Molecule produced during fasting has anti-aging effect on vascular system

https://newatlas.com/molecule-fasting-vascular-system/56360/

by sahin-boydas • 8 years ago

255 142 8 years ago

newatlas.com

abcd_f• 8 years ago

Relink to [1] perhaps, which is the original source without any anti-adblocking nonsense?

[1] https://news.gsu.edu/2018/09/10/researchers-identify-molecul...

krtkush• 8 years ago

I have observed a surge in articles related to fasting (all of them are positive about it). Has there been new breakthrough in the field?

Apocryphon2• 8 years ago

It might just be the post-Soylent diet fad in tech:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/sep/04/silicon...

Jedi72• 8 years ago

If its anything like technology, dieting probably suffers from baseless trends which become self-sustaining at a certain point.

serpix• 8 years ago

Well fasting has been a trend since I don't even know, well before ancient greece at least. Western culture != entire world.

chiefalchemist2• 8 years ago

Just the same, the current diet / dieting of most Western peoples is not sustainable. There's always noise and opportunists. That doesn't the rest of us should try.

Ultimately, for me, these articles boil down to me being willing to change my relationship with food. The more I eat for health, and less for pleasure, the better off I'll be.

black6• 8 years ago

It must be an up-and-coming Internet trend/meme (a la what color is the dress?) in the health community. One of my coworkers just transitioned from a ketogenic diet to intermittent fasting.

ilitirit• 8 years ago

I'm not so sure. IF was in "fad" mode several years ago. The IF sub-reddit is already 6 years old. Now it just appears to be something that people are rediscovering because of posts (mainly on social media) about this type of research. There's nothing "new" in IF in terms of the approach to diet.

Here's an HN submission from 2012:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4341091

fabricexpert4• 8 years ago

It won't last - how do you make money off a fasting diet? There's nothing to sell, unlike WeightWatchers, Shakes, Juice diets etc.

Unless someone sells fasting chewing gum or something.

adrianN• 8 years ago

You sell calorie free "cleansing" drinks.

mkagenius2• 8 years ago

For ketosis, you are allowed to eat carbohydrate less food. So, cheese is fine.

chiefalchemist2• 8 years ago

I'll offer to take your money so you can't use it to buy food. For a fee, of course ;)

madeuptempacct• 8 years ago

There is a market writing books, articles, and spamming hackernews with it to promote said books and articles. I am yet to see a good, accepted study linked though.

dotancohen2• 8 years ago

Has the surge been all year, or only the past few days? The large Jewish fast, Yom Kipporim, starts tomorrow evening and people love to find scientific explanations for their strange habits.

If my comment sounds condescending, then be there no mistake: I'm Jewish and I'll be fasting.

chaosbutters• 8 years ago

it has been growing for the past decade. me and several people I know regularly fast for health benefits and not religion.

Angostura3• 8 years ago

This was when it hit the mainstream for me https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01lxyzc a BBC programme in 2012

mirekrusin• 8 years ago

No, it’s just fasting bank holiday in Switzerland.

Apocryphon2• 8 years ago

Can anyone read the study and actually tell how long or what kind of fasting did it take to gain those results? The article just quotes a scientist about fasting for 24 hours.

hartator• 8 years ago

I was browsing through exactly for this.

sgrytoyr• 8 years ago

Since the benefits seem to be linked to ketosis, I believe we’re talking about fasts longer than 1-3 days, since that’s typically how long it takes to reach ketosis. So anywhere from 1-14 days, I would think.

fabricexpert4• 8 years ago

You can reach ketosis without fasting, it's worrying that both this article and it's source are not really clear on the methodology.

This the actual source:

"Here we report that β-HB promotes vascular cell quiescence, which significantly inhibits both stress-induced premature senescence and replicative senescence through p53-independent mechanisms.

Further, we identify heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein A1 (hnRNP A1) as a direct binding target of β-HB. β-HB binding to hnRNP A1 markedly enhances hnRNP A1 binding with Octamer-binding transcriptional factor (Oct) 4 mRNA, which stabilizes Oct4 mRNA and Oct4 expression. Oct4 increases Lamin B1, a key factor against DNA damage-induced senescence.

