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Intermittent Fasting -Improves Many Factors Involved In Acne, Aging & Disease

 
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(@alternativista)

Posted : 02/25/2011 11:38 am

 

Intermittent fasting improves glucose metabolism and insulin sensitivity, reduces oxidative stress and it slows cell proliferation which means it might reduce the hyperproliferation/hyperkeratinization of skin cells that leads to acne. In studies on cancer, both calorie restriction and intermittent fasting slow cell proliferation. It also promotes progesterone levels as they drop after a meal. Constant meals mean constant drops. And impacts androgen production.

 

 

I'm interested in this because it supposedly can produce the same benefits as calorie restriction: reduced oxidative stress, improves ability to cope with stress, lowers blood pressure, improves insulin resistance, etc. All of which reduce inflammation and thus any inflammation related health condition. Like acne and many much more serious conditions. It might also reduce hyperproliferation of skin cells which are the real root cause of true acne & other skin conditions.

 

Calorie restriction has been proven to promote longevity by improving all kinds of health conditions that affect your longevity. But there's no way I'm going the calorie restriction route.

 

One method of intermittent fasting is to do all your eating within an 8 hour period, then you fast for 16 hours. This is why a lot of people believe in skipping breakfast and not breaking the nightly fast until noon.

 

Which I could never, ever do. Morning through lunch is when I am hungry. I could skip dinner, easy. Since I usually eat breakfast around 7am, I'd just have to fast from 3pm onward.

 

Also, in fasting you don't have to completely eat nothing. It could just be minimal calories. Another method is to alternate days of eating normally with days of eating only like 20% of your normal calorie intake. That seems much less appealing to me.

Note that the studies I've referred to were based on 16 hour or alternate day fasts. And they were done on men. Other experts have proposed that the fasting window should be shorter for women i.e. 14 hours.

I often eat only a small amount of low calorie food at dinnertime , i.e. bone broth with greens. Or green smoothie plus something for fat to take supplements with.

 

And of course, you don't have to do this all the time. But each time you do it does you good.

 

Here's two articles from the Marksdailyapple.com blog on methods and benefits for intermittent fasting:

 

The Myriad Benefits of Intermittent Fasting

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/health-bene...ittent-fasting/

 

Anyone know of other methods, advantages, etc?

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(@drizzler)

Posted : 02/25/2011 12:26 pm

Intermittent fasting (IF) has been a very useful tool for me in my health and fitness journey. It is beneficial both to the body and the mind, in so many ways.

 

This was the first article I ever read about IF, from Dr. Michael Eades, author of Protein Power (an awesome book I recommend everyone reads).

 

"Like caloric restriction, intermittent fasting reduces oxidative stress, makes the animals more resistant to acute stress in general, reduces blood pressure, reduces blood sugar, improves insulin sensitivity, reduces the incidence of cancer, diabetes, and heart disease, and improves cognitive ability."

 

An interesting thing he mentions is that while both caloric restriction (CR) and IF provide numerous health benefits and potentially increase lifespan, CR animals in lab settings exhibit depression and irritability, even hostility and violence. IFing shows no such behavior.

 

Beyond the tangible physiologic benefits of IF, there is the idea that IF sort of re-primes your innate hunger mechanisms, can resensitize appetite hormones such as leptin and ghrelin, and just generally change/improve/reset your relationship to food. Which is obviously important in this culture of binge eating, food cravings and the like.

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(@drizzler)

Posted : 02/25/2011 12:57 pm

There are several different approaches or strategies to IF; there are a few already established plans or "diets" that various people advocate (commercially).

 

1. Alternate-Day Fasting - You basically eat for 24 hours, then fast for 24 hours, repeated indefinitely. For this to be successful, you need to be eating a lot of calories on your eating days (so not necessarily running a large weekly caloric deficit)*. A variation of this is Brad Pilon's "Eat Stop Eat" where you skip meals to create 24 hour fasting periods, but don't necessarily go an entire day without eating.

 

2. Condensed Feeding Windows- In any given 24 hour period, you only eat during 4-8 hours. For example you would fast til noon, and then eat anywhere from 1-4 meals between noon and 8pm, then fast til noon again the next day. The Warrior Diet is an extreme version of this, where you consume the bulk of your calories in 4 hours at the end of every day.

 

3. One Day/Week Fasting - Pretty simple, you just don't eat for one day per week. You could expand this to say, 3 times per month or whatever.

