Intermittent Fasting for Brain Health,How to Fast Without Fasting

Calorie
Restriction
and
Intermittent
Fasting:
Is
There Any Difference?
Calorie
restriction
is
the
most
robust
life-extension
intervention known. (Full text.) Animals that have their food
severely restricted can live much longer — 50% or more longer
— than fully fed animals. Yet calorie restriction and
intermittent fasting may be nearly identical interventions.
Scientists have long researched and debated the mechanistic
cause of the effects of calorie restriction (CR) on lifespan.
The most common idea is that it reduces insulin and IGF-1
signaling, as well as mTOR activation, and that this sends the
animal’s physiology into extended longevity mode. Insulin and
the others are growth signals, so if this is true it agrees
well with the idea that there’s a growth vs longevity tradeoff.
One reason scientists have been keen to find answers is that
CR has downsides. Immune function declines, and it can promote
frailty. Body temperature decreases and people feel cold all
the time; worst of all, sex drive declines.
In addition, humans have great difficulty practicing CR; it
means strict discipline and often going hungry. After all, the
only way they can get animals to do it is by locking them in a
cage.
Hunger is required for CR benefits
Animals in a long-term CR regime are hungry all the time.
Measurements of animal responses when they cease restriction
indicate that prolonged CR does not diminish hunger, even
though the animals may have been in long-term energy balance.
Neuroendocrine profiles support the idea that animals under
CR are continuously hungry.
A key component of CR is the generation of hunger signals of
the kind that fat tissue normally generates. This also
suggests that hunger is important to the effects of CR.
Animals that are subject to every-other-day feeding, or
alternate day fasting, appear to have a nearly identical
lifespan extension to CR animals. And that’s not because they
ultimately eat less: they gorge on food on feeding days and
end up eating the same as ad lib fed animals.
So the effects of CR may not be due to fewer calories — or
fewer protein, carbohydrates, or fat — but could be due to
being hungry, which sends neuroendocrine signals
presumably play a role in life extension.
that
CR experiments are confounded by
intermittent fasting
Further strengthening this line of thought, CR contains a
significant component of intermittent fasting. Why is that?
For one, when fed, CR animals (mainly rodents) eat all their
food at once, because they’re so hungry. If they’re fed once a
day, then that means they fast nearly 24 hours every day.
Moreover — and you’ll love this one — because of the cost of
staffing labs to feed animals, they’re at least sometimes not
fed on weekends.
In some CR protocols there may be an inadvertent exposure to
IF because the animals are fed a large ration on Fridays (3×
the normal size) but not refed until Monday. Potentially then
the animals may eat all the food on the first day and then be
exposed to fasting until the next feed on Monday. The CR
protocol would then be confounded by an IF exposure.
Unfortunately the exact feeding procedures are not always
detailed in papers that describe CR experiments. Moreover,
these protocols are generally employed to reduce the staffing
costs of feeding animals at the weekend.
A further piece of evidence that CR has been “contaminated” by
fasting effects is that fat tissue seems to have a necessary,
inverse connection to longer life.
Caloric restriction produces a variety of biological effects,
including retardation of growth and development as well as a
decrease in fertility. However, the primary factor in the
life-extending effect of caloric restriction seems to be a
reduction in adipose tissue.
Therefore it’s possible that the only “magical” thing CR is
doing is stripping the fat off of CR animals and keeping them
very lean.
Taking all in all, we have:
hunger may be very important to CR’s beneficial effects
intermittently fasted animals live longer but don’t eat
less food overall
CR experimental protocols may be seriously compromised
by inadvertent intermittent fasting
the primary factor in life extension by CR may be a
reduction in fat tissue
Intermittent fasting may
lifespan extension of CR
give
Given all that I’ve listed, it appears that you can get all of
the lifespan-extending benefits of calorie restriction just
through intermittent fasting.
Fasting
causes hunger, which may be the “secret” to CR
doesn’t have the downsides of CR like frailty or loss of
libido
can reduce fat tissue
and may be just CR in disguise
You read it here first: CR is just intermittent fasting in
disguise, and you don’t need to reduce calories to get the
benefits. Just periodic intermittent fasting.
PS: For more on intermittent fasting and
aging, see my book, Stop the Clock.
PPS: You can support this site by
purchasing through my Supplements Buying
Guide for Men. No extra cost to you.
Intermittent
Brain Health
Fasting
for
Intermittent fasting and calorie restriction induce the
process of autophagy, the cellular self-cleansing process that
rids cells of junk. Autophagy notably declines with age,
leading to a decreased ability to clear damage, and since
aging just is an increase in damage, the decline in autophagy
leads to even more damage in a vicious cycle.
The decline in autophagy has implications for the brain, as
brain disorders like Alzheimer’s are characterized by
increased amounts of junk molecules, such as beta amyloid and
lipofuscin. [1. Hardy, John, and Dennis J. Selkoe. “The
amyloid hypothesis of Alzheimer’s disease: progress and
problems on the road to therapeutics.” Science297.5580 (2002):
353-356.]
Fasting and brain function
Could intermittent fasting help protect against a decline in
brain function? Yes, it could.
Consider that a drug that induces autophagy is neuroprotective
and decreased the accumulation of misfolded, junk
proteins.[2. Tsvetkov, Andrey S., et al. “A small-molecule
scaffold induces autophagy in primary neurons and protects
against toxicity in a Huntington disease model.” Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences 107.39 (2010):
16982-16987.]
But we can get the same or similar results without a drug.
Short-term
fasting
induces
profound
neuronal
autophagy.[3. Alirezaei, Mehrdad, et al. “Short-term fasting
induces profound neuronal autophagy.” Autophagy 6.6 (2010):
702-710.]
Disruption of autophagy—a key homeostatic process in which
cytosolic components are degraded and recycled through
lysosomes—can cause neurodegeneration in tissue culture and
in vivo. Up-regulation of this pathway may be
neuroprotective, and much effort is being invested in
developing drugs that cross the blood brain barrier and
increase neuronal autophagy. One well-recognized way of
inducing autophagy is by food restriction, which up-regulates
autophagy in many organs including the liver; but current
dogma holds that the brain escapes this effect, perhaps
because it is a metabolically-privileged site. …we show that
short-term fasting leads to a dramatic up-regulation in
neuronal autophagy…
Our data lead us to speculate that
sporadic fasting might represent a simple, safe and
inexpensive means to promote this potentially-therapeutic
neuronal response.
How does this work? The answer is simple: in the absence of
food, the body needs certain constituents to maintain normal
function. For energy, it breaks down fat — obviously, since
you lose fat when you don’t eat.
The body also requires amino acids, the constituents of
protein molecules. Autophagy breaks down proteins to supply
amino acids, and in something of a miracle of biological
function, it preferentially selects misfolded and nonfunctional proteins for destruction.
Hence increasing autophagy through fasting leads to better
brain health.[4. Anson, R. Michael, et al. “Intermittent
fasting dissociates beneficial effects of dietary restriction
on glucose metabolism and neuronal resistance to injury from
calorie intake.” Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences100.10 (2003): 6216-6220.]
Ghrelin, the hunger hormone
A recent study found that the hormone ghrelin stimulates
autophagy in neurons (brain cells).[5. Ferreira-Marques,
Marisa, et al. “Caloric restriction stimulates autophagy in
rat cortical neurons through neuropeptide Y and ghrelin
receptors activation.”Aging 8.7 (2016).]
Ghrelin is known as the hunger hormone and has a central role
in the regulation of feeding.[6. Nakazato, Masamitsu, et al.
“A role for ghrelin in the central regulation of feeding.”
Nature 409.6817 (2001): 194-198.]
This all makes sense: fasting stimulates hunger through the
increase in ghrelin, which in turn stimulates autophagy.
Another implication of the role of ghrelin in hunger and
autophagy is that if you actually feel hungry, your autophagy
rate has likely gone way up — a good thing. So if you get
hungry while fasting, just realize that you’re promoting a
very healthful process in your body — not to mention the
promotion of fat loss.
Insulin, fasting, and autophagy
It turns out that other hormones are important to stimulating
autophagy too. A group investigating a cell-culture model of
autophagy found that omitting a certain supplemental nutrient
formula from the culture potently induced autophagy.[7. Young,
Jessica E., Refugio A. Martinez, and Albert R. La Spada.
“Nutrient deprivation induces neuronal autophagy and
implicates reduced insulin signaling in neuroprotective
autophagy activation.” Journal of Biological Chemistry 284.4
(2009): 2363-2373.]
By a process of elimination, they discovered that the absence
of one ingredient in the cell-culture supplement caused a
large increase in autophagy, and that ingredient was the
hormone insulin.
Insulin is produced in response to carbohydrates and protein
in food. (Ingestion of fat causes little or no increase in
insulin.) Fasting produces a potent and swift drop in insulin
levels.
In our era of high-carb food and 24/7 food availability, most
people’s insulin levels never drop much, leading to insulin
resistance and obesity. They never go long enough without
food, especially carbohydrates, to see much of a drop in
insulin.
This has implications for aging. Eating all the time will
accelerate the aging process.
The brains of overweight people show much more shrinkage and
are functionally ten years older than the brains of lean
people.[8. https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/brains-of-overw
eight-people-ten-years-older-than-lean-counterparts-at-middleage]
This could be due to inflammation caused by excess fat tissue,
or through insulin levels that are always high, or some other
mechanism(s).
Fasting at least some of the time is necessary for good brain
health and slowing the aging process.
My speculation is that even someone who fasts only 12 hours a
day, i.e. between dinner and breakfast, would have a
dramatically lower chance of brain disorders. These days, most
people don’t do that.
