Short excerpt from a YouTube video (host Mihail Pautov) in which an expert warns that occasional 1–2 day fasts are probably safe but longer multi-day fasts carry risks. The expert cites animal-study evidence that prolonged fasting can cause gut-lining deterioration (microbes consuming the gut lining) and advises preferring occasional fasting or adopting time-restricted eating as a more sustainable approach.
There's a lot of people that are going, especially in Romania, and they promote one day fasting or three days fasting, or even we have people that are going to 30 day fasting, like 30 day only drinking water. What do you think about that?
Yeah, I think fasting for a day or two a month is probably not harmful. But if you go beyond that, there are potential dangers. And there's some evidence from animal studies that your gut lining starts to deteriorate because the gut microbes are actually got nothing to eat except your gut lining.
Yes.
So you start to eat yourself. So there's probably a point at which healthy becomes unhealthy. So I don't advise people to do more than the occasional fast, which some people find psychologically important. People should do something more modest like this time restricted eating, it's called, which is very easy to carry on most days of the week. You don't have to do it every day of the week because we all have social lives and you know, we go out to restaurants and you know, you travel. It's pretty hard to do that.