 

I like to use a more combined, instinctual approach; this appears to be Mark Sisson's general approach too- you just kind of make it up as you go along- "I'm not so hungry tonight, I'll skip dinner". Or you might plan to skip breakfast the next morning, hit the gym hard and have an awesome lunch.

 

 

*Very important!! You must consider weekly caloric intakes as well as daily. This is a huge factor in binge behavior. If you don't eat enough 1-2 days, then by the third day, even though you ate good, substantial meals, you are still ravenously hungry.

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(@drizzler)

Posted : 02/25/2011 1:16 pm

Another fascinating viewpoint from Dr. Kurt Harris from PaNu.

 

"We are told to eat frequent snacks because the standard american diet with 55% carbs has you metabolically and emotionally tethered to frequent boluses of glucose."

 

Advantages of Infrequent Meals:

1. Enhanced metabolic training in the direction of fat metabolism

2. Lower insulin levels and fewer insulin related diseases (Metabolic syndrome, degenerative diseases, Alzheimer's, common cancers)

3. Greater tolerance for fasting makes it easier to tolerate not eating - this give you "metabolic headroom" -it makes you more functional and resilient - You are a Porsche with a 40 gallon gas tank instead of a truck running on lead acid batteries.

4. If you exercise while fasting, the lack of insulin in the fasting state improves the fat-mobilizing and insulin-sensitizing benefits of the exercise.

 

And for the encore: "Let's say involuntary periods of hunger were something that we are so adapted to that we metabolically depend on them to avoid some dieseases. Maybe we are less likely to get cancer if these periods happen to us with some regularity not found in a modern food-abundant environment. Because intermittent fasting might enhance our modern health, do we then say this was a "good" part of paleolithic life, even though the experience might have been uncomfortable and terrifying for paleo man or may have killed weaker members of his kin when it happened?"

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(@Anonymous)

Posted : 02/25/2011 4:32 pm

i just know there is this suposedly very effective n healthy method called

 

cascade fasting

 

u fast only every other day for a month, and this way u have fasted 15 days in total. at days u fast u also dont drink anything and dont get in contact with water at all (no showers etc), but at days u eat u must drink alot of water too. its suggested to have mostly vegetarian diet while on this.

 

second stage is, when u fast every third day for two days, basically 2 days u eat, then 2 days u fast. again do so for month. but now after fasting days on third day (first of eating days) u gotta drink alot of water at first, then after some hours u gotta drink kefir, and only after few hours u can eat whatever again.

 

u can also try doing stage 3, 4 or 5, rules r same as second stage just that every next stage u increase fasting days according to which stage it is. 5th stage is the most effective one but isnt reccomended to do at first time. its said to better start with stage 1 or 2.

 

& this method suposedly cures from all diseases (even aids? cancer, diabetes etc), kills parasytes, viruses, old and ill cells, toxins, holesterin and dead water (but this 1 only if u do the 5 day stage) which is super harmful etc. aand its said after this fast your face just ~gloows~! so i guess it cures acne too?

 

(got this from pretty huge book on fasting, theres everything explained scientifically etc so personally i trust it)

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(@joris)

Posted : 02/25/2011 4:37 pm

Not drink? Why?

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(@alternativista)

Posted : 02/25/2011 4:47 pm

 

QUOTE (Drizzler @ Feb 25 2011, 01:16 PM)

And for the encore: "Let's say involuntary periods of hunger were something that we are so adapted to that we metabolically depend on them to avoid some dieseases.

 

 

Yeah, I'm sure having plenty to eat all the time is just not good for us. And many of us are genetically adapted to survive famine, making all this food really, really bad for them. This is why African Americans, Hispanics and I don't know who all else are so prone to developing diabetes.

 

Study finding Intermittent Fasting lowers dLDL cholesterol More effectively than statin drugs which inhibit an enzyme used to produce cholesterol, which the body makes to repair damage caused by high blood pressure, high blood sugar, oxidation, etc. And that enzyme does other important things, like produce CoQ10 which is important for energy production. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20880415

 

Also, it reduces LDL cholesterol molecule size, which is a factor in vascular disease. Size matters.

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(@Anonymous)

Posted : 02/25/2011 5:22 pm

Not drink? Why?

for faster break down of fats (im not sure if this is how it should sound in eng tho 8/) & all other processes that usually happen at fasting, to happen faster? (afterall u gotta digest, filter, spend energy etc on water too right?)

