Much of the article is theoretical, connecting decline of the immune system to many of the medical issues associated with aging. Arthritis and even Alzheimer's disease are rooted in auto-immune reactions. The steep rise in cancer with age is believed to be related to the immune system's failure to detect cancer in its early stages and to eliminate pre-cancerous cells. It is to be hoped that rejuvenating the immune system might have broad anti-aging effects.
Why does it work?
Evidence for programmed aging
In write-ups of this material, the failure of stem cells with age is described as "dysregulation", and the reason the strategy works is attributed to a clearing out of damaged and ineffective immune cells from the blood, as they are converted by the body to food. Perhaps you have noticed that this makes little sense. Certainly Valter knows this better than anyone, given his history, but he has chosen not to fight the abstract battle about evolutionary theory, because he knows it would likely interfere with the credibility of his other, practical and life-saving work.
The point is that if the fasting body is able to rejuvenate and multiply the bone marrow cells that are responsible for blood and immunity (hematopoietic stem cells), then it is obvious that the body could do this as well or better when it has plenty to eat. If it wanted to. The fact that hardship and deprivation can induce the body to rejuvenate implies that aging is a programmed choice. Even when it looks as though the cells are suffering damage over time, that damage is entirely avoidable (indeed, repairable), and it is only with chemical switches that the repair mechanisms are turned off as we age. In PKA and IGF-1, Longo has identified two of the signals that keep the repair mechanisms dialed down, and make our health deteriorate with age.
Why is the body intent on killing itself? It is an adaptation for population regulation, a response to natural cycles of boom and bust in population size. When times are good, the population expands too fast. Aging is a way of slowing down the population boom. This is why we age more rapidly when there's plenty to eat. In times of famine, there is already plenty of death, and the danger is the opposite -- that the population might plunge to extinction. This is why aging backs off in the face of hunger. (Ideas in this paragraph are not yet standard evolutionary theory, but this is a theme that I have developed in computer simulation, and it is the core of my contribution to publications in the field.)
Fasting in Ancient Religious Traditions
Though they are not controlled and not founded in a knowledge of biological mechanisms, traditional writings nevertheless embody experience of large numbers of people over a long period of time, and I look to them for ideas, for cautions and confirmations. Before writing this piece, I had the impression that fasting was recommended in many religious traditions, and I eagerly googled associations with the 3000-year-old Ayurvedic (longevity) tradition of India. I was surprised to learn that fasting for more than a day is regarded as an extreme practice, and that Ayurvedic texts don't provide prescriptions or recommendations for long-term fasts, but rather cautions against fasting, suggesting that fasting practice has been prevalent for a long, long time, and the ancient Ayurveda was already reacting against it.
Frequent 12-24 hour fasts, however are recommended, even prescribed in the Ayurveda. Eating the main meal early in the day is a practice that ancient traditions and modern medicine agree on. Avoiding food for several hours before bedtime is part of yogic practice. For Buddhist monks in the Theravada tradition, all eating is confined to the morning hours, implying a daily fast of 16 hours.
Implications for the clinician, for you and me
I find it remarkable, if no longer quite surprising, that in write-ups of the therapeutic effects of fasting, medical professionals and researchers focus on what we can learn that will help us produce a drug that mimics the benefits of fasting. Fasting is providing all the benefits with little or no downside (except temporary hunger, need for warmer clothing); but medical science is busy search for drugs that will probably target just some of the signals that fasting sends, and will probably have more serious side-effects than fasting. Longo says that the constellation of benefits from fasting "would be difficult to achieve with any pharmacological or other dietary intervention."
It is deep in the culture of today's medicine that the patient is passive and it is the doctor who is the agent of healing. Medical professionals de-emphasize all that the patient can do with diet, exercise and life-style modifications to improve his own health, despite the proven power of these regimes. Part of the problem is in the conection to capitalism, which creates a focus on what can be healed profitably, ignoring remedies that cannot be sold.
Fasting and weight loss
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