You could greatly increase brain health by fasting longer,
such as 16 hours or more, say from dinner until lunchtime the
next day. Or longer, even 24 hours or more.
Conclusion
Autophagy declines with age, leading to accumulation of
junk in the neurons of the brain
Increased junk is implicated in brain disorders like
Alzheimer’s
Fasting strongly increases autophagy in neurons
Both the presence of ghrelin and the absence of insulin
are implicated in increased autophagy
Fasting regularly will improve brain health and lessen
the risk of cognitive decline and brain disorders
PS: Check out my Supplements Buying Guide
for Men. Intermittent fasting is an
integral part of my anti-aging program in
my book, Stop the Clock.
How to Fast Without Fasting
Intermittent fasting, discussed many times on this site, is a
potent anti-aging and health-promoting intervention. It lowers
insulin and glucose levels, and therefore can be used to treat
diabetes and for fat loss. Nevertheless, fasting requires
going without food, which many people are unwilling — or
possibly unable, in some cases — to do.
Is there a
workaround? Yes… here’s how to fast without fasting.
The effects of fasting
What does intermittent fasting do that’s so beneficial? It
appears that the main way that short-term fasting benefits
health is by lowering insulin levels. The mobilization of fat
stores — lipolysis — that greatly accelerates during fasting
appears to be due to lower insulin levels, and not to changes
in blood glucose (sugar) levels. [1. Klein, S. A. M. U. E. L.,
et al. “Progressive alterations in lipid and glucose
metabolism during short-term fasting in young adult men.”
American Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology And Metabolism
265.5 (1993): E801-E806, Klein, S. A. M. U. E. L., O. Bryan
Holland, and ROBERT R. Wolfe. “Importance of blood glucose
concentration in regulating lipolysis during fasting in
humans.” American Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology And
Metabolism 258.1 (1990): E32-E39.]
Besides increasing lipolysis or fat-burning, lowering insulin
levels also greatly increases the rate of autophagy, the
cellular self-cleansing process that rids cells of junk and
that is so important to fighting aging.
Fasting also increases the production of ketones, which
benefit metabolic and brain health.
So how can you get these effects of fasting without fasting?
You do this through restricting carbohydrates.
Carbohydrate restriction gives many
of the benefits of fasting
Carbohydrate restriction, i.e. a very low carbohydrate
ketogenic diet (VLCKD), or in this case, a zero-carbohydrate
diet, was found to account for about 70% of the metabolic
response to fasting. That is, merely refraining from eating
carbohydrates gives most of the benefits of fasting in terms
of lower glucose and insulin. [2. Nuttall, Frank Q., Rami M.
Almokayyad, and Mary C. Gannon. “Comparison of a carbohydratefree diet vs. fasting on plasma glucose, insulin and glucagon
in type 2 diabetes.” Metabolism 64.2 (2015): 253-262.]
In another study, a group of volunteers fasted for 84 hours
(3.5 days), or fasted for that length of time and received a
lipid infusion such that they got all the calories they
needed. The scientists found that there were no differences
in “plasma glucose, free fatty acids, ketone bodies, insulin,
and epinephrine concentrations” between fasting and nonfasting conditions.[3. Klein, S. A. M. U. E. L., and ROBERT R.
Wolfe. “Carbohydrate restriction regulates the adaptive
response to fasting.” American Journal of PhysiologyEndocrinology and Metabolism 262.5 (1992): E631-E636.]
The authors conclude, “These results demonstrate that
restriction of dietary carbohydrate, not the general absence
of energy intake itself, is responsible for initiating the
metabolic response to short-term fasting.” [My emphasis.]
Now, I might not go so far as these scientists as to say that
the entire response to intermittent fasting is due to absence
of dietary carbohydrate. Another study cited above found that
carbohydrate restriction accounted for about 70% of the
response to fasting, not 100%.
There may be other parameters that the study didn’t observe,
IGF-1 for example, or increased rates of autophagy. But it’s
clear that restricting carbohydrates accounts for a lot of the
changes seen in intermittent fasting.
I suspect that the additional benefits of fasting come from
lack of protein intake.
Radically restricting carbohydrates results in the production
of ketones, and ketones stimulate autophagy, which is one of
the important benefits of fasting.[4. Finn, Patrick F., and J.
Fred Dice. “Ketone bodies stimulate chaperone-mediated
autophagy.” Journal of Biological Chemistry 280.27 (2005):
25864-25870.] So here’s another way that reducing carbs
effectively imitates fasting.
Intermittent fasting also works by reproducing many of the
effects of calorie restriction, the most robust life-extending
intervention known. [5. Mattson, Mark P., and Ruiqian Wan.
“Beneficial effects of intermittent fasting and caloric
restriction on the cardiovascular and cerebrovascular
systems.”The Journal of nutritional biochemistry 16.3 (2005):
129-137.]
And in turn, restriction of carbohydrates is the most
effective way to mimic calorie restriction.[6. Klement, Rainer
J. “Mimicking caloric restriction: what about macronutrient
manipulation? A response to Meynet and Ricci.” Trends in
molecular medicine 20.9 (2014): 471-472.]
The conclusion must be that carbohydrate restriction confers
most of the benefits of intermittent fasting.
What if you combine a very-low carbohydrate diet with bouts of
intermittent fasting? That’s exactly what I do, and it should
give synergistic benefits.
If you start from a base of low-carb eating, and then fast for
a period of time, this should more strongly induce ketosis and
lower insulin levels, and more strongly increase the rate of
autophagy and lipolysis (fat-burning).
How to implement a low-carbohydrate
diet + intermittent fasting
The main source of dietary carbohydrates are refined grains
and starches. These should be omitted entirely, so that means
no bread, tortillas, pasta, breakfast cereal, rice, anything
with sugar such as soda.
Large sources of carbohydrates are also found in starches such
as potatoes.
Green leafy vegetables, while they contain carbohydrates, are
such poor sources of them and so high in fiber that they may
be eaten freely.
The main source of calories would consist of meat, eggs,
cheese, cream, butter, yogurt (unsweetened, natch). If you
drink alcohol, be moderate and stay with red wine and plain
highballs, which have no sugar.
Don’t eat anything after dinner, and then again not until 16
to 18 hours have passed, say until 10 A.M. to noon the
following day. That’s your fast.
You could do that daily, although if you lift weights, don’t
begin a fast until at least 24 hours after your workout. When
you lift weights, muscles are primed for growth, and need
nutrients to do so. If you want to get those gains, you must
feed your muscles.
On my current schedule of approximately twice a week workouts,
I can still manage several 16-hour fasts a week.
Hopefully, I’m getting potent anti-aging and health-giving
synergy between my low-carbohydrate way of eating and
intermittent fasting.
PS: Check out my Supplements Buying Guide
for Men. And fasting is an integral part
of my anti-aging program, as you can read
in my book Stop the Clock.
Fasting and the Mechanism of
Longevity
Self-cleansing and aging
Arguably, the most important driver of aging is the decline in
autophagy, the cellular self-cleansing process that rids cells
of junk.
Aging just is damage, yet at younger ages, both humans and
animals are capable of clearing up the damage and renewing
their tissues. They do this through autophagy, which regularly
turns over — that is, breaks down — proteins, organelles, and
other damaged cellular constituents. [1. Bergamini, Ettore.
“Autophagy: a cell repair mechanism that retards ageing and
age-associated
diseases
and
can
be
intensified
pharmacologically.”Molecular aspects of medicine 27.5 (2006):
403-410.]
The process of ageing denotes a post-maturational
deterioration of cells and organisms with the passage of
time, an increased vulnerability to challenges and prevalence
of age-associated diseases, and a decreased ability to
survive. Causes may be found in an enhanced production of
reactive oxygen species (ROS) and oxidative damage and not
completed housekeeping, with an accumulation of altered ROShypergenerating organelles in older cells. It has been shown
that autophagy is the only tier of defence against the
accumulation of effete mitochondria and peroxisomes; that
functioning of autophagy declines with increasing age and
determines cell and individual lifespan; that autophagy can
be intensified by drugs; and that the pharmacological
intensification of autophagy may be a big step towards
retardation of ageing and prevention and therapy of ageassociated diseases including neurodegeneration.
Calorie
restriction,
the
most
robust
life-extension
intervention known, requires autophagy to work. [1.Hansen,
Malene, et al. “A role for autophagy in the extension of
lifespan by dietary restriction in C. elegans.” PLoS Genet 4.2
(2008): e24, Jia, Kailiang, and Beth Levine. “Autophagy is
required for dietary restriction-mediated life span extension
in C. elegans.” Autophagy 3.6 (2007): 597-599.]
Life-extending
require autophagy
interventions
So at least one thing that calorie restriction does to extend
lifespan is increase autophagy. When animals lack food,
autophagy ramps up to increase the supply of nutrients,
especially amino acids, which it gets from breaking down
cellular waste.
Other interventions that increase lifespan also appear to
depend on increased autophagy. For example, FIRKO — fat
insulin receptor knockout — mice have extended lifespan. These
mice lack an insulin receptor in adipose tissue. [2. Blüher,
Matthias, Barbara B. Kahn, and C. Ronald Kahn. “Extended
longevity in mice lacking the insulin receptor in adipose
tissue.” Science299.5606 (2003): 572-574.]
Among the consequences of lacking an insulin receptor in fat
tissue is a 60% reduction in that tissue, leading to 20% lower
body weight, while calories ingested were more than 50%
greater than controls. [4. Blüher, Matthias, et al. “Adipose
tissue selective insulin receptor knockout protects against
obesity and obesity-related glucose intolerance.”Developmental
cell 3.1 (2002): 25-38.]
Wait a minute. These animals ate a lot more than controls but
also lived longer. What about calorie restriction?
