Fasting is Good For You.

Fasting is good for you.
What? How can you say that? But doesn’t starving destroy your metabolism? Isn’t it dangerous?

Dr. Naomi Neufeld, an endocrinologist at UCLA, says it doesn't hurt — it might even help the body — to fast or stop eating for short periods of time, say 24 hours once a week.

"You re-tune the body, suppress insulin secretion, reduce the taste for sugar, so sugar becomes something you're less fond of taking," Neufeld says.

Benefits of Short or Intermittent Fasting

Not only that, but the benefits go beyond that -- increased lifespan and a reduction of certain types of diseases.

Mark Mattson, a scientist with the National Institute on Aging, explains the mechanism, saying that when we convert food into energy, our bodies create a lot of byproducts we could do without, including free radicals.

"These free radicals will attack proteins, DNA, the nucleus of cells, the membranes of cells," Mattson says. "They can damage all those different molecules in cells." Fasting minimizes that damage because the conversion slows down or is minimized.

And even if you don't fast, Mattson says that simply limiting the calories you consume may be beneficial. He points to studies where rats and mice were fed every other day. Compared with those fed normal daily diets, there was a reduction in disease, and an increase in lifespan, among the rats that were severely restricted in their food intake. Mattson says those findings hold promise that humans could also benefit from partial fasting.

Mattson thinks partial fasting has numerous benefits, from improving glucose regulation, which can protect against diabetes, to also lowering blood pressure. Some animal studies have also shown that partial fasting has very beneficial effects on the brain, protecting against Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and stroke.

What about it burning your muscle tissue, and slowing down your metabolism?

Fasting technically commences within the first twelve to twenty-four hours of the fast. A fast does not chemically begin until the carbohydrate stores in the body begin to be used as an energy source. The fast will continue as long as fat and carbohydrate stores are used for energy, as opposed to protein stores. Once protein stores begin to be depleted for energy (resulting in loss of muscle mass) a person is technically starving.

Seemingly paradoxical, metabolic rate is actually increased in short-term fasting. For some concrete numbers, studies have shown an increase of 3.6% - 10% after 36-48 hours (Mansell PI, et al, and Zauner C, et al). This makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. Epinephrine and norepinephrine (adrenaline/noradrenaline) sharpens the mind and makes us want to move around. Desirable traits that encouraged us to seek for food, or for the hunter to kill his prey, increasing survival. At some point, after several days of no eating, this benefit would confer no benefit to survival and probably would have done more harm than good; instead, an adaptation that favored conservation of energy turned out to be advantageous. Thus metabolic rate is increased in short-term fasting (<60>60 hours).

But doesn’t intermittent fasting make you binge at the next meal, and overeat?

Monica Rinagle, the of the “Nutrition Diva” podcast, says, summarizing studies on the subject, that research shows that short fasts, lasting anywhere from 20 to 36 hours can in fact reduce some risks for heart disease and diabetes --and maybe even cancer.

As she explained in episodes #31 and #32 of her podcast, going without food for several hours does NOT cause your metabolism to slow down nor does it wreak havoc with your blood sugar. Short fasts actually improve insulin sensitivity, which means that your cells are more sensitive to the effects of insulin, and they do a much better job modulating your blood sugar levels after meals. This makes life a lot easier for your pancreas, and loss of insulin sensitivity is a risk factor for both heart disease and diabetes.

Short fasts also reduce oxidative stress and inflammation in cells. Many theorize that this helps prevent and repair DNA damage that could otherwise develop into cancer. There’s even some research suggesting that fasting slows the little clocks that tick inside our mitochondria and trigger senescence, or aging. In other words,the mechanism fasting might help us live longer by keeping our organs youthful.

Intermittent fasting doesn’t necessarily lead to weight loss, but it often does. Research shows that when people skip a meal or stop eating for an entire day, they do tend to eat more at the next meal. But even if they allow themselves to eat as much as they want, they don’t quite make up for the calories they missed, leaving an overall calorie deficit. And thus, and I know this flies in the face of everything you hear about food and nutrition, but skipping meals can actually be an effective weight loss strategy.

