Fasting has been a part of culture throughout the world, as has been the feasting. Most of the fasting has had some ritualistic flavor and are done as part of some religious practices. Jewish people fast on Yom Kippur and Tisha B’Av day among others, Christians fast on Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, the day of holy communion, Lent fasting days, nativity fasting days, and many others depending on the denomination, Islamic people observe fast during Ramadan, and other days like Ashura and Arafah, and although Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jains do not have very prescribed fasting days, they have restrictions on food and behavior on certain days and times, many of them self-imposed.
The king of the fasting in variety and numbers, however, has been the Hindu tradition, with fasting during Navarātras, Ekādaśīs, Saturdays (for Hanuman ji), Sundays (for Surya devatā), Fridays (Santoshi mātāt), Mondays (for Shiva), Tuesdays (Hanuman ji), etc., in addition to Ram Navami, Krishn Janmāshtami, the entire adhimās every three years, Purinmās, Anant Chaturdasi, Ganesh Chaturthi, etc. The most unique feature of Hindu tradition has the fasting by women for men in their lives, particularly husband and sons. Even before marriage, many fast on Mondays, the day assigned to Shiva to get good life partner, after marriage they observe Teej and Karwā Chauth, for the long life and health of their husbands, and also observe Chhat vrat, and perhaps a few other days for the welfare of their son, while there is no fasting or vrat by men for their wife or mother.
In modern times of equality, women empowerment, and movement for equal rights, it is normal and rational to question such gender differential observance of fasting, especially when many times these observances are enforced by traditional families and the society. With more and more women getting educated in modern world that has men and women working side by side, getting financial freedom, and enjoy equal privileges and say in developing social norms, these gender-differentiated practices seem archaic and out of date. Exposure to and influence of the Westernized lifestyle, which while had many discriminatory practices historically against women, does not have such male welfare female fasting practices, makes them more questionable.
Fasting itself is being celebrated from the point of view of spiritual enlightenment (which has its own value for the health of self and harmony with nature), and from the scientific perspective. Modern medicine dubs some of these fasting practices as intermittent fasting, and points out to several benefits as listed on, for example, the website of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. “Many things happen during intermittent fasting that can protect organs against chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, age-related neurodegenerative disorders, even inflammatory bowel disease and many cancers,” is quoted from an article of Mark Mattson in the New England Journal of Medicine. Other intermittent fasting benefits research has revealed so far the following:
Thinking and memory. Studies discovered that intermittent fasting boosts working memory in animals and verbal memory in adult humans.
Heart health. Intermittent fasting improved blood pressure and resting heart rates as well as other heart-related measurements.
Physical performance. Young men who fasted for 16 hours showed fat loss while maintaining muscle mass. Mice who were fed on alternate days showed better endurance in running.
Diabetes and obesity. In animal studies, intermittent fasting prevented obesity. And in six brief studies, obese adult humans lost weight through intermittent fasting.
Tissue health. In animals, intermittent fasting reduced tissue damage in surgery and improved results.
In the world of scientific advancement in human biology, the intermittent fasting has been investigated with standard protocols, which in many cases is similar to general practices observed in most cultures. According to Healthline, an online health magazine, there are several different ways of doing intermittent fasting — all of which involve splitting the day or week into eating and fasting periods. During the fasting periods, one eats either very little or nothing at all. These are the most popular methods:
The 16/8 method: Also called the Leangains protocol, it involves skipping breakfast and restricting one’s daily eating period to 8 hours, such as 1–9 p.m. Then you fast for 16 hours in between.
Eat-Stop-Eat: This involves fasting for 24 hours, once or twice a week, for example by not eating from dinner one day until dinner the next day.
The 5:2 diet: With this method, one consumes only 500–600 calories on two nonconsecutive days of the week, but eat normally the other 5 days.
The Healthline magazine further points out that several things happen in your body on the cellular and molecular level. For example, the body adjusts hormone levels to make stored body fat more accessible. The cells also initiate important repair processes and change the expression of genes. Here are some changes that occur in the body when you fast:
Human Growth Hormone (HGH): The levels of growth hormone skyrocket, increasing as much as 5-fold. This has benefits for fat loss and muscle gain, to name a few.
Insulin: Insulin sensitivity improves and levels of insulin drop dramatically. Lower insulin levels make stored body fat more accessible.
Cellular repair: When fasted, your cells initiate cellular repair processes. This includes autophagy, where cells digest and remove old and dysfunctional proteins that build up inside cells.
Gene expression: There are changes in the function of genes related to longevity and protection against disease.
Among other things, it has been experimentally established that the autophagy is heavily involved in mediating the benefits of the fasting.
