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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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Discover How to Harness Your Hunger Hormone to Lose Weight

AHA Publisher — Fri, 20 Aug 2021 07:00:12 +0000

Stephanie Woods via NaturalHealth365 – Did you know that you have a “hunger hormone” which controls your desire to eat? It’s true. In fact, two hormones work in concert to keep your hunger in balance. One, ghrelin, turns your hunger on and the other, leptin, turns it off. When these two hormones are in perfect balance, you have a healthy appetite and are not inclined to overdo it. However, if one or both are not working as they should, it can cause you to chronically overeat, which can lead to obesity and health conditions that are linked to obesity. These TWO Hormones Regulate Your Appetite – Here Is How Ghrelin and leptin work together to let you know when you are hungry and when you are satiated. They are the regulators of your appetite. Ghrelin – This hormone tells the body when it needs to eat to prevent starvation and to encourage the intake of necessary fuel for energy. The stomach releases ghrelin, which acts quickly and should significantly decrease once you are full. Leptin – This hormone is the appetite off switch. It signals your brain that your body has consumed enough fuel and is now ready to begin burning fat for energy. It works in a more long-term capacity where ghrelin is more of a rapid rise and fall. Many issues can throw these hormones off balance. For example, health conditions, lifestyle choices, genetics, sleep habits, and obesity can affect how well or poorly hunger hormones function. What Is Leptin Resistance? Leptin is created in adipose tissue or fat cells. People who are overweight or obese have more fat cells and often have higher leptin levels in their bodies. This creates an environment where the body is constantly exposed to high levels of leptin, and the body often responds by building a resistance to it. This decreases, often dramatically, the hormone’s appetite suppression abilities. When the brain doesn’t receive that “I’m full” signal, it thinks that the body requires more food or it will starve. This leads it to continue sending the message to eat, which increases the fat cells, increasing the leptin, and causing the body to become even more resistant. It is a difficult cycle that isn’t easy to break. Here Are Some of the Best Ways to Get Your Hunger Hormones Under Control When your hunger hormones are out of balance, it is best to address both the potential for leptin resistance as well as malfunctioning ghrelin. Remove processed foods from your diet. Switch to healthy fats like olive oil, coconut oil, avocado oil Consume healthy carbs like whole grains, quinoa, and stone-ground whole wheat Opt for lean protein and healthy animal fats such as fatty fish (salmon, and sardines), pasture-raised, grass-fed beef, chicken, and lamb Choose plant-based proteins like legumes or spirulina Exercise regularly. Even moderate aerobic exercise can reduce leptin resistance Eliminate added sugar in all forms and high-fructose corn syrup from your diet. Get quality sleep every night. 8 to 10 hours of sleep is considered optimal, especially when increasing leptin sensitivity Stay hydrated. Plain (clean) water is always good, but broths and soups also count, and foods with a lot of water like salads, melon, and eggplant. Chew your food – very well. And, finally, look into the health benefits of intermittent fasting. Simply put, if you believe that your hunger hormones are working against you, talking with your integrative healthcare provider could get you on the right track to getting them under control. There are treatments available, and a good health coach can help you create a plan that works best for you. Sources for this article include: EndocrineWeb.com NIH.gov NIH.gov To read the original article click here.

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Do You Find Processed Foods Utterly Irresistible? Here’s Why

