Eat your daily meals within 10 hours for better health

What if a clock did a better job than a scale at promoting weight loss, improving sleep and preventing diabetes?

Saturday, 21 Dec 2019

7:00 AM MYT

By AGENCY

Participants in the study were less likely to skip breakfast, an action that has negative health effects. — Photos: 123rf.com

New research suggests it’s about time to consider that possibility.

In an early effort to explore the benefits of daily fasting in humans, researchers have found that people who are at high risk of developing diabetes improved their health in myriad ways when they ate all of their meals over a span of just over 10 hours, then fasted for the remainder of their 24-hour day.

The regimen, called time-restricted eating, is a variant of intermittent fasting – a practice growing in popularity.

To lose weight or improve health, those fasting intermittently don’t eat – or follow a spartan diet that mimics fasting – for a day or more every week or month.

Time-restricted eating by contrast, limits a person to consuming all of his or her daily calories in a relatively narrow window – say from 8am to 6pm.

Practised daily, time-restricted eating widens the period during which the body’s major visceral organs are put into a state of rest and recovery.

The experiment

Ample research has shown that erratic eating patterns, shiftwork, and modern-day habits like get-up-and-go breakfasts and midnight snacks, have contributed to obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

Satchidananda Panda, a biologist at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California in the United States, said that by establishing a consistent daily cycle of feeding and fasting, one might realign the ebb and flow of fuel intake with the body’s natural circadian rhythms.

“Every cell, every organ has its clock, and every organ needs downtime to repair, reset and regain its rhythm,” he said.

“When all your organs have rested and rejuvenated every day, they just work well.

“It’s almost like an orchestra: when all the musical instruments are in tune and work well together, it’s a melody, not a cacophony of sounds,” he added.

For the new research, Panda and his colleagues measured what happened when 19 people were asked to do all their eating during a 10-hour window every day for 12 weeks.

The participants were allowed to choose their own 10-hour window and could vary it slightly, say if they had an early breakfast meeting one day or a late dinner on another.

All the study’s subjects had a condition known as metabolic syndrome.

Sometimes called pre-diabetes, metabolic syndrome makes a person five times more likely to develop type 2 diabetes and it doubles her risk of developing cardiovascular (heart) disease within five years.

The condition is diagnosed when a patient tests positive for three or more of the following conditions: obesity, high blood pressure (hypertension), problematic cholesterol, impaired metabolic function and excessive waist circumference (an indicator of abdominal fat).

Three in 10 Americans are thought to have metabolic syndrome.

To ward it off, doctors have little to offer beyond exercising more, eating less and losing weight.

But patients often ignore or abandon that medical advice and go on to develop full-blown type 2 diabetes.

In the pilot study, the participants limited their “eating day” to under 11 hours for 12 weeks.

They reduced their calorie intake by almost 9%, lost an average of 3% of their body weight and reported more restful sleep – all improvements that could aid in disrupting a patient’s progression from metabolic syndrome to diabetes.

As a group, participants reduced their belly fat – a bellwether of future heart disease risk – by 3%.

Promising results

Having all meals within a 10-hour period – and fasting for the rest of the day – can help to improve the health of those with metabolic syndrome.Drilling down on the physiological effects of a daily 14-hour fast, researchers also found a wide range of subtler improvements among the 19 subjects.

The group’s blood pressure, typically high in those with pre-diabetes, fell. Their cholesterol readings, typically worrisome in this population, improved.

And in the 12 participants whose metabolic function had already veered into abnormal territory, three months of time-restricted eating appeared to bring about improvements in two key health measures: fasting glucose and HbA1c.

These changes came about without any increase in participants’ physical activity. And improvements didn’t rise or fall with changes in weight.

Time-restricted eating did induce weight loss, which typically improves many bodily functions.

But it appeared to effect key changes in direct ways, rather than just by helping subjects slim down.

In several cases, participants were able to discontinue or take smaller doses of medications, such as cholesterol-lowering statins or hypertension drugs.

In other instances, researchers saw that shortening their eating day and observing a long nightly fast helped patients who were not sufficiently helped by medication alone to achieve normal readings.

The results were published recently in the journal Cell Metabolism.

