The authors disclosed they have equity in a company called L-Nutra, which intends to sell diet food packs:<p><a href="http://www.l-nutra.com/index.php/products/prolon" rel="nofollow">http://www.l-nutra.com/index.php/products/prolon</a><p>Nothing for sale yet, but hopefully the price will be competitive with do-it-yourselfers. I am cautiously optimistic about this direction.
I currently intermittent fast by skipping breakfast + lunch, partially because I'm lazy, partially because it allows me to easily eat 'all my calories' in the end of the day. I really like this as it provides a 'buffer' for unexpected food, such as random cake, or random lunches with colleagues etc.<p>Has anyone here actually ever TRIED fasting a full 24h day? I have. I HATED it. Well, the fasting itself wasn't that bad, however, the next day my body went FULL berserk mode and I literally couldn't stop myself from eating. It was really weird and I never had such strong biological urges. That's when I decided I'd just stick to fasting until 5 pm when I eat diner.
There is much more background info on Longo and his work on intermittent fasting if you go digging. More interesting than this particular piece, which is very short on context and science relating to the study of intermittent fasting, calorie restriction as adjuvant cancer therapy, immune regeneration via fasting, etc.<p><a href="http://gero.usc.edu/faculty/longo/" rel="nofollow">http://gero.usc.edu/faculty/longo/</a><p><a href="http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-06/uosc-fts060214.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-06/uosc-fts06021...</a><p><a href="http://michelsonmedical.org/2014/12/26/igf-1-fasting-discussion-valter-longo/" rel="nofollow">http://michelsonmedical.org/2014/12/26/igf-1-fasting-discuss...</a><p><a href="http://news.usc.edu/58074/wanted-a-recipe-for-longevity/" rel="nofollow">http://news.usc.edu/58074/wanted-a-recipe-for-longevity/</a><p><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25498742" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25498742</a><p><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25498743" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25498743</a><p><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25549805" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25549805</a>
Appropriate article since I just completed a fast of 19hrs. No water and no food. Muslims do this every year. Last year, on average our fast was just over 18hrs. We fast each day from sunrise to sunset for 30days. Of course, we as a group of people have been doing it for over a thousand years. Cant say we started it due to science, but cant say we noticed the lack of aging either. ;)
The paper in Cell Metabolism is here: <a href="http://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/abstract/S1550-4131(15)00224-7" rel="nofollow">http://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/abstract/S1550-4131(15)0...</a>
Ketosis also "mimics fastings", the main metabolic difference being nutritional ketosis is 0.5 - 3 mmol/L, while fasting is 3 - 5 mmol/L (betahydroxybuterate in the serum). The benefits of ketosis may also add longevity, possibly with similar mechanisms to fasting. It's likely intermittent fasting put the subjects of the study into mild ketosis.<p>Bottom line: Ketosis may have benefits similar to fasting in terms of aging, but without having to fast :)
RadioLab did an interesting story on how fasting (or living through famines) impacts your children and grandchildren with significant health boosts.<p><a href="http://www.radiolab.org/story/251885-you-are-what-your-grandpa-eats/" rel="nofollow">http://www.radiolab.org/story/251885-you-are-what-your-grand...</a>
There have been studies that prove that reducing meat consumption is the main benefit of fasting for slowing down ageing and that fasting has many negative psychological effects.
If you eat foods with low amounts of the amino acids methionine and leucine, you could significantly reduce age-related diseases and the risk for certain cancers.
<a href="http://nutritionfacts.org/2015/06/11/exploiting-autophagy-to-live-longer/" rel="nofollow">http://nutritionfacts.org/2015/06/11/exploiting-autophagy-to...</a>
The connection between longevity and caloric intake has been studied in mice:<p><a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3958810" rel="nofollow">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3958810</a> [1986!]<p><i>"Mice from groups 3-6 [restricted intake] exhibited mean and maximal life spans 35-65% greater than for group 1 and 20-40% greater than for group 2. Mice from group 6 [most restricted intake] lived longest of all."</i> Brackets mine.
