Fasting (Detoxification and Glycogen replenishing) (1 Viewer)

[Ockeghem]

This one is right up my alley. It isn't precisely on fasting this time, but it still interests me greatly as I am a long-distance runner and I do participate in various resistance training programs both while running and while practicing the martial arts. It concerns both supervised and unsupervised aerobic and resistance training. I don't understand what fasting insulin is, but I am going to ask my colleague (a health sciences professional with whom I work) what the significant of it is.

I neglected to mention that I have read several articles over the past year or so that frequently include Type II Diabetes as one of the primary conditions that fasting helps to improve. I can post those articles as well if there is any interest.
Stefanov, T., Vekoya, A., Bonova, I., Tzvetkov,S., Kurktschiev, D., Bluher, M., and Temelkova-Kurktschieve, T. "Effects of supervised vs non-supervised combined aerobic and resistance exercise programme on cardiometabolic risk factors."

Source: Cent Eur J Public Health. 2013 Mar;21(1):8-16.
Medicobiological Unit, International Scientific Institute, National Sports Academy, Sofia, Bulgaria. [email protected]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23741891

Abstract

OBJECTIVE:

We examined the effect of a 6-month combined aerobic and resistance training programme on cardiometabolic risk factors in nondiabetic subjects and compared its effectiveness when executed under strict professional supervision or without direct supervision.

METHODS:

Eighty-five sedentary, non-diabetic subjects (27 men and 58 women), mean age 47.5 +/- 0.6 years, mean body mass index (BMI, 33.8 +/- 0.6 kg/m2) participated in a combined exercise programme assigned to supervised (S, n = 31), non-supervised (NS, n = 24) or control group (C, n = 30). Cardiometabolic risk parameters were assessed at baseline and after the 6-month training.

RESULTS:

In both the S and NS group there was a significant decrease in BMI (-1.6 +/- 0.3, p < 0.001 and -1.0 +/- 0.3 kg/m2, p = 0.004), waist circumference (-10.1 +/- 1.1 cm, p < 0.001 and -7.8 +/- 0.8 cm, p < 0.001), fat mass (-1.8 +/- 0.4%, p < 0.001 and -2.1 +/- 0.6%, p = 0.003), and a significant increase in fat-free mass (+1.7 +/- 0.4%, p < 0.001 and +2.0 +/- 0.7%, p = 0.008), and aerobic capacity (+6.9 +/- 1.1, p < 0.001 and +6.9 +/- 0.8 ml/kg per min, p = 0.008). Fasting glucose did not change in S and NS, but increased in C (p = 0.048). In the S group a significant decrease in fasting insulin (p < 0.001), homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance (p < 0.001), highly sensitive C-reactive protein (p = 0.004), leucocytes count (p = 0.04), systolic high (p < 0.001) and diastolic (p = 0.009) blood pressure was found. Comparable significant decreases in total and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol were observed in all study groups.

CONCLUSIONS:

A 6-month combined exercise programme led to substantial improvement of various cardiometabolic risk factors. This programme was effective even when executed without direct supervision, although the effects were more pronounced in the supervised group. Our findings suggest that non-supervised exercise programmes may be a valuable, cost-effective tool to translate the current physical activity guidelines in a real-life setting.

 

[Stan]

I can't go without sleep for very long, and frankly I wouldn't even try that. When I was eighteen or nineteen years old, I once went seventy-two hours (I had my reasons at the time) without sleep, and that is something that I will never do again

I once went five days without sleeping and it wasn't my choice. My body just decided to not let me sleep.

It was a horrible experience.

Took Ambien for several years, but it has major side effects. Even on the lowest dose, I ended up with retrograde amnesia. For example if a took a pill at 10 p.m., everything from the previous six hours disappeared overnight. I also started sleep walking, eating, cleaning house, etc. Wasn't until I actually sleep-drove to my usual grocery store, did my shopping and then hit a parked car (no memory of it). Witnesses reported me and a policeman came to my door the next day. Thank God I didn't hit a person, but got a $325 ticket for hit and run/unattended vehicle. Actually turned out well because the owner never answered e-mails, phone calls or letters from my insurance company so the judge through it out and I never paid a penny.

Things have been fine for a couple of years, no definitive answer, but it seems to be over.
I've never taken Ambien since.

 

[Ockeghem]

Okay, a slight aside --

I just keyed in the following terms: fasting, prolonged fast, humans, and effects in one database (PubMed) and retrieved over 18,000(!) articles. This is using one database, and keying in only three terms and one phrase. My search will obviously have to be refined somewhat.

 

[Ockeghem]

I once went five days without sleeping and it wasn't my choice. My body just decided to not let me sleep.

It was a horrible experience.

