Ways to prevent cancer, diabetes, heart attack when you get older, please watch this and decide if you want to do it?
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Horizon: Eat, Fast and Live Longer
Traveling to America to lose weight may strike some as highly ironic, but health guinea pig Michael Mosley thought it a capital idea when embarking on his latest quest.
Mosley began this programme by stating he was about to lay out a ‘genuinely revolutionary’ approach to dieting which could not only shed pounds but also extend our brief existence.
Any time anyone states this with the same conviction as Mosley, the sceptical half of one’s brain should begin to purr – switch over your TV to any shopping channel and see the assorted tat masquerading as ‘genuinely revolutionary’ ideas and you’ll catch my drift.
However, as Mosley was not trying to sell me a swivel mounted giraffe tongue for cleaning the toilet, I decided to give him a chance.
Putting his body on the line for TV is nothing new; he most recently shoved a camera into his intestines warning of the dangers hiding past our colons.
This time the 55-year-old travelled across the most obese nation on earth and met scientists looking to combat flab and ill-health by various forms of fasting – he would of course try the approach himself.
The scientists’ techniques and research revolved around the notion fasting could reduce a person’s weight.
Not quite the revolution I had hoped for, but again I beat down my sceptical self and kept watching.
Mosley visited three scientists spread across the US, and each one offered up various evidence of how dieting and fasting affects the body.
Most interesting was the explanation of the IGF-1 hormone produced by the liver. If people eat vast amounts of protein, IGF-1 begins to develop lots of new cells leading to an increased chance of a person contracting several forms of cancer and a number of other nasty diseases.
Research has shown that when the amount of protein eaten is lowered, the liver stops producing vast quantities of IGF-1 and the body begins to repair.
Mosley was tested and informed viewers with appropriate brevity he was overweight, had 27 per cent body fat, high levels of IGF-1, as well as high cholesterol and blood sugar levels.
According to scientists this dire situation could be remedied by fasting which causes the body to feast on fat reserves and stops IGF-1 from being produced. Backed up with a low calorie diet, Mosley would be back on the path to a healthy future.
More remarkably scientists testing fasting on mice genetically engineered to develop Alzheimer’s showed in controlled experiments how their brains actually held off the disease for longer. The mice even began to develop new brain cells. This for me was the highlight of the whole programme.
After subjecting himself to various forms of fasting Mosley settled on a five week plan in which he would spend two days a week fasting (consuming less than 600 calories) and five days eating normally.
At the conclusion, Mosley had lost almost a stone, reduced his body fat, cholesterol, and blood sugar level. He also halved the amount of IGF-1 in his system. For him incorporating fasting and dieting into our lives could neutralize the ‘obesity bombshell’ exploding across western society.
It could also in the future be used to ward off the advance of Alzheimer’s and dementia.
However, despite the interesting science, the ultimate message was ‘eat healthy food, lower your calorie intake, exercise and weave in an occasional fast day. Do this and you will become thin and healthy’.
I’m not a scientist but I already knew all of this. Most people do. It’s not a secret nor, I’m afraid, a revolution.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Horizon: Eat, Fast and Live Longer
Traveling to America to lose weight may strike some as highly ironic, but health guinea pig Michael Mosley thought it a capital idea when embarking on his latest quest.
Mosley began this programme by stating he was about to lay out a ‘genuinely revolutionary’ approach to dieting which could not only shed pounds but also extend our brief existence.
Any time anyone states this with the same conviction as Mosley, the sceptical half of one’s brain should begin to purr – switch over your TV to any shopping channel and see the assorted tat masquerading as ‘genuinely revolutionary’ ideas and you’ll catch my drift.
However, as Mosley was not trying to sell me a swivel mounted giraffe tongue for cleaning the toilet, I decided to give him a chance.
Putting his body on the line for TV is nothing new; he most recently shoved a camera into his intestines warning of the dangers hiding past our colons.
This time the 55-year-old travelled across the most obese nation on earth and met scientists looking to combat flab and ill-health by various forms of fasting – he would of course try the approach himself.
The scientists’ techniques and research revolved around the notion fasting could reduce a person’s weight.
Not quite the revolution I had hoped for, but again I beat down my sceptical self and kept watching.
Mosley visited three scientists spread across the US, and each one offered up various evidence of how dieting and fasting affects the body.
Most interesting was the explanation of the IGF-1 hormone produced by the liver. If people eat vast amounts of protein, IGF-1 begins to develop lots of new cells leading to an increased chance of a person contracting several forms of cancer and a number of other nasty diseases.
Research has shown that when the amount of protein eaten is lowered, the liver stops producing vast quantities of IGF-1 and the body begins to repair.
Mosley was tested and informed viewers with appropriate brevity he was overweight, had 27 per cent body fat, high levels of IGF-1, as well as high cholesterol and blood sugar levels.
According to scientists this dire situation could be remedied by fasting which causes the body to feast on fat reserves and stops IGF-1 from being produced. Backed up with a low calorie diet, Mosley would be back on the path to a healthy future.
More remarkably scientists testing fasting on mice genetically engineered to develop Alzheimer’s showed in controlled experiments how their brains actually held off the disease for longer. The mice even began to develop new brain cells. This for me was the highlight of the whole programme.
After subjecting himself to various forms of fasting Mosley settled on a five week plan in which he would spend two days a week fasting (consuming less than 600 calories) and five days eating normally.
At the conclusion, Mosley had lost almost a stone, reduced his body fat, cholesterol, and blood sugar level. He also halved the amount of IGF-1 in his system. For him incorporating fasting and dieting into our lives could neutralize the ‘obesity bombshell’ exploding across western society.
It could also in the future be used to ward off the advance of Alzheimer’s and dementia.
However, despite the interesting science, the ultimate message was ‘eat healthy food, lower your calorie intake, exercise and weave in an occasional fast day. Do this and you will become thin and healthy’.
I’m not a scientist but I already knew all of this. Most people do. It’s not a secret nor, I’m afraid, a revolution.