What was the research plan here? We want to investigate a diets impact on aging? What are the negative results then?<p>These are two extraordinarily complex, intertwined topics that to come up with a hypothesis like this on the limited evidence ends up appearing to be just a random search for correlations, terminating once you find one that has the right <i>p</i> value.
Before you take <i>any</i> diet science story seriously, read this: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9714985" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9714985</a> . It's sadly easy to generate 'significant' results and get them published if you want to.
Stuff like this way more obvious if you start to think about it. Is putting your body in a safe bubble to live optimal? Does nurture always beat nature? Of course not. Some amount of stress and physical challenge MUST be optimal (defined as reduce aging). What USC just did here is pick a solid guess in the range of fairly optimal.<p>For the fasting parameter, (of many to choose from that cause stress or physical challenge) again with heuristics, we can first drill down to a sub-parameter of "being fairly hungry". Given the previous logic, this variable must be a component of slowing aging.<p>Now if you had to guess from 1 day to 50 days or even 250 days, what would you guess is the optimal time of "being fairly hungry" to reduce aging? Mostly people would probably guess 2-10 days using the heuristics of "one day is just too little to have an effect" and "15+ days just cant be safe for you body."<p>I'm surprised I hadn't heard about a study like this before. What I am not surprised by is that the <i>optimal</i> range is right in the middle of the optimal range from simple heuristics.<p>The next heuristic you can tack on is timing between fasts. Using the same logic you will get very close to the timing between fasts USC is suggests.
I'm curious if the health benefits of IF or moderate IF overwhelm the health detriment of appetite suppressant medications (e.g. amphetamines), in moderate doses.
Each and every Eastern religion emphasised fasting - Hindu and Muslims and Buddhists know the benefits of it.<p>Basically it means less burden, less load to the system (we are a system) and, as a by-product, the exercise of self-control, which is the key to personal success (delayed gratification and related concepts).<p>Thinking about tribal eating habits, one could realize that there is no single "right" diet, but a pepper set of habits of moderate austerity in consumption and sticking to simple, unprocessed, traditional (evolved according with local food sources) dishes.<p>To put it simply - conditioned by media overconsumption of processed junk food is the cause of suffering and a major contribution to ageing.
Previously it has been found that eating a ketogenic diet (<20g carbs/day for most, adq. protien, most cals from fat) mimics long term caloric restriction- And, at least to me, that sounds much more appealing that eating a severe calorie deficient...<p>I lost 40 lbs on keto eating mostly (by volume) non-carby veggies and mostly (by calories) fat, along with 80-120g of protein per day. I'd really like to see their complex diet tested against a well formulated ketogenic diet.
Haven't they known this for a long time?<p><a href="http://jn.nutrition.org/content/31/3/363.full.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://jn.nutrition.org/content/31/3/363.full.pdf</a><p>APPARENT PROLONGATION OF THE LIFE SPAN
OF RATS BY INTERMITTENT FASTING<p>by ANTON J. CARLSON AND FREDERICK HOELZEL
Department of Physiology, University of Chicago, Chkago
(Received for publication October 4, 1945 )
This study is definitely leading up to an FDA (they hope) approved, marketable diet. The actual study does give some hints at what the diet is comprised of,
"to last 5 days every month and to provide between 34% and
54% of the normal caloric intake with a composition of at least
9%–10% proteins, 34%–47% carbohydrates, and 44%–56%
fat".
... but reading further one finds this section:
"Human Diet
The human fasting mimicking diet (FMD) program is a plant-based diet
program designed to attain fasting-like effects while providing micronutrient
nourishment (vitamins, minerals, etc.) and minimize the burden of fasting. It
comprises proprietary vegetable-based soups, energy bars, energy drinks,
chip snacks, chamomile flower tea, and a vegetable supplement formula tablet
(Table S4). The human FMD diet consists of a 5 day regimen: day 1 of the diet
supplies 1,090 kcal (10% protein, 56% fat, 34% carbohydrate), days 2–5 are
identical in formulation and provide 725 kcal (9% protein, 44% fat, 4
I was annoyed the article didn't actually say what the diet was. Anyway from the Telegraph report of the same story:<p>Day one of the diet comprises:<p>10 per cent protein, 56 per cent fat and 34 per cent carbohydrate, making 1,090 calories<p>Days two to five:<p>Nine per cent protein, 44 per cent fat and 47 per cent carbohydrate making 725 calories
Sigh. The plural of anecdote is not data, rodent studies are useful but only relevant for designing proper human studies (not replacing them), and any aging "study" that works with a few dozen subjects over a few months is not science but marketing.
