BY SOLA OGUNDIPE

FASTING for as little as three  days can not only strengthen a person’s entire immune system but potentially extend the person’s life span. In view of this, persons with compromised immune systems have been urged to fast regularly in order to boost their immunity.

Researchers at the University of Southern California who discovered that people undergoing chemotherapy treatment or with autoimmune deficiencies that cause damage to their immune system, say they can reverse such negative effects simply by starving themselves of food.

Fasting and good health

According to their findings, fasting as little as eight days a year could help bodies become healthier. Further, fasting two to four days at a time every six months causes stem cells to awake from their normal dormant state, and start regenerating.

They said fasting in this manner, potentially replaces old and damaged cells with new and healthier cells, effectively renewing the immune system.The study, which is first to show that a natural intervention has capacity to trigger self-renewal, revealed that fasting causes production of new white blood cells, making the body more disease resistant.

In mice and humans, white blood cell counts which are vital to the immune system, were significantly lowered after long periods without food. But, when their numbers decline to a critical point, pathways for what is known as hematopoietic stem cells were switched on and the system generate new blood.

According to Valter Longo of the University of Southern California Davis School of Gerontology, “When you starve, the system tries to save energy, and one of the things it can do to save energy is to recycle a lot of the immune cells that are not needed, especially those that may be damaged.”

He argues that when a person fasts for 48 to 96 hours, the body starts to consume stores of fat, glucose and ketones (created when fats are broken down for energy). After a period of fasting, human immune systems generate new blood cells when nutrients start flowing back into the body. “If you start with a system heavily damaged by chemotherapy or aging, fasting cycles can generate, literally, a new immune system,” Longo said in a university press release.

Studies have shown that reducing typical calorie consumption, usually by 30 to 40 percent, extends life span by a third or more in many animals, including nematodes, fruit flies and rodents. A large portion of the data supports the idea that limiting food intake reduces the risks of diseases common in old age and lengthens the period of life spent in good health.

Benefit of intermittent fasting

While medical advances have championed the idea that intermittent fasting does indeed lower the risks of degenerative brain diseases in later life, faith proponents have long maintained that fasting is good for the soul, but benefits on the body were not widely recognised until the early 1900s, when doctors began recommending fasting to treat disorders such as diabetes, obesity and epilepsy.

For several decades, science has showed that intermittent fasting delays development of disorders that lead to death. As far back as the 1930s, a nutritionist at the Cornell University, Clive McCay, discovered that rats subjected to stringent daily dieting from an early age lived longer and were less likely to develop cancer and other diseases as they aged, while animals that ate at will were more prone to die.

Calorie  restriction

Research on calorie restriction and periodic fasting heightened in 1945, when University of Chicago scientists reported that alternate-day feeding extended the life span of rats as much as daily dieting.

One of the most telling researches was carried out in 2003 by the National Institute on Aging’s neuroscience laboratory.  Led by Mark Mattson, the researchers found that mice that fasted regularly were much healthier than mice subjected to continuous calorie restriction. The mice had lower levels of insulin and glucose in their blood, which signified increased sensitivity to insulin and a reduced risk of diabetes.

Mattson and his colleagues have shown that periodic fasting protects neurons against various kinds of damaging stress, at least in rodents. One of their earliest studies revealed that alternate-day feeding made the rats’ brains resistant to toxins that induce cellular damage akin to the kind cells endure as they age.

In follow-up rodent studies, his group found that intermittent fasting protects against stroke damage, suppresses motor deficits in a mouse model of Parkinson’s disease and slows cognitive decline in mice genetically engineered to mimic the symptoms of Alzheimer’s.