Silk Road forums

Discussion => Off topic => Topic started by: imperator23 on August 10, 2012, 06:08 am

Title: Intermittent fasting is finally becoming known to the mainstream!
Post by: imperator23 on August 10, 2012, 06:08 am
My dad is a doctor and has been studying nutrition off and on since he was a teenager, and long ago he told me of studies conducted on animals where calories were severely restricted to about 60% of normal intake because it was suspected that this should have some influence on the risk factors for disease, in particular cancer, cardiovascular disease, dementia, physical degeneration, and diabaetes.  When it was shown with remarkable consistency, regardless of the species tested (with one exception, I believe, with the earthworm, or maybe it was a fruit fly), lifespan tended to be increased by 20-40%, risk factors for disease also fell dramatically.  Researchers also found, as in the case of mice who had been injected with a chemical known to mimic the effects of Alzheimer's on the brain, that not only were these rats possessed of apparent immunity to diabetes, which is a strong predictor of Alzheimer's and cardiovascular disease because they all share the same cause, but their very brains seemed to be resistant to the physical damage a toxic chemical could inflict.  There are a couple books about this floating around out there, none of which are very well written or objectively presented.  The clinical trials done on animals, however, are remarkably consistent.

At some point it was realized that severe caloric restriction, if humans were ever to benefit from it, might be more easily adopted by restricting caloric intake every other day to 25% of normal and allowing patients to eat whatever and as much as they wanted on the day after.  There was really no danger that patients would overeat as expected on the days they experienced no caloric restriction because it's very difficult to eat over 1.5 times what you normally should.  When this approach was tested with animals, there were no significant differences in the results of either caloric restriction and intermittent fasting, which makes sense when you consider that most animals ate very little over 100% of their normal caloric intake on unrestricted days, which averages out to be about 62% per day, falling in the parameters of caloric restriction.

Many proponents of a low-carbohydrate diet, such as my dad, who are familiar with the harm that prolonged intake of sugar and refined carbohydrates has on the body (in particular, being the primary suspect behind most of the diseases of the West), found that when they took up the diet themselves or prescribed it for a patient, no matter what signs of damage prolonged carbohydrate intake had already inflicted, these negative effects seem to stop completely once the diet was well underway.  Furthermore, there are some reports that patients being treated for conditions like arthritis, artery plaques, high cholesterol, asthma, high blood pressure, asthma, etc. were in many cases able to stop taking medication for these conditions.  Of course, no studies have been done long enough to see if humans experience the same prolonged lifespan, but it is known that they tend to be much healthier even in advanced age than those who do not adhere to this diet.

I say all this because just recently my dad sent me this documentary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pfna7nV7WaM

It's called "Eat, Fast, and Live Longer" and it aired on the BBC recently, and if you prefer you can search for it yourself on Youtube.  This is the first instance my dad has ever seen of this approach to dieting being discussed where very many people might actually hear of it and benefit from it.  Mentioned in this documentary is another approach to intermittent fasting where you eat normally five days a week and fast on two days.  If you watch this entire documentary, you will see that the presenter of the show experiences significant benefits from this approach. 

I myself have been fasting every other day for about two years (incredibly easy with a prescription for Vyvanse/Adderall), with only brief interruptions in this pattern, and though only in my mid-20s, I have no negative disease risk factors whatsoever, nor have I ever put on any weight since I began fasting, even when I lay around for two weeks reading books and eating cookies.  My father, being in his early 60s, is as fit as he has ever been, with only minor complaints of less hair than he used to have.  Since he first learned of this diet plan in the 1960s, he has adhered to fasting every other day when possible, but it averages out to be about a 4/3 approach.  Of course, if you benefit from fasting whether you're on a 5 days normal 2 days plan or fasting every other day, it stands to reason you will benefit from 3 days fasting, 4 days eating, or 4 days fasting, 3 days eating, though I prefer to split it eventually myself.  There are some people who just restrict their calories every day for their entire lives.

