Intermittent Fasting

Growing old is complicated. Staying alive beyond 100 involves much more than just avoiding the major causes of death like heart disease and cancer. Just eating and exercising right are not enough. I also adjust my hormones to match those of a healthy 30-year-old man. But I have a 30-year-old engine in a 65-year-old body.

I’m missing body parts. I have scars. My skin is getting stiff, loose, and wrinkly. What I really want is renewal at the cellular level. New cells, new skin, and new teeth.

My cells are accumulating the junk of worn out organelles, which must obstruct the efficient flow of cellular signaling. Junk is also piling up in the interstitial space around my cells. How can I clean all that stuff out and have young, clean cells and tissue again?

I’ve been following the calorie restriction (CR) enthusiasts for about 10 years now. They believe that if they restrict calories, they can live longer and there is laboratory evidence to support this, at least in animals. No human, however, has shown the results they hope to achieve.

People have been fasting for health for a long time. Thousands of people have undergone supervised fasting over the previous century. They still do it today. But none of them have broken the natural limit to longevity, which seems to be about 120 years.

Nevertheless, fasting seems to promote apoptosis – programed cell death – which is a way for the body to kill and recycle worn out cells and replacing them with new cells generated from pluripotent stem cells. That would at least address the problem of replacing old, junk-laden cells with new ones. But it still leaves the space around the cells littered with waste.

It makes sense to me to rinse that space with water and wash the junk out through the skin or back into circulation to be removed by the kidneys and liver. So, here’s what I’m doing these days:

I’m lifting weights in the gym once every four days and eating a high protein diet on those days with no limit on calories. The other three days I do some light cardio, swim, do contrast baths and sweat in the sauna. Except for coffee and water, don’t eat until 3 o’clock in the afternoon. It gives me about 16 hours of fasting, which is reported to enhance apoptosis. It’s pretty easy to adhere to so far and I like how effective it has been in removing belly fat. I’m at a lean 185 lbs, down from 200 and feeling light, energetic, and well-muscled. My waist is exactly where I want it at 34 inches with no spare tire, even a small, flat one.