None of these promising findings is definitive: With only 19 participants and no control group, the work merely lays the foundation for further investigation.

But a much larger clinical trial that meets the gold standard of biomedical research is already in the works.

Underwritten by the US National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, that trial will also explore the benefits of daily fasting in people with metabolic syndrome.

Willing to do it

Modern-day habits like midnight snacking and eating on the go have contributed to the rise of obesity, diabetes and heart disease. — TNSThe researchers who conducted the pilot study were buoyed by its preliminary findings, but even more excited by evidence that the study’s 19 participants were both willing and able to follow the regimen – often well beyond the 12-week scope of the study.

All 19 subjects – three women and 16 men – were able to maintain a regular habit of fasting between 13 and 14 hours a day for about six days a week, on average.

The timing of their meals became more regular. And they didn’t skip breakfast – a shortcut that research suggests could have negative health effects.

They were not instructed or urged to continue this pattern of eating after the study was done.

But when researchers followed up with the participants about 15 months after the intervention had ended, they discovered that five continued to follow the eating schedules they had adopted in the study.

Seven others said they were either limiting their eating window a little less stringently or following their time-restricted eating schedule on a part-time basis.

The remaining seven said they had followed the regimen for an average of just over four months before it fell by the wayside.

Dieting fails most severely due to lack of patient adherence.

But daily fasting may make it easier for people at increased risk for diabetes and heart disease to succeed, experts said.

“These are patients at the tipping point for diabetes,” said Dr Pam R. Taub, a University of California, San Diego, cardiologist and co-author of the new research.

“This is a very critical window where you can reverse the disease process.”

But she said, “the same old spiel – get more exercise, reduce your calories, try a plant-based diet”, has proven frustrating for both her and her patients.

“Most people just don’t sustain it, and year after year, things are getting worse for them,” said Dr Taub, whose patients were among the participants.

“So what was really exciting was that here was a lifestyle strategy where all I asked them to do was change the time of their eating.”

They did, and their health improved.

Valter Longo, who studies the effects of intermittent fasting at the University of Southern California, said the new study “should be treated as a promising pilot”, rather than a blueprint for patients and doctors.

Future studies should not only explore the health benefits of time-restricted eating, but also the risks for people who prolong their fasts in a bid to gain more benefits.

Those risks include dehydration and heart arrhythmia (irregular heart beat), as well as an increased likelihood of gallstones.

Trials should also probe the potential impact of more relaxed eating-and-fasting routines, including 12 hours on and 12 hours off.
“Dose effects,” he said, could prove to be important.

Twelve-hour daily fasts “are very common among centenarians,” he said. Daily 16-hour fasts by contrast, are “absolutely not”. – Los Angeles Times/Tribune News Service

https://www.thestar.com.my/lifestyle/health/2019/12/21/eat-your-daily-meals-within-10-hours-for-better-health

The One Thing To Boost Your Metabolism

We hear about a lot of ways to boosting your metabolism for weight loss and better health, but what’’s the one thing to do it best?  It’s fasting! Intermittent fasting (IF).

Posted by Elaine Iseri on Mar 8th, 2019 // No Comments

We hear about a lot of ways to boosting your metabolism for weight loss and better health, but what’’s the one thing to do it best?  It’s fasting! Intermittent fasting (IF).

Most people relate fasting to weight loss, internal body cleansing or a religious practice for spiritual enlightenment.  But while our metabolic health does influence our body’s ability to maintain a healthy weight, it’s so much more.

The definition of metabolism, according to Medicine Net, is:  a whole range of biochemical processes that occur within a living organism. In other words, metabolism is the mechanism your body uses to convert food to fuel, nutrients to support growth and getting rid of your waste for instance. So ensuring that your metabolism is working as it should is of highest importance in your daily life.

Past studies have shown that high-intensity interval workouts, drinking a lot of water, getting a good night’s sleep and even eating spicy foods could increase or maintain a healthy metabolism. But the best means to do this is by intermittent fasting (IF).

A study published in the latest issue of Scientific Reports by a combined group of research experts from Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University and Kyoto University found a group of metabolic markers that usually decreases with age which influences our general health.  However, the study also showed that IF affects the body’s ability to increase these markers and provide a winning method for long term good health.