AHA Publisher — Mon, 05 Apr 2021 07:00:07 +0000

Lorie Johnson via CBN News – Many doctors call processed foods the number one enemy of our health. They are extremely high in calories, which is bad enough, but combined with the fact that a lot of people simply can’t stop eating them leads to a worldwide weight problem that’s only getting worse. Obesity can lead to a number of chronic health problems like heart disease, cancer, and depression to name just a few. In fact, the second leading risk factor for developing complications from Covid-19 behind age is obesity. Rapid Take-Over Processed foods barely existed just fifty years ago, yet now rake in about one trillion dollars each year and are projected to increase their market share by 4% annually in the coming years. In just a generation, we’ve witnessed these packaged products being virtually unseen at the local market to now making up ninety percent of grocery store shelves. Health experts say three-fourths of the calories most Americans consume come from processed foods. Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Michael Moss looked into why we as a culture have become increasingly obsessed with processed foods. He discovered it’s not an accident, but rather a deeply manipulative plan on the part of the food industry giants to make more money regardless of the health implications. “I’ve been crawling through the underbelly of the processed food industry for ten years now,” he told CBN News, “And I continue to be shocked by the level of their cunning, deviousness, if you will, in being able to figure out what draws us to the products…to not just like them…but want more and more.” Exploiting Our Weaknesses In his book, Hooked: Food, Free Will and How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions, Moss claims food companies intentionally make their products addictive by first understanding our vulnerabilities and then taking advantage of them. “Biologically, these deep instincts we have make us incredibly vulnerable to overeating,” he said. For example, our bodies are designed to naturally crave sugar, fat, and salt. Processed food is packed with highly condensed amounts of each, much more than we use in home cooking. “They get the brain excited,” Moss explained, “And it sends a signal saying, ‘Wow, Michael, I love that. Can I have some more of that?'” To feed that craving, food manufacturers can add som 56 different types of sugar to their products creating an expectation that everything we consume should taste sweet. “Our brain doesn’t say, ‘Oh wait a minute, Michael, you just ate two-thousand calories in that snack bag. Stop. Wait a minute.’ Your brain is going to be put to sleep and say, ‘OK, let’s have some more. Great taste,'” Moss said. Texture, Low Price, Lots of Choices Getting us hooked on great taste is only the beginning. The processed food industry also spends a lot of time and money engineering just the right texture in their foods and drinks. Smooth, bubbly, crunchy or an irresistible blend of different textures can trigger our brains to crave more. Food makers even have a term for it: “mouthfeel” and a ranking system. The greater the “mouthfeel,” the greater the consumption, the more money made. Getting the price down, often by using less healthy ingredients, is another strategy because it increases a product’s likeability. “But it’s also something that sends that signal to the brain, ‘Wow I love the cheapness of this food. I want more of it,'” Moss said. Food manufacturers understand we get excited by anything new. So they constantly add to an already wide variety, knowing it’ nearly impossible to resist all the choices. “It’s called the ‘smorgasbord effect,'” Moss explained, “And its why you can eat at a smorgasbord, fill up until you’re stuffed, but then look down the table and see something new and go, “OK, I can fit that in.'” Disguised As Healthy, Convenient These food giants take advantage of our desire to feel like we’re making healthy choices. Believe it or not, they also make some of our most popular diet foods using the same tricks to get us hooked. “But really when you looked at the ingredients and the nutrition they weren’t all that different from their full-calorie foods,” Moss said. Plastering healthy-sounding buzz words like “protein” and “fiber” on packages can also mislead. “And so they’re adding protein to sugary cereal that’s still probably not so healthy for you,” Moss said, “They are putting in lots of fiber in products and touting that on the label even though a lot of that fiber really doesn’t work to fill you up like fiber should.” Food companies exploit our desire to make eating easy. “Convenience is another one of those big driving forces,” Moss said. Protect Your Health So now that we understand the tricks of the trade, how do we defend ourselves? Whenever possible, cook at home from scratch. It doesn’t have to be complicated or time-consuming. For example, it only takes five minutes to cook fish in a pan on the stove while microwaving a sweet potato. Moss says the opposite of processed foods is whole foods. These are foods that closely resemble their natural form. They can generally be found around the perimeter of the grocery store such as in the produce, fish, meat, and dairy departments. Generally, the processed foods are in the center of the store. There are some exceptions, however, such as canned fish, tomatoes, and beans as well as frozen blueberries, raw nuts, and olives. To read the original article click here. For more articles from CBN News click here.

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“Hunger Hormone” Ghrelin Affects Monetary Decision Making

AHA Publisher — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 07:00:16 +0000

Endocrine Society via Newswise – WASHINGTON—Higher levels of the stomach-derived hormone ghrelin, which stimulates appetite, predict a greater preference for smaller immediate monetary rewards over larger delayed financial rewards, a new study finds. The study results will be presented at ENDO 2021, the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting. This research presents novel evidence in humans that ghrelin, the so-called “hunger hormone,” affects monetary decision making, said co-investigator Franziska Plessow, Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston. She said recent research findings in rodents suggested that ghrelin may play a part in impulsive choices and behaviors. “Our results indicate that ghrelin might play a broader role than previously acknowledged in human reward-related behavior and decision making, such as monetary choices,” Plessow said. “This will hopefully inspire future research into its role in food-independent human perception and behavior.” Ghrelin signals the brain for the need to eat and may modulate brain pathways that control reward processing. Levels of ghrelin fluctuate throughout the day, depending on food intake and individual metabolism. This study included 84 female participants ages 10 to 22 years: 50 with a low-weight eating disorder, such as anorexia nervosa, and 34 healthy control participants. Plessow’s research team tested blood levels of total ghrelin before and after a standardized meal that was the same for all participants, who had fasted beforehand. After the meal, participants took a test of hypothetical financial decisions, called the delay discounting task. They were asked to make a series of choices to indicate their preference for a smaller immediate monetary reward or a larger delayed amount of money, for instance, $20 today or $80 in 14 days. Healthy girls and young women with higher ghrelin levels were more likely to choose the immediate but smaller monetary reward rather than waiting for a larger amount of money, the researchers reported. This preference indicates more impulsive choices, Plessow said. The relationship between ghrelin level and monetary choices was absent in age-matched participants with a low-weight eating disorder. People with this eating disorder are known to have ghrelin resistance, and Plessow said their finding might be another indicator of a disconnect between ghrelin signaling and behavior in this population. The study received funding from the National Institutes of Health and a Charles A. King Trust Research Fellowship Award to Plessow. Naila Shiraliyeva, M.D., a research fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital, will present the study findings at the meeting. To read the original article click here.

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