Fasting diet 'regenerates diabetic pancreas'
bbc.com
bbc.com
To paraphrase an old mentor, curing diabetes in mice is kind of the sport of the field. It's been done a number of times. Mice have some abilities to regrow tissue we don't. It's unclear how well various mouse models for diabetes mimic the human phenotypes.
I am very hopefully for this line of research in general but I expect any cure in humans will be more complex and perhaps also deal with somehow suppressing the immune response that destroys the Beta cells in type 1's like myself. For a type 1 the best I'd expect something like this to be able to achieve is a temporary return to the "honeymoon" period where the pancreas still produces enough insulin to make small adjustments but supplemental insulin is required.
On a personal level i have found that diet can have massive effects on my diabetes management. I may try a diet like this (with the advice of a doctor in adjusting insulin to handle it well etc and with the realization i may need to break the diet to treat low blood sugars etc). Edit: I also use a continuous glucose monitor which helps greatly with avoiding low bloodsugars while changing diet/activity levels and recommend one to any other diabetics.
For the record, I have friends that are fasting, and family members with diabetes.
If you have diabetes you can't fast without correcting the dosage of insulin that you're taking. If, for example, you take a normal dosage of insulin, but fail to consume the corresponding amount of sugars, your blood glucose level will start decreasing. Soon you will faint, and your level will still go down. Next step is coma, and finally death. So yes, I consider this dangerous.
The article also says "People are advised not to try this without medical advice.", to reiterate that it is dangerous.
Thank you for commenting here. As you are a diabetic who was also a diabetes researcher, I think it would be helpful to have you describe your exercise regimens (both cardio and resistance training) as well as your own experience with fasting and/or intermittent fasting ?
Thanks.
I haven't experimented with fasting yet, I'm thinking of doing some sort of test of my insulin needs before and after if i do.
I climb, ski tour, mountain bike and trail run but am not particularly structured in my routine. Happy to talk about exercising with diabetes off line though.
I don't expect anyone who's actually diabetic to fall for this; every T1 diabetic is in practice forced to become an expert. But, for the sake of confused bystanders: for a diabetic using insulin, fasting is dangerous. That's not an abundance of caution thing; we diabetics micromanage a key part of our metabolism using insulin, and if we leave the range of metabolic states we're familiar with we'll get insulin dosages wrong. The most likely outcome of trying to fast for a day would be being forced to abort the fast by hypoglycemia.
And if you had to abort the fast a few times before you home in on your insulin needs during the fast, that is not a life or death situation.
I feel you are being too cautious. Please chime in if you feel I'm being cavalier. Thanks!
I too use a continuous glucose monitor.
2) Some people's blood sugar really is an issue and they can't traditionally fast without serious low blood sugar
3) People's understanding of how people lived 100 years ago let alone 10,000 years ago is minimal
/s
For someone with diabetes, an unmonitored and poorly planned fasting diet could be a recipe for disaster.
2) For diabetics, blood sugar is an issue.
3) Many diabetics do quite well understand how diabetics _died_ 100 years ago, let alone 10,000 years ago ('young'. http://www.defeatdiabetes.org/diabetes-history/: "In 1897, the average life expectancy for a 10-year-old child with diabetes is about 1 year. Diagnosis at age 30 carries a life expectancy of about 4 years. A newly diagnosed 50-year-old might live 8 more years.")
Where did you get the testing equipment? I tend to get very cold if I haven't eaten recently, if I'm not active -- always have -- and it would be fascinating to see if there's a connection.
Disclaimer: Not a doctor.
It seems fairly obviously no one should arbitrarily and radically do anything just because someone told them to. There are a lot of special circumstances, but thankful there are useful concepts such as personal responsibility and common sense that have generally been useful in keeping humans alive for quite a while.
I assume that telling people they need medical guidance before doing so is a means of avoiding liability should someone do something stupid.
The only plausible risk I've seen mentioned, by Longo himself, is in women where the risk of gallstones might be increased. To quote him "Water-only fasting should only be done in a specialized clinic. Also, certain types of very low calorie diets, and particularly those with high protein content, can increase the incidence of gallstones in women at risk." [0]
The idea that water-only fasting should only be done "in a specialized clinic" seems daft to me, but in a litigious society I can understand why he says that.
Other researchers worth following in this area are Mark Mattson and Luigi Fontana.