The study is pretty complex, but in laymen’s terms it essentially means that when we fast for a period of time, metabolites like butyrates, which have anti-inflammatory effects, are released, along with the chemicals of purine and pyrimidine which are crucial for protein synthesis and gene development, and anti-oxidants which prevent age-related diseases and decline.

iI has long been known that fasting  promotes longer life spans, but now we have a scientific study discovering one of the possible explanations for longevity which is the production of antioxidants during fasting.

As the lead author of the study, Dr. Takayuki Teruya, explained that “These are very important metabolites for maintenance of muscle and antioxidant activity, respectively. This result suggests the possibility of a rejuvenating effect by fasting, which was not known until now.”

So, along with good aerobic exercise, adequate sleep and water intake and a healthy diet, IF is the way to go for good health maintenance and especially for increasing longevity.

mindbodygreen.comhas a beginner’s guide to IF for those who wish to start on a program to better health and increased longevity.

https://www.modernreaders.com/news/2019/03/08/the-one-thing-to-boost-your-metabolism.html

Diabetes drug Metformin offers hope of new treatment for multiple sclerosis

Trial using rats showed the drug metformin repaired nerve damage caused by the disease

Ian Sample Science editor

 @iansample

Wed 2 Oct 2019 16.05 BST

Scientists have raised hopes of a new treatment for multiple sclerosis after animal studies showed a common diabetes drug can repair nerve damage caused by the disease.

The effect of the drug was so striking that doctors in Cambridge are now planning a clinical trial of MS patients next year.

If the treatment works as expected, it could potentially halt the progression of the disease and even allow patients to recover from some of the disabilities that typically develop as the condition worsens.

“It’s always a leap in the dark when you go from lab experiments to humans, but the data is as strong and as compelling as it is ever likely to get,” said Robin Franklin, a professor of stem cell medicine at Cambridge University. “I am very optimistic that this is going to work.”

MS affects one in 600 people in the UK, where about 100,000 people live with the condition. The disease is caused by the immune system mistakenly attacking a fatty coating called myelin that wraps around nerves in the brain and spinal cord. Without myelin, messages sent along nerves slow down, are disrupted, or fail to get through at all.

In the early stages, MS can cause eye problems such as pain and temporary loss of vision, but also difficulties with balance, dizziness, muscle spasms and tremors. In the longer term, nerves that have been stripped of their myelin degenerate, and it is the loss of these that leads to disability.

Working with researchers in Australia, the Cambridge team administered the diabetes drug metformin to rats for three months before they had an injection that stripped myelin off some of the nerves in the brain. The rats continued to receive the drug for three more weeks afterwards.

The treatment had a profound effect. Compared with animals that went without, those on metformin had a near complete recovery of the damaged myelin. “It is utterly unambiguous and very spectacular,” Franklin said. The same result was seen in animals that went without food on alternate days for six months. Dramatically reducing calorie intake has been shown to increase the regenerative capabilities of the body.

Writing in the journal Cell Stem Cell, the scientists describe further experiments that show how both fasting and metformin rejuvenate stem cells in the brain. Once in this more youthful state, they go on to develop into myelin-producing cells called oligodendrocytes. These in turn restore the myelin that MS destroys.

The scientists hope the drug will at least slow the progression of the disease. But a more optimistic possibility is to stop further neurological damage completely. If doctors can achieve that, the patient’s nervous system may be able to rewire itself enough to recover from some of the disabilities.

“My own view is that this is most likely to benefit individuals who are about to switch from relapsing-remitting MS into secondary progressive disease,” Franklin said. “But if you have an effect with a regenerative medicine, you can give it at any stage of the disease and it will be helpful.”

Anna Williams, a professor of regenerative neurology at the University of Edinburgh MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine, who was not involved in the study, said: “We know that repair generally gets worse with age, but this is exciting as it suggests that myelin repair in the brain and spinal cord in aged adult rodents can be improved. If this relatively simple, cheap and available drug can rejuvenate myelin repair in humans as well, then this may be really helpful in neurodegenerative diseases such as multiple sclerosis where efficiently restoring myelin will help avoid disability.”