The data from studies have been consistent, says David Levitsky, a professor of nutrition and psychology at Cornell University. If you skip a meal or downsize it, you do feel hungrier at the next one—but you don't make up for all of the calories you avoided, he says. In one unpublished study, his research team gave one group of people a commercially available small lunch (yogurt, soup, or some other small snack) adding up to about 200 calories, while a second group had regular buffet lunches of about 600 calories. Both groups were told to eat as they wished during the rest of the day. After two weeks, the small-lunch bunch lost weight; they were eating about 400 calories fewer than the all-you-can-eaters. "You don't compensate precisely for skipping a meal or reducing it," says Levitsky.

Intermittent Fasting may be the best method of Caloric Restriction.

There's plenty of evidence from animal studies to suggest that restricting calories—either by a consistently reduced food intake, skipping meals, or fasting—might be good for humans, too, says Mark Mattson. He says there are at least two possible mechanisms. Eating less cuts down on the production of free radicals, which damage cells and can lead to disease. He also says that there's a cellular response similar to what happens when we exercise. Like working out, going without calories is mildly stressful to the cells at the time, but beneficial over the long run. "Dietary restriction is about the best dietary advice I can give you," says Levitsky. "We don't know about living a longer life, but all the markers are in a favorable direction."

Partial fasting may even extend lifespan because eating less sends a message to the cells of the body that they should conserve and use energy more efficiently.

We all know that caloric restriction is good for all animals, including humans, and study after study shows that in animals. Intermittent fasting is caloric restriction, but when people hear the word “fasting”, they freak out. In fact, intermittent fasting is even better than regular caloric restriction.

Small, short-term studies find that complete fasting lowers blood pressure and reduces cancer risk. But Dr. Naomi Neufeld worries that complete fasting could be harmful. After the first few days of water only, the body uses up all its stored glucose to make energy. And then it turns to other sources, including fat and muscle. That’s why it’s important not to go too long for any single fast.

My experience with Fasting.

Fasting makes you appreciate food even more, and helps avoid mindless eating. Believe it or not, and this is from personal experience, it makes food taste better.

Since fasting puts one in a state of ketosis, you’ll find increased energy (although not at first. The first week of 24 hour fasts once per week I was mildly headachy, and low energy, and cranky at first). Afterwards, those symptoms disappeared, and a very helpful side effect for me occurred-- my craving for sweets was completely was gone, and I was able to walk by the candy jar at the office without even thinking about sampling the sugary treats wihin.

Studies published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and The Journal of Nutrition in 2003 showed that mice forced to fast every other day, while eating twice the normal amount of food on non-fasting days, had better insulin control, neuronal resistance to injury, and other health indicators than mice fed calorie-restricted diets.

There are some warnings however:

Fasting should never be more than 12-24 hours, which is when the body starts using muscle and vital organs as fuel. Fasting technically commences within the first twelve to twenty-four hours of the fast. A fast does not chemically begin until the carbohydrate stores in the body begin to be used as an energy source. The fast will continue as long as fat and carbohydrate stores are used for energy, as opposed to protein stores. Once protein stores begin to be depleted for energy (resulting in loss of muscle mass) a person is technically starving.

That 12-24 hour time period is considered safe, because it is well within when starvation actually occurs. In fact, the studies show that the earliest evidence for lowered metabolic rate in response to fasting occurred after 60 hours (-8% in resting metabolic rate). Other studies show metabolic rate is not impacted until 72-96 hours have passed (George Cahill).

And, fasting is not for everyone. Certain people should NOT fast, including:

• Pregnant women.
• People with wasting diseases or malnutrition.
• Those with a history of cardiac arrhythmias.
• People with hepatic or renal insufficiency.

You must drink lots of water – and keep drinking lots of water, to get any benefits from the fast, pancreas and kidney wise, and avoid problems.

Fasting with juice or other nutrients is not fasting, and doesn’t get the benefits of resting insulin production, or resting the pancreas, or the kidneys.

Resources:

Effect of intermittent fasting and refeeding on insulin action in healthy men

http://jap.physiology.org/cgi/content/full/99/6/2128

The effect on health of alternate day calorie restriction: eating less and more than needed on alternate days prolongs life. Johnson JB, Laub DR, John S. Med Hypotheses. 2006;67(2):209-11 “Restricting caloric intake to 60–70% of normal adult weight maintenance requirement prolongs lifespan 30–50% and confers near perfect health across a broad range of species. Every other day feeding produces similar effects in rodents, and profound beneficial physiologic changes have been demonstrated in the absence of weight loss in ob/ob mice.”

Effects of intermittent fasting on serum lipid levels, coagulation status and plasma homocysteine levels

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15802901 “We conclude that intermittent fasting may have beneficial effects on hemostatic risk markers for cardiovascular diseases.”

