Diet that mimics fasting appears to slow aging
news.usc.edu
news.usc.edu
http://www.l-nutra.com/index.php/products/prolon
Nothing for sale yet, but hopefully the price will be competitive with do-it-yourselfers. I am cautiously optimistic about this direction.
In comparison to intermittent fasting, chronic fasting/starvation everyday like you're doing is probably not good for your body. It responds by keeping more bodyfat to last you through your 16 hr window, giving you a belly and raising your insulin when you start eating.
It seems the best balance for insulin/optimum bmi is a large breakfast, medium lunch and small dinner http://www.nhs.uk/news/2013/08August/Pages/Is-breakfast-the-...
1. a cup of milked tea in the morning
2. a chicken salad for lunch
My dinner will be slightly heavier (usually low carb) and will be before 8:00pm. Throw in 2 more cups of tea and that's my day.
It took me a very gradual tapering off of caloric intake lasting over a year to get to a point where I can do this without actually feeling hungry. My body weight is constant (so I know I'm not at a deficit) and I take vitamin supplements (to cover the proportional loss of micro-nutrient due to cutting down on food).
Once a week I have a pig-out day when I usually drink a lot of beer and eat steak, pork chops or something along those lines.
Ultimately I expect to be eating a slice of bread at 1:00 and exist on oxygen otherwise.
My real question is why would breakfast be optimal? Dinner for me would typically be a bigger meal and at a time when I'm most inactive (and will be for another 10-12 hours)
Thing is, it isn't my intent to draw a conclusion. Merely to say that if they do not make it reproducible and testable by another team, then all the studies and data in the world do not qualify as science.
There's been multiple studies I've seen now indicating that fasting does this, the questions I want to know are:
1. How much of a caloric intake drop is required?
2. How much does it matter what specific types of calories are used for the lower-calorie period? (ie, 500 cals of fast-food vs. soylent vs. prolon vs. ensure)
3. Is there any tell-tale sign we can test for indicating when a sufficient 'period' has occurred for the benefits, thus knowing we can resume normal diet?
I can only imagine if these scientists are associated with a specific product, they probably don't have a huge reason to find out if a cheap existing product (soylent/ensure) works just as well as their most-likely-more-expensive-proprietary one. But it's the first thing I want to know.
Why? Soylent's just another proprietary product.
Edit: Soylent has an entire forum of various varients of their recipe: https://diy.soylent.com/recipes
from the paper.
VDL is the PI though.
Has anyone here actually ever TRIED fasting a full 24h day? I have. I HATED it. Well, the fasting itself wasn't that bad, however, the next day my body went FULL berserk mode and I literally couldn't stop myself from eating. It was really weird and I never had such strong biological urges. That's when I decided I'd just stick to fasting until 5 pm when I eat diner.
I think part of it that doing it a couple of times help reduce the extreme biological need. Also, when did you finish your fast? Dinner (5pm - 5pm) seems to be a good way to do it. Break it by drinking a lot of water to start.
Edit: I also find myself eating (snacking) less the next couple of days because I'm used to holding back.
As a meta note, in general, it's probably bad form to bring up religion on HN in unrelated threads, especially in a subtly proselytizing way.
http://drjohnday.com/do-mormons-live-longer/ includes additional description and links to a UCLA study of "other healthy things" associated with LDS longevity (includes no tobacco, marriage, church attendance, physical activity, moderate BMI, etc.).
It's a particularly insidious strategy because anyone who catches on and speaks out will be accused of being overly sensitive.
On the other hand, my comment seemed completely appropriate. My other comments hacker news make no mention of, although in them you can see I have principles and I do quote religious leaders once in a while (twice besides this I think), generally unattributed, and paraphrased/adjusted for clarity. I'll leave it to you to decide whether I'm here to preach or not.
The OP was obviously just bringing up an anecdote from his/her own life and in a very harmless way. Your comment was rude and your meta note is off base. Bringing up religion on HN is fine if done in a sane and approachable way. I've done this multiple times in an attempt to learn and to offer my opinions. I feel it has been beneficial for both myself and others here in the community and I've never received negative feedback from anyone like what you've posted.
I feel as if you've done a disservice in misrepresenting the respectful nature of our community regarding religion in most cases. If the op is trying to use his account to convert people on HN it's pretty obvious from his past comments that he's not doing it enough.