Susan Kohlhaas, the director of research at the MS Society, which funded the work, said: “We can see a future where nobody needs to worry about MS getting worse, or eventually needing a wheelchair, but for this to happen we need treatments that repair myelin. This research demonstrates myelin repair therapies are within our grasp, and we’re closer than ever to finding treatments for everyone living with MS.”

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/oct/02/diabetes-drug-offers-hope-new-treatment-multiple-sclerosis

Also: Hope for multiple sclerosis patients as scientists reveal type 2 diabetes drug metformin 'can reverse nerve damage caused by MS in rats in three months'

PART 2 - The 7 Wonders that Cured Bettina’s Cancer - MUST READ

One of the highlights of each Annie Appleseed conference is the Patient Panel, featuring three cancer patients who tell their stories.

By Lee Euler / April 24, 2019

(This is the second of two articles about the 2019 Annie Appleseed cancer conference in West Palm Beach, Florida.)

One of the highlights of each Annie Appleseed conference is the Patient Panel, featuring three cancer patients who tell their stories. The moderator, Julie Chiappetta, summarized her own story of healing from cancer 19 years ago.

Back in 2000 when Julie was first diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer, at a time when she was under stress from a high-paying job, doctors told her she needed serious conventional therapy. “You’ll die unless you do as we say,” they claimed, but she just said no.

Instead, she took a couple of months off to find out what she was dealing with and what she could do. She decided she needed to become the Chief Executive Officer of her own body, which was also stressed out from running in races.

After investigating her options, she decided to make some radical changes. She threw out her microwave and carpeting and made many other improvements to start over with a clean slate, and she was careful not to slip back into the way she had lived that made her sick.

Her plan included “rest, alkalinity, eliminating sugar and white food, and sticking with it.” She cautioned women to avoid mammograms because they’re only 40 percent accurate and they emit radiation that causes cancer.

She quoted cancer researcher Dr. Samuel Epstein, M.D., who said, “It’s a sobering fact that over a period of 10 years a premenopausal woman undergoing annual regular mammography receives almost half of the radiation that was measurable from a mile away from the Hiroshima epicenter.”

The seven wonders that cured Bettina’s cancer

The first panelist Ms. Chiappetta introduced was 52-year-old Bettina Tammaro from Denmark. She’s a teacher, a coach, and an adventure hobbyist.

When Ms. Tammaro was diagnosed with lymphoma in 2001, doctors talked her into surgery and radiation. In 2012 the lymphoma reappeared, but she said “no” to conventional treatments and decided to choose the natural way instead.

She told the audience, “Going alternative was like walking the plank and taking the jump into the deep blue sea.” She discovered a well-known video called “Cancer Is Curable Now,” and applied the following “seven wonders.”

1. An alkaline eating plan plus nutritional supplements including vitamins A, C, B12, magnesium, selenium, dried herbs, and seaweed
2. A lot of physical exercise
3. Restorative sleep, because the immune system’s ranger cells can’t work when you’re tired
4. Detoxification through rebounding on a mini-trampoline, infrared heat, massage, and intermittent fasting
5. Passion for life, including a survival island adventure and volunteer work in Africa.
6. Attending to the mind/body/soul connection through spirituality, forgiveness, and stress management
7. Balance

Bettina said she’s an enthusiastic outdoor adventurer, and she urged the cancer patients in the audience to “be brave enough to do crazy things! Do the free things. Take off your shoes. Do breathing exercises. Hug a tree.”

She said she enjoys jumping into the ocean, spends lots of time in nature, and loves the woods so much that she actually does hug trees.

The next panelist, Ryan Sternagel, has never had cancer. But as a husband and father he had agonizing decisions to make in 2013 when, a month before his son’s first birthday, his wife felt a lump in the baby’s back.

Ryder had stopped growing at six months and couldn’t handle solid foods. The health crisis was a cancerous growth coming out of his spine and metastasizing to his bones. The diagnosis was neuroblastoma. To make matters worse, the hospital gave him a staph infection from a port, requiring antibiotics at the same time the child received chemotherapy.

Normally chemo is an elective treatment, but the government regards it as mandatory for children with cancer — even in cases when they’re old enough to say they don’t want it and their parents agree that chemo shouldn’t be given. Unless parents want to go on the lam, the child is going to get chemo whether the parents like it or not.

