# Will fasting clear out your arteries?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-fasting-clear-out-your-arteries/304434>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [May 18, 2005, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-fasting-clear-out-your-arteries/304434 "2005-05-18T16:56:37Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 4

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**Author:** ![Roderick\_Femm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roderick_femm/32/14875_2.png) [@Roderick\_Femm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roderick_Femm)\
**Post date:** [August 20, 2018, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-fasting-clear-out-your-arteries/304434/61 "2018-08-20T22:38:00Z")

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> [@Grotron](#):
>
> How bout 9 months of severe starvation, would that clear out your arteries and veins?
> 
> That’s real, it happened… so this question is directly targeted for the unusual…
> 
> Any answers on that one?
> 
> I’ve always wondered about this…
> 
> Based on the level of pain I felt for that entire 9 months… I would imagine everything that could get burned out got burned out… it was down to the part where I could feel my muscles being burned up… my gums had gone past the vibration tingling stage and arrived at the completely dry, plastic 3D printed feeling stage… where you are waiting for your teeth to fall out, but get your shit together right before that begins to happen…
> 
> My guess is, that might of cleaned out some pipes… if anyone knows for sure, I would be very curious to hear it…

My uneducated opinion is that the body is capable of removing plaque from arteries by itself but does so slowly; if your fasting meant that no new plaque was being added, my theory would be that you would have less plaque at the end than you started with, through natural bodily processes. I’m not sure that 9 months is enough to make a difference. I went through a modified fast, under a doctor’s care, for 9 months and lost 150 pounds. I was not, however, able to get off of my cholesterol medication at the end of that process. Of course I suppose they were measuring serum cholesterol and not plaque buildup, so my experience may be irrelevant.

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**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\
**Post date:** [August 20, 2018, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-fasting-clear-out-your-arteries/304434/62 "2018-08-20T23:16:33Z")

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Apparently if you starve a thread for 5 years (to the day!)it will spontaneously generate a poster! Good to know.

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