Abdominal health may drive the health of the rest of your body.

Fasting can lower inflammation, resting heart rate, and blood pressure while increasing insulin sensitivity. Fasting, intermittent fasting, or extended fasting can lead to weight control and improve cardiovascular and brain health. It may even promote cancer prevention.
What about fasting for only 24 hours?

Intestinal Stem Cells

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcell.2020.583919/full. Our intestinal walls contain intestinal epithelial cells (IECs) that control the secretion and absorption of nutrients from our food. Twice a week, these cells are replaced or regenerated by the action of intestinal stem cells (ISCs).

The IEC renewal cycle is fragile. Injury, infection, trauma, immune system dysfunction, and other things can impair and kill ISCs. The stem cells can replace themselves but take time, and many things can happen. For example, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) risk increases while damage is repaired and regeneration occurs.

Intestinal Stem Cells and Fasting

https://www.cell.com/cell-stem-cell/fulltext/S1934-5909(18)30163-2. Fasting causes metabolic responses in the body. One is the switch from using carbohydrates to burn fat. We know that shifting from a carbohydrate-rich diet to a ketogenic diet switches our energy sources. The ISCs have a metabolic switch that converts their activity to fatty acid oxidation – burning fat.

Intestinal Stem Cells and Aging

https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/fasting-for-just-a-day-can-regenerate-your-stem-cells/?fbclid=IwAR2ii10hDR5o1m9d6KGrGNywOdtf3NE9pUQF5lSWUIZJ86DLlkvStb2-WVE. Scientists discovered that a twenty-four hour fast is enough to cause ISCs to switch from burning glucose to burning fat in laboratory animals – both old and young. ISCs age like other parts of our bodies. Fasting keeps transcription factors (peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors – PPAR – proteins that convert or transcribe DNA into RNA) turned off.

When PPARs are turned off, they cannot burn fat; and cannot boost the regeneration of other intestinal stem cells. Thus, the researchers could control the switch of burning carbohydrates or burning fat by activating or turning off PPARs.

When laboratory animals were eating a regular diet, scientists could activate the PPARs to make the intestinal system think it was enduring a fast and burn fat instead of carbohydrates.

Conclusion

This is important in the field of aging – longevity. When PPARs can be controlled in this fashion, fake fasting becomes a reality in one pathway of aging. For example, patients undergoing chemotherapy or gastrointestinal infections may be aided in a drug that mimics the effects of short-term fasting.

This is one part of the body – the intestinal system. Will other systems respond the same to a 24-hour, 36-hour, or 48-hour fast? Will other organs respond similarly? The theory has been tested and appears viable for one primary system in the body.

Live Longer & Enjoy Life! – Red O’Laughlin – RedOLaughlin.com

 

 

 

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