Accused of child abuse

Even though the Sternagels were reluctantly cooperating with the poisonous chemotherapy treatments, they were also giving Ryder so many alternative therapies that they were reported to “child protective services” for “medical neglect” and possible “child abuse.” They were cleared of these accusations because there was no proof that the alternative therapies were harmful.

Instead of defying the authorities, the Sternagels took a smart middle course by cooperating just enough to avoid trouble while taking serious steps to mitigate the poisonous damage of the chemo.

Their experience proved you CAN stay healthy in the hospital. In Ryder’s hospital room, for example, they had a juicer and a water filter, and they put lots of supplements in the juice. They also had a rice cooker. One nurse remarked, “So you’re making his feeds?” They were! They gave Ryder about 50 supplements, some with food, some without. The Sternagels had spent hours researching on PubMed, the vast database of almost every medical journal article published.

The doctor had told them their son needed four rounds of chemo to meet a certain goal. The Sternagels replied, “If we can get there in two rounds, will you let us stop?” The doctor said, “That’ll never happen.” It happened.

But even when the proof was in front of his eyes, the doctor still insisted that Ryder had to finish all four rounds. And that’s not all. After the first four rounds, the doctor said another four rounds were required. At that point, the Sternagels pulled up stakes and moved to Utah, where they would start with a new team of doctors.

Ryder made so much progress that the new doctors agreed to a “wait and see” approach. It soon became obvious that no more chemo was needed, so Ryder never received any more.

The Sternagels built a house in the woods outside Park City, Utah, using only natural, non-toxic materials, and everyone in the house is safe from the harmful, cancer-causing effects of electromagnetic frequencies (EMFs), which are difficult to avoid in technologically advanced countries, especially in urban areas.

Ryder is still doing fine.

Advice from a cancer survivor: Lose the anger

The last panelist to tell his story about overcoming cancer was Ryan Luelf. Married for 19 years with three children, ages 7, 9, and 18, he said he was turning 39. He gave this advice to other patients who are struggling with cancer:

“Stop being angry. Stop being pissed off about what happened years ago. Remember, life flows downstream. Don’t paddle against the current. Toss the oars aside, and get in the flow.

“Tune into your own infinite intelligence to find your own path, and then share it with others to help them find theirs. Drop out of your head into a deeper place within you. Get deep! Don’t live out of your ego or else you’ll miss the present moment. The present moment is all we have, and it’s always all we have.

“Don’t be lost in thoughts about the future or the past. Be in ‘the now.’ Bring all your awareness about what you’re doing.”

In 2015 Ryan began suffering from night sweats and swollen lymph nodes in his neck. Then he came down with horrible headaches. He found out he had stage four non-Hodgkins lymphoma with metastasis from the liver to the bone marrow.

That very instant, he decided he was going to live, period. He had a wife and children who needed him. He said, “NOTHING is more powerful than deciding what your destiny is.”

Patient has the guts to contradict his arrogant doctor!

Ryan’s doctor told him, “This cancer will kill you. You’ll do chemo, but it could kill you in the first two weeks. If you don’t do chemo, you’ll be dead in two or three months.”

This is how he replied to that doctor: “That’s not going to work for me.” He told the cancer patients in the audience, “Don’t make an agreement with a human being’s opinion. Instead, form an opinion that will serve you well, and believe it.”

Ryan never thought he would die from the cancer, but he knew it was possible, and he was at peace with it. His wife, on the other hand, was stressed out. Instead of ignoring the elephant in the living room, he told his wife, “It’s time to talk about the possibility that I might die and face it and deal with it.”

They had long talks. He got his financial affairs in order to make sure his family was provided for. Going through this process wasn’t a sign of defeat but an honorable and respectful course of action.

One day his wife looked him in the eye and told him, “If you die, the kids and I will be okay.” He felt relieved when his wife gave him permission to die, which gave him permission to be fully alive and in the present.

Needing $30,000 for his alternative treatment plan in a Tijuana cancer clinic, Ryan rolled up his sleeves and raised it by not being afraid to ask others for help. Based on his experience, he’s developed a reasonably priced fundraising course which is for sale to cancer patients and others on the website FreelyFunded.com. When he set up a crowdfunding website, 800 people donated, enabling him to get the treatment he needed.