These animals have lower insulin levels, and that leads to
higher levels of autophagy. [5. Bergamini, Ettore, et al.
“Insulin, food restriction and the extension of lifespan: the
mechanism
of
longevity.”
European
endocrinology150.1 (2004): 95.]
journal
of
Increased autophagy allows these animals to clear damage more
effectively and thus to live longer.
One of the main themes of my book Stop the Clock is that
living longer and in good health requires that you counteract
the decline in autophagy that happens to everyone as they age.
How
to
increase
autophagy
to
youthful levels
How do you increase autophagy?
Intermittent fasting. This is probably the best way to
increase autophagy. While in young humans and animals,
an overnight fast may be sufficient to ramp up
autophagy, the decline in the process with age means
that a fast longer than overnight is required. Fasting
for 16 to 24 hours should do the job, and even longer
may be better.
Drink water at night. This unusual way of increasing
autophagy works by diluting the bloodstream. Leucine is
the amino acid regulator of autophagy, and when it rises
sufficiently due to the breakdown of tissues, autophagy
stops. By drinking water at night (during fasting), the
leucine concentration in blood drops, thus restarting
autophagy.
Calorie restriction. Just mentioned in passing. Not many
people want to do this, including me. But your BMI will
be down around 19 or 20. Probably requires eating under
2,000 calories each and every day. fasting is easier.
Autophagy boosters. Certain substances, calorie
restriction mimetics, boost the process of autophagy.
These substances include hydroxycitrate, resveratrol,
nicotinamide (vitamin B3), and green tea extract. Taking
them during a fast will boost autophagy even more than
fasting alone.
Another interesting way to stimulate autophagy and extend
lifespan uses the drug Acipimox, a derivative of niacin.
[6. Tornvall, P., and G. Walldius. “A comparison between
nicotinic acid and acipimox in hypertriglyceridaemia—effects
on serum lipids, lipoproteins, glucose tolerance and
tolerability.” Journal of internal medicine 230.5 (1991):
415-421.]
Once a week fasting with Acipimox
or niacin
Acipimox does the same thing as niacin, only with less of a
flushing effect, which puts many niacin users off.
Unfortunately, it appears that Acipimox is not available in
the U.S., so niacin must be used if you live here.
In rats, fasting once weekly and receiving Acipimox on the day
of the fast was as effective in increasing autophagy to
youthful levels as fasting every other day without the drug.
[7. Cavallini, Gabriella, Alessio Donati, and Ettore
Bergamini. “Antiaging therapy: a novel target for
antilipolytic drugs.” Mini reviews in medicinal chemistry 14.7
(2014): 551-556.]
Huge, if you ask me. Every other day fasting is a strenuous
burden unlikely to be embraced by most people (like me). But
fasting once a week and taking Acipimox is just as effective
and much more doable.
Furthermore, niacin ought to be equally effective.
I tried this yesterday. About 16 hours into what proved to be
an 18-hour fast, I took a 500 mg tab of extended-release
niacin. I has quite a bit of flushing and itching, and while
not disastrous or painful, it’s kind of unpleasant.
Supposedly, the flushing goes away with continued use.
Intermittent fasting may be the strongest, most effective
anti-aging intervention we currently have. The logic behind
this reasoning is that it does the same thing that calorie
restriction does in terms of physiology, and calorie
restriction is the most effective anti-aging intervention in
lab animals.
Boosting the physiological effects of intermittent fasting
with the substances noted above should make it even more
effective.
Intermittent fasting directly counteracts the mechanism of
aging.
PS: Check out my book, Stop the Clock, for much more on how to
fight aging.
PPS: Check out my Supplements Buying Guide for Men, where
you’ll find some of these autophagy boosters.
Intermittent
Fasting
Decreases Heart Disease Risk
Intermittent fasting — the practice of going without food for
any period of time longer than about 12 hours, including sleep
time — has many benefits. Among them are fat loss, better
insulin sensitivity, and a profound anti-aging effect — and
intermittent fasting decreases heart disease risk,
dramatically.
Mormons have less heart disease
A study done among Mormons also found that fasting has a huge
effect on heart disease, the number one killer in the U.S..
Those Mormons who fast lowered their risk by nearly 50%.(1)
The study looked at people in Utah who presented at an
angiography clinic. Data was collected and analyzed.
Mormons commend fasting at least once a month.
Among the Mormons who practiced fasting, the odds ratio of
heart disease was 0.55, when compared to other Mormons who did
not fast.
Interestingly, among adherents of other religions, fasting
reduced the risk of heart disease even more, by 77%.
The authors of the study offer several possible explanations
for their findings.
How intermittent fasting prevents
heart disease
1. Fasting is associated with other beneficial behaviors, all
linked by self-control. Most people won’t fast at all and
believe it too difficult — even though it isn’t. But those who
do fast probably do have more self-discipline, and this
carries over into other behaviors, such as eating less
overall.
2. Metabolic factors — the authors believe this is the best
explanation. Fasting results in better insulin sensitivity,
and insulin resistance is strongly associated with heart
disease.
3. Hormesis. Fasting activates cellular stress-defense
mechanisms, which in animals results in longer life.
4. Fasting is a surrogate marker for other behaviors. But the
fact that fasting was strongly associated with less heart
disease among other religions, “suggests that the observed
benefit arises from fasting and not from a cluster of
religion-associated behaviors.”
5. Another possibility, not mentioned in the study, is that
intermittent fasting increases autophagy in arteries. Older
people have impaired autophagy, the cellular self-cleansing
process that rids cells of junk and keeps them in a youthful
state.
Age is the most significant risk factor for heart
disease. It’s been shown that impaired autophagy causes
reduced endothelial function — meaning that arteries become
old and not as useful.(2) People who have had a heart attack
show lower levels of autophagy.
Therefore, if you boost your cellular self-cleansing through
intermittent fasting, you end up with cleaner, younger,
elastic, and unplugged arteries.
Years ago, I read the book by Dr. Joel Fuhrman on fasting (I
no longer have it so I can’t quote it). Dr. Fuhrman claimed
that fasting could cure coronary artery disease, and claimed
some actual cures. The idea is that fasting almost literally
melts away lipid deposits in arteries.
No doubt it’s a bit more complicated than that, but it leaves
open the idea that fasting could not only prevent, but cure,
heart disease. I know that if I had heart disease, I’d be
fasting like a yogi on a mountain top.
Doctors won’t tell you to fast
Of course, if you do have heart disease, or just want to
prevent it, don’t think your doctor will suggest intermittent
fasting. It’s just not on the medical radar. You’ll be offered
drugs instead — statins, probably.
There’s no money whatsoever in promoting intermittent fasting,
either for a doctor or for drug companies. (Which is one
reason they won’t tell you about the dangers of iron.)
Intermittent fasting isn’t on the radar of almost anyone
either, doctor or not. Most people seem to believe that if you
miss a meal, you’re “starving”. We’re conditioned to eat every
few hours, whether we’re hungry or not.
So, if you want to prevent the number one cause of death and
disability, try intermittent fasting. A 16/8 schedule is easy
to implement, can be done daily or however often you want, and
will do the job.
PS: More on how intermittent fasting
reduces disease and stops aging is in my
book, Stop the Clock: The Optimal AntiAging Strategy.
PS: Check out my Supplements Buying Guide
for Men.
Stop Eating All the Time
The Most
Advice
Important
Anti-Aging
Once when I was talking to someone about my book on aging and
the actions that we can take to slow it, this person asked me
what was my most important piece of anti-aging advice, if I
had to put it in one sentence.
My reply: “Stop eating all the time.”
This piece of advice is also important when it comes to
staying lean and/or losing fat.
Eating and Aging
The most robust (non-genetic) intervention known for
prolonging the lifespan of lab animals is calorie
restriction (CR). Animals that have their food restricted from
10 to 50% of that of fully-fed animals live much longer, in
some cases 50% longer.
Many theories have arisen as to why CR increases lifespan. One
theory is that CR results in less fat tissue, and that this is
crucial to longer life.(1) Other theories have to do with
repressed insulin signaling (2) and/or increased autophagy,
the cellular self-cleansing process that rids cells of
junk.(3) Likely all of these theories are related to each
other mechanistically — you can’t have greater autophagy
without reduced insulin signaling, which in turn leads to
lower fat mass, for example.
I like to focus on autophagy, because this is a marker within
our control to some extent.
Aging is characterized by a decline in the amount and
amplitude of autophagy, which allows increased amounts of
cellular damage and junk to accumulate.
Autophagy is strongly cyclical, rising and falling over
periods of hours and days. Eating strongly decreases
autophagy, and fasting increases it. I hope you see where I’m
going with this.
If aging means less autophagy and more damage accumulation,
and fasting increases autophagy, then fasting fights aging.
In fact, intermittent fasting is the most potent anti-aging
strategy available.
Now, if we eat all the time, we never enter the fasting state
and never up-regulate autophagy.
Eating constantly or every few hours, or “grazing” as it’s
called, is one of the most potent pro-aging actions available.
So stop eating all the time.
How often does eating have to be to constitute “all the time”?
To answer that, it’s helpful to look at what people did in the
old days — you know, about 40 years ago, before the obesity
epidemic started. Or even more so, before the era of
industrial processed food and cheap fast-food restaurants.
It was common for people to fast for 12 hours daily, from
dinner in the evening until breakfast the next morning. Many
mothers often told their children, “Better eat your dinner
because there won’t be anything until breakfast.” My mom did
anyway.
As we age, insulin resistance increases,
accumulates, and autophagy declines.
fat
tissue
But we can fix that to a great extent by fasting longer than
12 hours. By 16 to 18 hours, autophagy proceeds at a riproaring pace, clearing out damage making cells young again.
