Periodic fasting starves cisplatin‐resistant cancers to death

http://emboj.embopress.org/content/early/2018/06/06/embj.201899815

by sjcsjc • 8 years ago

493 305 8 years ago

emboj.embopress.org

StriverGuy• 8 years ago

Anyone have a link without a paywall?

astrodev• 8 years ago

https://sci-hub.tw/10.15252/embj.201899815

arisAlexis• 8 years ago

I seriously seriously thank you. I have a family history of this specific cancer and wanted to read about it.

avbor• 8 years ago

It blows my mind that the original link wants to charge 35 dollars for one day of access for this.

sandworm1013• 8 years ago

Not much of a suprise really. It fits the model that cancer cells are weaker, that any stress to the entire body might see them die off first. That is the basis of non-targeted chemo and radiation treatment. You apply the stress and hope it kills the cancer before the patient. So here we starve the patient and see the hungry cancer cells suffer the most. But just dont go so far that the immune system suffers too. That wont end well.

Nae3Au5x• 8 years ago

In this case it also relies on the resistant cancer cells having altered metabolic pathways compared to your average cancer. It's not an universally applicable strategy.

Remember, fasting didn't work out so well for Jobs.

melling• 8 years ago

Perhaps it should be tried with regular treatments?

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fasting-might-boo...

eganist• 8 years ago

He also made himself a fruitarian, so the stress on his body was from a lot more than just fasting.

This same diet landed Ashton Kutcher in the hospital when he tried to go method for Jobs.

sleavey• 8 years ago

Didn't he only start after the diagnosis? Precancerous cells stand a better chance of being starved with fasting than cancerous cells. By the time the cell is cancerous it has built multiple metabolic pathways to power itself, making it more difficult to kill.

sandworm1013• 8 years ago

Each cancer is different and might respond to different treatments. I was speaking very generally. This paticular cancer reacts because of its unique properties, but the principal may work on others too.

morsma• 8 years ago

As far as I understand it, then Jobs was doing juice fasts which is probably the worst thing one can do in the presence of cancer.

Shorel3• 8 years ago

I think his particular way of fasting could have been a factor for the apparition of his cancer.

It seems that the best parallel we can do is cancer == DNA "software" bugs.

Software debugging is a complex art and what works in one case definitely doesn't work in all cases.

atrexler4• 8 years ago

this isn't how chemotherapy works. traditional chemo targets rapidly dividing cells in the body: cancer, hair/skin, intestinal lining cells. That's why you get those side-effects.

sandworm1013• 8 years ago

Targets all deviding cells, with the faster-deviding cancer cells more affected.

stephen• 8 years ago

Not much of a suprise really

Not to be super contrarian, but AFAIU nutritional treatment of cancer actually is a very big surprise for traditional cancer treatment/oncologists.

E.g. a podcast I listened to with Dominic D’Agostino mentioned walking through a cancer ward and most/all patients were being fed Ensure, a sugary "protein" drink (ingredient list starts with water, maltodextrin, sugar), to keep them from losing weight.

Which is a valid traditional concern, but ends up supporting the cancer's glucose-based metabolism (disclaimer IANAE) vs. triggering what this article cites (for the subset of cancers that are susceptible to it).

rsync2• 8 years ago

"Not much of a suprise really. It fits the model that cancer cells are weaker, that any stress to the entire body might see them die off first"

I don't think that is the model ...

I think the idea is that the cancer cells are a luxury that your body supports because external queues indicate that it's living in the land of plenty. Why not support the energy needs of these extraneous cells ? There's plenty to go around ...

The fasting forces your body to act in a miserly fashion and like someone forced onto a budget, the extraneous luxuries are the first thing to go.

It's your body that starves the cancer cells.

logfromblammo4• 8 years ago

It's isn't that they're weaker, they are more greedy and less eusocial. They abandon the mechanisms that keep ordinary cells as "good citizens" of the body and overconsume the available resources.

In doing so, they make themselves more sensitive to the resource supply. The "good citizen" cells will put themselves into a low-energy resting state or commit apoptosis to return resources for the common good when the energy supply gets low, as the cancer cells continue selfish business as usual, perhaps by growing more blood vessels into their tumor.

While fasting, many of your "good citizen" cells will stop dividing. Chemotherapy drugs or radiation treatments have greater impact on rapidly-dividing cells, like those in hair follicles, so the damage will then be more focused than ever on cancer cells, who disobey any signals to slow down, and keep dividing anyway. If you could send out a signal that says, "all cells should stay in their homes and shelter-in-place for the next 72 hours" then the cancer cells will ignore it and be the only ones out partying in the streets, and your attack helicopter drugs can be flying around, shooting at anything that moves. Then the immune cell cops can come out, and finish off the stragglers if they can.

It isn't the weakness of individual cells, it's the weakness of the intercell relationships in a tumor. "Good citizen" cells will commit apoptosis on demand in order to spare cells that are more important to the whole body. Cancerous cells have generally already ignored their suicide orders, and bluffed past or warded off the macrophages, in order to continue existing. That greed can be used against the cancer. They indiscriminately consume resources, so ordering the villagers to stop drinking water until further notice, and then poisoning the well, will kill or weaken anyone that disobeys. Even just poisoning the well without the prior protective order will tend to disproportionately kill more cancer cells, just because they drink as much as they can while the other cells are taking just what they need.

But when you can issue that protective order, by means of fasting, you get higher survival rates for obedient cells. If, for some reason, the cancer cells are resistant to the treatment, they will still hedonistically party themselves to death once the food is gone, as all the normal cells have either gone into brumation or killed themselves to lessen the burden.

noelwelsh• 8 years ago

The fasts are only a few days long, which is fairly easy to do. It's not clear to me if these results have been shown in humans or just mice. Anyway, interesting result suggesting that occasional fasts might be a good preventative measure. It would be interesting to know if 16 hour fasts, which are common in intermittent fasting, would have the same effect.

bad_user12• 8 years ago

Fasting is great for weight loss and for lowering your insulin resistance, which is now considered by many the main cause of obesity and of course type 2 diabetes. This has been shown by studies.

Some say that fasting activates "autophagy" which has great health benefits, supposedly being great for preventing the remission of cancer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autophagy — but note that I could not find any concrete study or proof of it, this being anecdotal evidence from some clinics that advise their patients to do fasting instead of chemotherapy.

I practice fasting for 36 hours, 3 times per week. Monday, Wednesday and Friday I don't eat or drink anything other than water and coffee. You can go shorter, like one meal per day in some days or longer, e.g. 5 days is easy once you get used to it.

As a tip: eating high fat, low carbs meals before fasting helps. Also if you get dizzy or if you get cramps, you probably have an electrolytes imbalance and you need to stop your fast. If that happens to you, make sure to take salt (sodium) and possibly magnesium supplements. Once I started doing that, the dizziness and the cramps stopped. But document yourself first and consulting a doctor and doing some blood work might be good ideas.

This is a pretty good book on the subject: https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Guide-Fasting-Intermittent-A...

user9182031• 8 years ago

It seems like every day somebody has figured out how to beat type 2 diabetes. I just read Proteinaholic by Dr. Garth Davis who advocates a vegan lifestyle (while telling you that carbs are not the enemy) to cure diabetes.

teekert2• 8 years ago

Carbohydrates come in many forms, simple ones like sugar make your blood sugar spike and this is widely considered bad (and what leads to diabetes type 2). Complex ones take very long to digest, some can even only be digested by your microbiome, deep in your gut, those carbohydrates make for a consistent, stable, small flow of sugar to the blood. Which is considered a good thing.

