A Fast Way to Increase Lifespan and Healthspan

O.K., you’re over 65 years of age and your mortality is staring you in the face. You’ve had good health habits during your life, and heaven known you’ve also

had poor ones. But, is there anything you can do at this late stage in life to extend your healthspan and hopefully your lifespan. The answer is a resounding “yes”, and it it’s called fasting.

Fasting won’t cost you a cent, if fact, you’ll save on your food bill, it just takes a little discipline and adherence to a program. If you can visualize the goodness you’re doing to your body while fasting, hopefully it will encourage you to stick with the program.

Fasting for Better Health

Fasting is definitely in vogue these days. Many people, of all ages, practice it primarily to lose weight but there is a far greater reason for regular fasting sessions namely to reduce “Inflammaging” and to live a longer and healthier life.

Inflammaging is a condition of chronic inflammation which speeds up the normal aging process and all the related age related diseases. If we can control the contributors to inflammaging we can extend lifespan and healthspan.

There are many contributors to inflammaging: obesity, smoking, over-nutrition, leaky gut, changes in microbiota. But the key one we want to deal with is “cellular senescence”.

Senescent cells are oftentimes referred to as “zombie” cells since they’re no longer vibrantly alive and functioning, nor are they dead. If they were dead the normal course of apoptosis would clean them out. But, in that halfway state they cause a cascade of issues.

Senescent cells affect their immediate microenvironment (the cells around them) via the production of inflammatory mediators. Their presence causes neighboring healthy cells to give off an inflammatory response. The trend line can go in a couple of directions: the body can rid itself of these nasty zombie cells or failing to do that, more and more cells become senescent and increase the inflammation. This results in rapid aging and reduced healthspan.

Autophagy

Luckily, there’s a very natural way to induce the body to remove these insidious senescent cells – that is to enhance “autophagy”.

Think of autophagy as cleaning house. It rids your body of accumulated junk and puts it in the recycle bin for reuse. The word “autophagy” derives from the Greek auto (self) and phagein (to eat). So the word literally means to eat oneself. Essentially, this is the body’s mechanism of getting rid of all the broken down cell parts and creating new ones.

Fasting is a key activator of autophagy. When we stop eating the body no longer secrets insulin and its counterpart, “glucagon” takes its place. This increase in glucagon is what stimulates the process of autophagy.

Although autophagy to a small degree is omnipresent in our cells, it is heightened during periods of fasting. Most importantly during autophagy, cells destroy senescent cells, viruses and bacteria and get rid of damaged structures. It’s a process that is critical for cell health, renewal, and survival. And, healthy cells extend overall health and longevity.

Intermittent Fasting vs Prolonged Fasting

A lot of the popular approaches to fasting is the restricted time eating regiment. That is, you don’t necessarily eat any less, but you only eat during a certain window, perhaps limited to 8 hours or less.

For example, upon awakening you do not immediately eat breakfast, but delay that first meal until 11:00 am. Then, your last meal would be completed at 7:00 pm. That’s an 8 hour window, thus you would have effectively fasted for 16 hours.

But to really clear out those senescent cells, the state of autophagy should be longer. Ideally 3-4 days entirely without food, just water. But you would only have to do this a few times a year depending upon your physical state.  Most people should shoot for a fast every 2 months.

Ancient Starvation Was a Survival Mechanism

So, why do we have to fast to trigger heightened state of autophagy?  Why doesn’t the body just do it on its own?

Scientists feel it dates back to our early hunter-gatherer days. The body can be primarily in one of two modes: (a) cell reproduction and growth, or (b) survival. The survival mode is the one that fosters resistance to disease and induces

longevity.

For our ancestors during periods when food was plentiful their cells were programmed to flourish and grow. The body sensed a goodly supply of glucose and amino acids and went forth and multiplied.

But when the spigot was shut off and the body now had a scarcity of glucose and amino acids, it shifted gears from growth to survival. In survival mode it knew there was no food coming in and it had to tune the body up so that it could find or catch its next meal.

This is what we evolved into.

But there’s a modern day monkey wrench in the system. Today food is plentiful all the time and we hardly go for without eating for prolonged hours, let alone for an entire day.  So our housekeeping system never gets turned on. And all that cellular debris just builds up and causes havoc such as inflammaging.

The Longevity Bonus

For decades, scientists have known that calorie restriction extends life. There have been number studies on yeast, worms, and mice. When these lifeforms were starved, they actually lived longer.

Although there are no clinical studies, it is believed that the same effect happens to humans. It goes beyond the cell cleansing, removing pathogens and starving cancer cells to actually adding years to life.

But the really good news is that scientists believe that not only will you extend your lifespan but you’ll also extend your “healthspan”. Healthspan are those additional vibrant, disease-free years of life. After all who wants to live longer if they’re debilitated?

The Prescription

The prescription for a full-body tune-up is a 3-4 day, water only fast every 2 months or so.

