If You Don't Want Low Testosterone DO NOT FAST

[haidut]

Herb Doctor: Right, that's the NH4+. Alright, how realistic do you think it is to consume. Do you think that consuming things that have an excess of potassium, magnesium and calcium can actively work to raise the pH of someone's environment?

RP: I think the main function is sparing protein that you would use for the kidneys to help to regulate the minerals. And for example, when a person's fasting for several days, they will generally loose more protein than fat because the stress hormones rise and they live on a pure meat diet when they're fasting as their tissues break down. And if during that fast if you just drink minerals - salt water, baking soda, potassium, magnesium and calcium - any of the alkaline minerals will radically spare the amount of protein that you would be consuming and wasting. So a fast is much less stressful and harmful if you're getting the alkaline minerals.
Alkalinity vs Acidity 2012, KMUD : The Herb Doctors

Yep, I mentioned in another thread where people complained about the milk + OJ diet that if you want to fast you might as well do a fast on OJ juice to protect their muscles.

 

[Constatine]

I think that in a large part of our population, you have such terrific gut irritation that essentially any input will result in a stress response - or more specifically movement towards a chronically adapted stress state. This must be addressed. Serious restriction of food is one way to deal with this, and I've found it fantastically effective. I think you can rationalize and reason away the benefits using whatever logic you'd like, but I think that submitting yourself to a system that is founded in incomplete knowledge and lack of experiment is extraordinarily dangerous.

Regarding androgen receptors - I think it's very important to distinguish between membrane (GPCR type) and nuclear receptors in this class, which is the estrogen receptor family. Membrane type receptors can increase in density in a hyper-androgenic environment. Not so much for nuclear receptors. It's important to note that the opposite situation can also be true depending on the reductive environment of the cell.

The environments controlling the density of these receptors is extremely convoluted and anyone claiming to have bottom line knowledge is probably misinformed. Besides, the receptors are not the bottom line anyway - the effect in the cell (and the entire organism) is what you're looking for, and it requires a lot more input than just receptor density.

We should also distinguish the types of fasting we're talking about here. I think it makes sense to figure out what works for you. I go long periods without eating much solid food and I've had no trouble whatsoever gaining significant muscle and strength - moreso than in any period in my life.



"If what you are doing isn't working, maybe you should evaluate the way you think about everything"

For this reason I think it's just good to copy what very androgenic people do.

 

[Constatine]

@AretnaP Awesome post!

Ray talks about men coming from concentration camps, and when they started eating again developed breasts.
I fasted regularly for years ( between ages 16 -21 ) and all it did for me was make my regular temps around 95-96°F, caused erectile dysfunction at first, then led to a complete lack of interest in women all together. I lucked out and didn't grow boobs though.

He also mentions fasting shuts down the livers ability to detoxify. I noticed after fasting that as I resumed eating I smelled awful for a few days.

Fasting is what ruined my health before Peat.

 

[schultz]

First time I hear ray has said fasting can be beneficial for some people!

He's mentioned it in regards to animals in a positive light. Took me a while to find the quote because I was searching for the word "dog" when he actually says "animal"... I think I just assumed it was a dog or something.

"There have been studies in which rheumatoid arthritis and similar things just are completely relieved during a week-long fast but then it would come back as soon as the person eats again and that's partly because your cortisol increases tremendously when you're not eating. And what the cortisol is doing is converting your muscle tissue mostly into fuel to live on and at the same time it's having an anti-inflammatory effect but the bowel is really the basic cause of most of the degenerative inflammatory diseases, and so there is a tremendous good reason for thinking that fasting is therapeutic. And I've seen animals with huge tumors that just refuse to eat and if their owners just let them sit around not eating, they would recover and live for years. So the lack of appetite during sickness is a natural opportunity to fast and sometimes it has a therapeutic effect but since the reason the bowel is so connected to the inflammatory diseases is that – well, besides the bacteria that produce things such as lactic acid and endotoxin, each of which has its range of harmful toxic effects, the intestine itself produces a tremendous amount of serotonin and the serotonin, if it isn't detoxified right away, it promotes not only fibrosis and the inflammation but multiplication of cells in the blood vessels thickening them and promoting tumor growth and just about every degenerative condition you can think of. So if you can lighten the inflammation bowed in the intestine, you can achieve the same thing as fasting even though you can still keep absorbing nutrients if you just do it in a way that you don't either produce endotoxin lactic acid or serotonin excess. And partly that means using a very easily digested diet, avoiding the undercooked vegetable matter for example that can’t be digested by human enzymes and provides good food for bacteria and having other easily digested or slightly antimicrobial foods, raw carrots or boiled bamboo shoots for example have thrombocytes that prevent bacterial growth."


I found this other quote while searching for the first one. If someone is set on fasting, they should at least follow his advice in the quote below.

