How fasting can help beat diabetes and cancer

Studies suggest the Longevity diet — with the occasional days of fasting — may help prevent, delay, treat and even reverse specific diseases. Here are some of the most promising examples:

CANCER

tHe Longevity diet could be useful for cancer prevention and is being tested for the prevention of cancer in people at increased risk. it could also reduce the chance of recurrence.

Your immune system is one of the major defences against cancer so it is important to balance your diet so it can kill cancerous or pre- cancerous cells without causing deficiencies in your immune system or hormonal changes that can leave you frail.

Professor Longo’s studies have shown that a fasting mimicking diet can trigger the same effects produced by immunotherapy in mice. it appears to weaken cancer cells and remove the protective shield safeguarding them from immune cells. it also revs the immune system, making it more aggressive toward the cancer.

Animal studies and those of other researchers show that fasting, in addition to protecting normal cells, makes chemotherapy much more toxic to melanoma, breast cancer, prostate cancer, lung cancer, colorectal cancer, neuroblastoma, and many other cancers.

three small clinical trials and one report involving 75 patients provide initial evidence that fasting and fasting mimicking diets are safe and potentially effective in protecting patients from multiple sideeffects of chemotherapy.

Ongoing clinical trials, which have now tested more than 400 patients, provide additional evidence for the safety and potentially protective effect of the fasting mimicking diet against chemotherapy side- effects.

DIABETES

AdOPting the Longevity diet can help prevent — and has the potential to reverse — diabetes in some people.

Ongoing clinical trials are now testing its efficacy in diabetes. diabetes drugs interfere with or activate enzymes that can lower blood sugar levels, but they will not target the root causes for diabetes — some of which are understood and some of which are still emerging.

the results of a 100-patient trial led by Professor Longo are very promising: they show that undergoing three-monthly cycles of the fasting mimicking diet lower many of the risk factors for diabetes and metabolic syndrome, which increases the risk for heart disease, diabetes, and stroke.

the relatively low protein levels might help. Because proteins are the major regulators of the growth hormone gene, results suggest that a diet high in protein may promote cancer and diabetes in some people, in part by increasing the activity of growth hormones. A relatively low-protein diet can potentially reduce obesity’s causal effect on diabetes and cancer.

HEART DISEASE

BeCAuse drugs and other interventions have not been very effective in reversing heart disease, the Longevity diet and fasting mimicking diet have the potential to reduce cardiovascular disease incidence and progression. When it comes to cardiovascular disease, two studies on monkeys, conducted over decades, as well as multiple human studies serve as evidence of the power of certain diets in combating this widespread problem.

Also, Professor Longo’s studies show the fasting mimicking diet can reduce your risk factors for cardiovascular diseases — the greater your risk, the more effective it seems to be.

DEMENTIA

tHe fasting mimicking diet is not yet recommended, although it is being tested in the over-70s.

Professor Longo encourages anyone whose parents or grandparents had Alzheimer’s to get a genetic test to determine if they are at risk. if the tests come back positive, talk to your gP about adopting the Longevity diet.

in order to optimise brain health, delay or help prevent Alzheimer’s, you could try the Longevity diet plus additional nutrients including extra olive oil (50ml per day) and nuts (30g per day). though the efficacy of this diet in the prevention of dementia has not been demonstrated yet, it has a higher potential for significant impact since it represents a stricter version of the Mediterranean diet and includes many additional components of reported benefit.

Professor Longo also suggests drinking coffee every day. Researchers found three or four cups of coffee a day provide a 30 per cent reduction in the risk of developing neurodegenerative diseases (compared to those who didn’t drink coffee). Extracted by LOUISE ATKINSON from from The Longevity Diet: Discover The New Science To Slow Ageing, Fight Disease And Manage Your Weight by Dr Valter Longo, published by Penguin at £9.99. © Dr Valter Longo 2018. To order a copy for £8 (offer valid to 1/10/19; P&P free on orders over £15), call 0844 571 0640 or visit mailshop.co.uk/books