Finally, fasting and intraperitoneal injection of β-HB upregulate Oct4 and Lamin B1 in both vascular smooth muscle and endothelial cells in mice in vivo. We conclude that β-HB exerts anti-aging effects in vascular cells by upregulating an hnRNP A1-induced Oct4-mediated Lamin B1 pathway."

https://www.cell.com/molecular-cell/fulltext/S1097-2765(18)3...

village-idiot2• 8 years ago

You definitely don’t need 1-3 days to reach ketosis, your previous diet macros have a huge impact on this. My blood ketones are at 1.2 mmol/L right now after 7 hours of sleep.

YeGoblynQueenne2• 8 years ago

Well, the fast lasted for 72 hours, but it's important to note that the subjects were lab mice, not humans.

From the paper:

Mice strains

C57BL/6J mice were purchased from the Jackson Laboratory. All mice were housed in temperature-controlled rooms with a 12 h light-dark cycle and given free access to water and food. After starvation for 5 h, 8 weeks-old male mice were injected intraperitoneally with PBS, β-HB, or S-β-HB (1.5 g/kg body weight in PBS). In parallel, 8 weeks-old male mice were randomized and fed a regular chow diet or fasted for 72 h. Then, the mice were sacrificed. Tissues were collected for gene expression evaluation in various organs including the aorta, liver, heart, brain, adipose, and kidney (n = 6). All animal protocols were reviewed and approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee at Georgia State University.

https://www.cell.com/molecular-cell/fulltext/S1097-2765(18)3...

Also note the slightly confusing setup of the study. Some mice were first fasted for a short time (5 hours) then injected with the tested molecules. Then a different batch of mice were fasted for a longer period of time (72 hours). The second batch where tested blindly and at random, the first one where not. To me, that sounds very strange, but I'm not a biologist, so.

village-idiot2• 8 years ago

All the other studies I’ve heard about said that the benefits of fasting kick in pretty quickly, with 24hrs being plenty to get quite a few benefits.

Edit: personal experience and some scant scientific evidence seems to point to there being a significant difference between men and women on this one. Men seem to accrue more benefits with longer fasts (diminishing returns though), women seem to get metabolically stressed earlier on. More studies are needed though.

reasonattlm• 8 years ago

Not all of the benefits. There are some significant benefits to the immune system that require at least 72 hours of fasting in humans.

https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2014/06/fasting-can-be-u...

lawlessone• 8 years ago

All these different supposed anti-aging molecules that our body already produces.. e.g. nad+ also

I would love if these could be used to slow or even halt aging but i would worry there is reason the body doesn't produce more of these. It's been said before but would we be leaving ourselves open to more cancer?

phkahler6• 8 years ago

> i would worry there is reason the body doesn't produce more of these.

It's starting to look like the reason is the modern diet. And by modern I mean what we shifted to with the advent of farming several thousand years ago. 3 meals a day with high carbohydrate content. This puts you into the mode of converting carbs to fat for storage and never gives the opportunity to go into a mode of retrieving fat for energy. One specific reaction to eating carbs is an insulin response, which can last several hours. It's looking like people weren't design (evolved) to live that way. Type II diabetes (insulin resistance) is looking entirely preventable and perhaps reversible if one goes keto. You're just not going to produce the chemicals needed for one mode of operation when you're telling the body to do something else. These diets are proving that you can get it to produce another set of chemical in clinically meaningful quantities.

magduf• 8 years ago

https://theoutline.com/post/6133/the-keto-diet-is-a-recipe-f...

YeGoblynQueenne2• 8 years ago

Looking up details of the study design, the molecule in question, β-Hydroxybutyrate, was tested in vitro on human tissue, and in vivo only on mice, so, as usual, wait patiently to see if there is any confirmation in, say, a large-scale study of a human population.

The researchers tested the efficacy of β-hydroxybutyrate against cellular senescence in vitro on human umbilical vein endothelial cells and human aortic smooth muscle cells, and they observed the beneficial effects of this molecule in vivo: by injecting β-hydroxybutyrate into fasting mice, the scientists were able to alleviate the senescence of the animals’ aortae.

https://www.leafscience.org/molecule-appears-to-have-anti-ag...

fabricexpert4• 8 years ago

Can we update the title to reflect the research by adding "in mice" at the end of it?

The effect of calorie restriction on aging in rodents has been known since the 1930s. Which does not diminish the value of identifying the precise molecule that triggers this, but it does mean that this shouldn't necessarily be used as justification for a fasting diet.