Try eating oats (no sugar, just yogurt and fruit for sweetening, don't get tricked into thinking honey or brown sugar is healthy sugar ;) I personally like strawberry or pomegranate but the latter is pretty expensive even in-season). Or try heavy whole wheat bread (with something like peanut-only peanut butter) and see how much longer it takes before you get hungry again, compare it to breakfast cereals or white bread. I really notice the difference. If you like sweet, try backing a cake from oats and banana (and some flour, pancakes of oat and banana are also very nice by the way), perhaps add some nuts as well. Works great for me (results of delayed hunger in the day are immediate, which is motivating). Oats are cheap, bananas generally as well.

camelNotation2• 8 years ago

There are a lot of ways to look at that, but I think what all these "cures" have in common is that they drastically reduce the amount of sugar in your diet and allow the body to essentially rest and reset its insulin response. I don't think it really matters how you do it as long as you do that.

bad_user12• 8 years ago

Our metabolism is very complex. But if it's not backed up by studies and science, it doesn't count.

Type 2 diabetes is defined by insulin resistance. The only way to "beat" type 2 diabetes is to lower your insulin resistance and thus to lower your insulin response. At the moment you can only lower your insulin with lifestyle changes that implies fasting + eating a diet that triggers a low insulin response.

The vegan lifestyle is high in carbs. What many people don't understand is that there are only 3 macro-nutrients: proteins, fats and carbs. You cannot do a low carbs diet without at least eggs and diary. And carbs stimulate insulin.

Note that there are clinics that have successfully treated people of diabetes via fasting. Here's one: https://idmprogram.com/

N.B. carbohydrates are not the enemy, but _refined carbohydrates_ are and unfortunately for a type 2 diabetic it's too late to switch to healthy carbs.

Yes, a potato is healthy, however for a diabetic it is basically poison.

supernovae• 8 years ago

I went vegan for 5 years, my cholesterol kept getting worse in every way.

Now i do keto, and my cholesterol is happy. Diabetes wasn't my direct concern but i find it interesting how eating a ton of eggs every day has improved my balance.

godshatter• 8 years ago

I'm fine living in a world where there are many ways to "beat" type 2 diabetes. Intermittent fasting (I eat one meal a day) has dropped my A1C from 8.9 to 5.5 (probably less, now). I've been doing this for about 15 months so far. My type 2 diabetes is not cured, if I drop off the diet and go back to my old habits my A1C will undoubtedly go right back up. But it's an easy diet to live with, especially since I don't limit myself and can eat whatever I want, though given the choice I'll try to reduce the worst refined carbs.

The high carb / low fat diet isn't one of the ways to beat type 2, though, and it's still the one pushed by many dieticians.

cageface11• 8 years ago

There are lots of different carbs with many different metabolic profiles. And there are plenty of people out there living very healthy lives and even reversing heart disease and diabetes on high carb diets provided they are unprocessed whole carbs. Okinawans used to get the vast majority of their calories from sweet potatoes, for example, and were the longest living people in the world.

bad_user12• 8 years ago

I am not contradicting you, however:

1. the diet of Okinawans is irrelevant because they are not eating the refined carbohydrates that we do and

2. that fasting is easier if you eat high fat, low carbs meals just before is a fact known for thousands of years, because fasting isn't new ... all major religions that practice water fasting allow meat just before a water fast

com2kid5• 8 years ago

The Okinawan diet is also famous for being a calorie restricted diet. There is a famous saying there that roughly translates to "eat until you are 80% full".

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hara_hachi_bun_me

I'm actually surprised that Wikipedia says they consume 1800 calories a day. When I am doing intermittent fasting I am around 1400-1600.

r_c_a_d• 8 years ago

I'm confused. Do you mean you fast for 12 hours on each of Monday, Wednesday and Friday, totalling 36 hours? Or you fast for 36 hours starting on Monday, Wednesday and Friday... which would be all of Monday and half of Tuesday etc?

bad_user12• 8 years ago

No, I mean I don't eat anything on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. If you count the hours, that's 36 hours windows, as it includes sleep.

mistaken• 8 years ago

You have to be careful though; it's easy to get gallstones if you regularly fast and don't flush you're gallbladder with fatty foods afterwards.

aviv3• 8 years ago

Your username is highly accurate based on this statement. This is just complete non-sense.

mygo• 8 years ago

sounds interesting, but I’m the type of person who defaults to scrawny, and if I don’t eat anything 3 days out of the week I’d likely be underweight and look like a stick. And I wouldn’t be able to keep my weight lifting routine.

S_A_P• 8 years ago

Ive recently started doing "mini" fasts combined with a keto diet to shed a few pounds. I usually just eat one meal per day at dinner time. While getting started on it was somewhat difficult after about 7 days I was in the groove and feel like this is a diet/lifestyle that I can maintain indefinitely. My hunger has changed from "IM STARVING FEED ME NOW" when I was eating 3 meals a day on no particular diet, to "hmm I guess I could eat". Energy wise, I do feel a lot better, and Ive shed 25 of the 50 lbs I need to get off of me. I was never much of a sweet eater, so I think Im lucky, as my wife who does have a sweet tooth has struggled eating Keto.

al_ramich3• 8 years ago

Obviously, it would be speculative given many factors that contribute to cancer like healthy eating, drinking, smoking... but it is interesting that in the top 50 countries with the highest rate of cancer, there are no Muslim countries. Fasting could be a factor that contributes to this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_cancer_ra...

jinder• 8 years ago

Perhaps - but it's mostly rich countries on that list. If you die of malnutrition, preventable disease etc you might not live long enough to die of cancer.

ggg9990• 8 years ago

But there are many absurdly wealthy Muslim countries.

hellofunk• 8 years ago

But fasting occurs in other cultures and religions besides Islam, so I don't see the relevance of this.

tomcooks2• 8 years ago

A month long TOTAL fast happens only in Islam, correct me if i'm wrong

francisofascii• 8 years ago

Catholics "fast" during Lent, but that typically just means two days where they don't eat between meals. For a typical Muslim, what is involved with fasting?

raverbashing2• 8 years ago

Not in the top 50, but curiously in the top 51

And of course, it's a combination of multiple factors (cultural, climate, and people dying by other means before being affected by cancer)

al_ramich3• 8 years ago

yes, interestingly Turkey being one of the more westernized Muslim countries. Nothin implied, just interesting.

bad_user12• 8 years ago

Heard somewhere that at least 40% of cancers in the western world is due to the diet, this figure supposedly being Officially recognized: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6639e1.htm

Our modern diet and lifestyle leads to a massive hormonal imbalance. E.g. many have started to blame insulin resistance for many cancers, which is also the leading cause for type 2 diabetes and obesity.

I suspect that countries with low cancer rates or low rates of type 2 diabetes simply haven't adopted the western diet.

closetCS• 8 years ago

Just curious, what kind of diet is considered "Western"? I would assume you are talking about diets high in sugar and carbs, but I'm sure other Eastern cultures eat plenty of high carbohydrate diets too right?

will_brown4• 8 years ago

E.g. many have started to blame insulin resistance for many cancers, which is also the leading cause for type 2 diabetes and obesity.

Curious, is insulin resistance the leading cause of type 2? I thought insulin resistance was the definition of type 2.

daveFNbuck2• 8 years ago

I've never heard of the American Health Organization, and I Google doesn't show a result for them. You might want to double-check your source before sharing that info again.

vanderZwan• 8 years ago

Perhaps a more useful analysis of this would be to look at cancer rates among Muslim communities and other communities that fast within a diverse country, since the populations would be more comparable in that case (or at least less incomparable, because there are probably still a ton of factors to consider).

roystonvassey• 8 years ago

I suspect that this is influenced by rates of under-diagnosis in third-world countries, rather than a factor of diets itself.[1]

1. http://www.who.int/dg/speeches/2010/iaea_forum_20100921/en/

misja111• 8 years ago

It can't be the only reason. Saudy Arabia and Dubai are not exactly third-world countries.

