
Photo: Jay Heike, Unsplash
Intermittent-Fasting & Inflammation. Another Unexpected Miracle:
Weight Loss seems like -The- universal health problem. Everyone talks about it.
Because of that, we’ve got supermarket checkout lines stuffed with BS celebrity fad-diets that are supposed to get you down to 6% bodyfat in 8 weeks.
So as a result, most diet plans tend to get a bad rap.
But a recent spin on a very old way of eating has cropped-up with some impressive new supporting-evidence,
And some work by Mount Sinai researchers is making Intermittent-Fasting look amazing one more time…
Chubby, But Still Trying:
So in-spite of our rising obesity-rates,
Americans, and especially HT-readers, still do look at themselves as self-improvers.
Whether it’s the aforementioned weight-loss, brain health, cardio fitness, or quality of life,
Most of us still try to get at it every day.
And that’s what keeps us looking for new plans and ready to jump; even when something like Intermittent-Fasting comes along.
And The Short Answer for the current research shows that’s a good idea this time, because it not only helps you lose weight,
We can now add evidence showing a long-term reduction in chronic and toxic inflammation to the list of miracles it achieves.
Read on to find out more details…
So What The Hell Is Intermittent-Fasting Anyway?:
The practice of intermittent-fasting, or what is also called Time-Restricted Eating,
Is based on studies on closing-down the time-window in which you eat,
Many of the notable ones done by the Satchin Panda Lab at the Salk Institute.
These researchers have done A/B tests and found that if you whittle that timespan from 16 hours a day for most people,
Down to 10 hours from the first bite of food to the last,
It actually makes a big difference in all kinds of body-processes and ultimately, health.
There are many forms like Intra-Day, and Inter-Day,
But the most-studied & “easiest” is the 10 Hours On/14 Hours Off Intra-Day type.
Some of the best news about this is the results were demonstrated using the same type and number of calories.
So reducing that time-window down to 10 hours a day really does make all the difference.
And Here Are The New Study Results On Even More Benefits:
All types of intermittent-fasting are associated with health benefits.
It doesn’t even seem to matter what hour of the day you start.
But if we’re honest, some of the most-bizarre are reductions in disease & health-problems.
Science has figured out stranger things like IF/TRE works with your Circadian Body-Clock,
And it helps schedule your metabolism to do all kinds of weird non-food-digesting stuff with it once you’re not eating.
So that’s odd.
But Miriam Merad of Mount Sinai and her team found out something weirder.
That scheduling seems to Turn-Off Inflammation.
Accidental Discovery. Intermittent-Fasting’s Inflammation Switch:
Doctors had first observed this by-accident when for one reason or another, patients just decided not to eat.
And an odd side-effect of that time was that they reported much less pain.
So to chase this down, Miriam looked at what was going on in people’s blood to see what the little chemicals in-it were doing.
And sure-enough she found some weird science.
A very-powerful type of killer-cell that can help under the right conditions decided to almost completely-vacate the bloodstream and go into hiding while test-subjects weren’t eating.
It went right back into its home in the bone-marrow to rest.
Wait, because it gets even weirder.
Your Immune-System (Finally!) Gets A Vacation:
Not only is this Healthy, but it actually gives these special types of cells a “day off”,
It keeps them from over-reacting to everything around them,
They also get recharged somehow when they’re back in the bone-marrow.
It’s really good for the patients, too,
Because these cells are so powerful, they cause inflammation pretty much wherever they go.
So it’s Really a Good Thing they’re back hanging out inside your bones where they chill the heck out.
But wait, it gets even better.
It went right back into its home in the bone-marrow to rest.
Wait, because it gets even weirder.
Not only is this Healthy, but it actually gives these special types of cells a “day off”
Selective-Inflammation Is Actually Good:
Because Inflammation is actually Selectively-Useful.
When you get a cold or a virus, you need killer cells like these Monocytes to come in,
Surround the sick-area and start cleaning things up by helping to sweep the bad stuff out after it’s been killed.
So you’d think that if their action was reduced, people would get sicker quicker and stay that way.
But that’s not what happened in a corroborating study.
Test subjects who got a cold took 1 week to clear it if they’d been fasting,
And for people who were eating the “normal” 16 Hour Schedule of the average westerner?
They took 1 Month to get well again from the same sickness!!!
So not only do these tests show that IF/TRE makes you healthier by removing chronic sources of inflammation,
That could screw-up everything in their path good or bad,
But it also makes your Immune-System BOTH more-targeted and 400% more-effective!!