Eating and Obesity
Obesity likely has many causes, all working together to
produce it.
But one factor that doesn’t get enough attention is the
frequency with which we eat. When we eat constantly, insulin
never drops by much, and so lipolysis, the exit of fat from
fat cells, can’t take place.
Contrary to popular belief, energy expenditure has not
decreased in recent years and is similar in modern people to
that of wild, non-overweight, mammals.(4) Westerners seem to
expend the same amount of energy as hunter-gatherers.(5)
Hunter-gatherers of course eat different food from Westerners,
but they also don’t eat all the time.
Furthermore, energy expenditure can increase with fasting.(6)
And our distant ancestors way back in the 1960s had a far
lower rate of obesity while eating, in general, lots of crappy
food. They weren’t interested in “health food”, but largely
managed to keep obesity at bay anyway.
The lesson is clear, to stay lean and/or lose weight, stop
eating all the time.
Current mainstream advice on losing weight seems to be to eat
constantly in order to keep your metabolism up. (I say “seems
to be” because I avoid reading mainstream health advice where
possible — most of it is bad for health.)
In fact, the admonition to eat constantly, or graze, is the
kind of BS weight-loss advice that’s perpetuating the obesity
epidemic.
Can you really lose weight by eating more often? No, you
can’t. Not only will someone who eats constantly fail to lose
much weight, but he’ll promote aging and the diseases that go
with it.
PS: Check out my Supplements Buying
Guide for Men.
The
Sweet
Spot
Intermittent Fasting
for
Lower insulin means greater fat
loss
Intermittent fasting — the practice of going without food for
some (undefined) period of time — has many health benefits. It
can help prevent heart disease, speed fat loss, and slow or
reverse aging.
There are a number of physiological mechanisms involved. It
reduces inflammation and oxidative stress, leads to increased
numbers and quality of mitochondria, and increases autophagy,
the cellular self-cleansing process.
Many of the beneficial effects are entwined with lower levels
of insulin.
The function of insulin is to promote energy storage and the
growth of the organism. When insulin is increased, fat is
stored in fat cells, and other cells take up glucose from the
blood.
Most importantly, when insulin is increased, lipids can’t
leave fat cells. Since fat loss is all about getting lipids
out of fat cells to be burned, losing fat requires some
attention to how diet, exercise, and fasting cause insulin to
rise or fall.
Take a look at the following graph, taken from a paper by
Volek et al. It shows that even small increases in insulin,
within the normal range, virtually abolish lipolysis, or the
breakdown of fat.
This is where intermittent fasting comes in, as one of its
effects is to lower insulin levels and thus increase
lipolysis. The question is, how long do you need to fast
before insulin comes down?
Eating causes insulin to rise, the amount of the rise being
dependent on a number of factors, such as type and amount of
food eaten and the insulin sensitivity of the person doing the
eating.
High amounts of carbohydrates and lower insulin sensitivity
cause a greater rise in insulin.
Insulin increases and stays higher for several hours after
eating – that is, during the “fed” state. The absence of food
during fasting lowers insulin.
What duration of fasting lowers insulin and to what extent?
The Sweet Spot for Intermittent
Fasting
Ted Naiman, M.D., whose great site is Burn Fat Not Sugar,
posted the following graph recently (used with permission).
The information comes from a paper, “Progressive alterations
in lipid and glucose metabolism during short-term fasting in
young adult men”.(1)
Dr. Naiman suggested that “the sweet spot for intermittent
fasting” occurs between 18 and 24 hours of fasting, since this
is the time period that sees the greatest drop in insulin and
increase in lipolysis – the breakdown of fat.
Eyeballing the graph and comparing it to the one above from
Volek shows that at an insulin level of about 40 pmol/L,
lipolysis should be proceeding briskly.
There has been lots of guesswork as to how long intermittent
fasts should last. One very obvious but usually non-verbalized
reason is that most people don’t want to fast very long, and
after a certain time most people get hungry. But they do want
to lose fat.
A very common duration of intermittent fasting, one that I
often do, is about 16 hours. A 16-hour fast involves skipping
only one meal, typically breakfast, so it’s easy enough. A
shorter fast than this wouldn’t involve missing even one meal,
so we probably couldn’t characterize it as a real intermittent
fast.
But according to the information above, in terms of insulin
level, the fast is only really getting going at 16 hours.
Extending it further than this ramps the drop in insulin and
the increase in lipolysis.
If you can extend your fast into the afternoon, you get more
benefits, and a 24-hour fast would do even more.
One thing I would add to Dr. Naiman’s “sweet spot” is that
duration matters for insulin level. In other words, it’s not
just a matter of achieving a low insulin level, but how long
you stay there. Therefore, longer fasts can be of great
benefit – though inconvenient in terms of hunger and a normal
life.
Fasting promotes autophagy
One of the great benefits of intermittent fasting that I’ve
written about often is that it promotes autophagy, the
cellular self-cleansing process that breaks down and recycles
damaged molecules and cellular organelles.
During the fed state, when insulin is increased, the rate of
autophagy is low. During the fasted state, as insulin drops,
autophagy increases dramatically, perhaps 5-fold.
Many of the anti-aging effects of calorie restriction and
intermittent fasting come from the increase in autophagy –
which I discussed at length in my book, Stop the Clock: The
Optimal Anti-Aging Strategy.
A high rate of autophagy is characteristic of young organisms;
with aging, autophagy decreases, and this allows cellular
damage to accumulate. By fasting intermittently, autophagy
rates can be reset to that of a younger person.
As we see above, one of the ways this happens is through
lowering insulin.
Exercise improves insulin sensitivity, so for any given
fasting stimulus, a person who is in shape will see insulin
levels drop and lipolysis commence faster than someone not in
shape.
Low-carbohydrate diets cause less of a rise in insulin, so
probably someone on a low-carb diet who then fasts will also
see a quicker drop of insulin into the range at which it
promotes lipolysis and autophagy.
Autophagy is suppressed in the presence of insulin resistance
and hyperinsulinemia.(2) This may be one of the main
mechanisms behind the deleterious effects of diabetes and
obesity.
It’s worth noting that the study cited by Dr. Naiman used
healthy young men as subjects, and they presumably had good
insulin sensitivity.
Fasting
as
intervention
an
anti-aging
As noted, by increasing autophagy, intermittent fasting causes
the breakdown and clearance of damaged cell parts.
Aging just is the accumulation of damage. As we age, we can no
longer recycle damage as readily; cell constituent turnover
decreases.
We saw in the interview with Dr. Michael Fossel
that
activating telomerase has the effect of increasing cell
turnover to youthful levels by lengthening telomeres.
Dr. Fossel roundly rejected my suggestion that, until
telomerase therapy comes along and/or it’s shown to truly
reverse aging, intermittent fasting is the best way to slow
aging.
But, he’s wrong. If the accumulation of damage characterizes
aging, and if the aging organism is characterized as being
less able to clear damage, then increasing the rate of
clearance is the best way to slow aging.
One of the best ways to increase clearance of damage, and
hence to slow aging, is through intermittent fasting.
———————————–
PS: Check out my Supplements Buying Guide
for Men, as well as my books, Dumping
Iron, and Stop the Clock.
More benefits of intermittent
fasting
Intermittent fasting, the practice of going without food for
some defined period of time, often from 16 hours up to 36
hours, has many benefits, as I’ve written quite a bit about.
The following are some benefits that either haven’t been
discovered before or you might not have considered.
Intermittent
stem cells
fasting
could
rejuvenate
Stem cells are those cells that have the capability of forming
themselves into mature cells of different kinds. They maintain
the ability to do so through most of our adult lives, and this
is important for renewal of tissues and organs. For instance,
bone marrow stem cells have the ability to change into
different kinds of white blood cells.
A new report in Nature, “Autophagy maintains stemness by
preventing senescence”(1), finds that stem cells maintain
their “stemness” into advanced old age via autophagy, the
cellular self-cleaning process.
During ageing, muscle stem-cell regenerative function
declines. At advanced geriatric age, this decline is maximal
owing to transition from a normal quiescence into an
irreversible senescence state. How satellite cells maintain
quiescence and avoid senescence until advanced age remains
unknown. Here we report that basal autophagy is essential to
maintain the stem-cell quiescent state in mice… our findings
reveal autophagy to be a decisive stem-cell-fate regulator,
with implications for fostering muscle regeneration in
sarcopenia.
Autophagy declines with age, and at the point of advanced old
age, this may cause stem cells to lose their stemness and
become senescent.
Intermittent fasting strongly increases autophagy, and this is
probably the main mechanism of its benefits. As such, it helps
keep the organism – that’s you and me – in a youthful state.
By practicing intermittent fasting, this could stave off the
decline of stem cells.
Intermittent
dementia
fasting
could
prevent
Mark Mattson, a leading scientist in the field of aging, wrote
“Late-onset dementia: a mosaic of prototypical pathologies
modifiable by diet and lifestyle”(2). He writes:
Intermittent bioenergetic challenges forestall ILOD
[idiopathic late-onset dementia] by stimulating adaptive
stress response pathways. As with other species, humans
evolved in environments where there was competition for food,
mates and other resources. Accordingly, selection favored
individuals whose brains functioned best when they were
hungry, physically active and under stress. In response to
the challenges (exercise, dietary energy restriction/fasting,
intellectual challenges and consumption of noxious
phytochemicals) neurons experience mild bioenergetic and
oxidative stress. The neurons respond adaptively by
activating signaling pathways that improve their ability to
cope with more severe stress and resist disease.
