Just for curiousity. Would you persist having headaches or is it quickly life threatning?
Lack of electrolytes will mess with your nervous system and muscle function. The thing is, you don’t know if you’ll end up with a headache, brain fog and your muscles feeling like lead or an irregular heart beat and a seizure, because the duration of the fast and lack of electrolytes are not the only things that are a factor.
The True North Health center have been doing 30 plus day fasting protocols for decades now. They water fast with DISTILLED water. Chugging water will lead to sodium deficiency. Drinking to satisfy thirst will probably be okay. Snake juice will make you feel human and fine while fasting.
Do with this information as you will.
when i first started the snake diet i was rolling 72’s with just water while i was waiting for my ingredients arrived.
It took about 2 weeks before i started getting symptoms but the main were crazy ass scarey muscle cramps, had one abdominal one that i though i was in major shit. the other symptom was muscle twitching, really anoying mostly my eyes but other places on my body
i get similar problems if i drink too much SJ and shit it all out, moraal of the story is keep up the snake juice and work out what dossage for you
I think it depends on the anatomy of the person. For me, a 150# 5’8” female, on the morning of my third day of fasting, my body feels tingly and warm (especially my back) like I’m sweating but I’m not. I feel extremely sluggish, like I need to lie down and I have extreme brain fog and dizziness. I tried going to work like this one day (I have a labor intensive job) and I felt like I was going to die. Like really. I was having heart palpitations starting that morning as well. It felt like I weighed 500#. Using my muscles, walking, lifting, was so difficult. I had to go get food immediately. I was in a panic. About 45 minutes after eating, I felt significantly better and was able to get through the day. Now, my suspicion is that if you are someone who has extra weight (fat) on your body, you can go longer with electrolytes without issue because your body has them stored away for just such an occasion. That’s just what I’ve come to conclude but I could be wrong. I encourage you to consume electrolytes however for the potential for permanent damage to your organs. Especially your heart. Your heart NEEDS sodium to function. I take it more seriously than others because this is how my mom unexpectedly died. She was sick with a flare up from ulcerative colitis and refused to eat (or go to the hospital). Her sodium level dropped so low that she passed out and slowly died in her sleep. Obviously she had other issues occurring (internal bleeding probably) but the pathologist mentioned that they didn’t have an explanation for why her sodium levels were so extremely low. They didn’t know that she hadn’t eaten in days.
It depends how long you plan on fasting.
Your body has everything it needs to function without ingesting anything at all, at least for a short period of time. However, it does this by eating itself, hence “autophagy”.
You have an enormous amount of electrolytes stored in your body already, it’s called a skeleton.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41413-019-0058-7
I would say a short term extended fast without electrolytes could actually be a good way to keep your bones healthy. However, I personally wouldn’t want to do it very often, and I certainly wouldn’t do it for very long at a time.
For longer fasts, if you don’t ingest electrolytes, you run a significantly higher risk of causing refeeding syndrome to occur when you break the fast. I’d even go as far to say that refeeding syndrome can be ovoided entirely by supplementing electrolytes while fasting. I would still take care when breaking a fast, though.
If you don’t drink too much water, you’d be fine. The problem is people over drink and knock the body out of balance.
When you do not eat food, your daily water requirements are drastically reduced. IMO, even when eating we do not need anywhere close to 2L a day. Most likely not even one unless you are sweating a lot or in a very dry climate.
You people need to do some actual research before just downvoting. Every single one of you is already waking up to the food myth. Is it really such a stretch to believe we’ve been lied to about water as well? Water industry is huge. Think about it. Use your brain.
Google sodium deficiency, potassium deficiency and magnesium deficiency. You’d have the symptoms of several of these, and likely some extra issues.
I’ve only experienced the muscle cramps and when that happens I make sure to prep and make some salt water ASAP.
So much info supporting and opposing, just try either way and see how you feel. Do what works for you.
If it’s a money thing, Cole’s videos show you how to pull together the ingredients for cheap. If it’s a taste thing, there are ready made electrolytes with zero cals/sugar/etc that tast better (I use Hydrolyte).
There’s not too many reasons not to use them but again just do what works for you.
Cole recommends you should get as much salt in you as possible when fasting, for me (when I went without salts/electrolytes) I felt very lightheaded when standing up and I even passed out a couple times