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The Largest Study on Fasting in the World

The AHA! Team — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 06:06:32 +0000

Michael Greger M.D. FACLM via Nutrition Facts – The Buchinger-modified fasting program is put to the test. A century ago, fasting — “starvation, as a therapeutic measure” — was described as “the ideal measure for the human hog…” (Fat shaming is not a new invention in the medical literature.) I’ve covered fasting for weight loss extensively in a nine-video series, but what about all the other purported benefits? I also have a video series on fasting for hypertension, but what about psoriasis, eczema, type 2 diabetes, lupus, metabolic disorder, rheumatoid arthritis, other autoimmune disorders, depression, and anxiety? Why hasn’t it been tested more? One difficulty with fasting research is: What do you mean by fasting? When I think of fasting, I think of water-only fasting, but, in Europe, they tend to practice “modified therapeutic fasting,” also known as Buchinger fasting, which is more like a very low-calorie juice fasting with some vegetable broth. Some forms of fasting may not even cut calories at all. As you can see below and at 1:09 in my video The World’s Largest Fasting Study, Ramadan fasting, for example, is when devout Muslims abstain from food and drink from sunrise to sunset, yet, interestingly, they end up eating the same amount—or even more food—overall. The largest study on fasting to date was published in 2019. More than a thousand individuals were put through a modified fast, cutting daily intake down to about ten cups of water, a cup of fruit juice, and a cup of vegetable soup. They reported very few side effects. In contrast, the latest water-only fasting data from a study that involved half as many people reported nearly 6,000 adverse effects. Now, the modified fasting study did seem to try to undercount adverse effects by only counting reported symptoms if they were repeated three times. However, adverse effects like nausea, feeling faint, upset stomach, vomiting, or palpitations were “observed only in single cases,” whereas the water-only fasting study reported about 100 to 200 of each, as you can see below and at 2:05 in my video. What about the benefits though? In the modified fasting study, participants self-reported improvements in physical and emotional well-being, along with a surprising lack of hunger. Vast majority of those who came in with a pre-existing health complaint reported feeling better What’s more, the vast majority of those who came in with a pre-existing health complaint reported feeling better, with less than 10 percent stating that their condition worsened, as you can see in the graph below and at 2:24 in my video. However, the study participants didn’t just fast; they also engaged in a lifestyle program, which included being on a plant-based diet before and after the modified fast. If only the researchers had had some study participants follow the healthier, plant-based diet without the fast to tease out fasting’s effects. Oh, but they did! About a thousand individuals fasted for a week on the same juice and vegetable soup regimen and others followed a normocaloric (normal calorie) vegetarian diet. As you can see below and at 2:54 in my video, both groups experienced significant increases in both physical and mental quality of life, and, interestingly, there was no significant difference between the groups. In terms of their major health complaints—including rheumatoid arthritis; chronic pain syndromes, like osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia, and back pain; inflammatory and irritable bowel disease; chronic pulmonary diseases; and migraine and chronic tension-type headaches—the fasting group appeared to have an edge, but both groups did well, with about 80 percent reporting improvements in their condition and only about 4 percent reporting feeling worse, as you can see below and at 3:25 in my video. Now, this was not a randomized study; people chose which treatment they wanted to follow. So, maybe, for example, those choosing fasting were sicker or something. Also, the improvements in quality of life and disease status were all subjective self-reporting, which is ripe for placebo effects. There was no do-nothing control group, and the response rates to the follow-up quality of life surveys were only about 60 to 70 percent, which also could have biased the results. But extended benefits are certainly possible, given they all tended to improve their diets, as you can see below and at 4:00 in my video. They ate more fruits and vegetables, and less meats and sweets, and therein may lie the secret. “Principally, the experience of fasting may support motivation for lifestyle change. Most fasters experience clarity of mind Most fasters experience clarity of mind and feel a ‘letting go’ of past actions and experiences and thus may develop a more positive attitude toward the future.” As a consensus panel of fasting experts concluded, “Nutritional therapy (theory and practice) is a vital and integral component of fasting. After the fasting therapy and refeeding period, nutrition should follow the recommendations/concepts of a…plant-based whole-food diet…” If you missed the previous video, check out The Benefits of Fasting for Healing. Key Takeaways Fasting as a therapeutic measure has a long history, but its potential benefits beyond weight loss are numerous and underexplored. There are different types of fasting, including water-only fasting and modified therapeutic fasting (such as Buchinger fasting), which involves consuming low-calorie liquids like juice and vegetable broth. Ramadan fasting is also observed, where despite abstaining from food and drink during daylight hours, overall food intake may not decrease. Studies indicate that modified fasting may have fewer adverse effects compared to water-only fasting. Participants in a large modified fasting study reported minimal side effects like nausea or faintness, in contrast to more significant issues reported in water-only fasting studies. Participants in modified fasting studies reported improvements in both physical and emotional well-being, alongside reduced hunger. Those with pre-existing health conditions often experienced improvements, although a controlled comparison with a plant-based diet alone would help delineate fasting-specific effects. Combining fasting with a healthier lifestyle, such as eating a plant-based diet, appears beneficial. Both fasting and non-fasting groups in studies showed significant improvements in quality of life and disease symptoms, suggesting that dietary improvements might be a key factor. To read the original article click here.