The challenges Mattson lists, exercise, dietary restriction,
fasting, and noxious phytochemicals, are all means of
eliciting hormesis, which is the activation of anti-stress
responses in response to toxins and stressors. (Noxious
phytochemicals are those chemicals found in fruits and
vegetables, notably berries and cruciferous vegetables like
broccoli and cabbage, as well as coffee, tea, and chocolate,
and also include resveratrol and curcumin.) The organism than
attains a better state of health because of it.
All these modes of hormesis he mentions are important for long
life and health. The opposite is the couch potato who never
challenges himself. Some form of hormetic challenge should be
engaged in daily.
Intermittent
lipofuscin
fasting
could
remove
Lipofuscin, the toxic waste of aging, is cellular junk that
accumulates with age and literally gunks up cells, making them
less able to perform their functions. It’s thought that the
accumulation of lipofuscin plays an important role in the
maladies of aging. For instance, lipofuscin appears to be
directly related to macular degeneration, a leading cause of
blindness in the elderly.
But there’s been debate among cell biologists as to whether
cells can ever be rid of
lipofuscin. There’s been some
experimental success using drugs in cell cultures, but other
results have been meager. It’s been thought that by its very
nature, lipofuscin resists removal.
A group of scientists recently found they could remove
lipofuscin from the cells of… marine snails.(3)
The aim of this investigation was to test the hypothesis that
fasting-induced augmented lysosomal autophagic turnover of
cellular proteins and organelles will reduce potentially
harmful lipofuscin (age-pigment) formation in cells by more
effectively removing oxidatively damaged proteins. An animal
model (marine snail – common periwinkle,Littorina littorea)
was used to experimentally test this hypothesis. Snails were
deprived of algal food for 7 days to induce an augmented
autophagic response…. This treatment resulted in a 25%
reduction in the cellular content of lipofuscin in the
digestive cells of the fasting animals…These findings support
the hypothesis that fasting-induced augmented autophagic
turnover of cellular proteins has an anti-oxidative
cytoprotective effect by more effectively removing damaged
proteins, resulting in a reduction in the formation of
potentially harmful proteinaceous aggregates such as
lipofuscin. The inference from this study is that autophagy
is important in mediating hormesis.
While the experimental animal here may seem odd, it’s no odder
than worms (C. elegans) used in aging research, and I don’t
see any reason these results wouldn’t apply to humans,
although admittedly I know little about marine snails.
In any case, fasting strongly increased autophagy and resulted
in a large clearance of lipofuscin from cells.
The upshot
There seems to be no end to the ways that intermittent fasting
can provide health benefits. It may preserve stemness, prevent
dementia, and remove lipofuscin, all solid anti-aging
measures.
How Intermittent Fasting Can
Prevent Heart Disease
Intermittent
autophagy
fasting
promotes
Intermittent fasting, which consists of going without or with
minimal food for 16 hours up to 36 hours – more than that is
“prolonged fasting” – could be one of the most potent antiaging measures available, as potent or more so than exercise
or dietary phytochemicals. One of its main mechanisms of
action is through increasing autophagy, the cellular selfcleaning process that rids cells of junk organelles and
macromolecules. Intermittent fasting can prevent heart disease
too, and through the same mechanism, autophagy.
Autophagy declines with age
Aging is the number one correlate of increased risk for
coronary heart disease (atherosclerosis), and aging also
correlates strongly with a decline in natural levels of
autophagy.
Dysfunction of the arterial walls plays a key role in coronary
heart disease. This dysfunction is related to declining
autophagy.
Some researchers decided to test the idea that declining
autophagy is important to arterial dysfunction. They used
human volunteers, mice, and cell culture in a three-pronged
experiment.(1)
They showed that blood flow in the forearm in response to
infusions of acetylcholine was only about half in healthy
older humans, age 61 to 71, compared to that in healthy young
people, age 20 to 31. The lower blood flow was shown to be due
to lower production of nitric oxide, which mediates
vasodilation.
Levels of autophagy in older people, as shown by protein
markers, were about half those in younger people. The
correlation between autophagy markers and forearm blood flow
was high at 0.61.
The mouse segment of the experiment studied markers of
autophagy in old and young mice. In the old mice, the markers
showed about half the level of autophagy as in the young mice.
Their arterial function was also much worse.
Trehalose restores autophagy in old
mice
Then, they gave the old mice trehalose, a sugar (sic) which
promotes autophagy, similarly to hydroxycitrate, resveratrol,
curcumun, and EGCG.
Trehalose completely restored autophagy levels in old mice to
those seen in young mice, and restored arterial function to
the same degree.
Human cell cultures treated with trehalose responded with a
restoration of nitric oxide production.
The scientists stated:
The present findings suggest that autophagy is reduced in
arteries of older mice and humans and contributes to impaired
vascular endothelial function, a clinically important
expression of arterial ageing. Importantly, our parallel
findings in mice and humans indicate that autophagy protects
vascular endothelial function with ageing by reducing
oxidative stress and inflammation and increasing NO
bioavailability. These results provide a basis for
translational research aimed at enhancing autophagy to
reverse arterial ageing and reduce the risk of age-associated
CVD in humans.
Declining autophagy is linked to increased oxidative stress,
inflammation, and mitochondrial dysfunction, all of these
being main physiological processes that accompany aging. In
fact, they just are aging.
Intermittent fasting can prevent
heart disease by improving arterial
health
Reversing one of these means a reversal in the others. So
increasing autophagy will lower these other markers. The
result in this case is improved arterial health. As
inflammation has been strongly implicated in coronary artery
disease, increasing autophagy will lower inflammation and help
prevent atherosclerosis.
Intermittent fasting strongly increases autophagy during the
fasting window, so it has great potential in the prevention of
coronary heart disease.
Other interventions already mentioned, curcumin, resveratrol,
nicotinamide, etc. (you can see all of these on my supplements
page) also increase autophagy – they have been called calorie
restriction mimetics – and therefore have the same potential.
Trehalose works in mice, though human data is lacking, and
it’s cheap.
PS: Check out my Supplements Buying Guide
for Men.
Fasting
as
part
Mediterranean diet
of
the
The Mediterranean diet and health
The Mediterranean diet has been extolled for its role in lower
heart disease rates seen in countries of the Mediterranean.
Greece, for instance, has heart disease rates less than half
that of places like Scotland or Sweden, despite much higher
rates of cigarette smoking. Fasting as part of the
Mediterranean diet could be important for its reported health
effects.
A recent randomized controlled trial in Spain put a group of
people on a Mediterranean diet and followed them for major
cardiovascular events: heart attack, stroke, or death from
cardiovascular causes. The subjects had no cardiovascular
disease at enrollment, so this was a primary prevention trial.
Those that adhered to a Mediterranean diet had an
approximately 30% lower rate of cardiovascular disease than
controls.(1)
In this particular case, the Mediterranean diet was either
supplemented with olive oil or mixed nuts. In general (from
the Mayo Clinic)
The Mediterranean diet emphasizes:
Eating primarily plant-based foods, such as fruits and
vegetables, whole grains, legumes and nuts
Replacing butter with healthy fats, such as olive oil
Using herbs and spices instead of salt to flavor foods
Limiting red meat to no more than a few times a month
Eating fish and poultry at least twice a week
Drinking red wine in moderation (optional)
The concept of the Mediterranean diet has been criticized for
being vague; for instance, is pasta part of it? Why is
replacing butter with olive oil so important? It can also be
seen that the diet is low in processed foods and in sugar, and
not much emphasis has been placed on these.
There are also confounding factors, such as more sunshine –
resulting in higher vitamin D levels – and social patterns
such as stronger family life and community ties.
Fasting as part of the Mediterranean diet
Another confounding factor is religion, specifically in
Greece, Cyprus, the Balkans, and parts of the Levant, in which
Eastern Orthodox Christianity is the majority religion. Why
does that matter? Because Orthodox Christianity prescribes
regular fasting, and fasting has been shown to be a very
healthy practice, similar to calorie restriction.
And let me tell you, the rules for fasting in Orthodox
Christianity are strict, and adherents are expected to follow
them. Fasting in some form is prescribed for up to 200 days a
year; levels of fasting vary depending on the season and day.
Every Wednesday and Friday throughout the year are fast days,
as are the entire seasons of Lent and the Nativity, as well as
selected other feast days and weeks. A few weeks are
designated as non-fasting weeks, in which the Wednesday and
Friday fasts are not observed.
The fasts vary in level of discipline. On Wednesday and Friday
fasts, no meat, fish, dairy, wine, or olive oil is permitted;
food consist of cooked vegetables, fruit, nuts, bread, and
honey. On other fasting days, only one or sometimes two meals
are prescribed, and on some others, adherents are encouraged
to take no food at all for the entire day. (I’m not an
Orthodox Christian, and I find some of the explanations of
these rules confusing, so if any Orthodox would like to
comment, that could be helpful. It’s also my understanding
that many or most Orthodox Christians do indeed follow the
prescribed fasting rules.)
So as we can see, on may days of the year, the Orthodox eat a
nearly vegan diet, and probably undergo many sessions of what
amounts to intermittent fasting. Given the number of fast
days, I suspect that average overall calorie intake, spread
throughout the year, is lower than it would otherwise be.
(Nevertheless, obesity in Greece is on the rise, and this has
been attributed to *not* following a Mediterranean diet. No
doubt many overweight Greeks don’t follow the fasting rules
either.)
Orthodox Christians who fast could be expected to have lower
BMI and less heart disease. Fasting could lower their iron
levels, and men in Crete in fact have half the body iron
stores as do men in the Netherlands. Autophagy, a prime
component of longevity, would be increased.
