Fasting diet cycles reduce neuroinflammation to attenuate decline in Alzheimer’s | Hacker News Reader

Fasting diet cycles reduce neuroinflammation to attenuate decline in Alzheimer’s

cell.com

23 pointsrntn16 comments

Fast mimicking diets were tested on elderly folks, because fasting or calorie restriction might be dangerous and has compliance issues

" The fasting-mimicking diet (FMD) is a low-calorie/low-protein but high-unsaturated-fat diet that has an effect on stress resistance/longevity-related markers similar to those caused by water-only fasting, but that minimizes the burden of prolonged fasting as it provides both macro- and micronutrients. "

Cholesterol and other parts of fats are the basic building blocks of a lot of things your brain needs. I have a hypothesis that sugar is the antithesis of this and that the benefits we're seeing from FMD are because you've limited their sugar intake.

True or not, that's a pretty decent mental model for justifying better eating habits.

I lost ~100lbs in the span of 1yr during covid with most of that weight coming off in 4 months on that model. The key in one-meal-per-day isn't that it restricts calories[0], but what it does do is force you for 23h a day to resist a reward/response cycle that food has on you.

- Biggest benefit was so much time for activities just opens up.

- Biggest drawback in all seriousness was losing the confidence and protection that came with being an immovable object.

[0] - My theory is that one-meal-per-day when not paired with mental progress can encourage binge eating. I can consume 10,000 calories in a single meal, unless I'm also biking 30 miles that is not doing to help me lose weight, one meal or ten meals.

The title is misleading, in that fasting is very different than "fasting-mimicking" which is the phrase in the original title and the topic of the paper.

This is great but I'm expecting to see a lot of "this didn't work for me so I challenge the validity of the study" comments.

Those testimonials would rightly receive skepticism. Lot's of people say calorie restriction didn't work. It's not that the diet didn't work, they have a perception and accountability problem. Nothing overcomes thermodynamics.

I agree with you completely but that's not really in common public discourse.

I guess I'm trying to make a gutter thread to capture all those sort of comments.

> that's not really in common public discourse.

You don't have to say the silent part if everyone's already thinking it.

In this case, “didn’t work for me” means you got Alzheimer’s, so you probably aren’t commenting on this thread.

How would you know if you have reduced neuroinflammation?

Other than a pre-packaged meal kit, are there resources out there laying out a menu for a fasting mimicking diet?

A fasting mimicking diet? There is nothing that mimics fasting 1:1.

"The fasting-mimicking diet (FMD) is a low-calorie/low-protein but high-unsaturated-fat diet that has an effect on stress resistance/longevity-related markers similar to those caused by water-only fasting, but that minimizes the burden of prolonged fasting as it provides both macro- and micronutrients."

Here’s a good meal plan to mimic fasting.

Breakfast:

Lunch:

Mid afternoon snack:

Dinner:

Check Walter longo fasting book

Reply on news.ycombinator.com