"It has been known since the 1930s that reducing the number of calories fed to laboratory rodents increases their life spans. The life extension varies for each species, but on average there was a 30–40% increase in life span in both mice and rats.[30] In late adulthood, acute CR partially or completely reverses age-related alterations of liver, brain and heart proteins, and mice placed on CR at 19 months of age show an increases in life span.[78] "

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

ransom1538• 8 years ago

Here is one monkey on an unrestricted diet and one monkey on a restricted diet years later:

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa...

lukeschlather2• 8 years ago

That article in its entirety is interesting, because there are not two but four monkeys from two different studies. Two on "restricted diets," and two on "unrestricted diets."

In one study they fed both monkeys a highly processed diet of 30% sucrose. In the other study they fed both monkeys a less processed diet of 4% sucrose.

The monkey with the poor health outcome was the one allowed to eat as much as it wanted of the highly processed 30% sucrose diet.

So the "calorie restriction" seems to more likely just mean "don't eat more than 4% sugar, unless you are on an extremely calorie restricted diet."

vlg• 8 years ago

It has been shown that longer lives occur in many species, from yeasts and c.elegans, to primates. Pubmed fetches lots of articles (arguing for both sides) given a search like 'caloric restriction aging'

baxtr• 8 years ago

So what is your point exactly?

andy_ppp2• 8 years ago

Peter Attia is an interesting person to listen to discussing ketosis and fasting; in [1] he only eats fat for a week followed by a 1 week fast and a further week of ketosis afterwards.

In [2] he specifically talks about the benefits of Ketosis in depth with one of the leading experts in this field.

[1] https://peterattiamd.com/ama02/

[2] https://peterattiamd.com/domdagostino/

pbhjpbhj• 8 years ago

He doesn't eat anything for 1 week in 4?

andy_ppp2• 8 years ago

For 1 week at the start and at the end he eats no sugar or carbohydrate.

For 1 week he the middle he drinks water and takes magnesium.

That's it.

guybedo• 8 years ago

it was just a one time experiment as he wanted to do a 7-days water only fast and decided it would be better/easier to do a 7-days keto diet the week after and the week before. It's not something he does continuously all year long.

amacbride2• 8 years ago

I know it's just one data point, but I've been doing a very mild form of intermittent fasting (more time-restricted eating) since June, and have been very happy with the results. (I stop eating by 8pm, don't start again until noon, but haven't done much in terms of changing what I'm actually eating.) At 5'5", I went from 156lbs. to 143 (goal is 135), and it's been relatively easy.

Your mileage may vary, of course, but I feel great. This was inspired by a paper I read (I believe linked-to in this article, but I'll have to track it down later.)

https://www.the-scientist.com/features/running-on-empty-3143...

phkahler6• 8 years ago

Close your eating window to 4 hours and eliminate carbs. You'll drop weight incredibly fast. Delay lunch until 1-2pm and then have an early dinner if you can't bring yourself to eating just one meal a day.

I did this and it is amazing, but I failed to keep it up long enough to become my normal.

Angostura3• 8 years ago

but I failed to keep it up long enough to become my normal.

And that's exactly why you want to keep it to a moderate 8pm to 12 noon fast. Its not hard to do, you lose a little bit of weight each week. You end up healthier with minimal pain or change to life-style.

naasking9• 8 years ago

Losing weight fast is not a desirable goal. You can lose considerable muscle mass, even around your heart which is obviously dangerous.

amelius3• 8 years ago

Did anyone here try the "Fasting Mimicking Diet" yet?

https://prolonfmd.com/fasting-mimicking-diet/

(not affiliated)

amelius3• 8 years ago

I've also found the benefits of intermediate fasting. Lost about 16 pounds in 2 months.

I have an 8-hour feeding window, but I try to start the day with low-carb food, such as some nuts and an egg. Then after one or two hours, I will eat normally (some bread, banana etc.)

Summarized: 8 hour feeding window, 6-7 hour carb window.

amacbride2• 8 years ago

I specifically don't want weight loss greater than 1-2lbs/wk -- slow and steady wins the race.

Trying to change a very complex set of equilibria too quickly is a recipe for disaster.

aqme28• 8 years ago

Ability to maintain a diet is more important than the speed of weight loss.