-BOOM!
So What Are Some More Average Benefits Of IF/TRE?:
So if you’re going to break the urge to avoid crazy celebrity diets one more time,
Why would you try intermittent-fasting/time-restricted-eating?
Well, because along with the previously-stated research-miracle, it has other benefits:
1) Reduced Obesity
2) Reduction In Fatty-Liver Disease
3) Increased Cleanup of Zombie-Cells
4) Reduced Probability of Diabetes
5) Reduced Probability of Alzheimer’s
6) Potential Increase in Natural Physical Activity
7) Weight-Loss
8) Reduced Total Amount of Inflammation-Related Disease
9) Longer Lifespan
10) Improved Blood-Sugar
11) Reduced Lethargy
12) Reduced Premature-Aging
13) Reversal of Pre-Diabetes
14) Potential Improved Function of Body/Circadian-Clock
15) Reduction in Oxidative Stress
16) Improved Cholesterol
And those are just a few, disregarding at-least some of the more far-reaching implications based on systems working better, that may also be true, but lack rigorous study right now.
So What Are The Problems That This Helps To Fix?:
The problem with inflammation is that it’s only really good when you need to heal from something.
You swell-up the area, get more bodily-fluids in there, heat things up,
And then try to sweep-away either toxins, foreign agents, and dead-cells,
So that the body’s healing-mechanism can get in there and fix things.
The problem is that it’s only good in the short-term to repair a specific problem.
But if you have it longer-term, things go awry and tissue-damage can result.
It’s almost like an auto-immune response,
Chronic Inflammation Is Like An Auto-Immune Disease:
Except the agents that get activated by inflammation-alone go where it is and raise hell,
Instead of just-purely immune-system components.
Although if you look at Dr. Miriam’s work, at least 1 immune-cell is in there fighting anyway.
And the starkly-amazing secret about intermittent-fasting is it kills at-least 2 Inflammation problems with one stone.
It reduces inflammation and also helps you lose weight.
But back in this post, we showed that if you have excess bodyfat,
It does not down-regulate the amount of hormones it puts out to compensate for that excess.
It puts out the same amount per-unit of fat, ie: fat*hormones not 1/fat*hormones, and that causes tons of inflammation everywhere in your body.
Excess Bodyfat Does Not Downregulate:
So not only does intermittent-fasting have a good shot at reducing all the other problems above,
But if you get back to a healthier bodyfat-level,
Which is 15% for Men, and 18-20% for Women,
Then you have a shot at reducing all kinds of excess-bodyfat related issues too!
Like:
1) Heart-Disease
2) High Cholesterol
3) Brain-Shrinkage & Reduced-Function
4) Pancreas & Insulin Malfunction
5) Diabetes
6) Depression
7) Circulatory-Disease/Atherosclerosis
8) The Big C
9) Lifespan Reduction of Up To 10 Years
So How Easy Is It To Get Too Much Of It?:
Sadly, it’s very easy.
If you have constant Stress, the fight-or-flight chemicals in your body are causing inflammation of some kind.
If you have too much extra bodyfat, the extra hormones it puts out are causing that problem.
Not only that, but the Western Diet is generally-seen as pro-inflammatory.
Specifically because of too much Ultra-Processed Foods,
And an imbalance of 20:1 of Omega 6 vs. Omega 3 Oils in food compared to the 1:1 or 2:1 ratio we traditionally had.
Inflammation Is A Real Problem:
So to wrap-up, Inflammation is a very real problem that most Americans carry around with them every single day.
And it’s related to a whole host of increasing health-complications.
So research that shows another unexpected and amazing facet of intermittent-fasting probably does qualify it as a small-miracle.
You can pick up many sources of Inflammation from all the different facets of your life,
So it’s especially-important to have several measures ready to fight back against it.
And though for-now, the time-honored American practice of just popping a pill to fix everything doesn’t look like it’s that simple for weight-loss or curing persistent, systemic inflammation.
The minor inconvenience of the first 2-3 “hell-days” of time-restricted eating and the slight-adjustments to your schedule,
Show that even for something as tough to solve as Inflammation, intermittent-fasting just keeps looking more and more like the proverbial Miracle Diet after-all!
Links:
• Source: Mount Sinai
• Source Study: Cell – Dietary Intake Regulates the Circulating Inflammatory Monocyte Pool
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