Took Ambien for several years, but it has major side effects. Even on the lowest dose, I ended up with retrograde amnesia. For example if a took a pill at 10 p.m., everything from the previous six hours disappeared overnight. I also started sleep walking, eating, cleaning house, etc. Wasn't until I actually sleep-drove to my usual grocery store, did my shopping and then hit a parked car (no memory of it). Witnesses reported me and a policeman came to my door the next day. Thank God I didn't hit a person, but got a $325 ticket for hit and run/unattended vehicle. Actually turned out well because the owner never answered e-mails, phone calls or letters from my insurance company so the judge through it out and I never paid a penny.

Things have been fine for a couple of years, no definitive answer, but it seems to be over.
I've never taken Ambien since.

Stan,That does sound like a horrible experience. I can't imagine going that long without sleep.

I've never heard of retrograde amnesia. However, over the years I have used the technique of retrograde and retrograde inversion contrapuntally in music, and I have heard of returning from a 'fugue state' (in the medical sense) from time-to-time. The fugue is, of course, one of the highest forms (or perhaps better described as a procedure) in music.

Somewhat coincidentally, the reason I chose to go without sleep for seventy-two hours when I was in my late teens was due to my having to learn a piece by Chopin for a music class the following Monday.

 

[Ockeghem]

Sam,In one of your posts above, you wrote that you did a fifteen-second search on Google. I hope you were joking about the time you took and (more importantly) the source. At our university we almost never use Google as an authoritative source when we are helping students with serious research. When we do use it, we corroborate what we find there with at least two other (and preferably three) resources.

It is possible that you could stumble upon a reliable (and peer-reviewed) resource when using Google. However, there is also a fair degree of probability that some of the 'huckster' and 'most of whom are trying to sell you something' information that you alluded to above will appear in great numbers with the results you retrieve using a general search engine rather than a legitimate subject-specific database. This non-helpful advertising will not occur with authoritative databases, in which peer-reviewed, scholarly journal articles may be located.

Incidentally, can anyone get to this link? If so, then more people will be able to do their own research if they so choose.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed

 

[Mike Frezon]

Sam: One of the things I am finding most interesting about the give-and-take between you and Scott is that he is clear about his intent: to chronicle his experience with fasting. He makes it clear that he is not advocating that people fast (certainly not without consulting their physician, etc.) and that he is not a medical doctor but, in effect, a layman.

And yet you are as adamant that the fasting behaviors are probably to be detrimental to someone's health. Yet you are no expert either.

Now please don't misunderstand me. I think your skepticism has gone a long way to fleshing out the issue for the rest of us to attempt to understand (because it is such a foreign concept to nearly all of us). While fasting certainly has its historical context, the overabundance of food for the majority of Americans has, I think, pushed the concept into near anonymity. This discussion has given me pause to ponder about the evolution of the "three squares a day" concept.

While this discussion is not about weight loss, my wife and I have been fighting our own battles with weight control over the years and even though in recent years have really upped our amount of activity/exercise, and have identified what are the right foods for us to eat, we continue to struggle and the bottom line has become the amount of the food we eat (even in the context of proper exercise and nutrition).

I am reading Scott's posts as if I am having an interesting dinner-table conversation with someone who knows something about a topic of which I have little knowledge. I understand the owner's concerns that a more casual reader might decide rather foolishly "Oh. That sounds like a cool thing to do." so we should have occasional reminders that the forum is not advocating that people should do this.

But, personally, I don't see any harm in the discussion taking place...especially since there are people like yourself asking a lot of specific, well-intentioned questions about the topic and creating a context which I think most HTF readers can appreciate and understand.

 

[Mike Frezon]

Incidentally, can anyone get to this link? If so, then more people will be able to do their own research if they so choose.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed

I just clicked on it and got there.

 

[Ockeghem]

I just clicked on it and got there.

Mike,That's great. I have a listing of about twenty-five health and medical-related databases that I am thinking of posting as links, but I need to be certain (from a licensing / subscription standpoint) that I can do this without getting myself into hot water.

 

[Mike Frezon]

You might be best to hold off for now..

Let's see how the discussion goes and if there is a real demand from the membership for links to conduct their own specific medical research.

 

[Ockeghem]

You might be best to hold off for now..

Let's see how the discussion goes and if there is a real demand from the membership for links to conduct their own specific medical research.

Mike,Okay, will do.

 

[Ockeghem]

Here are a couple more that discuss prolonged fasting and some of the effects (both pro and con) on humans. This is beginning to get to some specific chemicals in our bodies as a result of extended fasts. I was concerned a few years ago with the effects on the liver (see article no. 2 below) once I had broken any fast in excess of three weeks since I wasn't sure what would occur if proteins were introduced too quickly. After speaking with my doctor, he told me that my blood work (I had it done near the completion of the three-week fast) was fine so I didn't worry about it again.

