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Comment by bellerose | Hacker News Reader

I think fasting is a process helping me against the aging peril. I'm not convinced if it will help me live longer (if nothing else goes wrong) but I can say my focus is increased and compared if I ate 2-3 meals per day. I'm skeptical if fasting triggers cells into the claimed "garbage collect" process or if my focus is just a hunter gather sense of I'm in danger from low calories kicking in. I assume endurance exercise is the best for the mind. I doubt non-physical games directed at improving thinking really help at all. The only supplement I've had benefit with is fish oil.

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By "garbage collect" I assume you mean autophagy. Just ran across this yesterday from the Salk Institute, which looks promising for autophagy [1].

Now, the hypothesis is that fasting is one of the ways we can induce autophagy. The problem is, we have no way to measure autophagy in humans at the moment. That means we can't prove that fasting=autophagy=cancer stopper. It also means we don't know what an effective dose of fasting is (24 hours, 3 days, 5 days, etc.)

Regardless, it seems you are on the right track.

"The Karlseder lab studying the relationship of telomeres to cancer discovered that the cellular recycling process called autophagy—generally thought of as a survival mechanism—actually promotes the death of cells, thereby preventing cancer initiation."

[1] https://www.salk.edu/news-release/in-surprising-reversal-sci...

How do people know if their focus increases as opposed to a placebo intervention?

I think you show that the intervention you're interested in performs not just above a passive control, but above an active control that may itself plausibly have an impact. So rather than a control that does nothing, you have a control group that does some other intervention. Of course there's still pitfalls, but my understanding is that trials showing positive effects vs. "active control" groups are often considered stronger evidence.

Have you ever been so hungry that you cannot concentrate on something difficult? Once you master fasting, you don't get to that point anymore.

Does it increase focus overall? I have no idea.

I'm dieting at the moment (mainly trimming down after Christmas, and making some room for a winter bulk routine).

Quite a few times, I've been so hungry that it interfered with my thinking. I had to eat something to get my focus back. Currently sub-10% body fat and a pretty seasoned dieter, so I think I have a fairly good feeling for what's real "hunger" and what's just "craving food".

In 2 weeks I'll switch to a weekly 36 hour fast, but I have no idea how I'm going to deal with the hunger pangs affecting concentration. Maybe, as you say, it is something you can train yourself out of.

You feel hunger just in the initial 3 days. I was on a distilled water fast for over a week, hunger disappeared completely.

When you feel that way, it's because your blood sugar is low - your body i quite literally out of fuel. Once you adapt to not constantly providing an easy source of carbohydrates, it will activate other metabolic pathways. That's when you can go for an extended period without food.

If you want a softer landing, I recommend the 16+8 fasting for a week before diving into multi day fasting. You eat at the latest at 20 (8pm), and not until 12 (12am) the next day. It will take some adapting, but it's better than the headache inducing "withdrawals" you'll feel jumping headfirst into 36h fasting.

Fasting and zero-carb diet have done wonders for me.

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