Orthodox fasting in Crete
In doing research for this article, I came across an article
that shows that others have thought of the connection between
fasting and the health effects of a Mediterranean diet before:
“Greek Orthodox fasting rituals: a hidden characteristic of
the Mediterranean diet of Crete”.(2) The authors found that
dedicated fasters about 320 calories a day less on fast days
than did controls. They conclude, “The Orthodox Christian
dietary regulations are an important component of the
Mediterranean diet of Crete characterised by low levels of
dietary saturated fatty acids, high levels of fibre and
folate, and a high consumption of fruit, vegetables and
legumes.”
Much more work would need to be done to draw firm conclusions.
We would need to know what fraction of the population actually
fasts, how severe their fasts are, what other dietary and
lifestyle habits they had, and so on. But the idea that
fasting is an important part of the health effects of the
Mediterranean diet cannot be dismissed.
Low-Carbohydrate Diet Mimics
Fasting for Anti-Aging
Fasting
and
restriction fight aging
calorie
Perhaps the most well-known and efficient anti-aging
intervention in lab animals is calorie restriction, in which
restricting food by 30% or more causes an increase in
lifespan, sometimes by as much as 50%.
Intermittent fasting has most or even more of the benefits of
calorie restriction. Since fasting animals or humans eat as
much as those feeding ad lib – they just eat at different
times – intermittent fasting avoids some potential problems
associated with calorie restriction, such as frailty or
weakened immune systems.
The anti-aging mechanism behind both calorie restriction and
fasting is thought to be a reduction in growth hormone and
IGF-1 levels. (Although there’s a good case to be made that
reduction of iron levels may be involved and could even be
more important.)
It appears that low-carbohydrate and/or ketogenic diets can
produce many of the same anti-aging effects of fasting and
calorie restriction. The evidence and how to implement
follows.
Low-carbohydrate
diet
fasting for anti-aging
mimics
A recent study took a look at type 2 diabetics who undertook
either a 3-day fast or a zero carbohydrate diet for the same
length of time.(1) The study was done to try to elucidate the
mechanism of the beneficial effects of a low-calorie diet on
blood glucose in diabetics, which could be due to a) weight
loss; b) low calorie intake; or c) lower carbohydrate intake.
A previous study had found that a “crash diet” can cure
diabetes in a very short time.
After 3 days of fasting, glucose and insulin dropped
dramatically in these diabetics, by 49% and 69% respectively.
But they also dropped on the low-carbohydrate diet, although
not as much, the researchers calculating that 71% of the
glucose response to fasting was due to the absence of
carbohydrate.
So, most of the response to fasting came from the mere absence
of carbohydrates.
In another study, volunteers either fasted for 84 hours (3.5
days), or fasted and received a lipid infusion designed to
meet all caloric needs.(2) “Changes in plasma glucose, free
fatty acids, ketone bodies, insulin, and epinephrine
concentrations during fasting were the same in both the
control and lipid studies.”
The
authors
conclude,
“These
results
demonstrate
that
restriction of dietary carbohydrate, not the general absence
of energy intake itself, is responsible for initiating the
metabolic response to short-term fasting.” I would have liked
to have seen a measurement of IGF-1 as well, but the results
do indicate that restricting carbohydrates alone gives most or
all of the same benefits as fasting.
One study did measure IGF-1, this time using a very low
carbohydrate ketogenic diet for 7 days.(3) (There was no
fasting control group, but the study did measure the same
biomarkers after two weeks of refeeding.)
On low-carb eating alone, IGF-1 dropped massively, by 45%,
after only 7 days. (The subjects also lost nearly 3 kg of body
mass.) This indicates that the ketogenic diet has great
potential as an anti-aging intervention.
In a clinical setting, patients who went on a very lowcarbohydrate ketogenic diet for 90 days saw a reduction in
insulin of 40%.(4) Despite the diet being designed to provide
the same amount of calories as their previous diets, body
weight dropped 8%, or about 7 kg on average.
Taken together, these studies show that cutting carbohydrates
produces favorable changes in anti-aging parameters,
comparable to those seen with fasting.
One parameter we didn’t see in the above studies was
autophagy, which decreases with age, and the increase of which
has profound anti-aging effects. But it’s known that very low
carbohydrate diets can increase autophagy.(5)
Low carbohydrate may be easier to
implement than fasting
Fasting has the disadvantage that many people don’t seem to be
able to do it. At least some of the time, it entails feeling
hungry.
A very low carbohydrate ketogenic diet can produce most of the
anti-aging effects of fasting, only without the hunger.
How do you implement a ketogenic diet? In essence, it’s
simple: don’t eat carbohydrates. That means no sugar, anything
made with flour such as bread, pasta, pastries, and breakfast
cereal, and no starchy vegetables such as potatoes. No
tortillas, no fruit juice or soda pop.
Meals consist of meat, eggs, cheese, butter, coconut oil,
nuts, yogurt (without sugar), non-starchy vegetables (such as
broccoli or green leafy vegetables in salads), etc. An
excellent guide to the ketogenic diet, what it is, and what it
does, is by Stephen Phinney and Jeff Volek, The Art and
Science of Low Carbohydrate Living.
For more on fasting, ketosis, and anti-aging, see my book Stop
the Clock: The Optimal Anti-Aging Strategy.
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Short-term fasting + exercise
for fat loss
I’ve previously written about fed vs fasted workouts, and why
you might want to choose one over the other. The short answer
is that for fat loss, one should consider a fasted workout,
and for muscle gain, a fed workout. These are not hard and
fast rules of course.
Recently I wanted to shed a few fat pounds, and did so to the
tune of 7 lbs worth by a combination of intermittent fasting
and fasted workouts. I haven’t had a DEXA scan or anything,
but since I’m lifting the same weights for the same reps and
sets, I figure most of the loss was fat, not muscle. In
theory, that’s what should happen, since I didn’t reduce my
protein intake and kept up my regular gym schedule, and it
would be very unusual to lose muscle under those conditions.
Fasting helps fat loss by lowering insulin
One reason that exercise combined with fasting results in fat
loss is that, when fasting, insulin levels are low, and even
slightly higher insulin levels abolish lipolysis, the
breakdown of fat molecules. Small reductions of insulin, even
within the normal physiological range, causes a large increase
in lipolysis.
With all this in mind, it was interesting to see a study that
looked at the combined effects of fasting and exercise on fat
loss: “A “mini-fast with exercise” protocol for fat loss”.
(Medical Hypotheses. Full paper here.)
The protocol used for the study was basically your standard
16-hour fast with an 8-hour feeding window. Breakfast is
skipped, although the study allowed the participants to skip
any meal of their choosing. The fast was done daily.
Where the study differs is that the participants exercised
during their fast, and then did not eat until their next
scheduled meal. The most common exercise the participants
engaged in was brisk walking – this was nothing very intense
at all, so just about anyone could do it.
This was an informal study: no control group, participants
were allowed to choose the type of exercise they wanted, and
after an initial lecture, no one was monitored.
In 12 weeks, average fat loss was 7.4 kg (16 pounds), which
was about 25% of baseline body fat. Remarkably, it looks like
the subjects gained lean mass to the tune of a couple
kilograms. Insulin levels dropped by 25% as well; this is key
to the lipolytic effect of exercise.
Does exercise help fat loss?
If you have a long memory, you may be wondering about what
I’ve written previously to the effect that exercise doesn’t
help weight loss, and honestly I’m wondering too. For one
thing, this study featured both fasting and exercise. While
the participants were not limited in their food intake during
the fed state, they were encouraged to eat low-fat foods, so
caloric intake may have dropped substantially.
The main reason that exercise may have helped or caused weight
loss here is because it was done in the fasted state,
increasing lipolysis. So I think it’s still true that
exercise, in and of itself, does little for weight loss unless
combined with diet and/or fasting.
Autophagy,
suppression
hydroxycitrate,
and
appetite
Of great interest to me was that the authors suggest the use
of the OTC weight-loss aid hydroxycitrate as an appetite
suppressant during the fasting phase. Hydroxycitrate
profoundly increases autophagy, and thus boosts the effects of
intermittent fasting. It also curbs appetite and decreases
fatty acid synthesis.
This program, besides causing weight loss, has the potential
to improve health dramatically. The use of fasting together
with an intermittent fasting booster hydroxycitrate, and
combined with exercise, also resembles some of the program in
my book, Stop the Clock, accentuating the normal rhythms of
breakdown and renewal to slow aging. Lower insulin levels seen
in the participants indicate that this program has the
potential for anti-aging.
Fasting-mimicking diet slows
aging
Results of the fastingmimicking diet in yeast,
mice, and humans.
Prolonged fasting and a fasting-mimicking diet
Restricting calorie intake (calorie restriction, CR) in
experimental animals by 30% or more is the most robust and
effective strategy known to date to slow the aging process,
increase lifespan, and improve the health of old animals.
Intermittent fasting (IF) is perhaps an even better strategy
for doing this, since it avoids many of the problems of CR
such as weakness, immune suppression, and constant hunger; in
IF, total calorie intake is often no less than in constantly
fed animals (or humans), or sometimes, only slightly less,
because the subjects of IF, whether human or animal, usually
make up for lost intake by eating more during feeding times.
Intermittent fasting is one of several strategies for slowing
aging that I discuss in my new book, Stop the Clock: The
Optimal Anti-Aging Strategy.
In the book I also discuss going beyond IF and into so-called
prolonged fasting. In prolonged fasting, the fast is extended
and lasts two days or more. The great advantage of prolonged
over intermittent fasting seems to lie largely in the lowering
of levels of IGF-1, the growth hormone which promotes aging as
well as a number of diseases of aging, notably cancer.
The main problem with prolonged fasting is a practical one:
hunger. While I’ve read a number of accounts of people fasting
for several days, in real life I know of no one who would do
it, and I suspect the number of people willing to do prolonged
fasting is quite low.
