The catch-22 is that chemotherapy and cancer itself can reduce appetite and cause weight loss, so doctors demur when their more self-informed patients stumble across research on (temporary) fasting's protective effect (throw "cellular autophagy and health" into Google and you can immerse yourself for hours).
Malnutrition can in turn harm the immune system. Where's the sweet spot? Who knows, and the fear of malpractice suits slows down progress.
Malnutrition is about lacking essential nutrients. Fasting is very different than "eating less".
The body works in one of two mode. 1: use current energy, as long as you provide energy (eating) it'll use it and make you hungry if you're not giving it enough. 2: use stored energy. If you stop eating for long enough (some say 12 hours, other say 24 hours, I suspect it depends on what you have make your body used to, eg some long distance runners fast to make their body switch to fat burning mode earlier). The body has zero energy available in stomach/muscles, it'll then start burning stored fat ; unless you're very skinny, you can go on stored fat for a long time.
If you eat normal meals (no calorie restriction, you shouldn't be hungry at the end of the meal) between fasts, it shouldn't lead to health problems.
Recent studies show that the refeeding at the end of a 5+ day fast is benefic for your health, the closest thing to stem cells. Google "Valter Longo" for more information about it.
For general information about fasting, check Jason Fung material (blogs, youtube). He's a medical doctor who runs a clinic to cure patients of diabetes type 2 through fasting, and has put out a lot of material out there with lots of explanations.
The effects on mood and brain function is pretty much an established benefit. "... studies have built on decades-old research establishing a connection between caloric intake and brain function."
As someone that USE TO (Why is it you have more self-discipline in your 20s then your older years???) Fast about once a week for 24 hours (supper to supper). There are many positive benefits as a person when you go past 3 days also. There are plenty of studies out there about fasting and its benefits and risk. People who have never done more then 3 days nor have read scientific research seem to see this as a negative. The human body can go for more then 40 days without food so a few days actually has very little negative "malnutrition" issues.
The stomach takes about 3 days to shrink after that has finished you actually don't really feel hungry and surprisingly you would be shocked at the spike in energy and focus you get for the days 4-10. Longest I have ever done was 10 days but man food explodes with flavor. One of my favorite things is after coming back to food everything taste better and is more enjoyable.
I'd be curious to see how my body handles fasting, with some undiagnosed (ie, not visited doctor) issues with bloodsugar.
After growing up with massive sugar intake, and then ending up in my early 20s in a state where i would get bloodsugar shakes if i didn't eat balanced meals, i now live in a low-carb environment (just shy of keto) and am super super happy with it. High fats keep me so stable, i never have bloodsugar issues anymore.
I can easily skip a meal because i'm not dropping off a bloodsugar cliff where all i had to run off of were breads and sweets for breakfast, etc.
With that said, i'm still afraid of pushing my bloodsugar too far. If you have bloodsugar issues, are you just doomed from fasting?
Note that my issues were minor (imo), but again, undiagnosed. Things are better these days too, fwiw.
I used to faint on occasion and once was hospitalized because of it. They found that my blood sugar was very low (31) and kept measuring it even at night. It kept getting lower than the doctors liked and they made me eat bananas at 3am. However, they never found a explanation and eventually released me without any diagnosis or advise. So I always was concerned about my blood sugar.
About a year ago there was a similar article on here as this one. So I really wanted to fast, but had similar concerns as you have now. So I went out and got a cheap blood glucose measuring device as diabetics use. I measured my blood glucose over the course of a day and then tried intermittent fasting the following days. Everything was great. I felt weak and generally shitty in the late morning on the first day I did this, but that went away on its own by noon even before I ate at 1pm. Meanwhile my blood glucose was fine.
Maybe it will be different in your case, but why not find out? If you measure your blood glucose frequently and have good at hand in case it does get too low, what could go wrong.
Of course I'm not a doctor and you better talk to one than just trusting don't random guy on the internet.
I'm not sure it matters, but I had problems with what I thought were low bloodsugar, and later found out that it probably wasn't the case (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiopathic_postprandial_syndro...). A lot of individuals have similar symptoms (feelings of weakness, shakiness, irritability that are cured by eating) but it isn't accompanied by lowered blood sugar.
I've been fasting for five consecutive days every other week for over a year now (and in various less severe combinations for the three years prior to that). I switched up to five days mainly as a result of reading Longo's work. (Valter Longo is the head of the group that produced this research)
I rarely get hungry now, and whilst I have in the past experienced the "food explodes with flavor" sensation you mention, I don't any more. If anything, the re-feeding is something of an anti-climax.
