Is Fasting the Cure for Most Diseases?

The word ‘fasting’ tends to connote the idea of severe hunger and deprivation. That sounds like no fun, granted.

But what if there was a different form of fasting and it had the benefit of not only weight loss, but longevity, decreased risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, neurological and brain degenerative diseases? And let’s state that one more time.

Intermittent fasting is associated with:

• Weight loss

• Longevity

• Decreased risk of diabetes and insulin resistance

• Decreased risk of heart disease

• Decreased risk of cancer

• Decreased risk of neurological diseases, including epilepsy

• Decreased risk of degenerative brains diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s

The degree of longevity, while seen in many mammals, is still being researched. But what does seem clear is that calorie restriction reduces the risks of many diseases common in old age and therefore the result is a longer period of life where good health is enjoyed.

You Can Intermittently Fast Without Feeling Like You’re Starving

Yet, we’re back to hearing ‘calorie restriction’ and visualizing being hungry and miserable. Don’t dismay, intermittent fasting brings a solution that dispenses with the hunger and the misery while still enjoying the benefits.

The term intermittent fasting has several definitions. I’ll review them all and then tell you the one I prefer.

Some people fast completely on alternate days. This is based on animal studies that reveal that rodents who ‘feast’ one day and ‘fast’ the next often consume fewer calories than those who eat daily. Plus, they live as long as those rats who were calorie-restricted every day.

Another definition is skipping a meal or two each day, while a third option focuses on not eating for a period of 12-16 hours each day, thus promoting an 8 to 12-hour eating window.

Diabetes and Obesity Decreases with Fasting

A study performed at the National Institute on Aging in 2003 discovered that mice who fasted and feasted were actually healthier, in some areas than those who underwent daily calorie restriction.

Specifically what was noticed was a lower insulin and blood glucose which is associated with decreased risk of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Certain religions have long maintained fasting periods and it is believed that early man underwent days of fasting and feasting depending on the success of finding food.

From a degenerative disease viewpoint, man, pre-industry, was a much healthier individual.

Life Expectancy Increases with Fasting

As early as the 1900s, doctors began to treat certain complaints with fasting. Research at Cornell University in the 1930s, once again on rats, demonstrated that calorie restriction yielded longer-lived rats who were less likely to develop cancer and other degenerative diseases as compared to their fed-at-will counterparts.

University of Chicago researchers in 1945 began to investigate calorie restriction as compared to intermittent fasting and reported that those rats who fasted on alternate days enjoyed the same extended life span as rats on a daily calorie-restricted plan. They were quoted as saying that intermittent fasting “seems to delay the development of the disorders that lead to death”.

Fasting Decreases Risk of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s

More recent research supports that intermittent fasting lowers the risks of degenerative brain diseases later in life. It appears that intermittent fasting actually protects neurons (nerve cells that transmit nerve impulses) from the damages of stress.

Amazingly, researcher Mattson, along with others, have shown that intermittent fasting made the brains of rats resistant to toxins that cause cellular damage. This is the type of damage that ‘adds up’ with age.

Further studies showed protection against stroke, motor damage as seen in Parkinson’s, and cognitive decline as seen in Alzheimer’s. Dr. Mattson’s theory is that intermittent fasting acts as a mild stressor that stimulates the defense network of cells against damage. He’s found that fasting increases ‘chaperone proteins’ which are thought to prevent any incorrect assembly of molecules in the cell – sort of a quality control protein if you will.

Another protein, BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor – ‘trophic’ means growth) was also seen to be increased in fasting mice. BDNF is believed to prevent stressed neurons from dying. When BDNF is low, many symptoms and diseases are seen to increase, including depression and Alzheimer’s.

Fasting Lowers Insulin, a Hormone Associated with Many Diseases

Intermittent fasting, as touched upon earlier, increases the body’s sensitivity to insulin.

Decreased sensitivity to insulin, known as insulin resistance, is conclusively tied to obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease. There is a strong link between longevity and low insulin.

Insulin is an inflammatory hormone predominantly produced as a result of eating refined carbohydrates, so it makes sense that needing less of it would promote better health overall. It is important to note that insulin is NOT produced as a result of eating fat (good fat only though please when you do eat it).