What if one could develop a diet that mimicked the effects of
prolonged fasting while alleviating some of the hunger that
goes with it, making the process easier? A first step in that
direction has now been taken.
Valter Longo, probably the most prominent scientist who has
studied fasting, and colleagues, have done this, as shown in
their new study, A Periodic Diet that Mimics Fasting Promotes
Multi-System Regeneration, Enhanced Cognitive Performance, and
Healthspan. (Cell Metabolism.)
The study looked at the effects of the fasting-mimicking diet
in yeast, mice, and humans.
The diet
In humans, the diet lasted for 5 days a month for 3 months,
and was designed to provide 34 to 54% of the normal amount of
calories. Day 1 of the diet was 1090 calories – not terribly
low – and days 2 through 5 were 725 calories a day. Days 2
through 5 had 9% protein, 44% fat, 47% carbohydrate;
interestingly, even though carbohydrate percentage seems
relatively high, the number of calories was low enough that
the diet was ketogenic.
The results
Below is a figure from the article that shows the human
results.
Results of the fasting-mimicking diet in humans.
Fasting blood sugar dropped by 11% and remained 5% lower even
after the subjects resumed regular eating. IGF-1 dropped 24%
and remained 15% lower after refeeding. Body weight dropped
3%, and almost the entire loss was fat, not muscle. In those
subjects with a high C-reactive protein, a marker of
inflammation and cardiovascular disease risk, most dropped
into the normal range.
In summary, this study indicates that FMD cycles induce longlasting beneficial and/or rejuvenating effects on many
tissues, including those of the endocrine, immune, and
nervous systems in mice and in markers for diseases and
regeneration in humans. Although the clinical results will
require confirmation by a larger randomized trial, the
effects of FMD cycles on biomarkers/risk factors for aging,
cancer, diabetes, and CVD, coupled with the very high
compliance to the diet and its safety, indicate that this
periodic dietary strategy has high potential to be effective
in promoting human healthspan. Because prolonged FMDs such as
the one tested here are potent and broad-spectrum, they
should only be considered for use under medical supervision.
This diet would seem to lower disease risk considerably. The
beauty of it is that 1) compliance was high; most of the
subjects were able to adhere to it, in contrast to what would
presumably be a low adherence rate to a straight 5-day fast;
2) the prescribed number of calories and macronutrient ratio
is fixed, so it takes much of the guesswork out of the
equation; just eat what they tell you for 5 days and
biomarkers of aging and disease should diminish.
As they say in the study, a prolonged fast like this one
should be cleared with one’s doctor.
Personally, I’ve never managed to fast longer than 24 hours,
but with a prescribed regimen like this one, I might be
persuaded to do the FMD for 5 days.
An
Intermittent
Fasting
Schedule for Weightlifters
Fasting boosts muscle mass and
metabolism
The latest paper on calorie restriction (CR) as it relates to
muscle shows that CR in middle-aged rats preserves muscle
mass. It does this by activating AMPK, a cellular signaling
mechanism at the center of a network that controls the aging
process and which is crucially involved in lifespan extension.
Preserving muscle mass and counteracting aging obviously go
hand in hand, since loss of muscle mass is a prime
characteristic of old age. In this recent study, CR preserved
muscle mass in part by increasing levels of mitochondrial
biogenesis; since old mitochondria are prime sources of
oxidative stress and resultant inflammation, increased
mitochondria mean not only more but better, younger
mitochondria that do not release high levels of reactive
oxygen species. Also importantly, in the muscle of animals
subjected to CR, the machinery to burn fat, as opposed to
burning carbohydrates, was upregulated.
Intermittent fasting has most, if not more, of the benefits of
calorie restriction. The reason for this is simple: restricted
food intake, whether from timing or CR, is beneficial, yet
overall CR can lead to lower bone mass and lower immune
function. Intermittent fasting does not involve decreased
calorie intake, so it has none of these drawbacks. Most
studies on fasting show that animals or humans who fast
periodically consume the same number of calories as ad lib
fed, they just consume them at different times.
How often and long should you fast?
How often should one fast, and for how long, to get the
benefits of increased muscle mass, metabolic resiliency, and
fat-burning physiological machinery?
Of necessity, we need to speculate on these matters, hopefully
from a very informed basis. Although a number of studies on
humans and intermittent fasting have been done,
comprehensive ones on muscle function and the like have not,
and most of the work has been done on animals. One can readily
see that rats, for example, with a metabolic rate around 8
times higher than humans, respond differently than humans to a
fast of the same duration.
If you work out in the gym – and if you read this blog, I
assume that you do – you need to eat both enough calories and
enough high quality protein within the 24 hours after your
workout to sustain and increase muscle mass. Whey protein
around the workout (right before or after) is superb for
increasing muscle protein synthesis, and plenty of good
protein such as from meat, eggs, yogurt, and so on during the
next 24 hours should be optimal for muscle mass. You should
eat at least 1 gram of protein per kilogram of body weight,
which isn’t hard to do. (See the link for a full discussion on
protein quantity, if you think that amount is too low.)
My own intermittent fasting
schedule
My own intermittent fasting usually doesn’t begin until about
48 hours post workout, simply because the day after the
workout, I feel somewhat fatigued and plenty hungry. But by
dinner that night (one day after workout), I’m sufficiently
rested and fed to start a fast.
The length of my fasts vary depending on a lot of factors,
such as when my next scheduled workout is, and what else I
have on my agenda for the day. Recently I’ve done several
fasts of 20 to 22 hours, from about 6:00 P.M. to perhaps 4:00
P.M. the next day. There’s nothing at all heroic or even very
difficult about that, and I’ve spoken to several people who
practice 36-hour fasts. My more normal fasting duration is
around 16 hours, that is, from the night before until noon the
following day, taking usually one cup of coffee when I get up,
and another or one of tea at mid-morning. If I’m fasting
longer than 16 hours, then I’ll have more tea in the
afternoon.
I lift weights once every 3 days. Therefore, given the above,
I do a lengthy fast once every 3 days as well. I think this
schedule works well. You lift one day and eat for two days,
gaining muscle mass; then you fast on the third day, lowering
insulin levels, increasing mitochondrial biogenesis, burning
fat, lowering inflammation, and probably most of all,
increasing autophagy. These are all life-extending and lifeenhancing processes, and exercise itself also will do all
these things, provided the exercise is of the right type, such
as lifting and HIT.
Fasting strongly increases growth
hormone levels
It’s important to note that fasting strongly increases levels
of growth hormone in humans, by up to 5-fold, which preserves
and even increases muscle mass, as well as bone mass. So we
see from both the rat experiment discussed above, as well as
from good human data, that fasting has a salutary effect on
muscle and bone.
Making your own fasting schedule
Your workout schedule may vary. In particular, younger guys
often lift three or more times a week. In that case, it’s
important to eat plenty of high-quality food and protein on
lifting days, and you may be able to squeeze in one or two
days a week of intermittent fasting. That being said, regular
16-hour fasts, even on lifting days, ought to be doable,
provided you don’t need to lift in the early morning. You can
fast from dinner the previous night and through the next
morning, then take your protein shake and hit the gym around
noon. Plenty of guys do exactly this.
Summing it up
To sum it all up: both weightlifting (and HIT) and fasting
have healthful, anti-aging effects on muscle, increasing both
metabolic power and muscle mass. Adapting your fasting
schedule to the circadian rhythm of the fed and fasted states
can provide a powerful boost to health, longevity, and muscle.
Starting from the mindset that fasting was just too hard, I
now fast at least a couple times a week – and it’s pretty easy
– and consider it a necessary part of my health routine, one
leg of the tripartite regimen of dietary phytochemicals,
exercise, and intermittent fasting.
PS: Check out my Supplements Buying Guide
for Men.
Intermittent Fasting Boosters
/ Autophagy Enhancers
Calorie restriction and its twin, intermittent fasting, are
the most robust life extension interventions known, extending
life in lab animals and primates, sometimes by 50% or so.
Intermittent fasting is generally the way to go for most
people, as fasting from time to time is a lot easier than
permanent calorie restriction. I do intermittent fasting (IF)
at least a couple times a week now, for instance, but would
find calorie restriction difficult. Calorie restriction can
also result in lowered immune function and even brittle bones
(osteopenia), and IF does not have these disadvantages. In
fact, as far as I can tell, intermittent fasting is all
upside.
Intermittent Fasting and Autophagy
One of the ways, probably the main way, that IF promotes
increased lifespan is through the promotion of autophagy. (You
regular readers out there know this already, I’m sure.) It
appears that the longer one fasts, the greater the activation
of autophagy.
What I’m looking for is a way to boost the health effects of
my fasting, mainly through increased autophagy beyond what
fasting promotes. The best way to do this is through various
chemical inducers and enhancers of autophagy.
Autophagy enhancers boost the health effects of intermittent
fasting
A few of the heavyweights in the world of autophagy and aging
research have put together a nice compendium of chemical
autophagy
inducers:
Caloric
restriction
mimetics:
natural/physiological/ pharmacological autophagy inducers.
They work by various, diverse means. Let’s look at their list.
Hydroxycitrate
Recently discussed on this blog, hydroxycitrate is an OTC
weight-loss aid, and also part of a cancer therapeutic
combination that smashes cancer cells and tumors in vitro and
in mice. The linked review states that hydroxycitrate “causes…
massive autophagy in all studied organs in mice.” Massive.
Just what we’re looking for.
I’ve begun taking 300 mg of hydroxycitrate on my fast days,
once in the early morning and then once in early afternoon. So
essentially I’m boosting my fasting with this. Hydroxycitrate
appears to have a relatively short half-life; I’ve been unable
to find a number, but the weight-loss dose recommendation is
three times daily, so I’m assuming short half-life.
