Fasting plays a significant role in various cultures, including that of India. Concurrently, many women often adopt popular dietary trends in pursuit of fitness and health, sometimes depriving their bodies of vital nutrients in the quest for the 'ideal physique.' This raises the question: what impact does fasting have on women?

In a YouTube video released on March 29 by the Huberman Lab Clips channel, Andrew Huberman, a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology with a substantial Instagram following of 7 million, engaged in a discussion with Dr. Stacy Sims, PhD. They explored the 'realities of fasting for women.' Dr. Sims is a specialist in exercise physiology, nutrition science, and female-specific dietary needs.

Why fasting is non-ideal for women's metabolism?

Per Dr Stacy, women have more oxidative fibres in their bodies. “So, we hear all the things about fasting improving our metabolic flexibility, telomere length, [and] parasympathetic activation, but by the nature of women having more oxidative fibres, we are already metabolically more flexible than men,” she explained.

What are oxidative fibres, and how do they relate to metabolic flexibility?

Explaining what oxidative fibres are, Dr Stacy said that ‘they are muscle fibres that have more aerobic capacity, so those are the ones that you can go long and slow for a very long period of time because it uses a lot of free fatty acids’.

She further explained, “You need a little bit of glucose in order to activate those free fatty acids. So, we look at when a woman starts to exercise; she goes through blood glucose first and then gets into free fatty acid use. She doesn't tap so much into liver and muscle glycogen, which is another misconception that happens.”

What happens when you fast and why you should avoid it

When women fast or do ‘fasted workouts’ (fasting while working out), trying to improve that metabolic flexibility, it “increases the stress”. Per Dr Stacy, when one considers the overall stress, it leads to a cortisol increase. “They can't hit intensities high enough with no fuel to invoke the post-exercise responses of growth hormone and testosterone, which then drop cortisol. So, from an overall stress perspective, that fast didn't work out and holding that fast for a long period of time increases cortisol,” she explained.

Per the National Institutes of Health (NIH), symptoms of excess cortisol include weight gain (especially in the face and abdomen), fatty deposits between the shoulder blades, diabetes, hypertension, hirsutism in women, proximal muscle weakness, and osteoporosis.

Why shouldn't you fast?

Lastly, Dr Stacy explained though many women will say that fasting has been working for them for many years, the other side of the question is, how much better would they be if they were to actually pay attention to the circadian rhythm and fuel according to the stress at hand?

“…Knowing that you're going to garner less stress that way and if we're really tying in nutrition according to that profile, instead of following a fast, we see better brain improvements as well we see more cognitive function, we see less thyroid dysfunction, and overall a woman does much better when we are not in that fast state,” she added, in the end.

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