Here's a world map showing population cancer rate: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-population-with-... Definitely cancer is positively correlated with wealth, but there is clearly another factor as well.

theprotocol2• 8 years ago

I highly doubt this hypothesis.

Muslim people do not fast at night time. On average, they tend to eat much more during Ramadan what with the vast array of seasonal sweets.

The true difficulty of fasting during Ramadan is not being allowed to drink water during the day.

evfanknitram• 8 years ago

Regarding the "true difficulty" I don't think you can generalize like that. For example I suspect it depends on where you live, what hours fasting is, temperature and so on.

My friends here have told me that the main problem is to eat enough during the night because after fasting for 18 hours your body get used to it. I assume similar to my issues eating a bkg breakfast in the morning directly after waking up.

jnbiche• 8 years ago

As someone who has fasted an entire Ramadan along with Muslim friends, I completely agree that lack of water during the day was the hardest part about the fast for me. Along with lack of caffeine. Bad headaches were routine for me.

Not eating food for 12 hours isn't very hard at all.

phyzome• 8 years ago

« The true difficulty of fasting during Ramadan is not being allowed to drink water during the day. »

What?! To hell with that. That's just dangerous.

Zaheer• 8 years ago

I don't think it's about the total eaten but more so the fact that for several hours having no food / drink kills the cancer. So although they may eat more at night the hours during day is enough to starve / kill the cancerous cells.

mikkelam2• 8 years ago

Got damn, why is my country in the top :(

al_ramich3• 8 years ago

not enough fasting?

bayesian_horse4• 8 years ago

I've heard many Muslims actually gain weight during Ramadan.

As a fasting schedule, it is rather self-defeating. Even not drinking water during the day is not such a big problem, if you go about it smartly. On the other hand, complaining about Ramadan seems to be as big a part of the tradition as the eating after dark.

andreygrehov2• 8 years ago

Something tells me that it's not about fasting, but the quality of food. I'm originally from Ukraine, where fasting is not popular by any means and the cancer rate is 2.5 times lower than in US. I moved to New York 5 years ago, the first thing I noticed was how fake the food is. Seriously, I was like, why the hell the food in the most popular city in the world is tasteless, is it made of plastic? Anyways. Long story short. My hypothesis is that rich countries have access to a more powerful factories/hardware/etc. to produce a lot more processed food.

camelNotation2• 8 years ago

Rewritten for normal people:

Cancer sometimes becomes resistant to chemotherapy, but we did a study that shows a certain type of lung cancer is highly dependent on a certain amino acid and when you fast intermittently it deprives the cancer of that amino acid and causes the cancer cells to die.

atrexler4• 8 years ago

Well, to be precise- this study shows no evidence of a fasting effect.

they show if you starve cells in a dish in a way that might mimic what happens when you fast, you can kill the cells. I didn't see any mention of even mouse studies in there, so I don't know what their in vivo model was but it mostly looks like cell culture to me (apologies if I've missed that). Extrapolating that to humans is extremely hard.

For sure a promising result but its pretty preliminary.

randcraw• 8 years ago

The Guidi and Longo paper isn't a study at all. They're summarizing the work of Obrist et al, 2018:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29875130

Apparently efforts similar to these go back to at least six years. "Metabolic reprogramming: A new paradigm for targeting cisplatin resistant cells" describes a recurring research program that began in 2012 which seeks to impede cancer via restraining oxidative metabolism, though I think their method of blocking cancer cell metabolism may be more selective than starving ALL of the patient's cells.

http://grantome.com/grant/NIH/IK2-BX001289-03

varunpant• 8 years ago

Fast for how long ? Few days a week ?

atrexler4• 8 years ago

I've no idea about the fasting stuff. Just thought its important to make clear this particular study is all about doing stuff to cells or lumps of cells in dishes (again sorry if I missed more involved model system in the paper). Whether thats a good model for cancer in people and how fasting interacts with that I honestly have no idea.

pandasun• 8 years ago

Rewritten for normal people

Thank you =)

peter_retief• 8 years ago

There is a lot of evidence that high fat low carbohydrate diets, also know as fasting diets have enormous health benefits, completely at odds with the dietary recommendation here https://www.choosemyplate.gov/dietary-guidelines is one of the drivers of obesity, diabetes and metabolic syndrome which in includes heart disease and high blood pressure

cageface11• 8 years ago

Calorie restrictions in general are healthy. You can accomplish the same things with high carb diets provided you eat unprocessed complex carbs and reduce total calories.

arcticbull5• 8 years ago

Studies show that calorie restriction and fasting are actually different - during calorie restriction your body reduces energy consumption and metabolism, and while you can lose weight, it's proven hard to stick to and most people put that weight back on.

Fasting OTOH actually increases your metabolic rate [1], stimulates HGH production [4, 5], your brain switches to primarily consuming ketones instead of glucose and your body begins consuming damaged proteins via autophagy. Interestingly enough, studies show weight lost during fasting is better kept off than the equivalent loss with calorie restriction. Your body also resets what it considers 'low' levels of insulin, leptin, etc which can reverse Type II [2, 3]. That can't happen as effectively if you eat.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10837292

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15640462

[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16051710

[4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1548337

[5] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3127426

13years• 8 years ago

Fasting also seems to be protective to your health cells from being damaged.

https://news.usc.edu/118758/fasting-during-chemotherapy-may-...

buzzdenver2• 8 years ago

Is fasting supposed to work just due to going into a caloric hole, or is there also a time component to it? In other words: does a 6 hour run/hike on an empty stomach where I burn 4000 Calories have the same effect as fasting for 36 hours?

rsync2• 8 years ago

This is a good question - and it is not exactly the same question as "how long should I fast".

You're trying to put your body in a state where it no longer has the resources to support extraneous energy consumers so a too-short fast will not work if you don't cross that threshold of bodily parsimony. I personally would hope that 16 hour IF-style fasts would be enough (because that's what I typically do), but I bet they're not ...

But my parents question is a bit different: can one speed up the clock on the fast by burning through a lot of bodily resources through physical work. I suspect the answer is yes, to a degree - but I'll bet cancer cells are not in the same category of energy consumers as your muscles are - I'll bet there is a reserve of energy for them that doesn't get touched for a while, even if you do the big hike.

It would be nice if there were some kind of threshold indicator that you could test for to see when your body as in a state of parsimony with regard to cancer cells ...

7384725277846• 8 years ago

A nightly fasting window of at least 13h has been shown to reduce recurrence of breast cancer in women.

yazaddaruvala• 8 years ago

Disclaimer: This is all speculation based on anecdata from the internets. Noone really knows if/why IF helps.

Its not exactly the same. One is caloric restriction, and the other is caloric exhaustion. If your entire body worked as a single unit it might be that simple, but:

1. IF helps cull gut-bacteria which can only survive on simple foods. e.g. Bacteria which are inefficient and would happily produce toxins because it knows with enough of its simple foods it can outlive other populations and its own toxins.

2. IF helps turn off the digestive system. When this happens your stomach will stop "growling", and you will feel energetic even tho you haven't eated food for 16+ hours. Allowing the digestive system to relax, and flush/hopefully clean itself up, and won't happen because you went for a run.

3. Senesent/Cancerous cells may still be starved by exhausting all calories quickly, but it really depends on how those cells die(it might just take time), and how the body allocates resources. You can imagine a tumor sitting on a major blood vessel will continue to eat before any muscles are. The only way to starve it is to not eat.

All that said, exercise is always good. Just be careful. Try to do it in the first half rather than the second half of your fast. Fainting is never good.

logfromblammo4• 8 years ago

Despite your concluding statement, there is something called "bonk training". Basically, you exhaust your glycogen stores as much as possible before beginning your workout.

So when you start running/biking, your body is in a similar state to just after hitting the wall in a marathon or several hours into a long bike race or triathlon without eating. Since you have insufficient glycogen, you just can't do more than 70% your max heart rate. It is reputed to produce advantageous training adaptations when done in addition to normal training.