How can you do this that often? I mean, I can do it once a month, or perhaps once every other week for 2 or 3 times but I lose so much weight that I never /had/ to do it more than that; In fact, one 5 day fast usually slims me down to my 'happy' weight anyway (Which is still about 90Kg, I'm quite muscular!).
And I agree with the other poster about the 'tastebud high' -- I'd hate to lose that, as it's perhaps half the kick of fasting!
Are you sure you haven't developed some sort of 'habit'? With all due respect of course, just curious...
What kind of drinks do you drink during that fasting period? I imagine I'd collapse after one day if I wouldn't drink soda or something high-sugar / high-coffeine.
When I was fasting for 24 hour periods (I really need to get back on that) I would drink black coffee and water.
I stopped drinking soda many years ago (apart from the odd coke at a party or something). Realised it was addictive. It just feels normal to always be drinking water now. I don't miss it.
Coffee, I turn my machine on in the morning and it's 50/50 if I remember to drink one during the day. I drink a fair amount of tea (PG Tips with milk, I'm English) though.
It's not uncommon for people fasting have a glass of juice or fruit. When he says flavor is more intense it means sugar as well. An orange tastes really sweet. When having heavily reduced calories your body reacts stronger as well. Hot tea is a big pick me up.
If you are a big coffee drinker then start during a weekend where you can get through coming off coffee. Headaches and a mind like molassis are a hard way to go through th work day.
As someone on low-carb and sometimes keto, sugar is so insanely sweet. I basically can't touch heavily processed carb foods as they just taste like raw syrup. Juices too, honestly. Pretty nuts.
Definitely. You wouldn't know it looking at me, but I spent a month eatin only vegetables. Not raw, but no sauces other than some olive oil. I ate a donut after and it was so sweet it felt acidic.
I eat dinner around 5:30 PM and then I don't eat and only drink water till 5:30 PM the next day. This going to sleep hungry is for the birds. I realized that prior to midnight invention days started and ended at sunset so a full day fast was sundown to sundown.
I don't disagree, but academia and government (which I realize are not always separate from corporate R&D) are enormous drivers of scientific progress. There's a lot of quackery out there which I think erroneously magnifies the conspiratorial suppressive power of the pharmaceutical industry.
My argument is simply this: doctors need more leverage to use cutting edge research in their practice. I am not in the medical field, and I don't know exactly how to accomplish this, but must surely lose a lot of organic ground-level experimentation at individual doctor-patient mutual consent, which would generate a wealth of epidemiological data with which to move medicine forward. It deprives patients of certain medical alternatives, and doctors of part of their scientific capacity as experimentalists.
The entire field of vaccinations began from an observation of smallpox immunity in the Turkish country side where folk wisdom was to rub scabs into superficial wounds of healthy children. When western doctors observed a stark decrease in the infection rate, this began experimentation that became the foundation of the modern practice. I don't think that this could be done today.
The extreme counterexample is the Tuskegee experiment, but the key element missing there was patient awareness of their own participation as an experimental control.
Hi, can you talk a bit more about this? I have extremely low iodine and have been trying to figure out how to address it, so your mention of iodine caught my attention.
Also, when you say iodine and apoptosis my first thought is cancer treatment— is that what you're implying?
The RDA for iodine is 150 micrograms. I treated my asthma (lungs use iodine too) with about 1mg of iodine daily and 250mg of magnesium - YMMV of course. I was taking kelp supplements but needed 6 a day to get the amount I wanted. Another source is Lugol's solution - a few drops in a cup of water is several mg. I also use Lugol's for healing cuts, scrapes, and scars.
Iodine has also been suggested as a cancer cure for many different types - some strains of breast cancer in particular. This is because there are a couple pathways leading to apoptosis that require iodine to function - turns out your mitochondria need iodine too.
The funniest thing I ran across in all this was an article about the link between kelp and reduced breast cancer risk. At the end they said this should be investigated further because the author knew kelp had high iodine content and thought that would be bad for people. In other words, we need to isolate the anti-cancer agent and commercialize it so you don't kill yourself with too much iodine. Funny because the iodine is likely the anti-cancer agent, and is not bad for you in the slightest.
1) Tanya is an oncologist
2) Cachexia != fasting. Not much you can do about cachexia, it is an end stage phenomenon where the tumor is hijacking essentially all incoming nutrition. Feed the patient, feed the goober.
3) reversing myeloid bias (I'm dubious about this, even though Gregor was not the kind of fast and loose player that would fudge counts) would, if true, enhance innate and adaptive responses (subject to a million caveats because Immunology Is Really Fucking Hard)
If patients consent to trials and enough evidence accumulates it will become the standard of care. Of course it's going to be tough to patent not eating so don't hold your breath.
Malnutrition can in turn harm the immune system. Where's the sweet spot? Who knows, and the fear of malpractice suits slows down progress.