N.B.: Although the third link reads 'Report' at the conclusion of the title, the link does contain the full-text of the article. If anyone cannot access it, please let me know and I will cut-and-paste the full-text of that article here.

Robert L. Dobbins, Michael W. Chester, Murphy B. Daniels, J. Denis McGarry, and Daniel T. Stein.
"Circulating fatty acids are essential for efficient glucose-stimulating insulin secretion after prolonged fasting in humans."

Source: Diabetes. Oct 1998 v47 n10 p1613(6).

Lars Savendahl, Mei-Heng Mar, Louis E. Underwood, and Steven H. Zeisel. "Prolonged fasting in humans results in diminished plasma choline concentrations but does not cause liver dysfunction."

Source: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Sept 1997 v66 n3 p622(4).

Joris Hoeks, Noud A. van Herpen, Marco Mensink, Esther Moonen-Kornips, Denis van Beurden, Matthijs K.C. Hesselink, and Patrick Schrauwen. "Prolonged fasting identifies skeletal muscle mitochondrial dysfunction as consequence rather than cause of human insulin resistance.(ORIGINAL ARTICLE)(Report)."

Source: Diabetes. Sept 2010 v59 i9 p2117(9).

 

[Stan]

Scott, semi-related but not truly fasting, more weight related.

Have you ever done anything like completely cutting out all carbs and fat, sticking with lean proteins, veggies and fruit?

I've been told by my doctor, no fasting due to low blood pressure, but never asked him about cutting certain things out of my diet.

Just curious if you've got any insight in that area.

 

[Ockeghem]

Here are some more.

Rubio-Aliaga, Isabel ; Roos, Baukje ; Duthie, Susan ; Crosley, L. ; Mayer, Claus ; Horgan, Graham ; Colquhoun, Ian ; Gall, Gwénaëlle ; Huber, Fritz ; Kremer, Werner ; Rychlik, Michael ; Wopereis, Suzan ; Ommen, Ben ; Schmidt, Gabriele ; Heim, Carolin ; Bouwman, Freek ; Mariman, Edwin ; Mulholland, Francis ; Johnson, Ian ; Polley, Abigael ; Elliott, Ruan ; Daniel, Hannelore. "Metabolomics of prolonged fasting in humans reveals new catabolic markers."

Source: Metabolomics, 2011, Vol.7(3), pp.375-387 [Peer Reviewed Journal]

Another fascinating article on cancer and fasting.

Lee, C., and Longo, V. D. "Fasting vs dietary restriction in cellular protection and cancer treatment: from model organisms to patients.(Report)."

Abstract (underlining is mine, since I am more interested in longer fasts than shorter ones):

The dietary recommendation for cancer patients receiving chemotherapy, as described by the American Cancer Society, is to increase calorie and protein intake. Yet, in simple organisms, mice, and humans, fasting--no calorie intake--induces a wide range of changes associated with cellular protection, which would be difficult to achieve even with a cocktail of potent drugs. In mammals, the protective effect of fasting is mediated, in part, by an over 50% reduction in glucose and insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-I) levels. Because proto-oncogenes function as key negative regulators of the protective changes induced by fasting, cells expressing oncogenes, and therefore the great majority of cancer cells, should not respond to the protective signals generated by fasting, promoting the differential protection (differential stress resistance) of normal and cancer cells. Preliminary reports indicate that fasting for up to 5 days followed by a normal diet, may also protect patients against chemotherapy without causing chronic weight loss. By contrast, the long-term 20 to 40% restriction in calorie intake (dietary restriction, DR), whose effects on cancer progression have been studied extensively for decades, requires weeks-months to be effective, causes much more modest changes in glucose and/or IGF-I levels, and promotes chronic weight loss in both rodents and humans. In this study, we review the basic as well as clinical studies on fasting, cellular protection and chemotherapy resistance, and compare them to those on DR and cancer treatment. Although additional pre-clinical and clinical studies are necessary, fasting has the potential to be translated into effective clinical interventions for the protection of patients and the improvement of therapeutic index. doi: 10.1038/onc.2011.9.

Source: Oncogene, July 28, 2011, Vol.30(30), p.3305(12) [Peer Reviewed Journal]

Here is an article that discusses hormones while fasting.

Tunstall, R. J., Mehan, K. A., Hargreaves, M., Spriet, L. L., and Cameron-Smith, D. "Fasting activates the gene expression of UCP3 independent of genes necessary for lipid transport and oxidation in skeletal muscle."

Source: [color=rgb(34,34,34);font-size:10pt;]Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications, 2002, Vol.294(2), pp.301-308 [Peer Reviewed Journal][/color]


Another article that has to do with fasting and lifespan (albeit in worms).