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The Decision to Eat May Come Down to These Three Neurons

The AHA! Team — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 06:38:18 +0000

Rockefeller University via Newswise – Speaking, singing, coughing, laughing, yelling, yawning, chewing—we use our jaws for many purposes. Each action requires a complex coordination of muscles whose activity is managed by neurons in the brain. But it turns out that the neural circuit behind the jaw movement most essential to survival—eating—is surprisingly simple, as researchers from Rockefeller University recently described in a new paper in Nature. Christin Kosse and other scientists from the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics, headed by Jeffrey M. Friedman, have identified a three-neuron circuit that connects a hunger-signaling hormone to the jaw movements of chewing. The intermediary between these two is a cluster of neurons in a specific area of the hypothalamus that, when damaged, has long been known to cause obesity. Strikingly, inhibiting these so-called BDNF neurons not only leads animals to consume more food but also triggers the jaw to make chewing motions even in the absence of food or other sensory input that would indicate it was time to eat. And stimulating them has the opposite effect, reducing food intake and putting a halt to the chewing motions, resulting in an effective curb against hunger. The simple architecture of this circuit suggests that the impulse to eat may be more similar to a reflex than has been considered—and may provide a new clue about how the initiation of feeding is controlled. “It’s surprising that these neurons are so keyed to motor control,” says study first author Christin Kosse, a research associate in the lab. “We didn’t expect that limiting physical jaw motion could act as a kind of appetite suppressant.” More than a feeling? The impulse to eat is driven not just by hunger but by many factors. We also eat for pleasure, community, ritual, and habit; and smell, taste, and emotions can impact whether we eat too. In humans, eating can also be regulated by the conscious desire to consume more or less. The causes of obesity are equally complex, the result of a dynamic interplay of diet, environment, and genes. For example, mutations in several genes—including those coding for the hunger-controlling hormone leptin and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF)—lead to gross overeating, metabolic changes, and extreme obesity, suggesting that both factors normally suppress appetite. When Friedman’s team began this study, they sought to pinpoint the location of the BDNF neurons that curtail overeating. That’s eluded scientists for years, because BDNF neurons, which are also primary regulators of neuronal development, differentiation, and survival, are widespread in the brain. In the current study, they homed in on the ventromedial hypothalamus (VMH), a deep-brain region linked to glucose regulation and appetite. It’s well-documented that damage in the VMH can lead to overeating and eventually obesity in animals and people, just as mutated BDNF proteins do. Perhaps the VMH played a regulatory role in feeding behavior. They hoped that by documenting BDNF’s impact on eating behavior, they could find the neural circuit underpinning the process of transforming sensory signals into jaw motions. They subsequently found that BDNF neurons in the VMH—but not elsewhere—are activated when animals become obese, suggesting that they are activated when weight is gained in order to suppress food intake. Thus, when these neurons are missing, or there is a mutation in BDNF, animals become obese. Chewing without food In a series of experiments, the researchers then used optogenetics to either express or inhibit the BDNF neurons in the ventromedial hypothalamus of mice. When the neurons were activated, the mice completely stopped feeding, even when they were known to be hungry. Silencing them had the opposite effect: the mice began to eat—and eat and eat and eat, wolfing down nearly 1200% more food than they normally would in a short period of time. “When we saw these results, we initially thought that perhaps BDNF neurons encode valence,” Kosse says. “We wondered if when we regulated these neurons, the mice were experiencing the negative feeling of hunger or maybe the positive feeling of eating food that’s delicious.” But subsequent experiments disproved that idea. Regardless of the food given to the mice—either