I've seen polls on here about religion, articles about religion, and other comments about religion. It's part of our history as a species and shouldn't be ignored, even if you feel that further practice of any religion is detrimental to society. Writing anything out of history tends to be bad practice.
Side note: I'm not Mormon but I was raised as one.
Though, I do think there are also a lot of logical fallacies propagated as "faith". Just the same, I don't think it's worse than what a lot of commercial industries, or interest groups propagate. Look how long it's taking to get past the "fat == bad, lowfat == good" mindset that really took hold in the 80's.
Fortunately we now have science, which basically amounts to a hill climbing algorithm for identifying valid and rejecting invalid ideas over time. I'll note that I was once extremely active in the same community mentioned in the comment to which I replied, so I do have experience on both sides of the aisle.
I definitely don't get berzerk-mode hungry after 24 hours.
I can't say I felt any better after the fast. I had lost a few pounds but nothing else noticable.
One problem that people might have with fasting and then wanting to binge is that the starchy, sugary diet that the USDA and FDA have been promoting as "healthy" for the last four decades is actually the opposite. The food pyramid is pretty much upside-down. If your diet is mostly simple carbohydrates, they metabolize quickly and leave you hungry for more.
If you eat a diet richer in fats and proteins and leafy vegetables your appetite is slaked for a much longer time.
The idea that intermittent fasting is healthy makes sense to me. Prior to the last few hundred years, certainly prior to the last few thousand years, our hunter-gatherer ancestors probably routinely went without food for a few days at a time. Our metabolism would have evolved to operate optimally with that.
Seriously though, despite the obvious health benefits, sometimes I can't get the good stuff to be nearly as satisfying as the bad stuff. I wish sugar wasn't so damn addictive.
Food is the issue I'm most embarrassed about. I'm not obese, but I'm not svelte either. Self-control is easy right up until the second it isn't, and everything else in this world seems easy to control against my daily fight with food.
Give your self some fun and walk for an ice cream on the weekend, or pasta, whatever. But think of it as the same as going out for a beer, because thats what it is.
As you can see, swilling down alcohol three times a day is not a recipe for good health. Theres a great video where a doc explains that fructose has most of the same negative side effects as alcohol, just without the buzz.
Maybe we need to start up a Carboholics anonymous?
A typical extreme example of this is if you drink a glass of coke when you're full vs. when you have low blood sugar. The subjective taste experience is drastically different.
It'd be amazing if we could make foods that were better for us trigger the same responses, but that will almost certainly either require making us take drugs, or lace those foods with drugs.
After a few repetitions I got used to it. I don't feel like stuffing myself the next day. The hunger during fasting is still there, but it's much easier to deal with now. And sleeping during a longer fast is starting to feel easier now that I do that more consistently.
So you might want to try again once or twice and let your body adjust. Or not—ultimately you have to find something that works for you.
The revelation for me was after my second accidental 24hr fast, before doing anything deliberate with my eating schedule. I had skipped lunch the previous day, and then household drama prevented me from eating dinner. The next day, we had a team dinner set up at Publican in Chicago, which is hugely a metric fuckload of calories, and so I skipped lunch that day as well.
I was pretty hungry when we got to the restaurant but found myself too full to eat pretty quickly, much more quickly than when I'd been eating on a more "normal" schedule.
I also find that on an IF-y schedule, I'm a little hungry at 2PM; I eat a couple eggs, and then I am basically never hungry at any other time. I still eat dinner, but mostly because we cook for the family.
A fringe benefit of this lightweight pseudo-fasting schedule is that it's very easy to control macronutrients. I haven't eaten in 18 hours, so I'm eating because I legitimately should be eating, and so almost anything works for me; I don't find it at all difficult to opt for proteins and fats over carbs, which is challenging on the "normal" schedule.
Basically: the "normal" eating schedule is, in my case, just dumb.
> Has anyone here actually ever TRIED fasting a full 24h day?
The longest stretch for me has been 5 days.
It's hard for me to describe how I go longish periods(some go for a month+), but essentially it is a 100% mental effort. I visualise my hunger as a switch which I turn off. When the switch is off I am immune to hunger. It sounds ridiculous but this kind of visual imagery works for me.
I've tried going into a fast without first spending about half a day "tuning" my brain via visualisation and it was a disaster, just as you describe.