"And for example, when a person's fasting for several days, they will generally lose more protein than fat because the stress hormones rise and they live on a pure meat diet when they're fasting as their tissues break down. And if during that fast if you just drink minerals - salt water, baking soda, potassium, magnesium and calcium - any of the alkaline minerals will radically spare the amount of protein that you would be consuming and wasting. So a fast is much less stressful and harmful if you're getting the alkaline minerals."


So he seems to think that fasting can have a positive effect on the gut, but that you can also achieve the same results by removing irritating things. I think that's the gist of it.

 

[haidut]

I personally think that the issue of testosterone aromatizing into estrogen is overblown on this forum, with not enough emphasis placed on the importance of T in general.
It seems that there is a kind of positive feedback loop between T and dopamine synthesis in the brain. Many people, including myself, experience severe mental health issues as a direct result of low T, and this phenomenon seems to be ignored by the medical community at large, which is deeply disturbing. My endocrinologist seems to be clueless about this mechanism, despite the fact that there is legitimate medical literature on the subject.
There are many young men who have become depesonalized and suicidal, only to discover that they were suffering from low T, and their symptoms disappear after weeks to months of TRT. Search for "bignoknow" on YouTube. His story is harrowing and not at all unique.
@haidut has suggested that T is nothing more than a prohomone for DHT, and most people on TRT who benefit are just feeling the effects of a DHT increase. Well, that may be, but it seems to marginalize the importance of T, especially since I have not seen any evidence of DHT being particularly dopaminergic. Also, I believe haidut mentioned a study wherein men with total T levels under 400ng/dl had trouble conceiving children, and this is within the "normal" range.
There is a stigma regarding testosterone in the medical community, and I'm not sure where it stems from.

I posted a study that DHT inhibits serotonin synthesis through TPH and anything with such effects would be dopaminergic.
DHT Lowers Serotonin Synthesis, May Treat (testicular) Cancer

 

[Tarmander]

He's mentioned it in regards to animals in a positive light. Took me a while to find the quote because I was searching for the word "dog" when he actually says "animal"... I think I just assumed it was a dog or something.

"There have been studies in which rheumatoid arthritis and similar things just are completely relieved during a week-long fast but then it would come back as soon as the person eats again and that's partly because your cortisol increases tremendously when you're not eating. And what the cortisol is doing is converting your muscle tissue mostly into fuel to live on and at the same time it's having an anti-inflammatory effect but the bowel is really the basic cause of most of the degenerative inflammatory diseases, and so there is a tremendous good reason for thinking that fasting is therapeutic. And I've seen animals with huge tumors that just refuse to eat and if their owners just let them sit around not eating, they would recover and live for years. So the lack of appetite during sickness is a natural opportunity to fast and sometimes it has a therapeutic effect but since the reason the bowel is so connected to the inflammatory diseases is that – well, besides the bacteria that produce things such as lactic acid and endotoxin, each of which has its range of harmful toxic effects, the intestine itself produces a tremendous amount of serotonin and the serotonin, if it isn't detoxified right away, it promotes not only fibrosis and the inflammation but multiplication of cells in the blood vessels thickening them and promoting tumor growth and just about every degenerative condition you can think of. So if you can lighten the inflammation bowed in the intestine, you can achieve the same thing as fasting even though you can still keep absorbing nutrients if you just do it in a way that you don't either produce endotoxin lactic acid or serotonin excess. And partly that means using a very easily digested diet, avoiding the undercooked vegetable matter for example that can’t be digested by human enzymes and provides good food for bacteria and having other easily digested or slightly antimicrobial foods, raw carrots or boiled bamboo shoots for example have thrombocytes that prevent bacterial growth."


I found this other quote while searching for the first one. If someone is set on fasting, they should at least follow his advice in the quote below.

"And for example, when a person's fasting for several days, they will generally lose more protein than fat because the stress hormones rise and they live on a pure meat diet when they're fasting as their tissues break down. And if during that fast if you just drink minerals - salt water, baking soda, potassium, magnesium and calcium - any of the alkaline minerals will radically spare the amount of protein that you would be consuming and wasting. So a fast is much less stressful and harmful if you're getting the alkaline minerals."


So he seems to think that fasting can have a positive effect on the gut, but that you can also achieve the same results by removing irritating things. I think that's the gist of it.

nice find!

 

[Dhair]

I posted a study that DHT inhibits serotonin synthesis through TPH and anything with such effects would be dopaminergic.
DHT Lowers Serotonin Synthesis, May Treat (testicular) Cancer

If this is the case, then do you think DHT would ameliorate the dementia effects of testosterone deprivation in men just as well as exogenous T could? I'm referring the study regarding T deprivation in men for the purpose of treating prostate cancer.