[0] https://news.usc.edu/82959/diet-that-mimics-fasting-appears-...
In terms of results, my heart rate and BP have decreased (they weren't elevated previously). My weight remained the same as ever (around 10st, 65kg), which was my plan.
I've been fasting in other configurations for about 4.5 years now. I have a suspicion that I've been ill less (in the sense of colds etc) than pre-fasting, and that I recover more quickly, but I wouldn't take that as any kind of evidence. As soon as I can find some kind of cheap aging biomarker test, I'll start recording it regularly.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6859052 "Vigorous supplementation of a hypocaloric diet prevents cardiac arrhythmias and mineral depletion."
I wrote a comment a few months ago on fasting supplementation you may find interesting. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12455415
Also seconding the recommendations to talk to a doctor before you do anything. I know that usually goes without saying, but it deserves emphasis given the article is about diabetes. As the current top comment points out, fasting can be very dangerous for diabetics.
In particular I would like to know is it really necessary to use laxatives? Or other supplements? Or do you just stop eating and then start slowly again 5 days later.
I have just done a 3 day water fast to give it a try. With mixed results.
I would suggest starting gradually. Initially I think I did 48hr fasts. After a couple of years I upped to three days. Following Longo's stuff last year I moved to five.
No supplements. Definitely no laxatives ;-)
I don't start eating again particularly slowly. But I don't binge either.
The most amazing thing to me is that I don't get hungry. I haven't eaten since Sunday night, and I feel fine.
It's a sales pitch so obviously needs caution here, but I'm curious - what do you know about a "fasting mimicking diet"? Is it at all effective?
[edit] btw I suggest using google scholar rather than google. intermittent fasting, periodic fasting, prolonged fasting, calorie restriction. Lots of interesting stuff in there.
He (obviously) was an author, not a nutritionist or medial professional. But he was a "fasting practitioner" and has an interesting perspective on this topic.
Assuming you go back to the roots and live in the forest you're also a lot more likely to die.
not having a bite for a few days or even a week won't be the cause
This is right after they talk about using it as a treatment for diabetes. If you're already diabetic, doing this as a treatment could have some risks.
And people can really die if they "go back to the roots" and start running pursuing animals.
So, when someone says: don't this radical change in your nutrition habits, people should listen carefully.
purely anecdotal but my mother has seen high levels before going to bed only to wake up dangerous low. Or the fun good level and suddenly in the morning you are at 300+. Ask three doctors at hospital and get three different opinions.
No, don't do it at home and don't do it unless monitored by a health care professional who knows how to respond.
Doubt I'd be able to go full-on keto and still eat dinner with my family, and the diet sounds pretty miserable anyway but I'm hoping this plus trying a fast again every week or so will get me past the problem.
Just want it to be known that, if you haven't tried it and don't know how you'll react, even a shortish fast may leave you feeling like you're an hour and a half in to a visit to a beer festival, which might be problematic if you have to actually do stuff that day. Maybe not doctor's-supervision-required, but consider doing the first couple attempts on days when you have no responsibilities (unfortunately much harder, IMO, since it's easier to fast when busy and not at home, but hey.)
From what I understand, pollutants in food (from pesticides and other sources) and in the environment which are not easily broken down are stored by the body in fat.
Fasting or sudden weight loss can cause these toxins to be released more rapidly than would otherwise be the case. This can tax your system pretty heavily if you're obese or have a higher incidence of pollutants in your body.
The argument that, say, "walking for six hours a day is unlikely to be dangerous, since early humans did so" may or may not be factually correct, but it's a reasoned argument.
Additionally, the example argument you make isn't an appeal to nature; The argument is based upon what early humans did (not nature, or whether something is "natural"), and is a resonable conjecture.
What I had an issue with in the parent comment was "Fasting is kinda natural" - which doesn't say anything about fasting in and of itself.
However, the discussion here is not about people with "normal" human physiology.
Remember what diabetes is: simplistically, it's the inability to properly regulate the glucose in the blood vs in the cells. Type I diabetes is an autoimmune condition that results in the destruction of the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas. Without insulin, blood glucose levels elevate but the cells of the body continue to starve.
Type I diabetics are basically trying to synthetically replace the activity that their pancreas would be performing through a combination of carefully regimented eating (including very close attention paid to carbohydrate) and blood glucose checks / insulin injections. Suddenly changing over to a fasting diet without careful supervision from a physician could be lethal for a type I diabetic.