For me fasting has by far been the best (easiest, most effective) way of losing weight. Before this I spent about 3 months cardio training with only minimal dietary intervention which resulted in huge muscle tone in my legs (had a work colleague once remark : "dude! your calves are fricking huge!") and no noticeable abdominal fat loss.
Throughout my fasting I've also been weight training. The results at the 3 month mark are unbelievably cool :)
Pedantry: muscle tone doesn't mean what you think it means. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_tone)
You will also often appear to be weaker - e.g. I don't hit my 1 rep max when I'm not on a protein heavy diet with a calorie surplus. If I ate badly the day before exercise, I simply do not manage to push myself to my limits. There's no way I've then lost muscle to cause that (if I had, I wouldn't be back to normal next workout with a stricter diet). When I'm cutting that effect is much stronger.
Couple fluid loss and feeling weaker, and it's natural that people assume they've lost lots of muscle, but it takes quite a while or quite extreme deficits before you actually lose enough to notice.
(Even then, training back up again is much easier than the first time)
Even if there were no health benefits from fasting, worrying about eating every two to four hours must be mentally exhausting.
What do you mean by this? Do you mean I'm affecting the long term ability for my body to extract energy from food? I very much doubt that a few days of fasting would have any such long term effects. Quite the opposite in fact. Fasting has been clinically shown to have many positive side effects.
The book you refer to seems to be about intentionally inducing a prolonged state of starvation which would undoubtedly be bad.
And you must feed electrolytes like you mean it. 5g sodium, 3g potassium, mag+calcium if you need it, attenuate for size.
I've grown up as a Mormon though so since I was a teenager I had usually fasted at least once a month for two meals so maybe I'm more used to it than most people would be. Also, I'm naturally quite thin so that probably has something to do with it too.
http://thefastdiet.co.uk/how-many-calories-on-a-non-fast-day...
And for those pursuing longer fasts: day 3 is when most people turn a corner and the hunger is no longer horrible. I haven't gone that far, but am planning on it soon. And I've been told there are some remarkable physiological and psychological cleansing process that kick in on day 3. They say you become hyper-alert, clear-headed, and focused.
People do speak a lot of BS when it comes to fasting.
I guess my comment was more of a reaction from being attacked for my experiences fasting, not here but elsewhere. That's why I no longer spend time those places. It did come out wrong in retrospect and reactionary.
I fast pretty regularly for a day here and there. Used to do it every 4 days but fell off the bandwagon. Have done plenty of 2 day fasts too.
This is one of the silliest things said about fasting - and that is saying a lot.
Never had all this energy either.
I didn't have nightmares but I do remember that my dreams during the fast were incredibly vivid. I never imagined such dreams were possible and it's one of the things I miss most since ending the fast.
IMO, artificially supplementing those during the fast will throw off your body's sensors if you will of knowing when something is abnormal.
I've heard it said that what most people in the developed world describe as "hunger" is really just appetite. A different phenomenon, and an uncomfortable one, but separate from true hunger, which tends to set in after a few weeks, and is more like a psychological impulse to acquire food by any possible means, including violence.
This morning, I woke up about an hour earlier than usual with a great feeling of energy and focus. No real hunger. I'm going to push it a little further as long as I feel good. Thanks.
I feel a bit dizzy at around 20 hour mark, past this I feel absolutely fine, can do interval training like always and have no hunger at all. On 3rd day I can start noticing some physical limitations, like when I tested how many hills can I climb on a MTB until I hit the wall hard (shaking muscles, mild spasms etc.), and the time I can spend doing athletic level of activity decreases every day (like 6 hours in the beginning to 1 hour after two weeks).
Did you happen to get measures of your body fat pct before and after?
Another method I've done is a net-zero where I eat say 600 calories and run a few miles so there's not as much muscle loss.
I like the net-zero approach. Do you make those 600 cals primarily from protein? BTW, it's about 100-120 cals/mile typically. (I'm a runner and use 100 cals/mile since the math is easier and close enough.)
Also, in the first 48 hours of the fast I did a rather extensive physical workout program which is meant to bring your body into a keto state much earlier than it would otherwise.
At the end of the day I feel like I got to know my own body on a whole new level. I didn't do it with the intention of losing the weight, but of course it was a welcome addition to all the other benefits I took away from this experience. In a year or two I plan on doing another one for 40 days.
My other concern is that I run 50+ miles/week and I assume that would be impossible while fasting. I'd also be bummed about loss of muscle mass.