 

[haidut]

If this is the case, then do you think DHT would ameliorate the dementia effects of testosterone deprivation in men just as well as exogenous T could? I'm referring the study regarding T deprivation in men for the purpose of treating prostate cancer.

Yes, and it would oppose estrogen better than T. Estrogen is given to some men with prostate cancer in combination with antiandrogen or on its own in higher doses. Estrogen causes dementia in both men and women. The WHI trial showed that definitively for women but it is true in men as well.
Endogenous sex hormones, cognitive decline, and future dementia in old men. - PubMed - NCBI

 

[charlie]

Fasting is what ruined my health before Peat.

 

[Jarman]

What type of fasting are you guys talking about? There's 40 days water fast, intermittent fast, Christian fast for 24 hour, Ramadan aka a month / year fasting only eat before dawn and after sunset, Vinaya aka Buddhist not eating after noon meal.

I won't group all types of fasting into a single fasting term that's just inaccurate. Different fasting types yield different results.

 

[DuggaDugga]

What type of fasting are you guys talking about? There's 40 days water fast, intermittent fast, Christian fast for 24 hour, Ramadan aka a month / year fasting only eat before dawn and after sunset, Vinaya aka Buddhist not eating after noon meal.

I won't group all types of fasting into a single fasting term that's just inaccurate. Different fasting types yield different results.

Maybe the better question is: under what circumstances is fasting beneficial, and by what mechanism (let's define fasting loosely as employing willpower ignoring ones natural appetite) ? How is it more beneficial than responding to hunger with nutrient-dense, pollutant-free food?

 

[Jarman]

Maybe the better question is: under what circumstances is fasting beneficial, and by what mechanism (let's define fasting loosely as employing willpower ignoring ones natural appetite) ? How is it more beneficial than responding to hunger with nutrient-dense, pollutant-free food?

Sometimes I eat s**t ton of food in the morning and noon and sit around watching youtube all day like lazy bum. I feel like yeah why not skip a dinner I'm not hungry. If I eat dinner I feel like s**t like Fat Bastard from Austin Power. Some people call it intermittent fasting, but to me it's just skipping a meal and it's not that bad.

 

[alywest]

I think this seems pretty relevant to the whole discussion:

The modern conception of pharmacology, with receptors and transmitters turning functions on or off, has turned into an unproductive and dangerous scholasticism. No one will ever successfully count the number of transmitter angels dancing on the variable sites of the variable receptor molecules. The functional “meaning” of a receptor or transmitter changes according to circumstances, and the effect of activating a particular nerve depends on surrounding conditions, and on preceding conditions. Each cell integrates stimuli adaptively.

If no reflex is simply mechanical and innate, then all reflexes are conditional. (M. Merleau-Ponty argued against the validity of the reflex concept itself, because of this conditionality.) P. K. Anokhin’s concept of the “Acceptor of Action” (described in my book, Mind and Tissue) provides an image in which we can see the “set-points” for the relatively “autonomic” reflexes as reflections of the general needs of the organism. The local tissue reflexes, the organ reflexes, the spinal reflexes, etc., are variable, according to their energetic resources, and according to the way in which they are organized under the influence of the cerebral cortex and the environment.

The reality is more complex than the philosophy of the drug industry imagines, but the solutions of problems can be much simpler, if we think in terms of energetic support, rather than the over-concretized interventions of the pharmacologists. In hypothyroidism, it is common for there to be an excess of adrenalin/noradrenalin, serotonin, histamine, and some of the pituitary hormones. Correcting thyroid function can immediately correct many problems, but especially when the energy deficiency has caused anatomical adjustments (redistribution of blood vessels and mast cells, for example) it’s important to make the environment supportive in as many ways as possible. (Ray Peat, Autonomic systems)

 

[Regina]

@AretnaP Awesome post!

Ray talks about men coming from concentration camps, and when they started eating again developed breasts.
I fasted regularly for years ( between ages 16 -21 ) and all it did for me was make my regular temps around 95-96°F, caused erectile dysfunction at first, then led to a complete lack of interest in women all together. I lucked out and didn't grow boobs though.

He also mentions fasting shuts down the livers ability to detoxify. I noticed after fasting that as I resumed eating I smelled awful for a few days.

Yes. When I fasted and trained, I developed carotenemia upon re-feeding. It took me some time to improve liver health and insulin sensitivity.

 

[James IV]

Sometimes I eat s**t ton of food in the morning and noon and sit around watching youtube all day like lazy bum. I feel like yeah why not skip a dinner I'm not hungry. If I eat dinner I feel like s**t like Fat Bastard from Austin Power. Some people call it intermittent fasting, but to me it's just skipping a meal and it's not that bad.

Dude. That's way too rational.
You're definitely ruining your health.

