Fasting Reboots Your Immune System

A recent study shows fasting causes many of your white blood cells to die, especially damaged cells. Then after the fast is over, the body uses stem cells to generate new white blood cells.

Quoting from an article about the study:

The researchers say fasting "flips a regenerative switch" which prompts stem cells to create brand new white blood cells, essentially regenerating the entire immune system.

"It gives the 'OK' for stem cells to go ahead and begin proliferating and rebuild the entire system," said Prof Valter Longo, Professor of Gerontology and the Biological Sciences at the University of California.

"And the good news is that the body got rid of the parts of the system that might be damaged or old, the inefficient parts, during the fasting.

In trials humans were asked to regularly fast for between two and four days over a six-month period.

Scientists found that prolonged fasting also reduced the enzyme PKA, which is linked to ageing and a hormone which increases cancer risk and tumour growth.

"We could not predict that prolonged fasting would have such a remarkable effect in promoting stem cell-based regeneration of the hematopoietic system," added Prof Longo.

"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," Dr Longo said.

"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. So we started thinking, well, where does it come from?"

Read the whole article here: Fasting for three days can regenerate entire immune system, study finds.

Benefits Compared to Difficulty

Yes, when you fast, you get hungry at times. And sometimes you might feel weak or at least unenergetic. But that's a minor amount of "suffering" compared to what you get for it.

It takes way less effort than, say, running a marathon, and it benefits you far more.

Fasting vs. Eating Less: What's the Difference? (Science of Fasting)

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:

Fasting vs. Eating Less: What's the Difference?

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.

Interesting, no?

Video: Can You Build Muscle or Do You Lose it If You Fast?

This video is 7 minutes and 10 seconds:

Will You Lose Muscle While Fasting?

In 2010, researchers looked at a group of subjects who underwent 70 days of alternate daily fasting. That is, they ate one day and fasted the next. What happened to their muscle mass?

Their fat free mass started off at 52.0 kg and ended at 51.9 kg. In other words, there was no loss of lean weight (bone, muscle etc.). There was, however, a significant amount of fat lost. So, no, you are not ‘burning muscle’, you are ‘burning fat’. This, of course, is only logical. After all, why would your body store excess energy as fat, if it meant to burn protein as soon as the chips were down? Protein is functional tissue and has many purposes other than energy storage, whereas fat is specialized for energy storage. Would it not make sense that you would use fat for energy instead of protein? Why would we think Mother Nature is some kind of crazy?

That is kind of like storing firewood for heat. But as soon as you need heat, you chop up your sofa and throw it into the fire. That is completely idiotic and that is not the way our bodies are designed to work.

How, exactly does the body retain lean tissue? This is likely related to the presence of growth hormone. In an interesting paper, researchers fasted subjects and then suppressed growth hormone with a drug to see what happened to muscle breakdown. In this paper, they already acknowledge that “Whole body protein decreases”. In other words, we have known for 50 years at least, that muscle breakdown decreases substantially during fasting.

By suppressing growth hormone during fasting, there is a 50% increase in muscle break down. This is highly suggestive that growth hormone plays a large role in maintenance of lean weight during fasting. The body already has mechanisms in place during fasting to preserve lean mass and to burn fat for fuel instead of protein.

The above is excerpted from a longer article. Read the whole thing here: Fasting and Muscle Mass.

The Adam Bomb

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Leaded Gasoline Caused Violent Crime?

In an article entitled, America's Real Criminal Element: Lead, the author makes a convincing argument that the rise of violent crime in America was caused by the increase of the use of lead in gasoline, and that the subsequent drop in violent crime matches the discontinued use of lead as an anti-knock agent.

Way back in the early 1900's, ethanol was suggested as an anti-knock agent because it is naturally high in octane. The oil industry chose to use lead instead, from 1917 until 1987, when it was discontinued because, of course, lead is poisonous. And ethanol is not.

It is sobering to think it is likely that thousands of people were murdered in America because of the oil industry's fateful decision back in 1917.

Adding ethanol instead of lead to gasoline is an improvement, but it is even better to add a little gasoline to ethanol and burn that instead (E85). Or even better, as many do in Brazil, how about skipping the gasoline altogether and burning straight ethanol? It's an impressive fuel all by itself.