 

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(@alternativista)

Posted : 02/25/2011 5:52 pm

I like to use a more combined, instinctual approach; this appears to be Mark Sisson's general approach too- you just kind of make it up as you go along- "I'm not so hungry tonight, I'll skip dinner". Or you might plan to skip breakfast the next morning, hit the gym hard and have an awesome lunch.

 

Yes, I think I will just stick with what I already do. Skip dinner or have a low calorie food early, (as I frequently do anyway), when I feel like it and/or whenever it's convenient to do so like when there's no other people to worry about. So I would be having zero calories for like 13 hours, but very minimal calories for 16 or so hours.

 

And not have anything until after walking/playing with the dog. And maybe occasionally get some weight training done on those mornings. Because working out on an empty stomach also enhances the body's ability to breakdown old tissues and recycle the nutrients.

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(@alternativista)

Posted : 03/03/2011 6:06 pm

 

QUOTE (Drizzler @ Feb 25 2011, 12:57 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
2. Condensed Feeding Windows- In any given 24 hour period, you only eat during 4-8 hours. For example you would fast til noon, and then eat anywhere from 1-4 meals between noon and 8pm, then fast til noon again the next day. The Warrior Diet is an extreme version of this, where you consume the bulk of your calories in 4 hours at the end of every day.

 

 

There's the Leangainers who eat within an 8-hour window, which leaves you with a 16 hour fast:

http://www.leangains.com/ Which is pretty much what I plan to do once in a while, and most days, while i won't have no calories for those 16 hours, I'll have very little by having most calories from breakfast, lunch and afternoon snack, and a very light early dinner.

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(@alternativista)

Posted : 06/09/2011 10:05 am

 

Word of the Day:

 

Autophagy

 

 

Fasting turns on autophagy --the process by which cells recycle waste material, eliminate or downregulate wasteful processes, and repair themselves.

  • Required to maintain muscle mass, and inhibiting it induces atrophy of adult skeletal muscle.

     

  • Reduces the negative effects of aging and reduces the incidence and progression of aging-related diseases.

     

  • Increases neuronal autophagy, which aids in maintaining mental health and function.

     

 

Autophagy is the main anti-aging mechanism of fasting.

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(@greeneyes33)

Posted : 06/09/2011 10:28 am

Well my family's Irish so if anyone is genetically hardwired for famine it's us haha.

 

I started 'skipping' breakfast, rather waiting until 10-11 am to eat it. Other than the health and disease benefits, does this help with acne?

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(@alternativista)

Posted : 06/09/2011 10:45 am

Well my family's Irish so if anyone is genetically hardwired for famine it's us haha.

 

I started 'skipping' breakfast, rather waiting until 10-11 am to eat it. Other than the health and disease benefits, does this help with acne?

 

Anything that helps blood sugar metabolism helps acne and so affects how strict your diet needs to be.

 

Most of the studies seem to be about 16 hour fasting or alternate day fasting. So I don't know if anyone has looked into the effects of 15, 14, 13 hour fasting. Or most calories within 8 hours and a small amount during the 16, like a bowl of veggie soup for dinner? How reduced are the benefits, etc.

 

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(@greeneyes33)

Posted : 06/09/2011 11:28 am

Interesting. I suppose even 12-15 hrs is better than at most 8 hour fasting like a lot of people (including me at one point). I would say right now I'm doing 14-15 hr fasting. But I do drink water and green tea in the morning so it probably is less effective. Did you see anywhere the effects of water and or green tea?

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(@alternativista)

Posted : 06/09/2011 12:54 pm

Did you see anywhere the effects of water and or green tea?

 

No. It's about calories and digestion.

 

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(@lima)

Posted : 06/09/2011 11:49 pm

Oh wow haha what a coincidence!! This thread has been inactive for months and I just posted my own new topic on intermittent fasting after witnessing first hand how amazing it is.

 

Sorry for the double post alternate!!

 

EDIT:

I've edited my thread to include a link to this thread

 

I just named mine something else because I thought people would see the word "Fasting" in the title and run for the hills hahaha

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(@alternativista)

Posted : 09/10/2011 5:41 pm

Bump

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(@alternativista)

Posted : 10/04/2011 2:23 pm

After your fast, do some physical activity.

- benefits of working out on an empty stomach http://fitness.mercola.com/sites/fitness/a...-breakfast.aspx on fat burning and insulin sensitivity. Note: avoid all types of sugary drinks, including sports drinks, for up to two hours after your workout because fructose obliterates the growth hormone response.

