INSIGHT
Just figured something out. Was advised to have dinner within 3 hours of sunset. At first, I thought was a crackpot woo woo New Age idea that was. Until I realised why it made sense.
Its to do with this thing called intermittent fasting. Think about the word “breakfast,” which is a compound word derived from “break” and “fast.” In pre-modern days, with no electricity or artificial lighting, people used to have dinner before dark and go to sleep soon after sunset. While they sleep, they need just a minimal amount of calories, just a subsistence level. Anyway, while asleep, there are not eating so they are fasting. And then, next morning, they wake up and eat something, breaking their fast.
Since we don’t need much calories at night, it makes sense of eat light at night and/or to eat early as well. While we sleep, our body is just ticking over; as we don’t need much energy, we might as well be fasting at night.
Anyway, the term “intermittent fasting” means different things to different people. My former psychiatrist introduced the term to me when he told me about people who fast on Mondays and Thursday from sunrise to sunset. The rest of the week, they eat normally. That was what he meant by intermittent fasting.
Other people use the term differently. Someone I met who does intermittent fasting says he fasts 16 hours daily. He only eats between 1500 hrs and 2200 hrs. No breakfast, no lunch. Just teatime and dinner.
I guess the whole idea is to consistently starve yourself to a low blood glucose level, of say 4.0. A glucose flush, if you like. If you do this consistently daily, you’ll get a lovely fasting blood glucose level and thence a low HbA1c level in the longer term.
Copyright 2003-2018 Azlan Adnan. This blog post is sponsored by The Green Party of Malaysia
No comments:
Post a Comment