You showed yourself that while it was fast, it was difficult to maintain. This sounds like a less effective diet.

garyclarke27• 8 years ago

I’m 55 6’1/2” I’ve always done weights but only about 1 hr per week because of family long work hours etc. 1 year ago I moved from UK to Portugal (brexit), I was 95 kg 209 lbs, was disgusted with my self and wanted to get beach presentable body back. So I tried one meal a day - results were astonishing lost 10kg in 6 weeks. I’ve kept it going with a few cheat days 1 or 2 days per week and kept at around 86 Kg 189lbs. By far the easiest diet i’ve tried, I find it much easier to just not eat than to eat small portions, low carb also worked for me before but so difficult to maintain. I eat what I like now, inc pizza fries burgers etc though I try and eat lots of veg 4 meals a week. Just lots of black coffee lots off water and Himalayan salt rest of the time. My colleague was in early stages of type II diabetes taking Metformin etc, he tried the same and it completely cured him with 8 weeks, his doctor couldn’t believe it.

albertgoeswoof• 8 years ago

haven't done much in terms of changing what I'm actually eating.

Sure about that? Pretty unlikely you’ll lose weight if you’re consuming the same calories

EForEndeavour• 8 years ago

It's entirely possible to consume fewer calories "automatically" by making simple dietary changes that don't involve tracking calories. Thermodynamically, a calorie is a calorie, but it turns out the physics picture misses the point of recommending how to eat for weight loss and good health. Nutritionally, a calorie is emphatically not a calorie.

Calories in different macronutrient forms (protein, fat, simple carbs, complex carbs) have different effects on metabolism, satiety, insulin secretion, and mood. These differences in turn alter caloric intake. Cutting out refined starches and added sugar is more effective for long-term weight loss than obsessing over caloric intake, e.g., https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/well/eat/counting-calorie...

phkahler6• 8 years ago

I hate this:

"we are working on finding a new chemical that can mimic the effect of this ketone body's function"

They know what the molecule is and it works in mice. I presume they want to find a patentable molecule to mimic the natural one.

ecolonsmak• 8 years ago

Well yeah, if it's not salable what's the point in spending anytime on the research?

arcticbull10• 8 years ago

And they know it can be made in the body, free of charge, by changing eating schedule. Sounds like maybe convincing people to change their eating schedule is the way to go?

titzer• 8 years ago

But, but, we can sell them lots of food and diet pills!

mark_l_watson• 8 years ago

I am in a study by Stanford University to only eat during a ten hour period each day. So far, I am sleeping better but subjectively that is all I can say.

I do personally believe that in the past occasional 20 to 24 hour fasting and not eating after 6pm has increased my feeling of being healthy. My personal experiences don’t have much meaning so I am looking forward to more proper scientific studies in the future.

always_good2• 8 years ago

I would've thought most people eat within a ten hour window (8-6p, 10-8p, etc), though probably only if you ignore snacking.

zerop• 8 years ago

I do fast once in a week and I have seen good benefits. I have been doing this since 2014. This is what I do: Dont eat breakfast, lunch or anything till dinner. (Some people skip breakfast and dinner). Though I do drink lemon juice once in the day.

I obviously lost some weight, but more importantly it developed habit to ignore temptations. I find my self more relaxed overall.

ainiriand• 8 years ago

How does it fit with intense anaerobic exercise? Is it safe to do? Can I expect dizziness?

silverdrake11• 8 years ago

I have definitely experienced dizziness and feeling faint while fasting.. I'm not sure it's safe to exercise.

restallus2• 8 years ago

Coincidentally, Yom Kippur [1] begins tomorrow, when observant Jews fast for approximately 25 hours.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur

abraham_lincoln2• 8 years ago

No food, no liquids, no water.

Is fasting with water less effective?

restallus2• 8 years ago

Less effective in what sense? If one included drinking water, bathing/cleaning, or sexual relations it wouldn't be a proper religious fast, unless one is excepted from it, e.g. due to health issues. There are no degrees of effectiveness so to say.

bodhibyte6• 8 years ago

I'm on a day 4 of a water-only fast and have completed a two-week medically supervised fast as well as many other shorter fast.