But if you aren't on a keto diet already, that sounds like a great way to simulate the worst tortures of Hell. You probably won't even be able to push yourself hard enough to faint, but you will wish you had. There's a good reason racers down that glycogen gel stuff during their endurance races now.

nradov3• 8 years ago

Is that a realistic example? Very few people including trained athletes would actually be able to expend 4000kcal in 6 hours without some nutrition. After the immediate glycogen stores are depleted in a couple hours your power output drops dramatically if you don't consume anything.

raarts• 8 years ago

Unless you’re keto adapted that is (i.e. being in ketosis for a couple of weeks). When you're keto-adapted your body is used to running on your fat, and you won't experience 'bonking'.

buzzdenver2• 8 years ago

Today I just did a strenuous 4-hour hike on an empty stomach which based on my weight was about 2500-3000 calories. I drank about 100 calories worth of Gatorade, and I don't do any special diets. Just years of long runs/hikes.

7384725277846• 8 years ago

I am just one of those internet health "scientists", check some keywords of what I am saying for yourself. There is no conclusive data on all nutrition/eating habits. People like me gamble against the supposed average. Sometimes these hypes have been shown to be in fact detrimental (see antioxidant supplementation and cancer risk).

To your question: I doubt it's the same as many speculated mechanisms of fasting benefits are tied to your body's usual maintenance workings which just require some time. I suspect that some mechanisms are tied to a "low glucose signal", but the majority are things which are always present, but get interrupted or are less efficient when digestion is triggered and nutrients flood the blood stream.

Example 1: Glucose and complete (animal/soy isolate) protein trigger steady, increased IGF-1 secretion, which translates to "oh boy this is good, grow everything, store everything, who knows when we get something like this again. Noo, no maintenance! Build!". Higher IGF-1 levels are linked to cancer. Less nutritional "efficient" diets, like plant based, vegan diets are linked to an decreased cancer risk.

Example 2: Autophagy is always done (although increased when fasting), it's not hard to imagine the results to be much more protective when the garbage collection comes out ahead of the trash production from time to time. Mind that one problem with cancerous cells is the cloaking, hiding from the immune system, which might be done by accumulation of extracellular trash through increased cellular metabolism. Cleaning this up, might help the immune cells to target and kill cancer and precancerous cells.

Since eating became always accessible pleasure, I speculate some metabolic expectations of the body to be not met and humans tend to be in constant celebration mode. It's worth noting that cancer is naturally a rare event and absolutely linked to life style changes in humans and toxic byproducts of human civilization for all animals.

7384725277846• 8 years ago

I want to add: plant based diets are associated with something like a 10% (or more) decrease in overall cancer risk, which doesn't seem like a lot, BUT the average life time risk to DIE because of cancer is 1:5, so really fucking high.

aviv3• 8 years ago

Do I get back the 3,000 HN Karma points I lost to downvotes after years of suggesting fasting as a viable treatment for a whole host of "diseases"? One day people will see it as obvious as "smoking is bad for you". One day.

mirceal4• 8 years ago

Why do you care about karma so much? Express your opinion and forget about “internet points”.

19962• 8 years ago

Because you want to join in the conversation, and with lower amounts of magical points you get more often messages telling you to "slow down" AFTER you have carefully written a message in 5 to to 10 minutes. This is infuriating when english is not your native language and writing understandable language is slow, especially to communicate complex thought that may be not evident.

Due to my unpopular opinions about how some countries and companies are often targetted in US media, even on unrelated articles, this happens to me. I like taking breaks on HN, but the more it happens, the more I am going to other places instead.

This is not about being true or being right - just whether your conversation is following the mainstream opinion or not.

If later it proves to be right? Too bad for you. This is the case on most forums with up and downvoting, and it forces dissent out.

I am interested in conversation for learning and sharing. The post I read the more carefully are greyed out or dead. Most are ads or crankpots, but in 1% of the time I get gems.

Sinple example: would you have preferred to learn about intermittent fasting now, or 5 years ago? Me: 5 years ago, but too many downvotes may have pushed out of the community people like the parent poster.

aviv3• 8 years ago

I don't care, I said it tongue in cheek to illustrate how close minded many HNers are when it comes to health and how to improve one's own health without reliance on pharmaceuticals and other "modern medicine" inventions. Fasting is just one such example. I hope that by the time I reach 0 karma, fasting will be as mainstream as knowing you shouldn't be smoking.

IB885588• 8 years ago

For those interested in intermittent fasting, Valter Longo, the co-author of this paper, has done a few good interviews with Rhonda Patrick on her podcast and youtube:

https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/valter-longo

https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/valter-longo-2

I've quite enjoyed Rhonda's work.

Another good medical/biology/health podcast that recently appeared and that I'd enjoying a lot is Peter Attia's podcast. His interview with Dom D'Agostino is particularly good and includes discussion of the metabolic theory of cancer, but they're all good (he has one with Rhonda Patrick). He covers intermittent fasting among other things (also the health impacts/use of ketones, etc):

https://peterattiamd.com/domdagostino/

https://peterattiamd.com/rhondapatrick/

sjcsjc2• 8 years ago

You might also want to look at Mark Mattson's work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Mattson#Intermittent_Fast...

mbroshi• 8 years ago

Somewhat perpendicular, but intermittent fasting has been a great recent lifehack for me. I skip breakfast every day, and sometimes skip lunch. Gives me back at least an hour every day. And gorging for dinner is a lot of fun.

antoineMoPa2• 8 years ago

Skipping lunches is also a good method of spending less time at work and more time outside enjoying life. I only take 15 minutes noon breaks now.

elyobo2• 8 years ago

I eat lunch and it still only takes 15 minutes :D

rc_bhg• 8 years ago

That is not a healthy diet. You should be eating smaller meal more often. If you are going to fast, do it for at least a 24 hour period.

mtgx• 8 years ago

Eating more deals in a day (whether small or large) = more insulin spikes throughout the day = less of a chance to heal your insulin resistance.

laiden_swallow• 8 years ago

I mean intermittent fasting where you fast for ~16 hours and then eat larger meals during the remaining 8 is pretty popular.

mirceal4• 8 years ago

I think it’s worth considering what a healthy diet really is. Is it really healthy or are we just used to thinking it’s healthy?

As an example, a diet high in fat is generally considered by most people to be unhealthy.

You see people doing Keto and you start wondering if it’s really unhealthy.

Eating red meat is considered to be the unhealthy. You see people doing ZeroCarb diets and they (at least) look extremely good/healthy.

Fasting is generally considered unhealthy. You have people doing intermittent fasting, ADF or extended fasting at it works exceptionally well for them.

Vegan? It works really well for some people.

IMHO there isn’t one thing that works for everyone as far as diet goes. There are also the theoretical and the practical aspects of what we eat and when we it it.

I think everyone should try different things and figure out something that works for them, long term. It should not be a “diet”. It should be just something that blends into your lifestyle and gives you results for the investment you’re making.

bartread• 8 years ago

I skipped breakfast for years, until I realised it was the reason I was always in a bad mood for the entire morning. Skipping breakfast and lunch might work for you, but it's definitely not a solution for everybody.

013a• 8 years ago

The crazy thing about diets is how differently everyone responds to different plans.

For me, if I eat anything significant for breakfast (lets say > 400 calories), I am STARVING by the time lunch rolls around at noon. Like, stomach in pain, I need food now, I'll have 2 pounds of wings and a side of macaroni, thanks. But that overindulging doesn't carry over to dinner, which is pretty typical.

So, the synthesis of all of that is eating breakfast significantly increases my caloric intake for the day, despite having no measurable difference on energy, mood, etc.