The word ‘autophagy’ originates from the Greek words auto-, meaning “self”, and phagein, meaning “to eat”. Thus, autophagy denotes “self eating”. This concept emerged during the 1960’s, when researchers first observed that the cell could destroy its own contents by enclosing it in membranes, forming sack-like vesicles that were transported to a recycling compartment, called the lysosome, for degradation. Difficulties in studying the phenomenon meant that little was known until, in a series of brilliant experiments in the early 1990’s, Yoshinori Ohsumi used baker’s yeast to identify genes essential for autophagy. He then went on to elucidate the underlying mechanisms for autophagy in yeast and showed that similar sophisticated machinery is used in our cells.
This year’s [2016] Nobel Laureate [Yoshinori Ohsumi] discovered and elucidated mechanisms underlying autophagy, a fundamental process for degrading and recycling cellular components.
Ohsumi’s discoveries led to a new paradigm in our understanding of how the cell recycles its content. His discoveries opened the path to understanding the fundamental importance of autophagy in many physiological processes, such as in the adaptation to starvation [aka fasting] or response to infection. Mutations in autophagy genes can cause disease, and the autophagic process is involved in several conditions including cancer and neurological disease.
How does this autophagy explain fasting by women for men? That was a question recently asked by one of my female graduate students, now Dr. Ghuncha Ambrin. Her question was why are women expected to observe occasions like Teej and Karwa Chauth, and not the men? My standard line of argument that women live on average 5-7 years longer than men, and thus they keep the fasting vrata for men’s long life may make psychological sense of some sorts, not the scientific one.
I therefore asked for time to conduct research on this topic, as an assignment from a student. I like to do this regularly to provide a sense of equality if nothing else for the students. Generally, I ask them to do research on certain topics to answer questions, but I was happy to reverse the role, as I believe when it comes to learning, we all are students. What I found is what I present below by directly outlining the findings of researchers on this topic.
Autophagy is a dynamic system for degrading misfolded and/or damaged proteins and, therefore, for maintaining the cellular homeostasis. During this process, small portions of cytoplasm are sequestered by a double membrane bound vesicles called autophagosomes and consequently degraded when they fuse with lysosomes to form an autolysosome. Cellular autophagic activity is usually low under normal physiological conditions (constitutive autophagy) but can be markedly upregulated by numerous stimuli (starvation, hypoxia, or infections) or suppressed as documented in the case of neurodegenerative disorders and cancer. Specifically in neural cells, the role of constitutive autophagy has been studied and the results indicate that it is essential to prevent certain neurodegenerative diseases [
Sex-dependent differences in the activation of the autophagic cytoprotection pathway have long been reported in vitro. During starvation, cultured male neurons readily undergo autophagy and die, whereas neurons from females mobilize fatty acids, accumulate triglycerides, form lipid droplets, and survive longer.
The sex differences in autophagy under normal physiological conditions in spinal cord and muscle tissue from wild type mice have been clearly observed at the RNA and protein level expression of the microtubule-associated protein 1 light chain 3 (LC3) and p62/sequestosome 1 (p62). These proteins are the most commonly used markers to monitor autophagy. LC3 is associated with completed autophagosome, while p62 becomes incorporated into the completed autophagosome through its direct binding to LC3 and is subsequently degraded in the autolysosomes.
and <0.001 (∗∗∗).
Nearly two- or more fold differences between male and female mice were monitored in proteins that facilitate autophagy, suggesting the basal autophagy less than half of in females than in males.
Many diseases have been associated with alterations in autophagy and consequently some gender-associated differences have already been demonstrated. For instance, in neurodegenerative disorders, estrogen was neuroprotective and enhanced neurotrophic/synaptic plasticity. In vascular biology, compelling data indicated that sex differences were not only determined by sex steroid levels but may also be modified by innate cellular differences between males and females.
Regarding autophagy, only few studies allow for the possible influence of sex-dependence in this molecular process. One of the studies proposed the autophagy as a survival mechanism in males, whereas in female’s autophagy resulted. in detachment-derived cell death. In accordance with these studies, it has been reported recently that sex differences in constitutive autophagy was found in rats and, moreover, this sexual dimorphism was organ specific. Furthermore, in vitro studies also showed a sexual dimorphism in autophagic processes in cancer and in neurons under starvation.
As it is experimentally established now that autophagy which is helpful for the health is only about half as active in females as in males, and fasting enhances the autophagy, it makes sense for women to observe the fasting for health, if not for their husband or sons.
Prof. Bal Ram Singh, School of Indic Studies and Botulinum Research Center, Institute of Advanced Sciences, Dartmouth, USA
Vedic WAVES 
Thanks Prof.Balaramaji for sharing this interesting research on a)”benefits of fasting”, b)”mechanism of acquisition of such benefits” and c) gender based natural differences in the benefits acquirable by same amount of fasting by males w.r.t. females.
It will be interesting to carry out experimental verification on a sizable group of 50 or 100 men and women (of same age group and similar work engagement schedules) going through such fasting sequences along with the daily measurement of their biomedical parameters.
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That will be fantastic! There is more to come in terms of research in my next article, but it is important that such studies be thoroughly conducted in India.
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