I hope that helps clarify.
Today: Story about a weak, non-replicated animal study at the top of hacker news.
1) Decades old research on brain capacity and benefits of fasting http://www.johnshopkinshealthreview.com/issues/spring-summer...
2) Fasting increases chemotheraphy effectiveness in some chemos. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fasting-might-boo...
The research has been going on for a decade about metabolic.
I use to fast once a week from dinner to dinner (Prior to midnight day break most of the world's day started at sunset so a day fast was from sunset to sunset). I seriously need to jump back on the fasting bandwagon my self-discipline has gotten lower and lower ever since I hit my mid-thirties and got married.
Maybe you're trying to reinforce my point that the HN audience likes to quote weak scientific evidence.
This is what makes medical research. Using mice is a very established way of testing hypothesis. Are you trying to say that we should only trust human studies when humans can't be controlled and limit what is impacting the body?
I also fail to see that research not being reproducible = weak science when you then knock a study that is reproducible but then you knock it for being not human based. The fact that a lot of science isn't reproducible has many honest scientific reasons, while other's are fraud.
http://reddit.com/r/science/comments/5vufpb/the_pancreas_can...
With that in mind, I wonder how effective this actually is. I (I'm a T1 diabetic) grow some new beta cells, my overly aggressive immune system wipes them out again..
EDIT: reading the reddit thread (https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/5vufpb/the_pancrea... - thanks austinjp) i'm not the only one to ask this. The general consensus is it's not going to be useful for T1 diabetics, it's just treating the symptoms, not the cause (the immune system), again (like injecting insulin).
Prolonged Fasting Reduces IGF-1/PKAto Promote Hematopoietic-Stem-Cell-Based Regeneration and Reverse Immunosuppression
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B97CJJ5YOfctTUoxWkVFN3Y4b3M
I also had an undiagnosed (despite every test the docs could think off).
I went on a 1500 calorie a day diet for 7 months and dropped weight from 245lbs to 185lbs (I'm 6 foot) at the next doc appointment indicators where all in normal range and at the most recent they where all excellent for someone my age.
Diet for this 7 months was cottage cheese, veg, nuts and rolled oat porridge with either chicken or fish and veg.
No fruit, lots of supplements and a protein shake before bed.
First month was grim I felt terrible all the time but every month after was easier.
http://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(17)30130-7.pdf
Details on the human feedings:
"The human version of the FMD is a propriety formulation belonging to L-Nutra (http://l-nutra.com/prolon/). It is a plant-based diet designed to attain fasting-like effects on the serum levels of IGF-I, IGFBP1, glucose and ketone bodies while providing both macro- and micronutrients to minimize the burden of fasting and adverse effects (Brandhorst et al., 2015). Day 1 of the FMD supplies ∼4600 kJ (11% protein, 46% fat, 43% carbohydrate), whereas days 2-5 provide ∼3000 kJ (9% protein, 44% fat, 47% carbohydrate) per day. The FMD comprises proprietary formulations of vegetable-based soups, energy bars, energy drinks, chip snacks, tea, and a supplement providing high levels of minerals, vitamins and essential fatty acids (Figure S3). All items to be consumed per day were individually boxed to allow the subjects to choose when to eat while avoiding accidentally consuming components of the following day. For the human subjects, a suggested FMD meal plan was provided that distributes the study foods to be consumed as breakfast, lunch, snacks, and dinner. (See lists below for ingredients and supplements)"
All guys/gals with any sort of disease, I pray you all get well and better soon!
Also, it's impractical to fast when you have work to do and meetings. You risk becoming cranky and grumpy and pissing colleagues off. Better to fast when you have a day off or at night.
Ok, where can I find more information?
It's called a fast mimicking diet or FMD.
Quantified Bob took it on last year: https://www.quantifiedbob.com/2016/04/fasting-mimicking-diet...
If you're genetically predisposed, then "proper diet" is pretty strict. I am a T2 diabetic, and control my blood sugar with a low carb diet. I'm pretty familiar.
Many old people will get it (Type 2) anyway since the pancreas is simply out of juice, but with relatively simple medication it can be managed. Eating like a fat pig will definitely accelerate the reduction in betacell insulin production capacity and increase the insulin resistance of other cells as described above (nice feedback effect).