages, whereas this shifted property of alveolar macrophages could contribute to the inflammatory injuries and fibrosis of respiratory tracts."​

If I'm reading this well and that their observations are conclusive, it's M2 macrophages that are involved in the worst cases of COVID19.

Interestingly, the transcription factor NFAT5 which is supposedly increased by dehydration and probably fasting too (also called TonEBP in the literature) tends to suppress the HO-1 enzyme in macrophages.

Moreover, the HO-1 enzyme favor the M2 polarization of macrophages (from the same publication):

"Here, we show that TonEBP suppresses expression of HO-1 by blocking Nrf2 binding to the HO-1 promoter, thereby inducing polarization of macrophages to the M1 phenotype."
​

Water restriction has been shown to limit the quantity of water from lungs in mice. Would it be sufficient to prevent edema in lungs?

IMO this stuff has far too many moving parts to draw conclusions that can be practically useful. Rarely in biology, does it fit simply like a simple mathematical equation like this that can be manipulated easily. Or if it does, it creates other nasty side effects. Which is why some of my posts are probably on the cautious side.

For example, for many of the molecular switches mentioned like NRF2 and macrophage polarisation, I've seen various supplements touted to help COVID-19, which cause the very opposite (NRF2 upregulation, M2 macrophage promoting, etc), yet apparently help with the lung complications or the virus itself.

For another example, I read how pharma level doses of lithium prevented the immune response to (other) coronaviruses in rats. It lead to increased viral replication, with higher viral loads, but prevented the virus entering the animals lungs. This was because entry into the lungs required white blood cell infiltration via the immune response, which was being suppressed. This seems like a good thing generally... but I wouldn't want to take a chance with increasing the virus, either. Hard to say, IMO.

Lack of hunger seems to be a common symptom of a corona virus infection.

Regarding the effect on bacterial/viral infections, that's what was discussed above with the publication posted by S.Seneff.

Oh whoops, yep I forgot to go back and read that, my bad.

 

[Goobz]

@redsun and @Tristan Loscha it is a very good point about vitamins and minerals being depleted in a fast.

This is exactly why Valter Longo's fasting mimicking diet is a much safer way of doing this, as it provides a multivitamin and mineral to take every day for this very issue, and it only goes 5 days. And this is one of the many reasons I think such a long fast can be a very bad idea.

It's also why extended caloric restriction isn't a great idea IMO. Short cycles of fasting or fasting mimicking, then return to a nutrient dense diet, is Longo's approach. If it was me, I'd consider a B complex or multivitamin and mineral, for a while leading up to the fast, perhaps.

That being said, I think the body uses far less vitamins and minerals in a fasting state (all body systems are shrinking). And in regards to those crazy internet stories - yep for people like that, fasting should be avoided IMO. Mental illness and eating disorders are linked. And who knows if they're being honest.

But as someone said, "truth is truth", and we don't need to come up with opinions and theories ourselves.... there is now so much published science on this, it's not an opinion any more. Fasting then refeeding will shrink then regenerate and rebuild multiple organ systems. No, you won't have more fat, if done correctly it will give you higher muscle to fat ratio (you lose both fat and muscle, but your body then preferentially rebuilds the muscle). Your immune system will have ratios of myeloid to lymphoid cells that are more in the direction of a younger immune system. Regeneration of the hippocampus of the brain and better memory, seen in rats at least. It has all been written about already:

https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/pdfExtended/S1550-4131(15)00224-7