For two years prior to this fast I suffered from mild pain in my left knee which made it very difficult to get up from the floor or run for more than a few minutes. Two weeks into the fast, that knee began to hurt like crazy. By day 16 I was unable to bend it. But that was somewhat expected. Many peopl who undertake a prolonged fast report what is referred to as a "healing crisis"- when the body is in a state of self healing during which pre-existing symptoms flare up as the body works to get rid of them.
Who knows what I had in my knee. Gout, pre arthritis, some nasty build up of fluids... Either way, it's all gone. After 3 days of being unable to stand or even slightly bend that knee - it all disappeared. I woke up on day 19 and it was as if I had a new knee. All symptoms are gone since then and I have resumed my hiking and biking activities and am glad I let it heal itself.
And to answer your other question, at 5'9 I weighted 182 at the beginning of the fast and 147 on day 23. I wasn't terribly overweight, and now at my ideal weight.
And day 21 is far from being at the point of true starvation. That doesn't normally happen until at least day 45.
Now, when I don't want to be disturbed by a growling stomach, I usually give him an apple just to keep him busy.
I tend to be pretty sated after lunch, and will usually continue working until well after 6pm, when I start to get hungry again... I pretty much have to force myself to have something around 2 or 3pm, and it cuts the cravings way down.
I also notice that when I watch TV in the evenings (even without commercials), I tend to eat a bit more, and randomly.
Yeah, Yom Kippur fucking sucks. Every damn year.
[1]: http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/128/4/337.abstract?sid=6...
[1]: http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2013/07/23/why-is-s...
Detox is a pseudo-science word anymore. Is that detox or just your blood sugar level going down?
I meant to say it's painful, not 'pure detox'. Headaches and agitation isn't fun to deal with on a constant basis. But science barely understands the wide range of benefits from fasting. Whether that means empowering your immune system (which is what fasting does, energy to digest is now used to fight illnesses, etc.)
A nice read for the uninformed: http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1834
There is no science behind it. There is also no science behind extended fasting, giving your body a "break" from digesting and so forth. By all means fast if you feel like it and you believe there is some health benefit - you are harming no one, after all - but please don't try to justify it with medical science.
If your colon isn't working properly you are very sick and you need a doctor ASAP not a fast.
The fact fasting (perhaps) has benefits has absolutely nothing to do with "toxins."
I don't want an exact number, just a ballpark. Is it micrograms, milligrams or grams per kg body mass? Surely these people who know so very much about "toxins" must know the one fact that distinguishes the things we informally call toxic from the ones we don't.
It would be the hieght of intellectual dishonesty to claim something was "toxic" without having any knowledge of the LD50.
But to be clear, I think a lifestyle of eating fruits and veggies is more effective than fasts, when trying to achieve this.
There are a lot of medical, yes scientific, benefits to fasting. At the end of the day, it helps the body out (strengthens immune system), among other ways, whereas it might be struggling with eating regularly. Also, most research would never encourage people to go without eating more than seven days, as that's starvation mode and the Hippocratic oath has some things to say about that.
I'll ask again - Which specific toxins are stored in your fat? Its a simple question.
(I agree with you mostly, just don't think your argument is holding water.)
"My liver and kidneys work pretty well."
Also headaches, migraines, agitation can be caused by lower blood sugar and lower blood pressure than what you are used to.
http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Hypoglycaemia/Pages/Symptoms.as...
Can you name any of the toxins?
Can't code, can't solder, can't do circuit design....
I haven't done it in a while because you need to free to nap whenever you feel like it.
When you do this you re-learn what hungry is, and I found that what I thought was hunger was just desire in many cases.
And as others have commented yes there are many of us who have fasted for days at a time for religious reasons.
What's the number of hours you're calling the threshold for "fasting"? I assume it's some high number, like 24-48 ("skipping breakfast and lunch" gets you past 16). Can you cite a source for the stark metabolic difference you're implying?
http://gero.usc.edu/faculty/longo/
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-06/uosc-fts06021...
http://michelsonmedical.org/2014/12/26/igf-1-fasting-discuss...
http://news.usc.edu/58074/wanted-a-recipe-for-longevity/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25498742
And he's applied for patents on the technique, e.g. http://patents.justia.com/patent/20150004280
I think it wouldn't really be science relevant without revealing the diet so we can look at the nutrients and compare that to the research.
I agree with you that it doesn't sound especially "proprietary".