their standard chow or food packed with fat and sugar, like the mouse equivalent of a chocolate mousse cake—they found that activating the BDNF neurons suppressed food intake. And because hunger is not the only motivation to eat—as anyone unable to skip dessert can attest—they also offered high-palatable food to mice that were already well fed. The animals chowed down until the researchers inhibited the BDNF neurons, at which point they promptly stopped eating. “This was initially a perplexing finding, because prior studies have suggested that this ‘hedonic’ drive to eat for pleasure is quite different from the hunger drive, which is an attempt to suppress the negative feeling, or negative valence, associated with hunger by eating,” Kosse notes. “We demonstrated that activating BDNF neurons can suppress both drives.” Equally striking was that BDNF inhibition caused the mice to make chewing motions with their jaw, directed at any object in their vicinity even when food was not available. This compulsion to chew and bite was so strong that the mice gnawed on anything around them—the metal spout of a water feeder, a block of wood, even the wires monitoring their neural activity. The circuit But how does this motor-control switch connect to the body’s need or desire for food? By mapping the inputs and outputs of the BDNF neurons, the researchers discovered that BDNF neurons are the linchpin of a three-part neural circuit linking hormonal signals that regulate appetite to the movements required to consume it. At one end of the circuit are special neurons in the arcuate nucleus (Arc) region of the hypothalamus that pick up hunger signals such as the hormone leptin, which is produced by fat cells. (A high amount of leptin means the energy tank is full, while a low leptin level indicates it’s time to eat. Animals with no leptin become obese.) The Arc neurons project to the ventromedial hypothalamus, where their signals are picked up by the BDNF neurons, which then project directly to a brainstem center called Me5 that controls the movement of jaw muscles. “Other studies have shown that when you kill Me5 neurons in mice during development, the animals will starve because they’re unable to chew solid foods,” says Kosse. “So it makes sense that when we manipulate the BDNF neurons projecting there, we see jaw movements.” It also explains why damage in the VMH causes obesity, Friedman says. “The evidence presented in our paper shows that the obesity associated with these lesions is a result of a loss of these BDNF neurons, and the findings unify the known mutations that cause obesity into a relatively coherent circuit.” The findings suggest something deeper about the connection between sensation and behavior, he adds. “The architecture of the feeding circuit is not very different from the architecture of a reflex,” says Friedman. “That’s surprising, because eating is a complex behavior—one in which many factors influence whether you’ll initiate the behavior, but none of them guarantee it. On the other hand, a reflex is simple: a defined stimulus and an invariant response. In a sense, what this paper shows is that the line between behavior and reflex is probably more blurred than we thought. We hypothesize that the neurons in this circuit are the target of other neurons in the brain that convey other signals that regulate appetite.” This hypothesis is consistent with the work of early 20th century neurophysiologist Charles Sherrington, who pointed out that while cough is regulated by a typical reflex, it can be modulated by conscious factors, such as the desire to suppress it in a crowded theater. Kosse adds, “Because feeding is so essential to basic survival, this circuit regulating food intake may be ancient. Perhaps it was a substrate for ever-more complex processing that occurred as the brain evolved.” To that end, in the future the researchers want to explore the brainstem area known as Me5 with the idea that the jaw’s motor controls might be a useful model for understanding other behaviors, including compulsive, stress-related mouth actions such as gnawing on a pencil eraser or strands of one’s hair. “By examining these premotor neurons in the Me5, we might be able to understand whether there are other centers that project into the region and influence other innate behaviors, like BDNF neurons do for eating,” she says. “Are there stress-activated or other neurons that project into there as well?” Journal Link: Nature To read the original article click here.