As an anecdote, I can say water-only fasting in combination with a high nutrient density plant-based diet has helped me overcome some serious allergies and other health conditions. As an added bonus, I've lost 65 pounds from my peak weight over the last few years and my weight has been stable. It's not a panacea, but I've found it to be a net benefit.

For those interested in a deeper dive on the benefits of water-only fasting and diets that try to mimic its benefits, as well as time-restricted feeding, see:

Valter Longo, Ph.D. on Fasting-Mimicking Diet & Fasting for Longevity, Cancer & Multiple Sclerosis [1]

Dr. Valter Longo on Resetting Autoimmunity and Rejuvenating Systems with Prolonged Fasting & the FMD [2]

Dr. Satchin Panda on Time-Restricted Feeding and Its Effects on Obesity, Muscle Mass & Heart Health [3]

Dr. Satchin Panda on Practical Implementation of Time-Restricted Eating & Shift Work Strategies [4]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6PyyatqJSE

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evGFWRXEzz8

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R-eqJDQ2nU

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iywhaz5z0qs

[Edit to fix typos and formatting]

dpatrick862• 8 years ago

Very interesting to hear your successes in light of the immune cell turnover effect that prolonged fasting seems to have (Valter Longo's research).

FYI: these episodes also have a transcript and show notes not available at the youtube URL. Here they are...

[1] https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/valter-longo

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

[3] https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/satchin-panda

[4] https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/satchin-round-2

This discussion may also be relevant to ketogenic diets where BHB is produced. See these two episodes focused on research on the ketogenic diet...

• https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/eric-verdin

• https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/dominic-dagostino

bodhibyte6• 8 years ago

Thanks for the transcripts! I'm extending my fasts to a minimum of 5 days from now on as, from what I've understood, the immune cell turnover appears to really start kicking in on day 4 and 5.

riffraff3• 8 years ago

why are allergies supposed to be affected by fasting?

meowface• 8 years ago

Some people are allergic to so many things, with such sensitivity, that nearly all foods contain some percentage of something they're allergic to (even if it's only trace amounts). In that case, consuming nothing but water effectively assures a food allergy-free experience for the duration of the fast. If they're allergic to things found in water as well, then I'm not sure what the best solution is.

dpatrick862• 8 years ago

Valter Longo's work has shown that fasting causes a destruction of immune cells that get renewed from progenitors (absent the autoimmunity) after the refeeding phase. The mechanism has been shown to help with an animal model of multiple sclerosis called experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis.

It's a very elegant, most likely conserved mechanism that may generalize to virtually all diseases of autoimmunity and not just multiple sclerosis. However, that obviously needs to be proven clinically before you can say that and it might take a while.

Also, the conversion of animal research to human has another challenge: rodents have a faster metabolism. To have any hope of recapitulating those type of effects, you really have to go a while without food.

There seems to be a more medically safe way of probably tapping into mostly identical effects though, which is a "fasting-mimicking diet." Ultra low calorie, fits a specific macronutrient profile.

Read the show notes for this episode or watch the video... https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/valter-longo-2

dimastopel3• 8 years ago

Given that Dr. Longo promotes a diet that contains some calorie intake (~500 daily), why did you decide on water only fast? I am trying to choose between those two options myself.

bodhibyte6• 8 years ago

I've completed a few water fasts before I came across Dr. Longo work. The main reason he created the FMD is because they couldn't get people to volunteer for a water-only fast and then compliance was an issue. I'm now used to water-only fasting and hunger goes away completely by second or third day. I've heard anecdotally that hunger doesn't subside as well for everyone on the FMD as you're still eating, but haven't tried it myself.

This is the first time I'm working intensively during the fast (I worked through the weekend) and I've been incredibly productive. I also prepared really well: I was eating more than a pound of dark leafy green a day for the last month (in two high micronutrient smoothies for breakfast and lunch) and I used a sauna everyday for the week before the fast. I feel better today than I have in a long time, my energy is excellent.

That's not to say there aren't any side effects, I had some pretty bad lower back pain which made getting to sleep last night difficult, but I've come to expect it and it comes and goes throughout the day usually starting on the third day. I occasionally have some heart burn as well, but it hasn't been as bad this time. My first fast was the most difficult, but it was medically supervised at the True North Health Center in Santa Rosa, California. They supervise in-patient water-only fasts up to 40 days.

Molecule produced during fasting has anti-aging effect on vascular system

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