Does adjuvant therapy in the form of fasting affect survival in clinical trials in cancer patients?
Is this proven and accepted?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2815756/
"Proven" is of course a continuum rather than a binary state. There's plenty of evidence to suggest that calorie restriction and fasting are beneficial across the board, and in cancer, and specifically as adjuvants. Getting that past the FDA as an official approved treatment is still ongoing, I believe. Most likely because "eating less" is not attached to "we can make a huge amount of money charging for this" so who is going to pay for all the studies and data that the FDA wants? One of Longo's innovations is to have found a way to make that happen within the system, I think.
More:
https://www.google.com/webhp?#q=cancer%20%22dietary%20restri...
In those patients whose cancer progression could be assessed, fasting did not prevent the chemotherapy-induced reduction of tumor volume or tumor markers. Although the 10 cases presented here suggest that fasting in combination with chemotherapy is feasible, safe, and has the potential to ameliorate side effects caused by chemotherapies, they are not meant to establish practice guidelines for patients undergoing chemotherapy. Only controlled-randomized clinical trials will determine the effect of fasting on clinical outcomes including quality of life and therapeutic index.
Edit: sp and grammar
Drinking water is forbidden until the sun comes down and the fasting is over for the day, and in summer, excessive dehydration is fatal.
Also http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Adverse_Effects_of_Islamic_Fasting
LOL
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/17/ramadan-guide-t...
So instead of thinking sanely, people come up with "solutions" like 'then exercise your fasting according to meccahs timezone' and such.
Personally though, it went fine in terms of productivity and energy. Trying to work out without that nap was pretty brutal but fasts are long enough to fit it in after work.
Though I am a bit more serious about the the gorging/extra sleep probably negating the benefits. I don't have the studies on hand but I think that most of the fasting studies usually assume a 'normal' diet and lifestyle during non fasting periods.
- I can only sleep for a maximum of 4 hours each night - During my waking hours I extremely energetic and focused - I never nap, can't physically do it - I lose my appetite when I break my fast, I have to force myself to eat a reasonable amount, about 1 meal and water - I lose alot of weight real fast, which I suspect includes some muscle mass
My father is the same, but not the rest of my family. I would not continue this fast outside of Ramadan for too long for a few reasons :
- Sleeping 4hrs a night does not seem healthy, although I feel fine I don't want to play games with my health - I don't recommend fasting with no water, I don't know if this has any real health benefits.
Of course this is an anecdote, and not scientific in anyway, but my feeling is that genetics and psychology influence the resulting effects of a fast on a person.
http://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/pdfExtended/S1550-4131(1...
The human fasting mimicking diet (FMD) program is a plant-based diet program designed to attain fasting-like effects while providing micronutrient nourishment (vitamins, minerals, etc.) and minimize the burden of fasting. It comprises proprietary vegetable-based soups, energy bars, energy drinks, chip snacks, chamomile flower tea, and a vegetable supplement formula tablet.
The human FMD diet consists of a 5 day regimen: day 1 of the diet supplies ~1,090 kcal (10% protein, 56% fat, 34% carbohydrate), days 2–5 are identical in formulation and provide 725 kcal (9% protein, 44% fat, 47% carbohydrate).
That said, this conforms to a lot of previous research regarding fasting, and so it's a reasonable assumption that if you did a once-monthly 5 day fast at 33% of normal calorie intake, composed of a mix of nutrient/vitamin-dense plants and herbs, you would see similar benefits.
In reality this should just be your normal diet - eat lots of plants, add a reasonable amount of healthy meat (i.e. not a kilo of red meat a day). Limit simple carbohydrates, especially sugar. Keep calories reasonably low (which will happen naturally because you'll feel full & satisfied).
Maybe the proportions, but not the total amounts. 725 calories per day is way too low on a long term basis.
You don't need to keep yourself in a low-calorie state, but it's important to enter that state to some degree, on some number of occasions, to get your body to kick off the internal processes of autophagy and renewal that result in a variety of benefits, to healthspan even moreso than lifespan.
Bottom line: Ketosis may have benefits similar to fasting in terms of aging, but without having to fast :)
But I had to stop the keto diet because it makes me stupid when I'm on it. I'm not talking the "keto fog" that you experience for a few days when your body is adjusting; operating in extended ketosis for me correlated with a marked decline in mental capacity. I went from being a rockstar knowledge worker to someone who couldn't do simple arithmetic. And my mental faculties would return within an hour if I ate a bagel.
