Stay Hungry my friend
Feast or Fast?
In 1916, enemies of Rasputin has developed enough cyanide in his wine to kill five men. He had been drinking it without ill effects. In 1934 Mary Crowell and Clive McCay of Cornell University sometimes forgotten feed their laboratory mice. These mice lived twice as long as the well fed ones. Today, I eat normally once per day.
What all these things have in common? I'll try to explain. I have just to understand where to start. I think I'll start with my eating only once a day.
Long before that I started on the paleo diet and lifestyle caveman, I usually just ate when I was hungry. Most of the time who was formerly or sometimes twice a day. In fact, what I liked about this mode of life was that it made sense for me on a gut level (no pun). Sleep when you're tired, eat when you are hungry and when something chasing you. It seemed a natural.
A few days ago one of my friends said that he was going to do some intermittent fasting. He was not going to eat their first meal until noon. MIDI? Intermittent fasting? With this, What's up?
I decided to test this idea of "intermittent fasting" it led me to 1916 and Grigori Rasputin AKA Russian "Mad Monk". Enemies of Rasputin tried to poison by putting cyanide in his wine, which didn't work. Then, they fired at him 4 times, stabbed, beaten, he tied up and thrown under the ice in the River. That worked.
The important question here is, why does the poison kill? It turns out that Rasputin suspects that one day someone would try to poison, so he ate a little cyanide all days in advance. Finally its system had built an immunity to cyanide. (Unfortunately, it had not found a way to free shot, stabbed, beaten and drowned.)
This leads to 1934 and the people that I forgot to eat mice and found that "restricted calorie" mice live longer than well fed mice. (I don't know that they forgot to eat mice, but this is what I would say my boss too.) In any event, the concept of "caloric restriction" took off the coast and before long scientific were calorie limiting everything flies to monkeys. Some of them were in fact calories even restrict fungi. The results are interesting. As long as you keep the this side of hunger, everything seemed to be healthier and live longer (although probably a little crankier).
Then someone came with the idea of intermittent fasting. Perhaps we could take advantage of hunger almost without being miserable all the time? Turns out that we probably can. After all, this is how lived caves. Personally, I think that everything boils down to Hormesis.
"Hormesis" comes from the Greek word "hormain" which means to excite. Hormesis is the response that a body has a low level of stress. You've heard the expression "if it does kill you that it makes you stronger"? Hormesis is. If it is taking a little cyanide every day, lifting weights or intermittent fasting, Hormesis process makes you stronger. We all need a certain level of stress to survive.
How does actually work? Who knows? And is it really matter? Our bodies are designed for survival. Our muscles should be underlined to grow. Our immune system needs to be exposed to germs to remain strong. Our body needs to be exposed to famine to stay tuned. It's just how we did. If you want to stay healthy and live a long life? I'll give you 2.5 million years of advice:
True to eat... and... stay hungry my friend
Category Article friend, Hungry