Just for the heck of it, and with his wife’s permission, he decided to do something wild. He sold their house, bought an RV, and took off on an adventure traveling the U.S. Now he’s ready to settle down and buy a house in Tulsa.

Remarkable benefits of a juice fast

Using colloquial, PG-13 language, cancer coach Jill Schneider described her journey to healing from malignant cervical cancer back in the 1970s.

Her doctors wanted to hustle her onto the operating table for a hysterectomy, but she refused. Instead, she experienced profound healing in a jungle in Venezuela and in the mountains of Peru.

She took herbs from a doctor of Chinese medicine and purified her blood by going on a brown rice diet for ten days. Then she added vegetables to the brown rice plus nuts, seeds, and beans. She hiked in the mountains and felt wonderful. She actually forgot that she had a cancer diagnosis.

When she ran out of money, she came back to America — and her tests were normal.

Jill advises cancer patients first to address the physical causes: dehydration, exhaustion, and malnutrition. “Fix those first before you do anything. It’s a great start. Malnutrition is fixed by juicing. Everyone should do a juice fast. Fasting is holy. The kitchen is the holiest place in my house.”

At retreats she does massage and promotes relaxation and sleep. She said, “We need the sugar from fruit for our brain. You have to clean out your colon. Clean it out. Get that s–t out! Usually people lose about a pound a day during a fast. If you have digestive problems, stop eating!

“Start with a three to five day fast. You’re going to feel like s–t the first few days, but don’t be afraid of it. Accept it. Enjoy it. Watch comedies. Try to laugh your *ss off during the first few days. Break the fast with salad, watermelon, and avocado. You’re going to get your youth back and your mojo back!”

Jill is located in Delray Beach. Her website is www.circle-of-life.net.

The conference ended with presentations about cannabis, also known as “medical marijuana.” Also lumped into this category is CBD oil from hemp, although it isn’t marijuana and has no psychoactive effect. In marijuana it’s the compound called THC that causes the high.

Although THC and CBD have medicinal value, not only for cancer but also for pain management and other health problems, the problem is that they are difficult to dose. How much should you take? Nobody can say for sure, according to the presenters at this conference.

There’s almost no chance your physician has any idea how much is the right amount. For those who want to try these remedies, the best advice is to “go slow and start low,” only using as much as you need to feel better instead of getting yourself so zonked (in the case of THC product) that you’re out of it.

Sometimes CBD oil is enough. In other cases, a combination of CBD and THC have been found to be helpful. The good news for patients looking for pain relief or recovery from cancer without getting high is that CBD oil mitigates the psychoactive effect of THC.

Here’s the magic ratio: if you take four parts CBD to one part THC, you’ll get the medicinal benefits of both substances without the mind-altering effect. Using THC and CBD together in this way can even help cigarette smokers and opioid addicts quit their addictions.

For cancer patients who want to use this remedy, micro-dosing is perhaps the best approach because it keeps the cost down and can be done on a long-term basis if desired.

Despite the obvious medicinal benefits of cannabis, including no significant bad side effects, the disadvantages are considerable: nobody knows for sure how much is necessary or how long you should take it, and the monthly cost can be prohibitive, depending on how much is used.

What’s more, legality is still an issue in many places. CBD oil has significant medical benefits without the legal issues surrounding mind-altering THC/cannabis.

No such thing as a free lunch, right? Wrong!

Keynote speaker Dr. Mary Hardy, M.D., suggested an option that, for many, might make more sense than cannabis: medicinal mushrooms. She said, “Medicinal mushrooms are as close to a free lunch as you can get: medicinal benefits without side effects.”

Dr. Hardy mentioned several mushrooms she likes, including Reishi (Ganoderma), Coriolus (Turkey Tail), Shiitake, and a mushroom extract called AHCC. It has been said that whether you have a disease or not, everybody should be on two medicinal mushrooms — reishi and cordyceps — because of their wide-ranging medical benefits for various organs and the immune system.

Several reputable companies sell these mushroom extracts, including Mushroom Wisdom, Fungi Perfecti, and Mushroom Science.

https://www.cancerdefeated.com/the-7-wonders-that-cured-bettinas-cancer/