If there are any rules that have worked for me, it's: Eat less, Eat less often, and Avoid carbs.

alecco• 8 years ago

Try having lots of beans at dinner. The resistant starch gives you a "second meal effect" the following morning.

bitL• 8 years ago

So, how long should we fast? I was thinking about doing 24h fasts every Friday instead of 3-day fasts every two months. Which one would be better from the article's point of view (as a preventive measure)?

ldiracdelta• 8 years ago

How long does the article suggest? I can't read the whole thing.

hackermailman• 8 years ago

There's many articles on the University of Southern California site https://news.usc.edu/?s=fasting most have been posted here over time.

Like the fasting mimicking diets they came up with https://news.usc.edu/82959/diet-that-mimics-fasting-appears-...

That later turned into a startup https://prolonfmd.com/ of 5 day fasting at different monthly intervals depending on your weight, but you can read the orig paper to see what the calorie restrictions were and just make/measure your own food.

AlwaysRock9• 8 years ago

For many months last year I would do a 5 day water fast the third week of every month. I enjoyed it but my mental performance at work suffered during the end of the fast.

I've been intermittent fasting for the last 2 months. I eat breakfast around 7:30 (protein shake I make at home with some healthy things tossed in), eat an orange or apple around 10AM, a large salad I make at work without any dressing at noonish, and a handful of cashews and almonds at 2:00PM. That's it. Nothing after that. I'll drink some unsweetened herbal tea or a carbonated water around 7pm sometimes when I'm winding down.

It's by far the best diet I've ever been on. It's hard sometimes when work events offer food/drinks after my eating window closes but not that hard. If I have to do work drinks I'll do a vodka soda to minimize my caloric intake.

Now I walk around at the weight that I wrestled at in college, I don't feel hungry often, and I feel great during the day.

I'm trying to get my family to try it for a few weeks to spur a lifestyle / eating change but it's been difficult. Most people are locked into the three meals a day (and likely a few snacks) mindset.

alex_hitchins3• 8 years ago

If I have to do work drinks...

No one should ever feel forced to imbibe. I'm guessing you know that and don't want to preach or nanny, but wanted to mention it just in case.

w0utert• 8 years ago

On the other hand, I also feel that it doesn't hurt to if you deviate from your own rules sometimes, instead of being all fundamentalist about it.

I try to live by a whole set of self-imposed rules because I think they are beneficial to my health and well-being, but for me these are not dogma's. By default, I don't drink during weekdays for example, but if there's a special occasion once or twice a month, I don't feel guilty deviating and/or making up for it some other day. As long as you feel comfortable with it yourself.

AlwaysRock9• 8 years ago

Yes - I do abstain from time to time but if it's a one on one meeting I want to make the other person feel at ease. In group settings I'm likely to get a soda water at the bar without the vodka and no one will be the wiser.

lightbyte• 8 years ago

How often do you do this fasting?

AlwaysRock9• 8 years ago

This is my regular daily diet.

tryitnow• 8 years ago

Congratulations on finding something that works for you and sharing it here.

However, it's incredibly common for just about anything to "work" for a three to four months. The key is finding something that is sustainable for a lifetime. It's also noteworthy that you're a former wrestler - a sport where careful control of eating and weight is of paramount importance so you presumably have a lot of experience with modulating nutrition and weight within narrow bounds. Given your experience what works for you may very well not work at all for others.

121789• 8 years ago

Sometimes it helps to observe your parents' eating habits. At some point I realized I had very similar eating habits to my dad, and started skipping breakfast as he had been doing for years. Now I do that every day (for years) and feel great.

AlwaysRock9• 8 years ago

Absolutely. I recognize that my ability to fast is likely much greater than most due to that being the norm for a significant part of my life. However I also believe that many people could train their body/brain to have a similar response if they really tried for a few weeks or a month. It's incredible what we can train out bodies to do if we believe.

wycy• 8 years ago

I've always found fasting easier by shifting the eating window to the end of the day rather than the beginning, i.e., doing all the eating after 5PM for a nice big dinner. I've found that the initial fast-breaking in the morning seems to be what triggers hunger soon thereafter around lunch time, whereas not breaking the fast in the morning seems to make it easier to coast through most of the workday without feeling any hunger.

Afton• 8 years ago

Agreed. It also pre-loads the calorie deficit. If you eat in the morning, you haven't accomplished anything until you fail to eat at night.

In my case, hunger is one of the few things that can cause almost complete insomnia (like, lie awake actually all night, not just fitful wakeups), which means it works much better for me if I'm hungry in the daytime, instead of in the evening.

ra88it• 8 years ago

I've found the same, and for the last year I've been almost always skipping breakfast and usually skipping lunch. I've gotten used to it, and I rarely experience the gnawing kind of hunger that doesn't pass as quickly as it arises.

I wonder if I could adapt just as easily to the reverse, like gp.

logfromblammo4• 8 years ago

Same here. If I decide to eat only between 5:30 PM and 10 PM, that's a resolution I can generally keep for many consecutive weeks, and then seamlessly resume after an occasional midday meal. If I eat my breakfast at 8:30 AM rather than 5:30 PM, then it is a Sisyphean effort for me to fast through the rest of the day. No way could I establish that as a permanent lifestyle.

I figure that if my appetite spikes while I'm sleeping, I'm very unlikely to act on it.

If I eat breakfast at 5:30 PM, I generally want another meal around 10 PM, which is about the same interval as breakfast at 8:30 AM, lunch at 1 PM. But with the latter, I also want another meal at 5:30 PM, then maybe a snack at 10 PM. For the delayed meal schedule, that would probably put increases in appetite around 2:30 AM and 7 AM, which are easy enough to ignore if I'm not awake.

So my stomach timer runs at about 4.5 hours. If I'm awake, it's difficult to ignore when it times out, and it takes about 12 hours for the "eat now" alarm to stop screaming so loudly. So skipping a morning breakfast (with some effort) and midday lunch (easily) is about the only way I can manage to skip any meals without driving myself crazy from attempting to ignore the constant "eat now" appetite signaling. It then takes maybe 20 hours before the hunger signals start, which is not so much an "eat now" imperative as "get really irritable and impatient, be more stupid, and stop enjoying whatever it is you're doing". And that seems like a good a time as any to eat. If I ever push past 24 hours, I'm just not fit for participation in civilized society for a while.

moltar• 8 years ago

Yup, same here. I really try to push it as far as I can.

ryanwaggoner• 8 years ago

I'm trying to get my family to try it for a few weeks to spur a lifestyle / eating change but it's been difficult. Most people are locked into the three meals a day (and likely a few snacks) mindset.

I think flipping it around to skip breakfast is far easier, both in terms of self-control and socially. Food is really important to most cultures, and an incredible amount of social cohesion is built around sharing meals together, primarily dinner, but also lunch. But for most people's lifestyle, if you start skipping breakfast, many people won't even notice.

superflyguy• 8 years ago

"Food is really important to most cultures"

I suspect survivor bias is at work here.

Shorel3• 8 years ago

The issue is that it's easier logistically to go to the gym in the morning than going to the gym at noon.

So, it depends on how social are you and what other activities you schedule around the fasting.

AlwaysRock9• 8 years ago

I like this idea. It's the next option I'm going to try with them. No eating until lunch at noon and then stop eating at 8pm. That should be do able for most of my family as I don't think they are big breakfast people anyways. It will just cut out that late night snacking.

daxfohl• 8 years ago

Sounds like an unsustainably low calorie intake. Have you measured? Or, how "intermittent" is it?

