Fasting. When many hear the word fasting they often relate it to either outrageous diets that don’t have lasting effects or to having ties with certain religious practices. Intermittent fasting, the idea of reducing the frequency of meals, is now being researched by numerous scientists for its effects on preventing neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's, improving human’s overall cognitive ability, fighting obesity, and other diseases related to it. The idea being proposed is that ‘starving’ your brain will challenge it. This challenge causes your brain to activate adaptive stress pathways, whose function is to help the brain cope with stress and to reduce the risk of disease.
By 2050, it is predicted that Alzheimer’s disease will triple amongst the human population, meaning it will affect 15 million people. Dr. Mark Mattson, who presented the TedTalk, conducts research using lab mice as a model. He found that feeding the mice less not only improved their memory, but also, increased their energy levels and their lifespan upwards of 40%. His findings also have some historical support.
There are numerous effects intermittent fasting plays on the brain and body. In the brain, it improves cognitive function, increases production of neurons, and enhances DNA repair. Neurotrophic factors promote the growth of mature and developing neurons. One specific neurotrophic factor, Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), when increased showed an upsurge in the number of mitochondria per cell. This boost in mitochondria, gave rise in energy levels and increased the ability of neurons to form and maintain synapses. The challenge also caused an uptake in production of new neurons from stem cells located in the hippocampus. One final improvement fasting does to our neurons, is that it enhances their ability to cope with stress and thus resist disease, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson's. The challenge stimulates antioxidant defenses while also promoting the clearance of molecular waste. DNA repair becomes enhanced while inflammation is reduced. When we eat, our liver stores the nutrients as glycogen and it takes about 10-12 hours to burn off the glycogen stores before our body taps into fat deposits for energy. This time can be reduced through vigorous exercise, but also, through intermittent fasting. By reducing the frequency of meals our body switches to using fat stores for energy and ketone bodies are produced. The ketones provide an alternative food source to our brain and ketone production has been linked to suppressing severe seizures in epileptic patients today.
Intermittent fasting provides a new window for a whole host of medical issues the world faces today from obesity to Alzheimer's. The technique of fasting, though, is one different from many other types of treatment in that it can be easily be adapted into an individuals lifestyle and is affordable. There is a range of ways to fast from following a 5/2 diet, where 2 days you eat 500 calories and the other 5 you eat a normal well-balanced diet; or to an 8 hour diet, where you try to eat all the calories of the day within an 8 hour window. So try it out as Mattson suggests, start off by fasting once a week for a month and you’ll already to begin to notice changes in your energy level, overall mood and cognitive ability.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UkZAwKoCP8&vl=en
-Maddie Powers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UkZAwKoCP8&vl=en
-Maddie Powers
This reminded me of ketogenic diet which is a high fat, low carbohydrate diet. In this diet, as mostly only fats are being eaten, ketone bodies are produced and then burned off as the energy source instead of glucose. I also read that fasting, similar to ketogenic diet can help with epilepsy issues.
ReplyDeletePosted by Priya Bikkani
This is a really interesting finding! Fasting isn't something that someone thinks of typically as having health benefits, in fact many see it as having the opposite. I think this treatment could be very beneficial as it costs nearly no additional money and can be adapted to easily at home. However, part of me worries that if members of society who don't fully have an understanding of this treatment could end up engaging in unhealthy behaviors, solely because they heard on the news "fasting is good for you".
ReplyDeletePosted by Jamie Downer
I also, when I came across this TedTalk, had no idea that fasting had such beneficial and lasting effects on our body. I first thought of it as a way of starving your body and I knew that some religions had periods of fasting. I can also see that some people may take it the wrong way by not getting enough information. However, this is an issue with most things in practice today there will always be someone that doesn't fully gain all the information being present. So, going forward I agree that as much information about this should be presented to people and to get a doctors opinion.
Delete-Maddie Powers
I got the general idea of the blog. However this study is still at mice . But what i am thinking abou is: normaly as a survival body response, when animals are in need of food, they become more alert and try to use whatever it takes to get to food. What if the mice have higher energy and memory due to the fact that they are hungry and really searching hard for food. If this is the case, I don't think this would be a pleasant way to keep humans energetic and improve their cognition and memory. What do you think?
ReplyDeletePosted by Jad Imad
Mark Mattson who presented this data does research on mice, but, at the same time, he has been following this intermittent fasting himself for decades and has noticed similar results to the data collected from his mice. They also started the 5/2 diet on a group of human patients and Mattson said they had considerable improvement in their cognitive ability. Also, in regards to keeping humans "energetic" I do think it would be a good lifestyle for people to adapt. We humans used to be hunter gatherers and they had a very energetic lifestyle so I think it could still be adaptable today. This fasting is the challenge and the challenge is creating more active pathways in the brain which I believe would improve the overall way of life for humans.
Delete-Maddie Powers
I have heard of intermittent fasting, but I had no idea it had so many benefits, especially in preventing diseases such as Alzheimer's. The biology behind essentially stressing out the body through fasting makes a lot of sense to me. I think this is a great treatment for people to try, even if results are not necessarily guaranteed, since this treatment seems incredible easy to incorporate into one's life and will cost little to no additional money. I also like that this does not involve any extreme or dangerous dieting, but rather just limits the time for eating!
ReplyDeletePosted by Alexandra Rios
I could not agree more! I too had the same feelings about the affordability and ease of intermittent fasting. Mark Mattson who presented this particular Ted Talk says he practices fasting himself and he is still a prominent researcher and cross-country runner while in his sixties. They found that the fasting improved cognitive ability and prevented the degradation of neural pathways which provided results of preventing or reducing the Alzheimer's disease. The fasting diet also reduces the risk of diabetes, obesity, and is shown to reduce the symptoms of epilepsy. I'm glad you enjoyed the idea of it too.
Delete-Maddie Powers
There's so much research going on about intermittent fasting! It's showing that doing it can be really good for you, as you mentioned! Is there one way that's better than another: the 5/2 method, or eating only during an 8 hour window, etc.? Is fasting somehow "better" than just giving people a certain dose of BDNF?
ReplyDeletePosted by "Chandler Kupris"