The Salk Institute in La Jolla, California recently released a study where they allowed mice to feast on fatty foods for eight hours per day while enforcing fasting for the remainder. None of the rats became obese or showed excessive insulin levels. And if all that wasn’t enough, fasting has also been linked to ‘autophagy’, a process by which cells dispose of damaged molecules, inclusive of those linked to Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other neurological conditions.

There are definitely some naysayers on the topic, citing the possibility of gorging after fasting as well as potential sleep difficulties when trying to sleep while hungry. Certainly, our ancestors did not eat three meals a day and Dr. Mattson theorizes that imposed fasting strengthened brain areas involved in learning and memory, which increased our ancestor's odds of finding food.

Fasting Benefits with Deprivation Not Included!

The ultimate ‘beauty’ of intermittent fasting is its comparable benefits to calorie restriction without the day to day deprivation – a definite psychological advantage. Is intermittent fasting ‘right’ for everyone?

Unlikely. There is no single panacea when it comes to diet and what’s the healthiest plan for each individual, but intermittent fasting could very well prove beneficial for a decent percentage of the adult population. Children, pregnant mothers, nursing mothers, and those with highly unstable blood sugar, are not the recommended demographic for this lifestyle.

Ensuring that regardless of the plan you follow that you don’t go to bed very hungry is a good plan to prevent sleeplessness. Much like too much caffeine at the end of the day, severe hunger can elicit energy or wakeful level that prevents adequate sleep.

Reviewing a multitude of studies, success doesn’t always result and some people actually gain weight. What does appear constant and successful is the improvement in insulin sensitivity, immune function, decreased inflammation, cholesterol and triglyceride levels, and insulin levels.

There is some concern regarding fertility levels in women undergoing fasting. It appears that their bodies get stronger and healthier overall, but they may move toward masculinizing tendencies as they fast-improving many important aspects of health and mental well being, including memory and cognitive function, but not that of fertility. Studies are scant, but the few that exist point to this tendency.

Therefore women of child-bearing age who are interested in getting pregnant may want to avoid this type of program. If you’ve been a patient of mine in the past, you’ll see this post as a significant departure from my previous recommendations of eating breakfast within 1 hour of arising plus eating small frequent meals throughout the day.

As I like to say, if you don’t like change, the field of clinical nutrition is not for you. Why? As we learn more in the field of functional medicine and clinical nutrition, we need to adapt to that new knowledge. And therefore recommendations of the past ARE sometimes different from what we advise today.

Is Intermittent Fasting for Everyone?

The caveat to the exciting benefits of intermittent fasting is tempered by the individual, their age (not for growing children), blood sugar control, and fertility status (not for women trying to get pregnant or nursing).

Personally, when I was in my 20s my blood sugar was so volatile that if I didn’t eat 5 times per day I would pass out. Obviously, someone in that condition would never benefit from intermittent fasting as long as their blood sugar remained unstable.

But, having solved my blood sugar’s erratic nature several decades ago, I now regularly fast for 12 to 14 hours each day. And by the way, ‘solving’ unstable blood sugar is not difficult.

How Can You Try It?

It’s actually not hard to do intermittent fasting. Imagine you eat dinner every night at about 7 p.m. Perhaps you enjoy a snack at 9:30 before bed.

You get to sleep around 10:30 or 11:00 and you arise about 7 a.m. If you had some water upon arising and then worked out for a good 45 minutes (the best time of day to exercise if you want to lose weight and body fat) and followed that with a shower, getting dressed, etc., you’d likely be looking at around 9 a.m.

If you fixed yourself a green smoothie that you took with you to work and only started drinking it when you were really hungry, it could easily be 10:30 a.m. or later before you broke your fast.

According to this scenario, you have just done an intermittent fast of 13+ hours. That wasn’t too hard, was it? That’s pretty much what I do each day. Of course, the idea is to eat properly following the healthy guidelines I frequently discuss. The whole difference is the timing and allowing the body to ‘take a break’ from food coming in. Is this right for you?