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Eat to Beat Disease: How to Eat for Optimal Health

AHA Publisher — Fri, 12 Mar 2021 08:00:04 +0000

Dr. Josh Axe, DC, DMN, CNS – It’s no secret that what you eat has immense effect on your health, and it turns out you can actually eat to beat disease. No one know this better than Dr. William Li, MD, author of the book “Eat to Beat Disease: The New Science of How Your Body Can Health Itself.” Li has been featured on numerous media outlets, and he’s also the author of over 100 scientific publications, including research published in the New England Journal of Medicine and the Lancet. He’s also served on faculty at Harvard Medical School and has spent decades practicing medicine. I was lucky enough to talk with Dr. Li on my podcast, where he shared insights on how to combat cancer and other diseases through diet by activating the body’s five health defense systems. Here are his insights on how to eat to beat disease. The Study of Food One of the biggest breakthroughs for Dr. Li during his career was the realization that while the practice of medicine is vital and life-changing, a lot of his formal training focused on treating diseases and little on prevention. “When I went to medical school, I was really taught about health for maybe a few courses, and then everything else was about disease and what we should do to stamp it out, treat it, cut it burn it, give chemotherapy or antibiotics. That’s really how I entered the world of medical practice,” he says. “It is really just waiting for the horse to come out of the barn, which is illness, and then throwing the kitchen sink, ideally, smartly at it. “… I started to realize after many years of practice that the science was advancing so rapidly for treating disease and yet it didn’t seem like it was being applied to actually preventing disease, and you know prevention is really the mirror image of treatment.” Li realized that you can’t really use drugs as a prevention method so in order to focus on disease prevention, he shifted his attention to food. That led him to start researching the effects of food on health in the same manner medical researchers studied drugs, utilizing the same tools and methods to understand just how powerful food can be — and how to eat to beat disease. “I grew up uh eating traditional Asian cuisines and Mediterranean cuisines, whole foods freshly cooked not too much, designed to be really tasty. So I always felt that food was something that sustained me and sustained my well-being,” says Li. “… As an adult on my own eating in the cafeteria or hospital food, traveling around and going to restaurants, I started to realize we’ve actually lost touch with what our own history and cultures actually have given us, which is something pretty elemental that speaks to the body.” The focus for many today is on dieting, which can cause its own issues. Most diets are strict and exclusionary, and that can make them difficult for people to follow and sustain. “I just felt like there’s got to be a better way to do this, and what I discovered is when it comes to food and health, in fact it’s not just about the food — it’s about how our body responds to what we put inside it,” Li says. “You have to understand first before you choose any diet and any food combination how your body responds to keeping your health intact.” What Li found working for more than 30 years with Dr. Judah Folkman, a pioneer in the medical field, is that health is critically dependent on circulation. When circulation is excessive, it can feed diseases like cancer, while lack of circulation can cut off oxygen and nutrients to tissues so they die off — which in turn can promote disease. “Lab research has shown when a cancer that doesn’t have a blood supply suddenly gets one, that tiny little tumor can grow 16,000 times in only a couple of weeks. That’s enough to kill somebody. That’s led to the development of more than 18 medicines that cancer doctors use to cut off the blood supply to cancers,” Li says. “Using the same tools to discover medicines that can interfere to cut off a blood supply to starve a cancer, I’ve actually been able to test food, and when you test food in those systems, you can test them head-to-head, side-by-side, you wind up seeing that green tea, soy, lavender, citrus fruits, broccoli — they can stand up right next to cancer drugs.” The 5 Health Defense Systems The body is designed to protect health, while environmental factors all around are trying to get in. “Think of our body as a fortress. If you remember a medieval castle, you got the moat, you got the tall, sloping walls, you’ve got the little slits in the walls where people could shoot arrows out, you’ve got the little tiger traps, little holes with spikes in middle it, you got the winding staircases — all these things. A fortress is designed to protect itself from invaders,” says Li. “That is exactly our body except that rather than stone structures or spears, it’s actually biology.” There are five main health defense systems, according to Li: Blood or circulation/angiogenesis — The body grows blood vessels that feed every cell in the body. Stem cells in bone marrow — Help us heal from the inside out and regenerate our organs as we age or when we’re injured. Microbiome — This is the healthy gut bacteria, and humans have almost 40 trillion gut bacteria. “You know how a pregnant mom says, ‘I’m eating for two?’ We’re eating for 40 trillion, and that’s leading to a whole new insight into what we eat and how it impacts our gut defense,” says Li. DNA — Our DNA is hardwired to protect us against the assaults from the environment. Immune system — “It is more powerful than we ever thought because we now know that even an elderly person in their 80s, their immune system is so powerful that it can not only help resist infection, but it can help resist cancer as well.” “These five health defense systems are at play all the time, and when we sit down to eat something we are either building up and fortifying and boosting these defense systems or we’re taking it down and destroying it, ” says Li. “Everybody who thinks about food and health according to the traditional ways that have been everywhere for the last few decades, it’s about what program should I get into and what things should I cut out and what do I need to eat every single day. Here’s the news flash, which is good news: There’s no one size fits all. It’s about our individual preference, what our bodies seek, what we enjoy — and by the way, the enjoyment’s really important because if you can pick something that’s healthy that you enjoy, then you are already ahead of the game.” How to Eat to Beat Disease In “Eat to Beat Disease,” Dr. Li touches on 200 foods that can help boost immunity and activate the health defense systems. Here are some of the top foods to eat to beat disease: 1. Soy “There’s a belief out there that soy is actually dangerous for your health because it can cause breast cancer, and we believe this because there’s a plant estrogen in soy that we know is there, and we know that some types of human breast cancers can be activated by human estrogen. However, if you look at soy plant estrogen vs. human estrogen, they don’t look anything alike, and it turns out the science shows us that plant estrogens actually counter the effects of human estrogens so they actually block human estrogens almost like a drug does,” says Li. “There’s a study of 500 women who already have breast cancer, and it was studied that those women with breast cancer who actually ate more soy had better survival — they had about a 30 percent reduced risk of dying from breast cancer — and those who ate more soy were able to decrease the risk of having the cancer come back.” A note is to be wary of highly processed foods, including in soy products. A lot of soy milk is overly processed and contains unnecessary and sometimes harmful additives. That’s why I’m a proponent of natto, a fermented soy. It’s also why I’m in favor of fresh foods instead of buying juiced foods. Eating blueberries or an apple vs. buying blueberry juice or apple juice — it’s better to eat the whole, fresh fruit that hasn’t been processed or had any unhealthy ingredients added. Flaxseeds have a similar compound as soy that can protect against disease, along with lavender, vitex, clary sage. They can actually balance estrogen. 2. Tomatoes “There’s a lot of people out there saying tomatoes are harmful because they’re related to the nightshade plant,” says Li. “In fact, tomatoes don’t have any of the poisons of nightshade, and in fact there is a really important natural chemical called lycopene which is present in tomato. “Lycopene in tomato has been studied. There’s a study of 35,000 men, and they looked at their intake of tomatoes, cooked tomatoes, and found that those men who ate two to three servings of cooked tomatoes actually had up to a 30 percent lowered risk of developing prostate cancer. “In those men who did develop prostate cancer, the more tomatoes they ate, the less aggressive their prostate cancer because lycopene is anti-andorgenic, which means it cuts off the blood supply feeding cancers. It starves cancer in this really remarkable way.” 3. Green Tea Drink two-plus cups of green tea a day. It floods the system with natural bioactive chemicals that come from the tea plant that can actually cut off the blood supply to tumors, actually even kill cancer stem cells. It also protects blood vessels. 4. Tree Nuts Pistachios, almonds, cashews, macadamias and walnuts are some of the best options. “A major study of over 700 people from the American Society of Clinical Oncology showed that people who ate a couple handfuls of walnuts a day, about 15, a week actually had up to a 50 percent reduction in death if they had stage 3 colon cancer, and if they had their cancer successfully treated, it also markedly decreased the risk fo their cancer coming back,” shares Li. “A couple handfuls of nuts as a snack is a really great way to reduce your risk of cancer. “It turns out nuts not only have healthy omega-3 fatty acids that can cut off the blood supply feeding cancer cells, but they also have insoluble fiber. They’re a great source of fiber. “This insoluble fiber feeds our microbiome and activates our immune system. It lowers inflammation, which lowers cancer risk.” What Does Dr. Li Eat to Beat Disease? First and foremost, Dr. Li stresses “there’s no single food you need to eat all the time. It’s eating diversity, mostly plant-based foods, minimal processing like ultra-processed foods and cutting down on your meat also reduces your risk of cancer as well.” Instead, he says to focus on dietary patterns, such as the Mediterranean dietand traditional Asian diets. In addition, he likes to focus on plant-based foods and tries to build his meals around a vegetable. So what does Dr. Li typically eat to beat disease each day? Breakfast “When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is reach for either green tea or coffee,” Li says. “Coffee contains caffeic acid, chlorogenic acid, all these natural bioactives that are amazingly healthy for you. They increase your telomeres, which slows down cellular aging. They’re anti-androgenic so they cut off the blood supply feeding cancers, and they make our blood vessels actually healthier. Many lower the risk of dementia. “… I’ll have tea or coffee every day. Every day...

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