Ketones (what your body burns for energy when there are no sugars available) don't penetrate to the brain, so your body produces sugars from protein through gluconeogenesis, but it wasn't really enough to keep me functioning at 100%. Also, you don't want to be frequently transitioning in/out of ketosis; it gives you horrible headaches.
[0] says that this is false. Ketones do go into the brain and the brain does use them for fuel.
[0]http://proteinpower.com/drmike/2007/05/22/metabolism-and-ket...
I understand the urge is great to talk about science exploration, but if your only source is reddit, you can easily accidentally propagate misinformation. Likely someone walked away from your post thinking that the brain will fail on ketosis because it doesn't have glucose (which is actually a common myth heard from physicians). They will never read this reply. I would highly encourage you to read a complete book before even attempting ketosis, otherwise you won't have the motivation and understanding of the changes in your body to make it worth your time.
If you want something light, read Keto Clarity. If you want a dense but approachable medical perspective, read The Art And Science of Low Carbohydrate Living. I've been in nutritional ketosis approaching a year, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who hasn't done their research on it.
I cut off all noodles/pastas and breads, and ate no pastries/sweets/chocolates. I went from lifting a few times a week for three months to once a week and my brain could not have a rational thought. I felt like my sugar levels were down all the time some how, so even after eating meats, eggs, vegetables, and dressings, my body would feel light and I couldn't get full. I couldn't work on my computer a lot and basically was on autopilot. It was kind of bizarre because I was eating 4-6 eggs a day and my body started feeling really weird. I think all the protein was messing with my body when it was trying to break it down.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2015/01/02/red-mea...
Either way, I would suggest reading The Big Fat Surprise and/or Why We Get Fat to learn more about the tenuous red meat cancer risk. I would also suggest re-reading the last three paragraphs of the article you linked to, and read studies and books instead of articles!
I've been doing an IF of 8/16 where I only eat within 8 hours. Whenever I have lunch, I then have 8 hours to have dinner. I don't have the same schedule each day so sometimes I might start the next day late and fast for 20 hours.
However, since I've been doing this for a couple weeks, I recently stopped eating the second meal. I just wasn't hungry. I don't have the psychological stress- because I'm allowed to eat as much as I want (of the keto diet, so within the 20g of carbs, but I snack on celery) during those 8 hours so if I got hungry I could do it.
It's just when the 8 hours are up I decide if I'm hungry or not.
As someone who is very overweight, the idea of not being hungry is quite shocking. (I don't think it's due to the IF, I think it's due to the ketogenic diet I'm on.)
But if I keep to this, then eating once a day would give me about 23 hours of fasting. But given my uneven schedules many times that's been over 24 hours, though some days it's more like 20 hours. The point being that it isn't really much of an issue- depends on how I'm feeling and about half the time I'm not hungry at the 24 hour mark.
Of course I do drink a lot of water, and I use sugar free "water enhancers" to help. So, as a consequence I am drinking quite a bit more water than I ever have in my life. (probably 1-2 gallons.)
This is an anecdote, so I don't know if it's ketosis, or what that's the effect. I wanted to do everything right this time around so I'm doing keto, IF, calorie restriction, and portion controls. (I pre-make my meals. So I heat up a fixed sized meal, and have to go get a second meal if I'm still hungry, which I did a few times in the early days.)
I'm also learning to cook really great BBQ in the slow cooker.
Yesterday all I ate was some ribs. They were wonderful. (Memphis style, no sauce.)
Here's the recipe: Rub: Memphis Dust: http://amazingribs.com/recipes/rubs_pastes_marinades_and_bri...
1. Cut the membrane off of the back of the ribs (or at least pierce it.)
2. Coat the ribs with salt. (I use lite- salt to increase my potassium intake).
3. Coat the ribs with Memphis Dust- pretty thick (I use a shaker for this)
4. Lay down a layer of celery in the bottom of the Slow Cooker. (keeps the ribs an inch away from the heat)
5. Put the Ribs in there.
6. Cook on Slow. I set it for 8 hours, it should take 8 hours but they've been done in 6 the past couple times. I think my slow cooker is running hot. So check them at 4 and 6 hours. They'll be done when the meat is falling off the bone.
7. Enjoy!
Can you please provide a source on this?
