- Calories restriction
- Fasting benefits
- Water fasting
- Intermittent fasting
- Alternate fasting
- Risks
- Drinks
- Species particularities
- Conclusion
This website is mostly about birds, but fasting can be positive for all life forms, from human to bacteria, parakeets cats and dogs, or horses. Most experiments are done on mouses and rats, or humans, but that's for practical reasons.
Calories restriction
The only known technique to prolong life of living organism, is calorie restriction, which means less food, by 25 to 30%. The difficulty is to offer a diet with enough minerals, amino acids and vitamins, but less calories.When all conditions are met, life expectancy of most animals rises by a 2 figures percentage, simply by lowering the calories intake. Of course there are side effects with this kind of diet, mostly a possible loss of energy, and some hunger.More recently, it was discovered that fasting can have the same effects as permanent calories restriction. There are several methods for fasting. The most obvious, is to completely stop eating for a day or more. The idea of feeling hungry can be unacceptable for some people, but in reality everyone knows how it feels, and this sensation doesn't change much, at least for short periods of fasting, not real starvation ! and this feeling does not evolve much, but comes in craving peaks. There are now different methods for fasting, with apparently the same benefits. They are described below.
Fasting benefits
Just like calories restriction, fasting could have anti-aging effects, as well as a whole serie of advantages for health, lower glucose in blood, higher growth hormone levels, lower inflammatory proteins, lower cardiacs risks, better respiration for asthmatics, Alzeimer and Parkinson starting at older age, etc. Some people practice fasting as a more spiritual way of life, but we are talking about pets here, so...Another well known problem with animals, is that they as much food as they can, which means that they eat more than they need. This comes from natural conditions where food was often scarce, with no guarantee to catch a prey every day. It's easy to observe how after giving the usual quantity of food to your pet, it will swallow any supplement you offer him ! A third plate is served ? No hesitation, it will probably swallow it just as easily and quickly ! This behavior was important to survive, as it allow a quick build of fat accumulation for harder times, but this is not needed at all in our modern life, and more problematic, this accumulation of fat is not used as it was before, and can create health problems. Birds act just the same, most of their time is often used to forage for food, except for period of resting and preening, but their metabolism is different, as their weight is usually restricted by the need to be light enough to fly, and the quantity of fat stored in adipous tissues is limited. Add to that that small species have a shorter lifespan, which makes it harder to measure the effect of a more moderate usage of food, but bigger species can live for decades, like parrots, and positivie effects of a better diet should be easier to see.
Water fasting
No food, water, for one day or more. It can appear as cruel to suppress food, but some people manage to fast for periods of 20 to 30 days. It's a bit extreme, but these people chose to do it, although it's certainly not for anyone ! About little birds, who have a much faster metabolism than mammals, and despiste their fasting capacities, this is maybe not the best method. Raptors and other big birds can go without food for long periods, as they are not ssured to catch any prey for days or more.
Intermittent fasting
This method consist in fasting for a part of a the day. Just don't ingest any food for 12, 16 or 20 hours every day. So no food for 12 hours, some meals during the next 12 hours (12/12), or no food for 16 hours, eating period of 8 hours (16/8), etc. You need to be careful not to have larger meals than usual, else there is a risk to over compensate, and eat more than usual. For humans, it's mostly about skipping one meal, often the breakfast.Cats and dogs are fed with 1 or 2 meals a day, so it's a bit diffcult to apply this method here. For birds the only way would be to remove the feeder from the cage for a fixed number of hours. Remember that animal that live outside, and mostly birds, need more food when the temperatures are lower.
Alternate fasting
Fasting every other day, or a day a week, often 2 days a week (5 :2), a common way to do it is the Michael Mosley method, with 1/4th of the daily calories during 2 fasting days every week.This is probably the easiest way to do it with pets, depending on how you feed them, and that for birds, cats, dogs or horses.
Risks
Fasting should NOT be done during pregnancy, nor during reproduction or growth, that's also applicable to pets. Women seems more sensible to fasting, and shorter period of fast should be applied, same during illness, or for older ages, and a medical advice is then necessary, also for pets.A common mistake is to ingest more food than usual after ending the fasting hours or days, so it can be useful to keep an eye on the quantity of food offered, so that norms are respected, and all these efforts are not spend for nothing !Outside of these points - growth/reproduction and excessive calorie intake during eating periods - fasting should be positive for most, notably for animals, as their organism is naturally build for fasting periods, even more than us. Even outside of starvation periods, weather is routinely too bad to allow for foraging, which really makes shorter intervals of some days quite common in the wild, sometimes even in the good season, and makes animals quite resistant to lack of food.For birds who spend most of their days foraging, some diversity inside the cage can offer some occpation, different perch position, toys if they use them, some company, etc.
Drinks
Sugar being an important source of calories, it should be proscribed. Fruit juices are often used during fasting, but that's not a good idea, as they are rich in energy and other nutriments. Also their alteration is quick once out of the fridge, and they will be a source of bacteria and filth. Coffee and tea, low in calories, are also often used by humans during their fast, but their effects on animals is not well known, so their usage should be avoided.Water is the best drink, tap water if good quality, mineral water, in sufficient quantity, and to be replaced regularly to keep it clean !
Species particularities
To make it quick, if calories restriction is easy to apply to cats and dogs, by removing 30% of the usual food quantity. Of course essential nutriments, amino acids and vitamins must be provided, but that should not be a problem, since modern pet foods are packed with supplements of all sorts. Same ease of use with alternate fasting, which could also be the preferred method for bird in many cases, for example the 5 :2 method.
Conclusion
Not only medical research done with lab animals conclude that lifespan is prolonged with caloric restriction and fasting, but pet owners testimonies start to appear on the web, to confirm that these methods are quite positive on the health and life expectancy of our companions, as long as they are moderate. We should not expect miracles from fasting, but a part of our and our pets' health problems could be prevented.