 

[DuggaDugga]

Sometimes I eat s**t ton of food in the morning and noon and sit around watching youtube all day like lazy bum. I feel like yeah why not skip a dinner I'm not hungry. If I eat dinner I feel like s**t like Fat Bastard from Austin Power. Some people call it intermittent fasting, but to me it's just skipping a meal and it's not that bad.

Right, I'm not implying one has to eat on the clock, to make "dinnertime". If you've eaten, haven't done much to re-develop your appetite, I wouldn't consider that fasting. Fasting- in my opinion- is when someone has an appetite and actively ignores it to lose weight, to "cleanse", to please some deity, or whatever else.

 

[Jsaute21]

There is a particular user on this forum who had been proposing fasting as a way of "resetting the receptors".

The idea of course being that if you have low levels of a hormone you will experience an increased number of the proteins that the hormone interacts with. I am highly skeptical of this idea, and think it's dangerous advice. One area that this almost certainly isn't true in is the androgenic hormones.

As somebody who has spent a few years posting on bodybuilding/fitness forums I can tell you that when this comes to androgen this is absolutely not the case. When the good fellas over at the misc, getbig, anabolicminds, and steroidology forums look in to this topic they usually find the same, consistent results: the more androgens you have the more ARs you have.

This article perfectly sums up what you need to know.

In summary: Very high (bodybuilder doses) amounts of androgens increase the density of androgen receptors, without question. There have been some studies where going from zero to normal levels of testosterone have shown a decrease in androgen receptors, this could very well be because of estrogen (estrogen downregulates AR receptors itself).

The most important information is below:

-very high levels of testosterone/androgen increases AR density, this is almost 100% certain

-this has been confirmed in many actual humans (because there are many men who use steroids) and consistent increases in AR density is observed

-we have had very few chances to observe the effects of going from low to normal testosterone on male AR density, since lowering T so much would be bad for the subject's health

-given high level androgen use's effect on ARs it would seem likely that the decease in estrogen could explain the increase of ARs in extremely low testosterone environment

The idea that the decrease in testosterone seen in people who fast for long periods will be made up for by increased AR density rests on very little evidence, in fact the evidence points to receptors liking high testosterone, and proliferating in a high-androgen environment.

If you care about having optimal hormones DO NOT FAST.

Great post man. Fasting is not the way to go.

 

[Jsaute21]

Fasting is what ruined my health before Peat.

+ 1.

 

[Jsaute21]

@AretnaP Awesome post!

Ray talks about men coming from concentration camps, and when they started eating again developed breasts.
I fasted regularly for years ( between ages 16 -21 ) and all it did for me was make my regular temps around 95-96°F, caused erectile dysfunction at first, then led to a complete lack of interest in women all together. I lucked out and didn't grow boobs though.

He also mentions fasting shuts down the livers ability to detoxify. I noticed after fasting that as I resumed eating I smelled awful for a few days.

We had similar experiences. I fasted from 23-26 and went from an anaerobic athlete to an asexual plant. Terrible experience. I've noticed a couple of things from prototypical people who fast as well (that don't take juice.)

1.) they crash. Always. Not sustainable.
2.) generally have cortisol driven physiques (poor muscle definition, clear they lack androgenic qualities.)
3.) typically orthrexic

Just my 2c.

 

[TubZy]

Since we are talking about androgen sensitivity, @gbolduev seems to be right in this respect in terms of AFTER fasting your body responds extremely well and can re-sensitize it. I noticed this as well after a ten day water fast.

Look at the massive increase of T upon refeeding! Even going from OP's info, the higher T will increase AR density further, well I guess fasting will even increase AR density further with that massive spike..

https://sci-hub.cc/https://academic...during-Fasting-in-Men?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Also if you just wanted pure T levels, here you go.

Pituitary-testicular axis in obese men during short-term fasting. - PubMed - NCBI.

Short-term fasting increased the GnRH-elicited LH response by 67% in the non-obese group (LH incremental areas 2147 +/- 304 vs 3581 +/- 256, p less than 0.01), and the corresponding testosterone response by 180% (testosterone incremental areas 111 +/- 61 vs 311 +/- 49 micrograms.l-1.min-1, p less than 0.01). These results imply that food deprivation affects the pituitary-testicular axis differently in obese and non-obese men.



Since this thread is about BBing....

Fasting enhances growth hormone secretion and amplifies the complex rhythms of growth hormone secretion in man.


If you want more studies on the benefits of short term fasting and its benefits for insulin sensitivity and immune function, let me know. BTW, I'm not 100% pro fasting, but I think an occasional water fast isn't as bad as some of you demonize it. I did a ten day water fast and my muscle is still fine but my muscles respond to carbs 20x better, so I don't get all the hype that you are losing muscle, majority of it water.