Anti-Aging Secret = Juice Fast?

Getting Younger from the Inside out!

No one has been able to explain why fasting and especially juice fasting for several days works such a miracle, but “miracle” is the right word. Visible benefits are terrific, including a lessening in the number and depth of facial lines, an improvement in the skin’s texture, firmness, and contour, and a vibrant, healthy glow to the skin, eyes, and hair. Theories as to why fresh juices transform one’s appearance echo theories about aging and how to slow that process. At the cellular level, aging is brought about by free-radical damage to cells and an accumulation of wastes and toxins. Wastes build up because of environmental toxins, stress and poor eating habits, which impair cellular metabolism and gradually poison and age the body. If you choose the juice fast, drinking only freshly made vegetable and fruit juices for several days is believed to counteract waste buildup by flushing away internal “sludge.” When you embark on a fast, you give your digestive tract a rest and enable immune cells to destroy dead, diseased, and damaged cells. At the same time, the rich concentration of nutrients from the juices helps renew your cells.

Research suggests that one way to slow down the rate of cross-linkage (wrinkling and loss of elasticity of the skin) is to eat sparingly and to fast occasionally. Fresh juices provide an abundance of nutrients that heal and restore the cells along with binding up free radicals that cause aging. They also contain a special energy derived from the sun during photosynthesis called biophotons, which cooking destroys.

Research from the University of Southern California found that periodically adopting a diet that mimics the effects of fasting could produce a wide range of health benefits. USC researcher Valter Longo found that cycles of a four-day low-calorie diet that mimics fasting cut visceral belly fat and elevated the number of progenitor and stem cells in several organs of old mice — including the brain, where it boosted neural regeneration and improved learning and memory, according to a paper published in Cell Metabolism.

Mice, which have relatively short life spans, provided details about fasting’s lifelong effects. Yeast, which are simpler organisms, allowed Longo to uncover the biological mechanisms that fasting triggers at a cellular level. And a pilot study in humans found evidence that the mouse and yeast studies were applicable to humans.

Twice-a-month four-day reduced calorie fasts that begin in middle age extended life span, reduced the incidence of cancer, boosted the immune system, reduced inflammatory diseases, slowed bone mineral density loss and improved the cognitive abilities of older mice tracked in the study. The total monthly caloric intake was the same for the fasting and control diet groups, indicating that the effects were not the result of an overall dietary restriction.

In a pilot human trial, three cycles of a similar diet given to 19 subjects once a month for five days decreased risk factors and biomarkers for aging, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer with no major adverse side effects, according to Longo.

Longo, is a professor of bio-gerontology at the USC Davis School of Gerontology and director of the USC Longevity Institute. The diet reduced the individual’s caloric intake down to 34 to 54 percent of normal, with a specific combination of proteins, carbohydrates, fats and micronutrients. It decreased amounts of the hormone IGF-I, which is required during development to grow, but it is a promoter of aging and has been linked to cancer susceptibility. It also increased the amount of the hormone IGFBP-, and reduced biomarkers/risk factors linked to diabetes and cardiovascular disease, including glucose, trunk fat and C-reactive protein without negatively affecting muscle and bone mass, according to the press release..

A few years ago, Longo’s research found that chemotherapy drugs might work better if administered during a brief period of fasting. Researchers looked at mice that were injected with different types of cancer cells, and found fasting before chemotherapy treatment protected the animals against some of the drugs’ toxic effects. 1

1 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/19/fasting-live-longer_n_7620950.html; accessed May 16, 2016