Alternate-day fasting in nonobese subjects: effects on body weight, body composition, and energy metabolism

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/81/1/69 “Alternate-day fasting was feasible in nonobese subjects, and fat oxidation increased. However, hunger on fasting days did not decrease, perhaps indicating the unlikelihood of continuing this diet for extended periods of time. Adding one small meal on a fasting day may make this approach to dietary restriction more acceptable.”

Caloric restriction and intermittent fasting: Two potential diets for successful brain aging, Bronwen Martin, Mark P. Mattson, and Stuart Maudsley, Ageing Res Rev. 2006 August; 5(3): 332–353.

“In this review article we describe evidence suggesting that two dietary interventions, caloric restriction (CR) and intermittent fasting (IF), can prolong the health-span of the nervous system by impinging upon fundamental metabolic and cellular signaling pathways that regulate life-span.”

Related articles

• Fasting...or Starvation...no it's Fasting. - Sydney, Australia (travelpod.com)
• How Fast is the Slim Fast Diet? (justslimming.com)

Iowa has Impact

Image via Wikipedia

Until last night, I wasn't even aware that there is a massive meteor crater, the edge of which is where Manson, Iowa, sits.

Some 74 million years ago, an asteroid, or comet nucleus, hit the area, and killed everything in a 150 mile radius, and ejected debris worldwide for over 10 years. It was originally thought to be the impact that killed the dinosaurs, but was too far back in time for that to be the case (the smoking gun crater has since been located in Chiluxub, Mexico).

During successive ice ages, the crater was filled with glacial till and alluvial foam (I love to speak geology like I know what I am talking about).

Unfortunately, Bruce Willis was not around back then to drill a nuclear device into the object. Not that that would have helped do anything but create several impact craters.

~Robert

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A love that lasts 100 million years

Skeptics have a reputation for being a little hard around the edges, mainly because people confuse the word "skeptic" with "cynic".  

I am in love with the podcast from WYNC, "Radio Lab", which is brilliantly done by Jad Abulmrad and Robert Krulwich.  One of the short pieces they have used for two episodes is a short interview with Ann Druyan, a writer in her own right, political activist, and poet, but best known as the widow of Carl Sagan.  

I remember being deeply touched by the story of how Druyan and Carl Sagan had worked together for three years, on the Voyager Golden Record, and then later on the television series Cosmos, and finally fell in love.  As she told it, they had a conversation by phone where they agreed that they loved each other and should get married, and they hadn't even kissed yet.   

The Golden Record has compressed EEG data from Ann's brain, and she was thinking while they were recording her brain "I am in love... I am so in love!", and somewhere, at 35,000 miles per hour average, that recording is out in deep space.  

And will be for 100 million years (estimated).  Until, at some point, perhaps an alien society retrieves the spacecraft and decodes the messages.  Carl Sagan died in December, 1996, and who knows when, at some point in the hopefully far future Ann Druyan dies, but those brain waves, of a young woman in love, will be far out in space when all of us no longer are on the Earth.

I find that touching. 

Ted Serios and Thoughtography

Image by Jordan.A. via FlickrI first learned about Ted Serios in a Skeptic Magazine eskeptic mailing list article about him. His psychic photography method is called thoughtography.

As the "blur of the otherworldly" website says:

"Ted Serios

Ted Serios came to the world’s attention, briefly, upon the 1967 publication of The World of Ted Serios: Thoughtographic Studies of an Extraordinary Mind, by Jule Eisenbud. Eisenbud was a psychiatrist interested in the paranormal powers of the mind; Serios was an unemployed alcoholic bellhop from Chicago who could allegedly project images on unexposed film by staring into the lens of a camera with intense concentration. In “carefully controlled” experiments, while chugging quarts of Budweiser, the oftentimes shirtless Serios would work himself into a sort of ritualistic froth, snapping his fingers at the moment of telepathic impact and then falling back into his chair exhausted. The results were mixed, but he did sometimes inexplicably produce imagery of buildings, people walking down the street, Neanderthal families, and space ships. This seemingly random archive was guided by Eisenbud who placed “target pictures” in manila envelopes for Serios to access and re-imagine onto the instant film. The bubble of interest in Ted Serios was part of a larger cultural fascination with the paranormal that peaked in the late 1960s in the climate of alternative lifestyles that included meditation, new age religions, and “mind-expanding” drugs. Serios was not a participant in, but a subject of this cultural phenomenon. In a way Eisenbud viewed him as a kind of “urban primitive,” who still had access to ancient powers of the mind that modernity had banished as superstitious and uncivilized. Recently there has been some resurgent interest in Serios, not so much in terms of his telepathic powers but more in relation to a peripheral history of photography, a chronology of photographic image-making at the margins of the accepted canon."