Is there anything that I can eat or drink during fasting you may ask?  No, you shouldn’t eat or drink anything that has calories. The whole mission is to deplete your system of blood sugar and allow your insulin level to drop and stay there.  We do recommend staying fully hydrated by drinking water at regular intervals. If you need a caffeine fix, drink either black coffee or green tea (obviously with no milk or sugar).

Feeling Hungry is not Cumulative

Most people feel that because they have experienced hunger pains in the past when they skipped a meal that the huger feeling will grow and grow until it becomes totally unbearable. Rest assured that will not happen.

Ghrelin is the hunger hormone that makes you feel hungry. Its release is not cumulative but is actually cyclical. It rises during normal meal times, then drops.

What will happen is that you will feel hungry right around your normal meal times, then it will subside until the next meal time, in a cyclical nature. So, when you feel hungry drink a glass of water, just that oral exercise will make you feel somewhat satiated.

The Goodness to your Body During Fasting on a day by day Basis

Now that we’ve convinced you to take up fasting, here is a play by play of what

happens to your body with each succeeding day. Visualize the goodness you’re doing to your body, and this will get you to commit to finish

Day 1 — Upon Awakening

Nothing unusual happening here. This has been your pattern perhaps your entire life. Your body is naturally assuming you’re going have breakfast right on schedule. But wait, all you have is black coffee and water from there on.

During the first day you’re still in an anabolic growth phase. Your body is using up the energy of last night’s meal to power your current activity and a bias toward cellular and tissue growth.

The glucose remaining in your bloodstream triggers your pancreas to produce the hormone insulin. The insulin allows your body to use the glucose for immediate energy and to store any unneeded glucose as fat in your adipose tissue.

Day 1 — Afternoon

We skipped breakfast and lunch and our body has burned off the glucose in our bloodstream we’re now powering off our body’s stored “glycogen”. Glycogen is fuel that is stored in our muscles for quick energy. It’s also stored in our liver glucose for use throughout the body, particularly the central nervous system.

Approximately 4 grams of glucose are present in the blood at all times; during fasting, blood glucose is maintained constant at this level by drawing down these glycogen stores in the liver and muscle.

Day 1 — Evening

Great job, you skipped supper and perhaps in addition to water, you had a cup of green tea (it actually helps to suppress Ghrelin, the hunger hormone, so drink up).

The body now enters that desired state of “ketosis”, slowly at first but it builds up during the remainder of the fast. With diminishing glucose and glycogen, the body begins to access body fat and breaks it down into usable fatty acids.

Fatty acids will feed most of the body, but the brain cannot feed on fatty acids. So it converts fatty acids to special ketone bodies in the liver primarily to feed the brain.

Two specific ketone bodies B-Hydroxybutyrate and Acetoacitate have been shown to benefit the brain by reducing neuro-inflammation and increasing BDNF.

Day 2 — Morning

Congratulations, you’re doing great, you skipped breakfast and perhaps had a cup of black coffee. You’re now entering that beneficial state of “autophagy” in earnest.

Autophagy is triggered by a reduction in a growth regulator enzyme called MTOR, and this process is basically a spring cleaning for your cells. It gets rid of any senescent, dead or damaged cellular material, which can otherwise contribute to aging, cancer, and chronic disease.

The production of another chemical, AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), is also triggered at this point. This really increases the amount of autophagy happening all around your body.

Day 2 Evening

By now your brain is receiving a boost from an increase in production of brain-derived nootropic factor (BDNF).

BDNF supports the growth of brain neurons and enhances neuroplasticity. Not only is it correlated with improvements in long-term memory, coordination, and learning, but it’s also thought to be key in reducing the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease in later life. Good stuff!

Day 3 – the Home Stretch

Keep going, you’re now firing on all 8. You’re burning fat, creating beneficial ketone bodies, developing BDNF, and autophagy is doing a complete makeover of all your cells and using them for spare parts for new healthy cells.

The divine intelligence of your body now starts generating more stem cells.   The circulating stem cells in your body will go up as much as fivefold from .2% to 1%.

The damaged cells throughout the body that were killed off by autophagy are now being replaced by fresh stem cells and the rebuilding can begin.

Day 4 — Breaking Fast

Stop and declare victory, you did it.

Lots of good things happen during the initial refeeding upon ending a fast.  This will start the process replacing damaged cells with fresh new ones that are healthy.

You lost between 1/2 and a full pound of body fat which will not return when you start eating again.  Plus that fat loss tends to be from abdominal fat. Having large amounts of abdominal fat (which is also visceral fat) increases your risk of cardiovascular disease and certain cancers.

Although you lost some muscle during fasting, it is quickly rebuilt during refeeding. Relative lean body mass actually goes up.

Congratulations, you are now a lot healthier, now put it on your calendar to repeat in 2 months. .