This documentary in my opinion distracts from the substantial amount of evidence that intermittent fasting seems to improve your health by arresting cell death, which has a couple times been attributed to the SIRT-1, or survival, gene.  That isn't really touched on here.  Instead, they focus on genetic anomalies in the beginning of the film, such as the South Americans who, though very tiny, live long lives despite having habits we would consider horribly unhealthy.  In the last 30 or 40 minutes or so, he starts to get to the meat and potatoes, which is that intermittent fasting could revolutionize the way humans age, making diseases of degeneration matters we deal with once we've reached our first century in years, if we must deal with them at all.  Anyway, now that I can share this with some evidence that people besides my crazy family of quack doctors follow this approach, I hope that it is of interest to someone and that they find it as beneficial to their health as it has been to my family's.
Title: Re: Intermittent fasting is finally becoming known to the mainstream!
Post by: snipeemfl0 on August 10, 2012, 06:19 am
Since doing my bodybuilding, I do IF for smaller periods of time so I don't lose weight. But I will do 8 hours of eating, 16 hour fast, and repeat. Works great to build strength/muscle on a cut which is otherwise impossible without the juice.
Title: Re: Intermittent fasting is finally becoming known to the mainstream!
Post by: imperator23 on August 10, 2012, 06:27 am
Thanks for mentioning that.  Somehow I forgot all about it, even though my roommate told me about that trick, though I thought he was crazy because usually my dad tells his patients who don't do intermittent fasting, but who are almost always on a low-carbohydrate diet to avoid statins, heart disease, etc., and whose weight loss has hit a plateau, that they should try it temporarily to get restart their gradual weight loss.  It's a good thing to bring up the different effects that altering the duration of the fast can have so that people who have different priorities don't get discouraged.
Title: Re: Intermittent fasting is finally becoming known to the mainstream!
Post by: mochill on August 10, 2012, 06:30 am
You can do that, or also drink wine every other day as there are things in wine that mimic the effects of calorie-restriction diets. The chemical involved is resveratrol, found in wine and other berry-type foods. You could also get a supplement for that easily.
Title: Re: Intermittent fasting is finally becoming known to the mainstream!
Post by: imperator23 on August 10, 2012, 06:41 am
You can do that, or also drink wine every other day as there are things in wine that mimic the effects of calorie-restriction diets. The chemical involved is resveratrol, found in wine and other berry-type foods. You could also get a supplement for that easily.

That may very well be true.  I remember hearing about that at around the time I first started doing intermittent fasting.  At that time there were only two suppliers, I think, of the supplements, Dr. Mercola being one of them, I think and Dr. James Johnson, who also wrote a pretty interesting if not always scientific book about it.  Resveratrol is something that keeps popping up every time I look into the recent research on the SIRT-1 gene, and I think it merits more study than it has yet received.  It appears to have some triggering effect on the SIRT-1 gene, or at least that was the general opinion a few years ago.  If I am mistaken, let me know.  That's something else I'll have to look up because I love wine.  I also love the fasting, though, but there is no reason I can't have both. :D
Title: Re: Intermittent fasting is finally becoming known to the mainstream!
Post by: mochill on August 13, 2012, 02:50 am
Many studies have shown that resveratrol has an effect on SIRT1 genes, no doubt about it. I think if you wanted to go for more caloric restriction diets you could easily add resveratrol supplements into your regime. Or just drink a glass a day with your meal :) always good.

Another thing you might be interested in is pterostilbenes, a common molecule found in many berries. Pterostilbenes work like resveratrol, extending lifetime by simulating calorie restriction in humans. Some say that stilbenes are more powerful than resveratrol because its more bio-available to the human body and has a longer half-life than resveratrol. Many studies show that pterostilbenes work synergistically with resveratrol, leading to a much more powerful effect of lifespan extension.

All those anti-oxidants in both pterostilbene and resveratrol also helps with keeping you healthy :) perhaps a combination of the two would be a great post-load for MDMA and other high-oxidant drugs.
Title: Re: Intermittent fasting is finally becoming known to the mainstream!
Post by: carilitobrigante on August 18, 2012, 05:32 am
who likes to be hungry?  I can't go half aday w/o eating and I become cranky or get an upset stomach.

Far easier and healthier is just do low carb 6 days a week (google CKD).  It's what the bodybiuldres/fitness people/hollywood people do to lose weight.  Never go hungry, easy to do, healthy and totlaly FREE! (which the diet industry hates hence why they like to rip on this method and tell everyone to buy their p90/jenny craig/diet crap).