Ted Serios, was a man, an alcoholic, a possible psychic, and a former Chicago bellhop who briefly came to prominence in the 1960s for his purported ability to psychically impress images onto Polaroid film. The article I read purported to suggest that no one had an explanation or was able to reproduce his methods for how he made images appear on polaroid film. However, at least one man is able to reproduce the results, and has a potential explanation:

http://www.niler.com/estitle.html

For the other side, a "pro-Serios" article:

http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/michael_prescotts_blog/2006/08/lets_get_serios.html

Using Asparagus to Tell the Future

From the "Law and Magic" blog, I found the following hilarious entry:

"I was poking around, looking for an update on that storyabout the fellow who got Italian store clerks to turn over money to him by using hypnosis, and came across this story about Jemima Packington, who lives in Worcestershire, who throws asparagus on the floor (or, I suppose any flat surface would do--why not?) and who then uses the patterns the stalks make to tell fortunes. She calls herself an "asparamancer," a word that as far as I can tell she seems to have invented, along with her fortune telling technique. She made an appearance at the recent British Asparagus Festival to predict attendees' futures, so her asparagus future seems to be sprouting. She says foreign asparagus doesn't work as well as the homegrown kind for divination.

Now, according to Charles MacKay's Extraordinary Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, asparagus tied in a bundle can predict something. "Asparagus, gathered and tied up in bundles, is an omen of tears. If you see it growing in your dreams, it is a sign of good fortune."

I've heard of using tea leaves and coffee grounds (tasseography), but I've never heard of using this particular vegetable, although as I say, Charles MacKay mentions it, so it's got a history as a symbol of some kind of future meaning."

The Amazing Meeting (TAM)

The Amazing Meeting is coming up again in Las Vegas, the first one in June (previous TAMS were always in January). Due to financial issues, this will be the first one in five years that I probably won't attend, and that makes me sad. There's something about being with like minded people of a scientific bent, that is incredibly powerful, and makes you feel that you're not alone, which is great.

If anyone attends, please leave a comment. I'd love to know which speakers you found most interesting. If you get a chance to see Richard Wiseman, a TAM regular, speak anywhere, you should take that opportunity - he's a wonderful and entertaining speaker.

The Amazing Meeting 5, Las Vegas (TAM5)

In late January, I attended "The Amazing Meeting 5", in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Amazing Meeting (or TAM5, for those in the know), was started by James "The Amazing" Randi, a well known magician and skeptic, who has his own charitable organization, the James Randi Educational Foundation, in Florida. Randi is well connected, having been in both the entertainment business and also well known among those of a skeptical mind, so there's always a great lineup, including the following guests (and click on any photo for comments, notes, and larger sizes):

Penn and Teller (and James Randi):


The Mythbusters (two years in a row!)


The creators of Comedy Central's "South Park", Trey Parker and Matt Stone:


From Saturday Night Live and Sex and the City, Julia Sweeney:


Vanity Fair writer (and author) Christopher Hitchens:


Peter Sagal, of National Public Radio (NPR)'s "Wait, wait, don't tell me".


The Skepchick, Rebecca Watson:


The "Bad Astronomer" Phil Plait, of Sonoma State University:


British Psychologist and author (and magician) Richard Wiseman, and yours truly, the Froggy, and tadpole:


National Council of Science Education President Eugenie Scott:


President of the Skeptics Society, and Skeptic Magazine publisher, Michael Shermer:


Overall, I really had a great time. It was the largest skeptics event ever (800 people), but still small enough to meet every speaker personally, and learn a lot. The largest podcasts, Skepticality, and the Skeptics Guide to the universe, were there, as well as CNN, the Las Vegas newspapers and television stations also. There's a lot of smart people in this group, that's for sure. The speakers were definitely hit and miss (who knew the editor of the Onion could be such a boring speaker?), but this event is really "amazing". Don't miss it if you are in Vegas next June (they moved it to the hot Vegas summer so more teachers can attend). Plus, where else do you see t-shirts like this?