Nicotinamide
Again, on this blog we recently discussed nicotinamide, a
version of vitamin B3. (I’m not using the editorial “we”, it’s
that I always think of my readers as part of the discussion.)
From the review: “Nicotinamide is another potential SIRT1
activator that is sold over the counter in the US and that
induces autophagy in rodents.” Nicotinamide at physiological
doses looks like it may prevent Alzheimer’s, and that is
related to its ability to promote autophagy.
I’m also using nicotinamide on fast days at one dose of 500
mg.
Resveratrol
“… resveratrol exemplifies a widely used over-the-counter drug
that can stimulate the deacetylase activity of SIRT1, thereby
causing general protein deacetylation and autophagy.” (More on
resveratrol on this site.)
I take this at about 150 mg nearly daily, but avoid it around
workouts, as it inhibits mTOR, the engine of muscle growth.
Curcumin
Mentioned in passing in the review, and we’ve mentioned
curcumin before too. I’m currently taking this not on fasting
days, as it seems that it’s better absorbed with a fatty meal.
Three times a week as an adjunct anti-cancer,
inflammatory, and autophagy booster.
anti-
EGCG
Epigallocatechin gallate, from green tea. Not currently taking
this as a supplement, though I do drink green tea
occasionally. Probably would require supplement level doses to
see an effect. Review states, “…epigallocatechin-3-gallate
(EGCG, one of the major active compounds contained in green
tea) can inhibit a range of acetyltransferases including
EP300.”
The authors make no mention of lithium, but it is an autophagy
inducer and lifespan extender.
From the review:
What could be the therapeutic indications for the use of such
CRMs [calorie restriction mimetics]? CR or intermittent
fasting are known for their wide life-span-extending and
health-improving effects that can be measured in an objective
fashion in multiple model organisms including rodents and
primates. Beyond their capacity to reduce aging and agingassociated pathologies (such as neurodegeneration, type-2
diabetes, and cancer), fasting also has an important
preconditioning effect, protecting different organs from
ischemic insult. This applies to the heart, brain, liver, and
kidney. There is emerging evidence that autophagy is involved
in starvation-mediated organ protection. Moreover, fasting
can reduce the subjective and objective toxicity of cytotoxic
anticancer chemotherapies, both in humans and in mouse
models, at the same time that it improves treatment outcome
in mice. It is tempting to speculate that CRMs could be used
for the same therapeutic indications in which fasting has
proven to be useful. In accord with this idea, several CRMs
can increase the health span and life span of rodents (as
demonstrated for EGCG, spermidine and resveratrol), reducing
the advancement of neurodegenerative diseases (as shown for
spermidine, nicotinamide and resveratrol), likely through
their capacity to induce autophagy. Moreover, several CRMs
(including EGCG and resveratrol) have potent preconditioning
effects in ischemia, which, at least on theoretical grounds,
might be due to the induction of cytoprotective autophagy.
[all my emphases]
We need to learn more about autophagy enhancers, but I think
that using them to boost the effects of intermittent fasting
is the best way to use them now. Most have fairly short halflives, so you need to take them when you are fasting to get
the boost, at least that’s my interpretation of the data. I
also need to do some more work on dosing, comparing in vitro
and animal levels with a human dose. Right now I’m taking
relatively minimal doses.
Supplement Timing
I had a request to write a post on supplement timing, that is,
how time of day or other timing such as with meals, or whether
in the fed or fasted state, matters. I practice timing of
supplements myself, although the hard scientific evidence for
these practices is sparse. Nevertheless, I think reasons and
logic make a fairly compelling case for doing so.
Categories of Timing
Timing of supplements can be broken down into various types.
Here’s how I would classify them.
1. Time of day, such as in the morning or evening.
2. Fed or fasted. Some supplements may be absorbed better on
an empty stomach, others with a meal. Perhaps more
importantly, some supplements could abolish the effects of
intermittent fasting.
3. Anabolic or catabolic phase. Humans have a strong diurnal
rhythm of anabolism and catabolism, and derangement of this
rhythm, that is a weakening of the amplitude of these
processes, is a prominent cause of aging. Maintaining peak
health and slowing aging requires that attention be paid to
the rhythm of anabolism and catabolism, so that amplitude does
not diminish and these processes continue to operate as they
would in young, healthy people. Therefore, if a supplement can
either augment or diminish these, one must time the
supplements properly to ensure good regulation of our diurnal
rhythm that rids us of junk and builds new, better functioning
physiological machinery.
Let’s look at each of these.
Time of Day
The late Seth Roberts used to discuss taking vitamin D in the
morning. He and a number of his readers reported much better
results from doing so, particularly on sleep. The logic of
this is that vitamin D is normally produced in the skin by the
action of sunlight, and therefore we may be adapted to
receiving vitamin D during the daytime. Whether that time is
morning or the afternoon may obviously vary, but it seems
clear enough that it would not be at night. Vitamin D taken
during the day may reinforce our circadian rhythms; taken at
night, it may disrupt them, and thus disrupt sleep and any
number of other physiological processes.
To my knowledge, there are no scientific studies on whether
this effect is real, but it does make sense, and I don’t think
anecdotal accounts should be disregarded. Since it’s no great
difficulty to take vitamin D at one time of the day or
another, I follow this guideline by taking it in the morning.
Another supplement that can be usefully taken according to
time of day is magnesium, which in this case should be taken
at night. Magnesium promotes relaxation and thus may promote
restful sleep. Some readers of mine have reported that
magnesium completely cured their insomnia. I follow this
guideline also and take 200 mg magnesium citrate right before
bed.
Fed or Fasted
This category has some overlap with anabolism and catabolism,
since if you have fasted long enough you will be in a state of
catabolism, if fed, you are in anabolism.
N-acetylcysteine (NAC) is a supplement that should be taken
with a meal. The rationale for NAC is the replenishment of the
body’s most abundant and important internal antioxidant,
glutathione. NAC supplies cysteine, which is rate-limiting for
glutathione synthesis, but glutathione’s other two building
blocks are glycine and glutamate, the former an amino acid,
the latter derived from one. Older people do not appear to
have diminished levels of glutamate, but they do have lower
levels of glycine. These components are equally necessary, and
if NAC is taken in the fasted state, glycine may be lacking,
and therefore no glutathione is synthesized. So if you
supplement with NAC, eat some form of protein with it.
Curcumin by itself is readily metabolized by the liver, and
for this reason many supplement manufacturers have added
piperine, a derivative of black pepper, to their curcumin.
Piperine inhibits the metabolism of curcumin. But curcumin is
also difficult to absorb from the gut, and a high-fat meal
increases absorption greatly. So I take curcumin with a highfat meal – and since just about all of my meals are high fat,
no problem.
I take zinc with meals for a simple reason: it can make me
feel slightly nauseous on an empty stomach. Others have
reported this to me as well. If it doesn’t do that to you,
then no big deal, otherwise, take it with food. I have no
problem with it when I do that.
Anabolism and Catabolism
This is perhaps the most important category. If you are
fasting for health – as opposed to doing it to lose weight –
you do so because fasting increases autophagy, so you don’t
want to take a supplement that might hinder that. If in
anabolism, that is during the fed state or around workouts,
the same holds, you don’t want to diminish it, and you do want
to enhance it.
In the fasted state, I take resveratrol, which I avoid around
workouts. Resveratrol enhances autophagy and diminishes IGF-1
and mTOR signaling, so it should increase the benefits of
fasting. Whether the effects of resveratrol are strong enough
to decrease anabolism from a workout is something I doubt, but
I think no one really knows, and since it isn’t difficult to
arrange my timing, I don’t take it within a few hours, before
or after, workouts.
Lithium extends life by promoting autophagy. However, the
mechanism by which it does so is independent of mTOR, meaning
that it is not connected to fasting or workouts. Therefore I’m
indifferent as to when I take lithium.
As we’ve noted many times here, both fasting and calorie
restriction promote longevity. But antioxidants may not only
abolish the health effects of exercise, but also abolish the
health effects of calorie restriction and intermittent
fasting. In this regard, vitamin C is the most important
antioxidant, so do not take this when fasting or exercising.
Vitamin C diminishes or abolishes the radical oxygen species
that are important signaling molecules in exercise and
fasting, and which signal the cells to upgrade their stress
defense mechanisms and to grow muscle. On days that I take
vitamin C, I do so long after workouts and when I’m in the fed
state.
Whey is the anabolic protein par excellence. When taken before
or after workouts, it enhances anabolism by providing a high
level of essential amino acids and branched-chain amino acids
(BCAAs). At this point, it perhaps goes without saying that it
should not be taken when fasting, as it will totally abolish
autophagy. Take it around workouts and in the fed state.
Perhaps less obvious, if you take either BCAAs or leucine as a
supplement, which I do myself sometimes, this will also
abolish autophagy. Take these during the fed state if you fast
for health.
Creatine I don’t think has an effect one way or another on
autophagy or fasting, but as a matter of convenience I add it
to my whey shakes and therefore take it during the fed state.
Summing Up
You should be cognizant of whether a particular supplement
interferes with intermittent fasting or anabolism or exercise,
and take them at the appropriate times. You want to see
results from all the hard work you do, whether in the gym or
in kitchen avoidance, and some supplements either enhance or
interfere with that work. Likewise, you want to sleep well,
and also get the most benefit from your supplements.
The supplements above are all discussed at greater length in
my book on supplements for men. You can also see a list of
recommended supplements on my appropriately named Recommended
Supplements page.
If any readers feel that I’ve omitted something, or have
questions, by all means let me know.