[color=rgb(34,34,34);font-size:10pt;]De Petrocellis, L., and Vincenzo, Di, M. "Why fasting worms age slowly: lipids of the N-acylethanolamine family mediate cell signalling across a wide range of organisms. In nematode worms, they translate food availability into fundamental choices about development that affect lifespan.(CELL SIGNALLING)(Report)."[/color]

[color=rgb(34,34,34);font-size:10pt;]Source: Nature, May 12, 2011, Vol.473(7346), p.161(3) [Peer Reviewed Journal][/color]

 

[Ockeghem]

Scott, semi-related but not truly fasting, more weight related.

Have you ever done anything like completely cutting out all carbs and fat, sticking with lean proteins, veggies and fruit?

I've been told by my doctor, no fasting due to low blood pressure, but never asked him about cutting certain things out of my diet.

Just curious if you've got any insight in that area.

Stan,

I've thought about doing that, but when I eat, I don't seem to have the discipline necessary to eat 'only this or that' food. I find this interesting, since I can fast for weeks at a time, but cannot (at least not consistently) avoid certain foods for very long when I am not fasting. When I fast (even for a day or two), this problem doesn't exist for me.

I would definitely listen to your doctor on this. I do know that fasting lowers blood pressure (I've seen it in myself countless times). So if your blood pressure is already low, I wouldn't fool with that. That being said, I would ask your doctor about cutting out various foods. When I first began running about thirty-five years ago, I researched various foods and their effects on blood pressure and heart rate. Hopefully your doctor will know which ones (if any) to cut out of your diet.

 

[Sam Posten]

Can't pull up those links from here but I don't believe any of them are looking at whole body health, long term effects, or specifically at extended fasts.Just as a heads up for those considering such a diet, I'll point to my first non medically supervised web site, the National Center Against Health Fraud, which collects resources regarding medical fraud brought on by alternative medicine. Even if you don't trust their objectivity their referenced deaths caused by water diets should be considered.http://www.ncahf.org/articles/e-i/fasting.htmlI guess those people missed the trigger points, huh?It might not be fair of me to add, but I will note a not so surprising streak of religious motivation (for multiple religions!) attached to the fasting fad.

 

[Sam Posten]

Sam: One of the things I am finding most interesting about the give-and-take between you and Scott is that he is clear about his intent: to chronicle his experience with fasting. He makes it clear that he is not advocating that people fast (certainly not without consulting their physician, etc.) and that he is not a medical doctor but, in effect, a layman. And yet you are as adamant that the fasting behaviors are probably to be detrimental to someone's health. Yet you are no expert either.

That's true Mike, but I'm not the one advocating for a "lifestyle choice" that can, has and will continue to lead people to their deaths. I think the burden of proof should be on that end. If Scott were to be chronicling his experiments with, say, snake handling or explosives ordinance handling as a lay person would we be all "Cool, let us know how that works out for ya!"?

 

[Ockeghem]

How many times must I say that I am not advocating for you -- or anyone else -- to do this? This is a choice I have made for myself, and it is mine alone to make.

"I guess those people missed the trigger points, huh?"This remark is insulting and uncalled for. We're through. And it could have been very interesting to continue.

 

[Sam Posten]

You might not be advocating for anyone else to try it but by presenting it as perfectly safe and medically endorsed you have become a champion of a system that has inherent danger. You wave off the definition of starvation when that is what you are flirting with.Yes, the body has protections to help us when we are starving but this is an escape hatch, not something that was hidden like an easter egg in a video game, designed to provide a boost to stats.http://io9.com/5941883/how-your-body-fights-to-keep-you-alive-when-youre-starvingNote: It's a consumer blog, not a peer reviewed article. Those sources are linked within it tho should you wish to pursue them.

 

[DaveF]

Truth be told, the first three days of any no-food fast are the most difficult for first-time fasters. After that, the hunger disappears, and your mental clarity is heightened markedly. I attribute this to more oxygen being routed to the brain, although that is speculation on my part. It may be in part because the body does not have to work virtually every minute of every day digesting food (a physiological process that seems to take a large amount of energy for our bodies to accomplish).

Have you ever considered quantifying this? Say, time yourself on e.g. Sudoku puzzles pre- and mid-fast, to see how your mental acuity changes?My experience is focus changes based on time of day (I work best late afternoon), and food-coma is a killer if I've got dull meetings to attend. I do not know how prolonged hunger affects problem-solving. I infer that it improves your research.

 

[Ockeghem]

For the benefit of those who might object to my views on this topic, I have decided not to post any longer in this thread. And I have asked either Ron or Mike to delete the content and close the thread, or both. I just wanted posters who might ask me a question on this topic to know why I won't be answering them any longer.

Ron,

Thank you very much for allowing me to post on this topic for as long as I did. It is much appreciated.

Happy fasting.