AlwaysRock9• 8 years ago

I havnt measured but it doesnt feel unsustainable. I weigh about 172 right now and ultimately I'd like to walk around at 160 pounds. I could be ignorant here but eventually if I continue this diet my body will get to a weight where my caloric intake is enough to maintain my weight. I havnt seen any decrease in performance mentally or physically so I wouldn't call it unsustainable. I went on a 15 mile walk this weekend and felt fine.

dghughes2• 8 years ago

Vodka is not a good choice, ethanol (7kcal/g) is second only to fat (9kcal/g) for caloric density.

fifnir3• 8 years ago

But if the point is to feel the effect of alcohol, V gon' give it to you with much less junk (carbs etc) than anything else

gojomo• 8 years ago

I'm not sure you can say that about a body in a fasting condition described here: the metabolism shifts may be more significant than default caloric counts.

In particular, note the observation about acetic acid being excreted in urine rather than completing energy metabolism in this Wikipedia write-up, and the resulting massive difference in caloric energy output:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_metabolism#Discussion_...

I suspect that discard-rather-than-use pathway may be prevalent in a fasting (or other low-sugars) metabolic condition.

malloryerik• 8 years ago

What is the best low-cal drink, then? Or are you better off drinking wine? Whiskey?

evincarofautumn• 8 years ago

Alcohol metabolism is pretty complex, though. Your liver can only process so much at once, so you’re not going to extract all the available energy from it if you’re drinking quickly/heavily, because the body will start excreting the excess acetic acid as urine.

That is, a bottle of wine has ~600 Cal in ethanol alone, but to actually get those calories out of it, you would need to drink it slowly, one glass at a time—you won’t actually get 600 Cal out of it if you drink it in one sitting.

Anecdotally: when I used to drink quite heavily a few years ago, I was consuming 500–1000 Cal of ethanol a day, yet still eating a normal ~2000 Cal diet, with ~2 hours a day of moderate physical activity, and losing weight.

JamesBarney2• 8 years ago

The calories per gram you reference is how much energy you get out of substance from literally setting it on fire.

But how much actual energy is available to the human body is very different. And alcohol specifically is very hard for the human body to efficiently turn into eneegy.

In addition alcohol make the mitochondria more inefficient leading to greater energy usage.

Most studies that add alcohol to animals diet find no change in weight.

AlwaysRock9• 8 years ago

Got a better option? I'm all ears. I know I can drink one vodka soda and it's generally 65ish calories. That's not too bad.

bayesian_horse4• 8 years ago

Protein shakes may help with mental performance when fasting.

GordonS5• 8 years ago

Surely nobody would class that as fasting, since you're basically drinking liquidised food?

chiefalchemist• 8 years ago

IDK. I feel most ppl are locked into a mindset of consuming food as something they want, not something they need. That is, it's mostly about pleasure and satisfaction and too little about nutrition and replacement.

As one of my XFit friends say "you can't outtrain a bad diet."

p.s. I too prefer vodka and soda. I like it. But I also know I'm better off with V&S than a beer. One look at the waistlines of my beer drinking friends and I'm happy with plain and boring V&S.

clumsysmurf• 8 years ago

Someone mentioned on HN recently (sorry, couldn't find the thread) that multi day fasting damages the lining of the stomach — something to do with acid production.

Anyone have more information about this?

jolmg• 8 years ago

Typical advice I've heard is to not stay hungry for too long. The stomach sends acid to the stomach as a strong message that it's hungry. Not eating means there isn't food protecting the stomach from the acid. That risks getting an ulcer.

Fasting seems to be a common practice, though. I wonder what variations in fasting (how long to go without eating, how often to fast, etc.) maximizes fasting time while keeping the risk of getting an ulcer to a minimum.

EDIT: Changed "increases or decreases risk" as of course fasting is not going to decrease the risk as opposed to not fasting.

cannonedhamster2• 8 years ago

Generally fasting under 2 weeks is considered safe. The stomach does not have a problem being in an acidic environment, it's always in acid. What some people report is heartburn or acid reflux, which can be damaging to the throat lining however it's usually temporary or treatable. Keep in mind people have been fasting safely, whether intentionally or not since before history. Our bodies are capable of handling many feast/famine cycles.

subpixel• 8 years ago

I'm glad that works for you but if that describes your daily routine you are on a diet, not an intermittent fast.

padobson• 8 years ago

It's pretty close to an 18/6 IF, depending on whether or not he does the tea in the evening.

AlwaysRock9• 8 years ago

explain?

alokitr• 8 years ago

I adhere to a eat nothing diet. Then after I have starved, I am awakened and I gouge myself to death. The cycle then restarts. The powers that be make sure I don't die cause who's gonna do a quickening on the highlander if I do ?

supernova87a• 8 years ago

Look, stop applying pseudo-science "feels-right" intuition to things that involve complicated cellular mechanisms. It doesn't work that way and you should just listen to what your doctor(s) tell you and trust them + your own due diligence.

Fasting doesn't "starve" cancer cells. Drinking only juice for a week doesn't "cleanse" your body.

Stop making up your own medical diagnoses fueled by internet bullshit. Listen to experts and trust them for a change.

triviatise4• 8 years ago

most doctors get little to no nutritional education. It is easy to learn about any one topic and know more than your physician. Especially since most physicians dont regularly read journal articles and probably dont even really understand statistics.

Appeals to authority are a logical fallacy. I do agree that reading something on the internet and following it is a bad practice.

elihu• 8 years ago

For what it's worth, the non-paywalled blurb seems to be saying something more specific than "fasting kills cancer", it's saying that cancers that develop resistance to cisplatin are more susceptible to fasting than cancers that aren't. So, even if cisplatin doesn't work directly, cisplatin-resistance has a beneficial side-effect that one might be able to exploit.

(This point seems to have been buried under the many posts expressing an opinion or anecdote about fasting in general.)

sjcsjc2• 8 years ago

I believe that in this case the term starve might actually be accurate:

"... the inability of ketone bodies metabolization due to various deficiencies in mitochondrial enzymes is the major metabolic changes discovered in malignant cells"

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5450454/

rainbowmverse2• 8 years ago

The main thing I got out of this thread is that everyone thinks they know the right way to health, that everyone else disagrees with them, and I have no idea how to tell who's actually right.

If you want to know why there's a health problem in some developed countries, the confidence of all the factions in the back and forth in this thread is a shining example. Unless you can afford professional guidance (and know how to tell if they know what they're talking about), you don't have much hope unless you stumble on to something that works for you.

falcolas2• 8 years ago

Or the huge reliance on personal anecdote and web sites/studies that agree with those anecdotes. It's stunning how quickly the dialog shifts from reasoned arguments about programming to "I'm right and you're wrong" in nutritional articles.

nonbel3• 8 years ago

Personally, I find a collection of anecdotal data (ideally from a wide variety of people) is worth much more to me than these studies that just report average results that apply to the average person/animal/cell in their sample.

The average person/animal/cell doesn't exist, and focusing on that has been a huge mistake in my opinion.

joe_the_user• 8 years ago

I think it's easier for each faction disagree because even professionals disagree about fundamental nutrition and healthy living questions.

I think there's considerable evidence that human physiologies vary enough that different and contradictory regimens can seem to wonderfully for different individuals.

On the current topic, fasting might indeed work great for some but I stay close to underweight regardless of my diet or exercise regime so any serious, multi-day fasting probably wouldn't be healthy for me.

Edit: Also problematic is how the topic jumps from the topic of cancer and fasting, which is very specific, to the healthiness of fasting is problematic (coming before the jump you note, fasting-in-general to "here's a my fasting anecdote and pet-theory").

lolc• 8 years ago

I don't get that impression. Maybe I have selective reading but the following things get little controversy here:

1. Sugar bad

2. Eat less

3. Find good eating-habits that you can maintain indefinitely

Point three is where people will naturally have different outlooks. I don't read that as disagreement as much as diversity.

nradov3• 8 years ago

Points 1 and 2 are certainly controversial for endurance athletes doing intense workouts or races. Those are a small fraction of the population, but the point is there are hardly any universal guidelines.

agumonkey3• 8 years ago

I think we should also put culture/group back into the equation.

Instead of being bored on a couch watching channels, spend time with people gathering fruits and making your own meals as a fun thing to do. It may first feel dull at first but I think it's a good blend of social, physical and nutritional health.

sridca• 8 years ago

Yes.

We should let the body tell us what, and how to, eat. My body is allergic to a variety of food groups, so I'm eating only meat. Normally I eat two meals a day; but at times, depending on what my body wants, I may eat just one or three meals during the day.

rednerrus• 8 years ago

There is no professional guidance.

firethief• 8 years ago

If you want to know why there's a health problem in some developed countries, the confidence of all the factions in the back and forth in this thread is a shining example.

I think you might be extrapolating from your experience with your own social class. I can assure you that armchair nutritionistism is not the biggest problem for the majority of the country. Nutrition isn't on most people's minds--even people whose lives are imminently threatened by their nutritional habits.

rainbowmverse2• 8 years ago

> "I think you might be extrapolating from your experience with your own social class."

You don't know anything about my social class. I'm not HN typical. People without much think about health too, and receive plenty of conflicting advice.

farresito• 8 years ago

Anyone doing weight lifting has any experience with fasting? I'm not so interested in doing weight lifting while fasting (doesn't sound too good) as in the muscle gain/loss after a fast.

theatraine• 8 years ago

Time restricted eating is probably the most compatible with weight lifting.

Personally I'm interested in longer fasts but I'm under my goal weight. I would also be interested in more research about how to gain muscle while fasting.

plausibilities• 8 years ago

Me.

I currently maintain a 2.3x bodyweight deadlift and 1.5x bench press while working a relatively tame & laid-back salaried dev job.

Can't do IF (multi-day, anyways) without losing lean mass anymore. Used to be able to until I started plateauing on my lifts.

My guess is as you gain more and more lean muscle mass, there's some arbitrary threshold (which differs person to person) at which your TDEE begins to exceed viable intake within a limited timeframe.

I specify "viable intake" because your body's nutrient uptake rate per hour has some given limit - anything over that limit usually just gets pooped out later.

Restricting timeframe for eating during the day (break my fast after work) seems to work out okay though.

Skrillex• 8 years ago

Off-topic:

Articles like this, and most others that deal with health and medicine, present a problem for me that is somewhat hard to describe. The research for this one appears to be built upon prior research (which is hopefully validated with these findings) and the two headliners appear to have some credentials, so let us skip the question of whether or not the reporting itself can be trusted, as that is not what this is about. The first thing that I notice is that the trials mentioned in the article do not seem capable of proving the claim made in the title, but let us assume that they instead ran a trial involving humans fasting (which could be incited by a study like this) and had the same results. I would like to believe that this is a breakthrough, but how is it to be reconciled with the other 400 breakthroughs we find for various cancers each month? If even a small percentage of them were as valuable as they are expressed to be (and we ignore the contradicting evidence), I would expect cancer, diabetes, and obesity (at least!) to be solved problems by now. I suppose that what I am saying is that with there being so much FUD and so many actual unknowns about what determines the well-being of humans that I find most studies to be hard to believe, especially without being able to test most of it myself. It might be a given that nothing you read can be fully trusted, but it is becoming difficult for me to trust at all, and that is without even considering the fact that some people are reporting findings for studies that never happened. It seems to me that the two most common strategies are to either believe one thing and reject all new information that contradicts it, or to believe most of the new information. Overall, I am left feeling hopeful that the people to who articles like this would make the greatest difference to have found a logical and efficient way to handle this sort of situation.

Any thoughts?

barking• 8 years ago

In Gaelic the words for Wednesday mean "First Fast day", those for Thursday "day between fasts" and for Friday "Fast day". So the 5:2 diet is nothing new.

kolbe• 8 years ago

I thought this applied to all diets that induce ketogenesis.

abledon• 8 years ago

Combine that with 30s+ mayurasana for a total intestinal workout. (Work towards 5 minutes)

yogiwannabe• 8 years ago

Here is ancient wisdom on this: https://youtu.be/tkuF1VmLoRs If you are looking for scientific data, you will not got any but WISDOM, a plenty :-). This is from an Enlightened Living Master.

olivermarks• 8 years ago

Not happy with the certainty of the headline. A very close friend of mine who died of cancer chose dietary treatment over western medicine, and had a very grueling, unpleasant death in a remote place.

hinkley• 8 years ago

This reminds me of a paper maybe ten years back where they found that normal cells go into a holding pattern (I hesitate to use the word hibernation) when resources are scarce, but cancer cells do not.

Because healthy cells are less active, they take less damage from chemo. So they were looking at intermittent fasting before chemo to reduce the collateral damage.

dagoat• 8 years ago

Non pay walled: http://sci-hub.tw/http://emboj.embopress.org/content/early/2...

highlight:

A549 CDDP-resistant cancer cells showed reduced tumor growth and longer survival in response to periodic fasting cycles (24 hours of water only twice a week). In contrast, CDDP-sensitive tumors were not affected by these 24-hour fasting cycles. Because previous results indicated that 2–3 consecutive days of fasting were effective against a wide range of cancers, particularly in combination with chemotherapy (Lee et al, 2012; Bianchi et al, 2015), it would be important to test these longer fasting periods on A549 and other CDDP-resistant cancer

brfox• 8 years ago

That paper is a mini review of this paper which actually has the data in it: http://emboj.embopress.org/content/37/14/e98597

In there, they did work on A549 cell lines and showed that removing nutrients from the media decreased their growth rate. They also showed that putting these human cell lines into immune deficient mice and doing a couple 24hr fasts per week had a small (p=0.03) effect on the tumor growth rate (Fig 2). But in the in vivo study, it appears they didn't directly compare A549 vs cisplatin resistant A549 - they seemed to have run 2 studies both vs control.

There are literally thousands of papers showing drugs or treatments which can cure lab mice of "cancer" and many more which can kill cell lines in vivo, but only a tiny percentage of those work in patients. There is a reason this is not in a higher profile journal.

bayesian_horse4• 8 years ago

Most intermittent fasting works on a 1-3 day fasting schedule. It doesn't really work for me, maybe because of decision fatigue, maybe I just lack the discipline.

Currently I try to loose weight by shooting for two weeks fasting, one week not. About 10kg gone, 40 left to go.

vstuart3• 8 years ago

Very interesting! I (female; 57 y.o.) have been doing an intermittent fast (2 days/week: typically Tue/Thu) for >2.5 years now. I picked those days as they don't interfere with social events, weekends, long weekends. I initially did 500 calories on those days, but for more than a year now I simply don't eat at all on those days (but I drink coffee, tea). I find that much easier, as the hunger pangs are largely absent. Benefits from this fasting include an epigenetic reprogramming (perhaps?) of some stem cells, as from the outset I've seen a few of the very few gray hairs that I have revert back to brown (white further out; brown more recently to root). That could be triggered (or entirely due to) e.g. by autophagy of the old, weakened cells and their replacement by rejuvenated cells. Interesting, nonetheless. Body weight is stabilized around the new metabolic set point (I record this daily in a tab-delimited file, that I can easily plot with a simple linux command (alias gp='echo "gnuplot -p /mnt/Vancouver/Programming/scripts/gnuplot/plot.gp')! On non-diet days I eat whatever I want (I ashould add, pretty sensible: mostly home-made food, meals), ad libitum. ;-)

Plot: https://imgur.com/a/e3ahbtQ

dipro• 8 years ago

Wow - I (male; 45 y.o.) have done virtually the same (2 days/week fast, Tue and Fri, no food intake, only drinks - mostly water, sometimes coffee, rarely some orange juice; on non-fast days ate without restriction) for one year now.