 

One of the explanations for how exercising on an empty stomach can prevent weight gain and insulin resistance despite overindulgence is that your body's fat burning processes are controlled by your sympathetic nervous system (SNS), and your SNS is activated by exercise and lack of food.

The combination of fasting and exercising maximizes the impact of cellular factors and catalysts (cyclic AMP and AMP Kinases), which force the breakdown of fat and glycogen for energy.

This is why training on an empty stomach will effectively force your body to burn fat.

It's also important to realize that eating a full meal, particularly carbohydrates, will inhibit your sympathetic nervous system and reducethe fat burning effect of your exercise. Instead, eating lots of carbs activates your parasympathetic nervous system, (which promotes energy storagethe complete opposite of what you're aiming for.

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(@themalern)

Posted : 10/05/2011 12:24 am

A very helpful topic for those seeking to lose some weight...

God bless...

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(@alternativista)

Posted : 10/06/2011 11:00 am

A very helpful topic for those seeking to lose some weight...

 

Or improve glucose metabolism, reduce oxidative stress, lower blood pressure, retard aging, and any of the other benefits already mentioned in earlier posts. And it looks like it will even reduce the hyperproliferation/hyperkeratinization that leads to acne. In studies on cancer, calorie restriction and intermittent fasting slow cell proliferation.

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(@alternativista)

Posted : 10/11/2011 9:15 am

 

Study

 

Effect of intermittent fasting on circadian rhythms in mice depends on feeding time.

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19041664

 

Revealing that only daytime feeding produced the desired affects.

Some Intermittent fasting gurus, the ones that say to skip breakfast, claim the evening meal is the one we are 'meant' to eat. I'm not hungry then. Besides, it makes sense to me to eat during the hours I'm active. I think the most important thing is to that you spend a lengthy period not eating, whatever time of day you do it.

Of course, a mouse's natural circadian cycle isn't necessarily the same as ours.

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(@gmarias)

Posted : 10/13/2011 2:29 pm

My boyfriend (after I've FINALLY managed to convince him to clean up his eating habits) has developed a consistent pattern of eating similar to intermittent fasting. I think I read somewhere that it's called the warrior method or something. He basically eats once a day, around 6pm and he'll eat a rather large meal. Then, he won't eat again until 6pm the next day.

He never had bad skin to begin with, but has lost a significant amount of weight doing this (and yes, he eats enough calories and is super excited about all of this newly discovered energy of his.

I've done intermittent fasting before, but found it much easier to simply stick to caloric restriction.

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(@alternativista)

Posted : 10/13/2011 3:09 pm

Yeah, the warrior method is more extreme in which you eat all your meals within a 4 hour period and fast the rest of the day.

 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Intermittent Fasting may reduce hyperproliferation/hyperkeratinization:

 

Modified alternate-day fasting regimens reduce cell proliferation rates to a similar extent as daily calorie restriction in mice

 

http://www.fasebj.or...22/6/2090.short

 

This study is comparing the results of calorie restriction and alternate day fasting, and a modified method in which calories are reduced 85% on the alternate days. Apparently all methods produced the result of reduced cell proliferation. This study was about cancer so it mentions various cells--"keratinocytes, liver cells, mammary epithelial cells, and splenic T-cells"

 

 

Epidermal cell proliferation decreased (P<0.01) by 29, 20, and 31% in the CR-25%, ADF-85% and ADF-100% groups, respectively, relative to controls.
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(@uncle-buck)

Posted : 10/14/2011 2:18 am

There's nothing extreme about a 4 hour window, I do it because it's natural for me. I get up, go to work, by the time i'm home and ready to eat it's 6pm and around midnight i'm off to bed.

I do extremely active work in a warehouse, and eating lunch makes me too sluggish, physically and mentally. I enjoy food much more if I can sit down afterwards and relax.

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(@dancedd)

Posted : 10/14/2011 7:29 pm

There's nothing extreme about a 4 hour window, I do it because it's natural for me. I get up, go to work, by the time i'm home and ready to eat it's 6pm and around midnight i'm off to bed.

I do extremely active work in a warehouse, and eating lunch makes me too sluggish, physically and mentally. I enjoy food much more if I can sit down afterwards and relax.

 

So what do you do during lunch at work then?

I can never eat alot during lunch when I am at work. Or really enjoy it.. I feel rushed or something and not relaxed. I also can enjoy food more at dinner times because I cam alot more relaxed and I can eat alotbiggrin.png

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