If you're interested, I highly recommend giving this a watch: <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01lxyzc/horizon-20122013-3-eat-fast-and-live-longer" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01lxyzc/horizon-201220...</a><p>(If you're not in the UK, connecting via VPN works).<p>Twice a week fasting, where I eat a bowl of cereal and a piece of fruit and nothing else but coffee all day, has been working really well for me. Surprisingly, I've found I'm totally able to run a few miles on my fasting days to boot.
Anecdotally, when I was a kid I had goldfish at one point. I noticed that if they were fed daily they didn't live very long. If they were fed once or twice a week they seemed to live forever.
I've seen this claim several times in connection with different studies. I believe the hugest benefits apply to organisms that eat a restricted number of calories for all or most of their lifespan.<p>And it's probably not only the number of calories, but also the quality of food that matters. Nutrient-dense, low-calorie diets could be worth a try, but how long could you stick with them?<p>Giant page of research: <a href="http://qualitycounts.com/fpcalorie.html" rel="nofollow">http://qualitycounts.com/fpcalorie.html</a>
A lot of the pathways that are mentioned here in the comments were discussed at the "Interventions to Slow Aging in Humans: Are We Ready?" conference in Italy in 2013 that
Valter Longo from the article was also part of. They reviewed the different pathways and summarised them here:<p><a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/acel.12338/full" rel="nofollow">http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/acel.12338/full</a>
This has been known for a long time. The big question is whether this can actually work in humans. Rhesus Monkey's have shown some promising results, but the evidence is conflicting. I also wrote an article recently on this and other forms of lifespan extension:
<a href="http://mitchkirby.com/2015/06/02/can-we-live-forever/" rel="nofollow">http://mitchkirby.com/2015/06/02/can-we-live-forever/</a>
I don't know every time I skip a meal for 8+ hours since waking up in the morning I get a terrible headache and become mad at everybody around me, not sure if it's just me or everybody who fastens have those symptoms. But when I eat breakfast and lunch I can go on without food till 4-5 am with no issues at all
Can we have this in a pill? Science telling me to go fasting is same as if science told me to go walk instead of providing an automobile.<p>I know that it sounds unpositive but telling people how to live didn't work for the last 2000 years, probably more. They fail at this always. But giving them tools help a lot.
Any chance this could be related to this? <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laron_syndrome#Clinical_characteristics" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laron_syndrome#Clinical_charac...</a><p>I remember hearing about this in some BBC Horizon show.
The article in question <a href="http://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/abstract/S1550-4131(15)00224-7" rel="nofollow">http://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/abstract/S1550-4131(15)0...</a>
On the mechanistic side of things, it seems that fasting, among other things, cause a mild mitochondrial uncoupling[1]. This uncoupling seems the main reason for the extended life span[2]<p>If we give some credit to this hypothesis then yes, we will have a pill to slow down aging. It can go from a simple aspirin[3] (baby-aspirin anyone?), to the dangerous DNP in a low-dose, controlled release formulation[4], the novel cationic uncouplers [5], or the safe mitoBHT [6].<p>That said, you can just get a cold shower every morning[7]<p>I am even researching this area to treat my primary mitochondrial disfuntion[8]<p>[1] In simple terms, it means that the mitochondria generates less energy in the form of ATP and more energy as heat.<p>[2] <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21483800" rel="nofollow">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21483800</a><p>[3] <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC316328/" rel="nofollow">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC316328/</a><p>[4] <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1467-789X.2001.00043.x/abstract" rel="nofollow">http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1467-789X.2001....</a><p>[5] <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26071782" rel="nofollow">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26071782</a><p>[6] <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2267406/" rel="nofollow">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2267406/</a><p>[7] <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18335051" rel="nofollow">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18335051</a><p>[8] <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21275885" rel="nofollow">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21275885</a>