[peteretep]

> At the 3-day mark, I've hit a key milestone in cellular regeneration. My body has broken down old immune cells and generated new ones (Cheng et al., 2014).

... if you were a mouse. Here's the article being referenced: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24905167/

[ivanhoe]

There's now a number of studies on effects of fasting on chemo therapy patients, and they all make the same claim of regeneration through autophagy for some types of leukocytes.

[peteretep]

Could you explain how this is used to support statements like:

> I've hit a key milestone in cellular regeneration

What's key about it? In what way is it a milestone? What's the expected health impact in human patients?

[ivanhoe]

Well, if he was a mouse you still would have those same questions in the air until you do the proper blood tests, right?

Of course this is a naive, over-simplified interpretation of science findings, but it doesn't mean the science it's inspired by is bad.

One thing that I couldn't find any research on is what are the effects of repeated fasting cycles (and that's how most of people do it now). Traditional fasting is something you do few times a year, and then you have a recovery period afterwards. Can't find that research now, but I remember reading a paper saying that it takes about 2 weeks of normal food intake to get back to the initial white blood cells counts. What happens if you don't let the body recover and instead create a new calorie deficit stress seems unclear?

[peteretep]

> Of course this is a naive, over-simplified interpretation of science findings, but it doesn't mean the science it's inspired by is bad.

I am complaining entirely and exclusively about the interpretation, I’m sure the science is fine.

[cowsandmilk]

If so, why not cite those?

[ivanhoe]

Because it's easy to google it, and I don't have that much free time... these links are on a first page of google results when you search it:

Effects on stem-cells: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4102383/

Reducing toxicity of chemo therapy: https://jeccr.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13046-019-...

clinical trials on humans: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01175837

[TheJurgen]

I will add a non comprehensive list of relevant papers at the end of the post for anyone who wants to look further into the research.

[im3w1l]

So... is it good to break down old immune cells?

[ivanhoe]

It's not about just randomly breaking the cells, it's a normal process called autophagy where damaged cells are being recycled to be replaced by new ones. This happens all the time, but it seems that fasting can increase it significantly. The leukocyte count only temporarily falls, and then gets back to normal. This is extremely beneficial to chemo therapy patients because chemo damages cells, suppressing the immune system as a side-effect and also makes people feel very sick. This can reduce these effects.

[peteretep]

I’d guess so, but I’d also guess your body is doing it all of the time