"During the usual overnight fast, the body's metabolism naturally switches into ketosis, and will switch back to glycolysis after a carbohydrate-rich meal. Longer-term ketosis may result from fasting or staying on a low-carbohydrate diet, and deliberately induced ketosis serves as a medical intervention for intractable epilepsy.[6] In glycolysis, higher levels of insulin promote storage of body fat and block release of fat from adipose tissues, while in ketosis, fat reserves are readily released and consumed.[5][7] For this reason, ketosis is sometimes referred to as the body's "fat burning" mode"
http://www.radiolab.org/story/251885-you-are-what-your-grand...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3958810 [1986!]
"Mice from groups 3-6 [restricted intake] exhibited mean and maximal life spans 35-65% greater than for group 1 and 20-40% greater than for group 2. Mice from group 6 [most restricted intake] lived longest of all." Brackets mine.
"The total monthly calorie intake was the same for the FMD and control diet groups, indicating that the effects were not the result of an overall dietary restriction."
There are a lot of possible factors that may be involved. From changing behaviors, lifestyle, lack of disease, larger buffer before weight loss becomes an issue etc.
Edit: It should be noted that this still a fairly low BMI compared to most middle aged Americans.
Considering diet is so important for managing the disease being light weight is probably correlated with a greater focus on health.
That said, it seems likely that reducing weight would have a net positive impact on heath and it's other risk factors which are being improved.
These are two extraordinarily complex, intertwined topics that to come up with a hypothesis like this on the limited evidence ends up appearing to be just a random search for correlations, terminating once you find one that has the right p value.
For the fasting parameter, (of many to choose from that cause stress or physical challenge) again with heuristics, we can first drill down to a sub-parameter of "being fairly hungry". Given the previous logic, this variable must be a component of slowing aging.
Now if you had to guess from 1 day to 50 days or even 250 days, what would you guess is the optimal time of "being fairly hungry" to reduce aging? Mostly people would probably guess 2-10 days using the heuristics of "one day is just too little to have an effect" and "15+ days just cant be safe for you body."
I'm surprised I hadn't heard about a study like this before. What I am not surprised by is that the optimal range is right in the middle of the optimal range from simple heuristics.
The next heuristic you can tack on is timing between fasts. Using the same logic you will get very close to the timing between fasts USC is suggests.
Basically it means less burden, less load to the system (we are a system) and, as a by-product, the exercise of self-control, which is the key to personal success (delayed gratification and related concepts).
Thinking about tribal eating habits, one could realize that there is no single "right" diet, but a pepper set of habits of moderate austerity in consumption and sticking to simple, unprocessed, traditional (evolved according with local food sources) dishes.
To put it simply - conditioned by media overconsumption of processed junk food is the cause of suffering and a major contribution to ageing.
I lost 40 lbs on keto eating mostly (by volume) non-carby veggies and mostly (by calories) fat, along with 80-120g of protein per day. I'd really like to see their complex diet tested against a well formulated ketogenic diet.
A Ketogenic diet (per the actual medical definition and not from fitness gurus) is not low carb, adequate protein and high fat. it is high fat, little to no carbs and low protein. From medical recommendations, calories from fat should be in the 85-90% range. Most of the articles you read about the benefits of ketogenic diet is the MEDICAL definition and not the fitness definition.
Also, protein as a nutrient creates a similar insulin response as carbs.
(nothing against keto diets, but they just seem to be the hip diet of the moment and annoys me when this keeps being stated)
If you look at graphs comparing them you will see protein is greatly blunted compared to carbs.
The body being in ketosis is primarily medicated by the availability of liver glycogen, temporarily insulin spikes will at worst only pause ketosis. Protein can be converted to glucose via gluconeogenesis, but (compared to felines) the human body can't do much of this and its usually only an issue if someone exceeds the standard recommendation of 0.8g of protein per lbs of lean body mass by x2 or more.
Any diet that keeps your ketones high, ie keeps you in ketosis (assuming you are healthy) is a ketogenic diet by the scientific definition.
http://jn.nutrition.org/content/31/3/363.full.pdf
APPARENT PROLONGATION OF THE LIFE SPAN OF RATS BY INTERMITTENT FASTING
by ANTON J. CARLSON AND FREDERICK HOELZEL Department of Physiology, University of Chicago, Chkago (Received for publication October 4, 1945 )
(As long as I'm commenting, I complained a couple of days ago about how I'm very strongly willing to bet now that the "standard" diet is really quite bad, but that I'm far weaker on what a good diet is. This is the sort of thing I mean... how useful is fasting? Can we simulate the results without having to pay as many costs? How does fasting integrate with a low-carb/low-glycemic-index/whatever-else-you-like diet? What's the biochemical mechanisms at play here? Can we use those mechanisms any other way? There's so, so much fantastic and useful work to be done here, and instead we spent nearly 50 years re-running the same damned studies over and over again, wrong. ("Are eggs good for you? Are eggs good for you? Are eggs good for you? Are eggs good for you? I propose to study the question of whether eggs are good for you, give me half a million dollars...."))
