Below are four links to the same BBC documentary. It's about 58 minutes
long. The host of the show talked to various experts on fasting and then
did each kind of fast himself, testing his bio-markers before and after
each regimen to see what effects the fast had on his body.
According to these researchers, fasting improves your reaction time
(reversing the normal age-related decline), improves your balance
(again, reversing the normal age-related decline), prevents both heart
disease and cancer, and stimulates your brain to create new brain cells
(which delays or prevents Alzheimer's disease). And this is not
optimistic, pie-in-the-sky conjecture. The researchers are drawing these
conclusions by looking at real data.
This episode is a short excerpt from a much longer podcast (What's So Great About Fasting?). This one touches on the counterintuitive biological reasons many people find fasting to be significantly easier than dieting.
Click on the link below to listen on your favorite podcast platform:
Mark Mattson describes his research in the following TEDx talk. Mattson is the current Chief of the Laboratory of Neurosciences at the National Institute on Aging. He is also a professor of Neuroscience at The Johns Hopkins University. Mattson is one of the foremost researchers in the area of cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's Disease, Parkinson's Disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
Arjun Walia, in an article in Collective Evolution, describes and comments on some of the points Mattson makes in the video above. Excerpts from Walia's article are below.
Mattson and his team have published several papers that discuss how fasting twice a week could significantly lower the risk of developing both Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease.
“Dietary changes have long been known to have an effect on the brain. Children who suffer from epileptic seizures have fewer of them when placed on caloric restriction or fasts. It is believed that fasting helps kick-start protective measures that help counteract the overexcited signals that epileptic brains often exhibit. (Some children with epilepsy have also benefited from a specific high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet.) Normal brains, when overfed, can experience another kind of uncontrolled excitation, impairing the brain’s function, Mattson and another researcher reported in January in the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience.”(source)
Basically, when you take a look at caloric restriction studies, many of them show a prolonged lifespan as well as an increased ability to fight chronic disease.
“Calorie restriction (CR) extends life span and retards age-related chronic diseases in a variety of species, including rats, mice, fish, flies, worms, and yeast. The mechanism or mechanisms through which this occurs are unclear.”
Fasting does good things for the brain, and this is evident by all of the beneficial neurochemical changes that happen in the brain when we fast. It also improves cognitive function, increases neurotrophic factors, increases stress resistance, and reduces inflammation.
Fasting is a challenge to your brain, and your brain responds to that challenge by adapting stress response pathways which help your brain cope with stress and risk for disease. The same changes that occur in the brain during fasting mimic the changes that occur with regular exercise. They both increase the production of protein in the brain (neurotrophic factors), which in turn promotes the growth of neurons, the connection between neurons, and the strength of synapses.
“Challenges to your brain, whether it’s intermittent fasting [or] vigorous exercise . . . is cognitive challenges. When this happens neuro-circuits are activated, levels of neurotrophic factors increase, that promotes the growth of neurons [and] the formation and strengthening of synapses. . . .”
Fasting can also stimulate the production of new nerve cells from stem cells in the hippocampus. He also mentions ketones (an energy source for neurons), and how fasting stimulates the production of ketones and that it may also increase the number of mitochondria in neurons. Fasting also increases the number of mitochondria in nerve cells; this comes as a result of the neurons adapting to the stress of fasting (by producing more mitochondria).
By increasing the number of mitochondria in the neurons, the ability for nerons to form and maintain the connections between each other also increases, thereby improving learning and memory ability.
“Intermittent fasting enhances the ability of nerve cells to repair DNA.”
He also goes into the evolutionary aspect of this theory – how our ancestors adapted and were built for going long periods of time without food.
A study published in the June 5 issue of Cell Stem Cell by researchers from the University of Southern California showed that cycles of prolonged fasting protect against immune system damage and, moreover, induce immune system regeneration. They concluded that fasting shifts stem cells from a dormant state to a state of self-renewal. It triggers stem cell based regeneration of an organ or system. (source)
Human clinical trials were conducted using patients who were receiving chemotherapy. For long periods of time, patients did not eat, which significantly lowered their white blood cell counts. In mice, fasting cycles “flipped a regenerative switch, changing the signalling pathways for hematopoietic stem cells, which are responsible for the generation of blood and immune systems.”
This means that fasting kills off old and damaged immune cells, and when the body rebounds it uses stem cells to create brand new, completely healthy cells.
“We could not predict that prolonged fasting would have such a remarkable effect in promoting stem cell-based regeneration of the heatopoietic system. . . . When you starve, the system tries to save energy, and one of the things it can do to save energy is to recycle a lot of the immune cells that are not needed, especially those that may be damaged. What we started noticing in both our human work and animal work is that the white blood cell count goes down with prolonged fasting. Then when you re-feed, the blood cells come back. ” – Valter Longo, corresponding author (source)
A scientific review of multiple scientific studies regarding fasting was published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2007. It examined a multitude of both human and animal studies and determined that fasting is an effective way to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer. It also showed significant potential in treating diabetes. (source)
I just watched a video, 12 minutes, 49 seconds long, that explored what scientists have discovered about the difference between fasting and calorie restriction. Here's the video:
The upshot is that it is much more difficult to just eat less, especially if what you're doing is eating primarily carbohydrates. The reason is interesting: Insulin tells your body not to burn fat. So if you're eating enough carbohydrates to stimulate a significant amount of insulin (as the volunteers did in the starvation experiment — around 1000 calories of carbs a day) it isn't enough fuel for your body, but it prevents your body from accessing your stores of fat, so you starve. If they had eaten no food, they would have been able to burn more calories and would have suffered less.
This video is a good basic video on fasting. It is seven minutes and forty-four seconds long. Here is a little blurb from the description:
"What is water fasting? What are its benefits? Intermittent fasting is gaining huge popularity as a dietary option, but what actually happens to your body when you fast? When I first heard about water fasting, I thought, “No way am I doing this!” But after doing some research and finding out about the benefits of this process, I changed my mind. And now I'm going to tell you what I experienced during my 20-day water fast."
It's called The Science of Fasting and it is available for streaming at Amazon Prime here. This is the description of the film:
"Young
biologists from the University of Los Angeles have overturned
conventional wisdom and used molecular biology to demonstrate the
powerful effects of fasting. This research suggests a wide-ranging
potential, which could include treatments for the disease of the
century, cancer. If these scientists are right, maybe our approach to
disease and treatment will need a rethink."
This is the description of the film: "Young
biologists from the University of Los Angeles have overturned
conventional wisdom and used molecular biology to demonstrate the
powerful effects of fasting. This research suggests a wide-ranging
potential, which could include treatments for the disease of the
century, cancer. If these scientists are right, maybe our approach to
disease and treatment will need a rethink."
Here's a ten minute TED talk about how cancer cells love sugar and aren't good at using fat as a fuel, so when you're in ketosis, you starve cancer cells.
This is just a clip from a panel. The man speaking has worked in a clinic for a long time that monitors and helps people do long fasts. Ten to forty days long. He has observed many people change their health for the better in many different ways. This is not scientific evidence. But it's not nothing either. Check it out:
