Eating in 10-hour window can override disease-causing genetic defects

https://www.salk.edu/news-release/eating-in-10-hour-window-can-override-disease-causing-genetic-defects-nurture-health/

by clumsysmurf • 8 years ago

228 87 8 years ago

crehn• 8 years ago

Completely anecdotal, but I had some digestive issues for a few weeks, fasted for two days, and everything returned to normal.

leptoniscool• 8 years ago

Is it better to eat in the morning or night for humans?

ztjio• 8 years ago

A separate study showed a small increase in the effects associated with these windowed eating patterns if the majority of food was consume earlier, and meal size tapered off as the day went on. But the difference wasn't big enough to worry about it.

abledon2• 8 years ago

Middle of the day for largest meal. Try to eat less before bed so liver can detox instead of digest food while u sleep. Also if your a man try working on peacock pose each morning 30 mins before eating (up to 5 mins) to boost digestion , if woman be careful when menstruating

dexterdog• 8 years ago

Peacock pose is not exactly for the faint-hearted.

Franciscouzo• 8 years ago

Everything you said sounds like bullshit, do you have any source to back it up?

adiusmus• 8 years ago

Big breakfast. Just water for the rest of the day. This approach causes no hunger for me unless I ate a lot of carbs.

Broken_Hippo4• 8 years ago

I am not a medical professional, but I have lost a great deal of weight (was on the low end of obese before, and trend towards very thin now). I've kept it off for at least 5 years, with a small amount of fluctuation (one pant size, isn't so much). I always suggest folks eat most when they find they are the most hungry. It takes a bit of paying attention, but after that it gets easy.

I'm personally better off eating very lightly early in the day and eating a large meal at dinnertime. I feel satisfied being full then and don't miss the food early in the day. When I try to eat a full breakfast or lunch regularly, I'm actually more hungry the rest of the day and still want the full dinner. I'm also a night owl, but I do not know if this is related. This holds true no matter what waking schedule I'm on, however.

I personally eat a very light breakfast (a piece of bread with some cheese, for example), a light snack if I'm hungry during the day, and a full dinner. Only dinner is a warm meal, mostly vegetarian save for fish once a week.

My mother, on the other hand, has done the opposite, She's likely to eat a decent breakfast (instead of a piece of bread with cheese), a lunch, and a light dinner. Her weight loss wasn't as drastic as mine, but she didn't weigh as much either.

The thing is that us humans aren't all wired the same way. Even things like insulin response can vary from human to human. I'm guessing there is a genetic component or something to it, but that is an uneducated guess.

djrogers• 8 years ago

In mice.

Whose genes have been altered.

And who show no adherence to a circadian rhythm.

Not exactly relatable, is it?

scotty79• 8 years ago

Humans too I guess:

https://www.surrey.ac.uk/news/changes-breakfast-and-dinner-t...

allforJesse• 8 years ago

Interesting how this time restricted eating seems to differ from perspectives in the intermittent fasting community.

Intermittent Fasting folks tend to espouse avoiding caloric intake for long periods of time every day, but they're fine with black coffee/tea (since it doesn't trigger an insulin response). But here Dr. Panda seems to believe that even coffee would compromise the fasting window: https://youtu.be/iywhaz5z0qs?t=1h15m15s

There goes that 7am cup of coffee...

will_brown2• 8 years ago

Definitely if you trigger insulin response it is safe to say you break a fast, but any caloric intake breaks the fast, even without insulin response.

I’m not sure that video supports your conclusion that coffee/tea breaks the fast, seems to me it’s more of a maybe.

I personally appreciated the acknowledgement of the microbiome. The idea that simply...we don’t know and don’t understand the interactions of the microbiome. The example given was artificial sweetener that most every Keto/paleo/low carb/IF advocate would say is ok...well no,it’s probably not because even with zero calorie and no insulin response the interaction with the microbiome likely breaks the fast and is an over all negative (unhealthy) interaction.

coldtea8• 8 years ago

Definitely if you trigger insulin response it is safe to say you break a fast, but any caloric intake breaks the fast, even without insulin response.

"Breaks a fast" is meaningless without specifying what we mean by that.

If we mean "breaking fast = you eat something with calories" then yes, but then it's a tautology.

If we mean "insulin response", then there would be other criteria for breaking a fast.

Even traditional religious and cleansing fasts allowed lots of different foods (e.g. plants) and were still considered fasts.

Fast is not some one-size-fits-all word that means "absolutely no calories" during it.

mark_l_watson• 8 years ago

I just signed up and installed their iOS app. You are correct: drinking coffee or tea in the morning starts the non-fasting period. This will be rough for me because I usually have coffee at 5:30am, read or study for 90 minutes, then have breakfast and go to work. I will shift my morning coffee to when I have breakfast.

I have been non-fasting and fasting with an even split of 12 hours / 12 hours per day, so this will be an adjustment.

coldtea8• 8 years ago

This will be rough for me because I usually have coffee at 5:30am, read or study for 90 minutes, then have breakfast and go to work.

Or you can ignore their advice (others advice otherwise anyway), and still drink coffee as part of your fasting...

It's not like any of this is particularly scientific...

browsercoin4• 8 years ago

drinking coffee or tea in the morning starts the non-fasting period

major bummer. I almost entirely rely on caffeine while I'm fasting and it inhibits my appetite.

mrfusion• 8 years ago

But 8am to 6pm would be a ten hour window. So you could have your coffee and a big breakfast.

That wouldn’t be so bad. It really just mirrors the advice our lacrosse coaches have been telling us all along. Don’t snack at night.

neuro_imager• 8 years ago

I'm not sure how well this translates to humans.

onetimemanytime• 8 years ago

I doubt they would do these experiments unless, one way or another, they also apply to us. They are not trying to make mice live longer :)

Broken_Hippo4• 8 years ago

Actually, studies in mice don't always pan out to humans. There are flaws in mouse studies and sometimes the results in humans are wildly different. But mice are cheap, bread readily, and are a great starting point for laboratory tests.

projectramo• 8 years ago

Another major victory in mankind’s long quest to render mice immortal.

vedtopkar2• 8 years ago

A witty quip, and I totally agree with the sentiment, but I'm wondering what other way we have to test hypotheses in vivo. Animal models are pretty key, but my knowledge of the field is incomplete.

colechristensen• 8 years ago

"I guess doing strange things to rodents and measuring the outcomes is useful, but going so far as to turn it into health advice for humans is absurd." 16 days ago I said that.

This one seems a little more legitimate and a target for further research.

Animal models are a start, but you shouldn't use them to give definitive advice or conclusions. The headline is " Eating in 10-hour window can override disease-causing genetic defects" and it is a deception. You are not a mouse, health advice for mice and health advice for humans surely overlaps but there are certainly very many differences.

You solve this by doing a human study. It is a lot harder.

Nasrudith• 8 years ago

If including even human testing in animals the furthest out theoretical way would be complete physical modeling. There would be so many issues involved there it isn't funny including building it from faulty assumptions. Even with sufficient processing power to completely model a human accurately from their DNA and wonder why the functions don't match up or show health problems - say because the communal bacteria weren't included or the physics model didn't include this one obscure molecular physics interaction we didn't even know existed before now.

j7ake• 8 years ago

You're suggesting that mouse studies are not useful because they do not apply to humans are overly cynical. You're not giving enough credit to the similarities between mice and humans in physiology.

These time restricted feeding studies have been done in humans with effects in the same direction.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S155041311...

Retric• 8 years ago

For studies that are easy and safe to conduct in humans testing in mice seems largely pointless. Sure it might cost far less, but the data is also far less useful.

It’s the reverse that’s then useful. If you can find an animal model that replicates a known human result then you can investigate the mechanics more easily. Ex: Scurvy

ainar-g• 8 years ago

For anyone wondering about what's wrong with mouse testing, here is a funny but informative video on the subject[1]. One highlight:

After a drug is confirmed as safe and efficacious in preclinical studies, it is tested in healthy human volunteers for first in man trials. In 2006, a phase I clinical study was conducted for a CD28 superagonist antibody TGN1412 in six human volunteers. After very first infusion of a dose 500 times smaller than that found safe in animal studies, all six human volunteers faced life-threatening conditions involving multiorgan failure for which they were moved to intensive care unit

Source[2].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvJHq2FJPDM

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2964774/

Angostura2• 8 years ago

Which shows that mice are an imperfect model, not that they don't have substantial value.

DannyBee• 8 years ago

I believe it concludes that while 500x lower, 0.1mg would bind 85-98% of all possible CD28 receptors -meaning that "small" dose would have shown the maximum effect of the drug.

sharmi2• 8 years ago

How does 10 hours of eating and 14 hours of fasting translate to humans? The life span of a mouse is much smaller than humans amd their metabolic rate is higher, 4 times that of humans. So I wonder if that would mean a much longer eating window and fasting window for humans.

yostrovs2• 8 years ago

The sun and the moon spin at rates independent of the lifespan of the animal in question.

sharmi2• 8 years ago

Yes, but the effect of food restriction have more pronounced effect in mice vs humans. So, we cannot expect the same efficacy in humans when fasting for the same periods.

""" Fasting of mice for 48 h (which causes ∼20% weight loss) or starvation of human volunteers for up to 4 d (which causes <2% weight loss) """

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28059587

coldtea8• 8 years ago

And are bot irrelevant when we concern ourselves at changes to metabolic rate and other such processes in different animals.

tluyben2• 8 years ago

If it would work on humans, I guess I am good; I cannot (i am never hungry that early) eat before 10am and I cannot sleep if I eat after 8 pm.

SwellJoe3• 8 years ago

I've been on an intermittent fasting schedule (I usually do 16/8) for about a year and a half. I lost some weight during the first several months, but have leveled off to a reasonable weight (which is probably 10 pounds heavier than I'd like, but ~25 pounds lighter than when I started intermittent fasting).

Overall, I don't see any dramatic changes. Lots of people claim to see a significant difference, usually positive, in energy, strength, mood, sleep, etc. But, I generally think all of those metrics are "about the same" for me. Maybe I'm mildly more energetic because of carrying less weight around. But, I'm also at the age where the effects of aging begin to be noticeable...so, maybe just maintaining levels is progress?

Nonetheless, after several years of research into the topic, and related topics like caloric restriction, a couple of years ago I was convinced that the evidence was compelling enough to make it part of my life and started reducing my eating period each day until I was comfortable with 16 hours of fasting each day (sometimes I'll do 20 or 24, if I'm busy and feel OK). I recommend it to people who ask about it, but not because it's a magical cure for all that ails you. I just think the evidence is strong enough to be worth the minor trade-offs. It isn't a risky decision (with the caveat that it probably isn't appropriate for people with diabetes or hypoglycemia or similar)...none of the science indicates negative results, and nearly all of it indicates positive results to one degree or another. It's pretty much like any other diet decision, e.g. eat more vegetables because you'll probably live longer, not because it'll cure cancer or make you an Olympic athlete.

dave1619• 8 years ago

Are you doing LCHF (low carb high fat) as well or just IF (intermittent fasting)?

SwellJoe3• 8 years ago

No, I eat mostly how I've eaten for many years, just on an intermittent schedule. But, I've always eaten pretty healthy; I've been vegetarian for 24 years and relatively conscious of what I eat. I tend to a eat a lot, so if I don't eat good stuff, I get fat. I eat probably more fat than average, and I don't avoid fat, but my diet isn't "high fat", I don't think, and it's certainly not low carb, though I do avoid sugars and many kinds of processed foods, and I never eat fast food. I eat bread, rice, and/or tortillas, regularly, at least once a day, and I tend to eat a pretty sizeable serving. Fruit and vegetables probably make up the majority of the volume/mass I'm consuming most days, but a significant portion of calories come from carbs.

My health has always been, thankfully, very good. I'm not doing intermittent fasting to address any specific problem. Losing weight was a goal, because my pants (the same size I've been wearing since college) weren't fitting comfortably anymore...it worked for that, and all my pants fit again. But, I wasn't trying to reboot my eating in some dramatic way. I did try a low carb high fat/protein thing for a while before beginning intermittent fasting, as a way to lose weight, but it didn't work for me. The restrictions just took the fun out of meals. I love food, I love cooking it, love eating it with friends/family, etc. It's pretty hard to have normal meals on a very restrictive diet. I couldn't imagine living out the rest of my days without bread or rice, and any diet change has to be sustainable for decades or it's going to be part of a cycle of weight gain and loss. Intermittent fasting has been sustainable for me. I don't even think about it most days.

pizza234• 8 years ago

Lots of people claim to see a significant difference, usually positive, in energy, strength, mood, sleep, etc.

I'm very skeptical of people's dieting claims in general.

First, lots of people, more or less unconsciously, omit their previous condition/background.

A typical example of this (that tragically gets always attention on HN) is an obese person making a post about how they made change X and lost Y kgs. When you're obese because of bad habits, any minimal healthy change will lead to weight loss.

Second, every [not seriously into sports] person I ever spoke to who applied a change in his/her nutrition, reported the same symptoms (more energy, better sleep, etc.etc.), independently of how absurd the change was.

Considering also how extremely variable between samples (=people) lifestyle is, the only reasonable way I accept is just to set emphasis on personal metrics and disregard other people's experience (I actually assume the vast majority of them to be inaccurate to the point of being false, for the above reasons).

lhl3• 8 years ago

At the end of the day I agree that it's pretty important to try things out for yourself and see how it goes - intermittent fasting is one of those things that's pretty easy/safe to do (and has shown some insane health, longevity, disease prevention/treatment results in the experimental research lately) - I will say that having never purposefully fasted before, the first couple days of 16:8 sucked but now is fine.

I also agree that while research can point you towards general guidelines, personal factors will be an issue. For example, from SNP analysis I carry rs1695(A;G) which reacts poorly to supplemental vitamin E, rs1801282(C;G) which may metabolize saturated fats differently, rs1535(A;G) which is associated with decreased ALA->EPA conversion efficiency, etc. (Which isn't even addressing the lifestyle/epigenetic aspects that are even more importantly, but largely unexplored, harder to test for.)

DoreenMichele2• 8 years ago

But, I'm also at the age where the effects of aging begin to be noticeable...so, maybe just maintaining levels is progress?

The thing is we can't clone you multiple times and treat each replica of you differently, so we have no idea if you would be terribly sick or something by now if you had made other choices.

I'm always fascinated by anecdotes about fasting, etc. But it's actually incredibly hard to isolate one dietary factor and draw firm conclusions about cause and effect.

From what I gather, large scale longitudinal studies are our best data for diet in humans and they conclude things like "A handful of nuts a day is good for you."

lhl3• 8 years ago

It's actually not as hard as you think for experimental design to show strong causitive effects - I think randomized controlled trials (in animal and then human models) and meta-analysis are much more effective than epidemiological studies (which don't have effective controls, often don't appropriately correct for other factors, or are specific enough to target specific lines of inquiry and allow spurious conclusions to be drawn).

I've just started doing my own research digging through the literature in PubMed and there's a huge amount of research over the past decade especially that's really advanced our understanding of nutrition and metabolism (that sadly, has yet to get full traction in conventional wisdom/popular science).

Just a few examples from my collection on fasting (at this point I'm tracking hundreds of publications covering a whole range of different aspects of nutritional science, and this is only over the course of a couple weeks of research):

Nørrelund, Helene, K. Sreekumaran Nair, Jens Otto Lunde Jørgensen, Jens Sandahl Christiansen, and Niels Møller. “The Protein-Retaining Effects of Growth Hormone During Fasting Involve Inhibition of Muscle-Protein Breakdown.” Diabetes 50, no. 1 (January 1, 2001): 96–104. https://doi.org/10.2337/diabetes.50.1.96.

Bhutani, Surabhi, Monica C. Klempel, Reed A. Berger, and Krista A. Varady. “Improvements in Coronary Heart Disease Risk Indicators by Alternate-Day Fasting Involve Adipose Tissue Modulations.” Obesity (Silver Spring, Md.) 18, no. 11 (November 2010): 2152–59. https://doi.org/10.1038/oby.2010.54.

Harvie, Michelle N., Mary Pegington, Mark P. Mattson, Jan Frystyk, Bernice Dillon, Gareth Evans, Jack Cuzick, et al. “The Effects of Intermittent or Continuous Energy Restriction on Weight Loss and Metabolic Disease Risk Markers: A Randomised Trial in Young Overweight Women.” International Journal of Obesity (2005) 35, no. 5 (May 2011): 714–27. https://doi.org/10.1038/ijo.2010.171.

Chaix, Amandine, Amir Zarrinpar, Phuong Miu, and Satchidananda Panda. “Time-Restricted Feeding Is a Preventative and Therapeutic Intervention against Diverse Nutritional Challenges.” Cell Metabolism 20, no. 6 (December 2, 2014): 991–1005. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmet.2014.11.001.

Rothschild, Jeff, Kristin K. Hoddy, Pera Jambazian, and Krista A. Varady. “Time-Restricted Feeding and Risk of Metabolic Disease: A Review of Human and Animal Studies.” Nutrition Reviews 72, no. 5 (May 1, 2014): 308–18. https://doi.org/10.1111/nure.12104.

Fontana, Luigi, and Linda Partridge. “Promoting Health and Longevity through Diet: From Model Organisms to Humans.” Cell 161, no. 1 (March 26, 2015): 106–18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2015.02.020.

I should add that the evidence was so strong for certain behaviors that I have changed my diet (VLCHF + 16+:8IF) and n=1 shows immediate improvements in weight, energy, mental clarity, and even skin health. Somewhat unexpected because I wasn't eating that badly according to common wisdom (and have maintained a moderate overweight, but stable weight for the past 3+yrs).

Angostura2• 8 years ago

I too do 16:8 and am in my 50s. I'm losing moderate amount of weight, but probably because it has made me think about evening snacking. As with you, it's low risk, not a particular problem for me to carry out and cost neutral at worst.

The only problem is I tend to feel drowsy after lunch at work :)

zeroimpl2• 8 years ago

Did the mice which had access to food 24/7 eat more overall than the mice with restricted food access?

If so, then the study seems useless because the results can entirely be explained as excessive eating leads to health problems.

I don't see anything in the article saying how they controlled for quantity of food consumed.

jayzee44• 8 years ago

No the article said that's both groups consumed the same number of calories per day.

zeroimpl2• 8 years ago

Thanks. I didn't read it carefully enough the first time but I see that mentioned now.

browsercoin4• 8 years ago

Is it possible that with economic affluence of the West, overconsumption is harmful?

It used to be that there would be days where our ancestors would not be able to bring home any meat so fasting probably was built in as part of our metabolism process.

It was only in the past 100 years that we've seen mass produced sugary food and drinks.

Like the diet difference is painfully obvious when you go to Japan's 7-11. Healthy stuff all around compared to deep fried fast food.

Some days I will only eat 1 meal, and I honestly feel great. The biggest difference being I have way more energy and just feel "light".

These days I've converted to mostly Korean food consisting of rice and veggie side dishes incl kimchi of course. I've lost 4kg within 3 weeks just by changing diet.

Of course can't resist the burger and fries once in a while....but eating primarily Korean food because I'm Korean I realize is the wise choice....our ancestors have been eating the same stuff for millenias so it's probably "right" for my metabolism.

there's a study that showed East-Asian men living in North America have high rate of prostate related issues which has traditionally never been prevalent in East Asia...and also the rise of American fast food chains have collectively made the world a lot less healthier with the increase of diabetes and obesity.

sddfd• 8 years ago

our ancestors have been eating the same stuff for millenias so it's probably "right" for my metabolism.

There might be a genetic factor here. The other thing is that the food habits of our ancestors were more thought out than we think. It might be that what they have been eating is not only better because of genetics, but more healthy in general than the terrible foods we can buy everywhere today.

browsercoin4• 8 years ago

Absolutely. It's fascinating how different dietary cultures develop and adapt to their environment in a surprisingly efficient manner. Nothing is wasted. Need to store meat for long periods of winter? Smoke it. Need it on the go? We'll use the left over bits to make sausages. What? You need side dishes that doesn't go bad for a long time? We'll pickle it, store it under ground to ferment it. Huh, you are throwing away all that extra cabbage roots from making kimchi? Put that in a soup or 시락국 containing high levels of Omega-H3 from the broth containing tiny fishes.

grecy• 8 years ago

Is it possible that with economic affluence of the West, overconsumption is harmful?

Absolutely. As Michael Pollan points out, our food has changed more in the last 50 years than it did in the preceding 5000, in both composition and quantity.

There is no way we have adapted that fast.

cageface• 8 years ago

I live in Vietnam but we have a lot of Koreans in the area I live in and what they eat doesn't seem very healthy. Huge amounts of cheese and grilled meats and very heavy drinking. Is that typical for Koreans in Korea too?

browsercoin4• 8 years ago

Yes, it's a very unhealthy combo to do frequently. The bovine industry along with a connected global marketplace has made it far more abundant than is healthy.

For example, I heard that samgyupsal is mostly fat that isn't typically consumed for grilling, is really unhealthy as it consists mostly of fat lard with little pork meat. but once you taste it it's hard to put down. Typically, lettuce, garlic, onion, sesame oil and in traditionally green onions shredded with red pepper sprinkled. You take a bit of meat, bathe it in the sesame oil sauce with pepper and salt, wrap it up in lettuce, throw in some fermented bean sauce containing healthy probiotics also found in kimchi, and pop it in your mouth. When you get a bit tired of the grease, you yell "WUN SHUT!" ("one shot") and down what seemingly smells like acetone. There's a euphoria that happens when you combine it with family and friends, it's also a common way to bond with your co-workers and superiors.

Typically a traditional Korean meal consists of rice and banchan, or seasoned side dishes, but most people I know just eat rice and kimchi. Also, Koreans have a huge affinity for Pho and vietnamese cuisine because it feels familiar.

Writing about samgyupsal has gotten me salivating lol....

    "My mind is telling me no, but my body....my body is telling me YES"

     - R. Kelly

Nomentatus• 8 years ago

The big difference in traditional diets is enough plant fibre to support the biota that lets us absorb choline: https://medium.com/@russjj/choline-is-it-the-key-to-modern-i...

m3kw9• 8 years ago

Just don’t eat too much

throwaway666662• 8 years ago

I 've spent 3.5/4 years eating nothing except on the weekends (my undergrad). So I would go for 2-5 days at a time without food. Not because of fasting fads or anything, I didn't even know what fasting was. I was just from a very poor family and if I wanted to go for vacations with my friends or party in the weekend or buy a computer I had to save every penny I could. (that's how I bought my first laptop etc). I would eat properly during holidays and the summer only at my parent's home.

I was very skinny, but somehow still had fat. Sometimes I bought pants from the women's section or I would take pants to my mom to sew the waist tighter, because I was so thin I couldn't find clothes that fit me (I have some pictures of me wearing my 108lb girlfriend's pants stashed somewhere). I exercised a bit but seeing me without a shirt you could tell I had manboobs and a tiny-lil bit of a potbelly and no abs at all, not even the skinny ones.

At some point I developed fainting on sight of blood. I would brush my teeth, and if I scratched my gum and blood came out -- I had to run to the bed asap before passing out. To this day I don't know if I was just afraid of blood (blood doesn't affect me anymore), or I had gotten so weak I was actually nearing total collapse. Blood tests were surprisingly fine I just had low iron.

Looking at that period back, I 'm trying to see if the advertised benefits applied to me. I didn't get sick much, but I don't get sick in general. Aging... well what can you say to an 18-22 year old about aging. My libido was low which makes sense I guess. Energy, regular levels. I don't know, I was just a very thin dude, fasting or not, no major epiphanies or amazement. I suppose it's amazing that one can survive fine, no suffering, going for so long without food, but it wasn't better than eating.

I am very surprised at how people swear by it. Maybe life is much worse when you eat 3 meals per day? I don't know, nowadays (early 30s) I eat 2 meals and exercise a lot and I 'm pretty content. I think for me, exercise did the trick that elevated both my mood and my energy levels.

Would I do the crazy 5-day 4 year fast again? If I was young and "hungry" sure, but it's definitely miserable. Food can be a great social thing to do with friends, and a cool experience especially when trying new dishes and restaurants. The huge food diversity in SF spoiled me.

Edit: back then I was very ashamed of my fasting and try to hide it from friends etc. A few weeks ago I was shocked when a coworker told me he was doing a 7 day water-only fast. We 've come a long way!

oh_sigh3• 8 years ago

It sounds like you were just starving yourself. I'm going to guess that you weren't eating 2-5 days worth of food whenever you chose to eat?

I'm sorry but going that long without eating just doesn't make any sense. Did you/your family only have the ability to buy/acquire one meal at a time or what?

throwaway666662• 8 years ago

No, I was living alone while going to school. I would starve myself so I could save more money. What is the difference between X day fasts and what I did?

I am not trying to claim that fasting doesn't work, just noting my personal experience. For me it certainly worked in the sense that I saw the fakeness of "if you don't eat for X days you get super hungry or weak/sick/you die", I was perfectly ok.. but not amazing.

coldtea8• 8 years ago

I'm sorry but going that long without eating just doesn't make any sense.

That would be great news to the lower 1-2 billions in the developing world.

jfnixon• 8 years ago

One plausible physical explanation for IF is it promotes autophagy. 18-22 range probably doesn't gain much if any AIUI since you system is already running near optimum if you just eat regular times and don't snack around the clock. But older? Maybe the human body takes longer, in general, to switch on autophagy as it ages, and the additional time in the food-gap helps.

actuator• 8 years ago

I have tried eating with long gaps in between but somehow that leads me to lose a lot of muscle mass as well. Recently I was trying it again with an overall caloric deficit but sufficient amount of protein intake but I lost both fat and muscle in 1:1 ratio even with regularly working out.

I don't know if that was just because of caloric deficit or long gaps in between. I have seen the 5-6 evenly spaced out meals in a day work the best for me if I want to maintain/put on muscle mass.

sytelus• 8 years ago

Better way to state this is: Make sure you have 14hr period where you are not consuming any food (i.e. fasting period).

nickjj2• 8 years ago

I'm kind of surprised this isn't the default for most people.

For example let's say you eat dinner at 6-7pm and then goto bed at 11pm. After that you wake up around 7am and then maybe eat breakfast an hour or 2 later.

At this point you've gone from about 7pm to 8am or 9am without eating (~13-14 hours) but it fits pretty well into a schedule.

Wouldn't you have to really go out of your way to deviate from that? Of course you would adjust the numbers based on how late you goto bed and rise in the morning, but the ratios would be about the same -- maybe even more fasting if you sleep longer than 8 hours.

jvvw• 8 years ago

That implies eating breakfast at work for most people. Also you need to be leaving work promptly at 5pm, not have too long a commute home and then start cooking straight away if you want to eat dinner by 6.30pm. (I do this, but didn't pre-kids, and don't think it fits by default into most people's lives).

coldtea8• 8 years ago

Wouldn't you have to really go out of your way to deviate from that?

Depends on the country and culture. In these here parts we still go to work at 8am or 9am, but we dine at 10pm or later (going to a restaurant at 11pm is very common, and similarly for eating at home).

nickjj2• 8 years ago

What time do you get home from work?

That sounds like an unreasonably long day if you have to be in work by 8am but you're still at a restaurant at 11pm.

I'm from the US btw. I happen to do freelance work but most people I know work from about 9am to 5pm where they leave the house around 8:30am and are home by 5:30pm or 6pm at the latest.

Eating breakfast at 8am and dinner at 7pm is normal for them, or sometimes they skip breakfast at home and eat something small at work.

laurex• 8 years ago

The comparison was between rats who could eat anytime and rats eating within a 10 hour window. What makes 10 hours the magic? Could it be 11, 12, 14 hours? Is it better if the window is 6 or 8 hours? Would it be different on a day in which the sun shone for 16 hours or 12 his? There is clearly something there but 10 hours seems arbitrary.

stochastic_monk• 8 years ago

I’ve experimented with intermittent fasting, carb cycling, and a variety of other methods.

Intermittent fasting’s benefits for me are primarily the lack of distraction and fluctuations in my blood glucose level. I found that consuming protein or fats in the morning does not affect the latter benefit. It seems to me that it’s more about a diet that’s easy to stick to than dramatically altering one’s metabolism.

Lately, I’ve become more serious about strength training and have given up on it because my caloric needs have skyrocketed (I found myself losing weight at over 3000 calories a day.) and I need to eat frequently to recover.

However, I would not hesitate to recommend it to anyone who isn’t an athlete, and to the latter I’d still suggest experimenting.

scottlocklin• 8 years ago

I picked it up from Martin Berkhan's leangains. It was a lot easier than counting calories for long term maintenance, and it kept the lard off. It made sense to me from an evolutionary point of view; cavemen don't eat "3 square meals" before attacking wooly mammoths, and virtually every religion in the world includes a rigorous fasting period, which, IMO emulates hunter gatherer eating patterns.

For me, the main side effect is I feel a lot more alert, and I waste less time during the day, as preparing and eating food takes up less of it. You know that sleepy feeling you get after a huge breakfast or lunch that makes you reach for an extra cup of coffee? It is no longer a problem. Hunger pangs were an issue for the first two days I did this, and haven't been since then. Oh yeah, and I also feel REALLY FULL when I've eaten too much. Keeping your gut empty from time to time helps you to self regulate.

I think I won the genetic lottery as far as aging goes, and I exercise and try to not eat too much junk food, but "so far so good."

dixonge-22• 8 years ago

I keep reading the study to verify, but the wording is wishy-washy. I can find no numbers that they actually measured the calories taken in by the mice who had access to food ad libitum (24/7). If those numbers aren't measured, you'll never know if the time-restricted mice ate the same calories. Let me know if you can find those calorie intake numbers anywhere...

dixonge-22• 8 years ago

and here's what happened when Panda tracked actual humans - "Even though the participants didn’t change the content of their diet, Panda confirms that reducing the hours they ate resulted in the reduction of about 20 percent of calories, which may be one reason why they were able to lose weight."

So it's the calories after all. Regardless, if any technique (well, almost any) helps you cut calories without having to 'count' them, then that's still a win!

Mikho• 8 years ago

There is more detailed research as to food consumption patterns. Basically fasting for around 16 hours a day is good for health. From the evolutionary perspective--that invested in a human body 200K years--the way we eat today is really broken. And our body can't adapt to a new pattern even during 1000 years. Not to mention like 50. A human body during 200K years was not prepared to eating a lot. It needs to store energy and to use stored energy. That's a natural cycle and different function that our body needs to execute. Nowadays we just store energy 24/7.

"Emerging findings from studies of animal models and human subjects suggest that intermittent energy restriction periods of as little as 16 h can improve health indicators and counteract disease processes. The mechanisms involve a metabolic shift to fat metabolism and ketone production, and stimulation of adaptive cellular stress responses that prevent and repair molecular damage."

Here is the link: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4250148/

Also here are patterns of daily and weekly food consumption from this research: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4250148/figure/...

Eating in 10-hour window can override disease-causing genetic defects

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