Here is the full text of their pseudo-scientific research: http://bit.ly/1MRWyhv
I used bitly.com to shorten this link, and it takes you to a page that begins to download the pdf file associated.
For those worried about the link, here is the full version of the link: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd...
Day one of the diet comprises:
10 per cent protein, 56 per cent fat and 34 per cent carbohydrate, making 1,090 calories
Days two to five:
Nine per cent protein, 44 per cent fat and 47 per cent carbohydrate making 725 calories
(If you're not in the UK, connecting via VPN works).
Twice a week fasting, where I eat a bowl of cereal and a piece of fruit and nothing else but coffee all day, has been working really well for me. Surprisingly, I've found I'm totally able to run a few miles on my fasting days to boot.
When you saturate the water with fish food (and also well fish poop) you pretty much give bacteria a free reign in the water which causes the water to be extremely anaerobic, so yep you've caused your fish to drown :)
As someone else pointed out, the reason your fish lived longer when you fed them less is because you were reducing the amount of ammonia (from rotting food, or from fish waste) in the water.
And it's probably not only the number of calories, but also the quality of food that matters. Nutrient-dense, low-calorie diets could be worth a try, but how long could you stick with them?
Giant page of research: http://qualitycounts.com/fpcalorie.html
It makes sense to me, because some of our ancestors might have had only an itermittant supply of food, while others might have been accustomed to eating several times a day.
I know that it sounds unpositive but telling people how to live didn't work for the last 2000 years, probably more. They fail at this always. But giving them tools help a lot.
I remember hearing about this in some BBC Horizon show.
If we give some credit to this hypothesis then yes, we will have a pill to slow down aging. It can go from a simple aspirin[3] (baby-aspirin anyone?), to the dangerous DNP in a low-dose, controlled release formulation[4], the novel cationic uncouplers [5], or the safe mitoBHT [6].
That said, you can just get a cold shower every morning[7]
I am even researching this area to treat my primary mitochondrial disfuntion[8]
[1] In simple terms, it means that the mitochondria generates less energy in the form of ATP and more energy as heat.
[2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21483800
[3] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC316328/
[4] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1467-789X.2001....
[5] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26071782
[6] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2267406/
Thank you!
In the FMD subjects, fasting blood glucose levels were reduced by 11.3% ± 2.3% (p < 0.001; FMD) and remained 5.9% ± 2.1% lower than baseline levels after resuming the normal diet following the third FMD cycle (p < 0.05; Figure 6B). Serum ketone bodies increased 3.7-fold at the end of the FMD regimen (p < 0.001) and returned to baseline levels following normal food intake (Figure 6C). Circulating IGF-1 was reduced by 24% by the end of the FMD period (p < 0.001) and remained 15% lower after resuming the normal diet (p < 0.01; Figure 6D). IGFBP-1 was increased 1.5-fold at the end of the FMD regimen (p < 0.01) and returned to baseline levels following normal food intake (Figure 6E). These results indicate that the FMD group was highly compliant and generally did not consume foods not included in the FMD box provided to them.
"In a pilot human trial, three cycles of a similar diet given to 19 subjects once a month for five days decreased risk factors and biomarkers for aging, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer with no major adverse side effects, according to Longo."
What is not mentioned is that other biochemical pathways are triggered by starving, for instance, you digest your own muscular tissues. This may or may not be what you want. So basically you are avoiding some biochemical machinery just to trigger another.. balacing it looks sort of difficult and for sure picking 5 days in a month looks pretty random, I will wait the try different timings at least;P
My point anyway was that they are only proving obvious facts: "when you don't eat -> obvious facts". It could have been interesting if they studied different starving period because 5 days in a month looks random. They should compare 0 - 1 - 2 - 3 - etc and see what works best. Thanks science for you method (and I am not saying anything on the diet composition)