You may already know that practicing intermittent fasting can carry a host of benefits for your physical health, but did you know that fasting could be helpful for your mental health as well? Perhaps surprisingly, fasting can play a key role in keeping your mood stable, boosting your self-esteem, helping you to feel in control of your daily life and much more. Here are five key ways fasting could be a boon for your mental health that you should know about.
1. It Can Give You the Confidence You Need To Feel Your Best
When you’re in control of your eating habits and your weight, you may notice your confidence levels going up and up. Whether you fast from all foods or whether you incorporate certain supplements such as intermittent fasting mints, fasting can give you the small boost you need to have healthy self-esteem and feel your best all the time.
2. It Can Help Lift Your Mood Every Day
Because fasting can help you physically feel better, it can also lead to a happier mood every day. When you regularly fast, you may notice that you:
- Feel more energetic and spritely than usual
- Enjoy generally higher self-esteem
- Can achieve a sense of accomplishment
- Enjoy practicing self-care daily
- Can reduce your levels of tension and stress
- Can try to avoid episodes of anxiety and depression
3. It May Be a Helpful Complement To Your Other Mental Health Efforts
If you’re currently going through therapy to try to improve your mental health, you may be happy to learn that fasting could make the ideal complement to your current self-care efforts. Fasting can help you work towards your health goals and give you a sense of control in your life. One of the top mental health benefits of fasting is that it can be a useful support mechanism when you’re working through other issues.
4. It Could Help Improve Your Memory and Retention Abilities
Similarly to some of the benefits of THCV, fasting may help improve your memory. If you struggle with retaining and recalling information, this could be hugely helpful. Fasting may:
- Trigger a detoxifying and self-cleansing process in your brain known as autophagy
- Reduce your chance of developing certain neuropsychiatric disorders
- Strengthen your overall memory capacity
- Improve your learning and overall retention abilities
5. You Could Be at Lower Risk of Inflammation-Related Brain Disorders
Because fasting helps to reduce inflammation throughout the body, you may be at lower risk of developing certain inflammation-related brain disorders if you fast regularly. Some of these common disorders may include:
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD
- Schizophrenia
- Depression and anxiety
- Bipolar disorder
- Alzheimer’s disease
Prior to embarking on a fast, it’s important to understand the various ways it could potentially affect your mental well-being. Beyond providing physical health benefits, intermittent fasting can also offer key mental health benefits that could support your usual self-care efforts. From lifting your mood to instilling greater confidence to improving your memory and much more, occasional intermittent fasting could be the tool you’ve been looking for to help support and boost your mental health state.