The curve looks quite similar: https://imgur.com/a/H4pKkNv

What I find interesting is your mention of a metabolic set point. Wanted to lose a bit more weight (since I still have visceral fat), but couldn't manage to do so. It seems I hit a hard barrier - any caloric deficit during fasting days was magically compensated exactly on non-fasting days; I tried to reduce caloric intake on non-fasting days, but while fasting a whole day isn't that difficult for me, restricting calories while eating seems to only work when my body has met a magical internal quota.

It seems indeed to be a set point. The small uptick beginning of June was when I skipped a fast day once. I'm a bit scared what would happen if I stopped fasting altogether now.

Would be interesting to understand more about the set point - however, some research on the net didn't yield much substantial info. It seems it exists, but how it works exactly and how it can be moved is unclear. And even if trying to move it makes sense. Maybe the set point is ideal health-wise, and is overridden on unhealthy caloric surplus diets...?

fifnir3• 8 years ago

Have you tried or considered a low-carb high-fat diet in the non fasting days?

Maybe keeping your insulin levels relatively low, you can reduce the effect of the insulin cycle on your appetite

CuriousSkeptic• 8 years ago

Perhaps this will help https://idmprogram.com/tag/body-set-weight/

a13692099932• 8 years ago

while fasting a whole day isn't that difficult for me, restricting calories while eating seems to only work when my body has met a magical internal quota.

One dirty trick to try is, just after eating, to drink about two tablespoons of staight "extra-light" olive oil. It's a bit foul, but makes for a effective way of ruining your appetite. Other "bland food diet" tricks might also work.

(I'd like to mention that I do not support healthy diets, but my design to work against anything nature intends takes priority.)

Edit: two tablespoons, not eight, and apparently they make low-fat olive oil now.

agumonkey3• 8 years ago

How much time before you started to adapt and not eat on Tue/Thu ?

kudos for your fasting and thanks for the comment

vstuart3• 8 years ago

You're welcome! Honestly, I adapted almost instantly. When I first started the IF, it was harder the first few times (just your body getting used to it), then I was fine. I do get somewhat peckish, more so later on the Thu diet day, but I have strong will-power (indeed, I've yet to miss a week during the past 2.5+ years, but that's just due to discipline, not regimented: I think it'll be ok to miss some period of time, e.g. due to vacations or illness). Comparing to 500 calorie days to to zero-calorie days, the latter are definitely easier. My added rationale is that if starving weakened cells kills them (whether or not that is true, then so much the better. Overall, I am in excellent health, but I've lived a reasonably healthy lifestyle (exercise: walking mostly later years; nonsmoker; v. v. occasional social drinker; ...). :-) Ancillary benefit: reduced grocery bills! :-P

andreareina• 8 years ago

Good progress! I understand blurring the y-axis, though I'm curious about how large those up/down swings are. Have you considered using an exponentially-weighted average to smooth out the noise in the measurements?

It's just $ f(x_n) = f(x_{n-1}) * (1 - alpha) + x_n * alpha , f(x_0) = x_0 $ where 0 < alpha < 1 (lower values give a smoother graph but lags more)

Here's a quick sketch of how to do it in gnuplot without having to preprocess the data:

    # Getting previous values via https://stackoverflow.com/a/25753509/5921362
    
    alpha = 0.1
    prev = 0
    shift(x) = (prev = x)
    ewma(prev, cur) = shift(prev * (1 - alpha) + cur * alpha)
    
    plot data using 1:2 with p,\
         data using 1:(prev < 1 ? shift($2) : ewma(prev, $2)) with l

vstuart3• 8 years ago

Since I'm really not that careful during non-diet days (some foods such as home-made chicken pot pies or pizzas etc.) can result in "significant" gains (2-3%) and other items my gf sometimes brings over (potato chips; ice cream; ...). Short answer: that week-to-week swing ranges ~4.5% of overall body weight. I try to limit (within reason) processed synthetic fake foods like margarine, Canola (lifeless, NaOH/heat-treated, hexane-extracted, bleached, deoderized "food") in favor of known-sourced, i.e. non-fake EVOO (look for the oleocanthal-induced burn at the back of the throat: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110118180514.ht...), butter, etc. I make my own bread, yogurt -- again for control of what goes into them. But overall, not obsessed with any of that. I like to keep it simple; those preparations take minutes not hours ... :-p

* [How It's Made - Canola Oil](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omjWmLG0EAs)

Detrimental health effects:

* [Canola oil linked to worsened memory and learning ability in Alzheimer's](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/12/171207141624.h...)

* [Effect of canola oil consumption on memory, synapse and neuropathology in the triple transgenic mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-17373-3)

Edit: thank you for the plotting comments (I heart these: I love all things tech, programmatic, bio*); I just wanted a quick way to see my overall progress over time. I enter my morning weight (digital scale) daily, and occasionally plot it (Ctrl-Alt-T shortcut to terminal; "gp" bashrc alias to run that plot command, "qq" to quit the terminal). ;-)

diogenescynic• 8 years ago

People without cancer already don’t eat, or hardly as they often lose their appetite due to cancer treatments. Why is that different than this?

barftransit• 8 years ago

"I've found that I feel so good when I fast and I don't know why, but please listen to me about myself" - HN

fredliu• 8 years ago

There's a documentary: The Science of Fasting ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1b08X-GvRs) which talks about fascinating effects of fasting therapy, and interesting effects of fasting on cancer treatment. Looks like it's inline with what's discussed here and in the comment section. On the flip side, I feel like fasting has the potential of becoming the new "meditation", but with more potential danger than just an over-hyped hip practice.

malbs• 8 years ago

so I just completed 4 months of fasting (I had a friendly wager going, where I had to lose 15kg in 16 weeks, or pay $2000)

I did it via intermittent fasting (no breakfast, or lunch, black coffee/water only, and a normal dinner)

Chart: https://imgur.com/a/rzckgMi

Basic routine was this

Monday, fast, overhead press at gym Tuesday, normal eating, deadlifts Wednesday, fast, rowing/kettlebells Thursday, normal eating, bench press Friday, normal eating, squats Saturday, fast, cardio/hiit Sunday, normal eating

came in under the target (needed 15kg, ended up losing 18kg) and won myself $2000 because the guy I had the wager with didn't hit his target.

Fasting really works, it doesn't cost you anything, and you save money.

FieryTransition• 8 years ago

Do you have any data on your muscle mass or lean body mass? Did you have a gain or loss in muscle mass? Or was it the same? thanks.

runeks• 8 years ago

For someone with access to the article: what was the duration and frequency of the fasting that was shown to cure certain cancer types?

sigvirt• 8 years ago

To feed everyone's inquiry/discussion of diet, nutrition, and western disease (though not fasting per se): two particular researchers/authors had much mindshare and influence in Bay Area circles a decade ago. They've not been mentioned on HN in several years, so this will bring forward and tie in the references and discussions for newcomers.

The China Study - by T. Colin Campbell : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Study : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._Colin_Campbell

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto - by Michael Pollan : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Defense_of_Food : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Pollan

The China Study is notably a retrospective of primary research on diet, nutrition, and disease spanning nearly a century. There are many breadcrumbs for further reading. Campbell was a top-tier government/academic researcher for several decades. The summary conclusion is that western diseases (e.g. diabetes, cancer, heart ...) are strongly correlated with increased ratio of animal product consumption, especially in presence of environmental toxins - a binary poison cocktail one might say. Genetics are a factor, he says, but not so pervasively as the other two.

Michael Pollan is iconically known for the phrase, "Eat Food, Mostly Plants, Not Too Much". A prolific author and journalist, he is on about many of the same things Campbell is: cautioning about a) over-reliance on reductive analysis of food nutrient components, and about b) over-indulgence in foodstuffs that passed through some industrial process on way from earth to earthling.

Edit: formatting

Periodic fasting starves cisplatin‐resistant cancers to death

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