Fasting and Brain Health

Recently Fasting and Brain Health have been in many news reports and healthy articles. In this post, the science behind fasting and how beneficial it is to brain health will be explored.

What is fasting?

Fasting is when you avoid eating food for an extended period of time to elevate the levels of compounds called ketones in your body.

When you're not fasting, glucose is the primary fuel used by your cells, including brain and nerve cells (neurons). When you fast, your liver's storage of glucose is emptied and fat cells release fats. These fats travel to the liver and are converted into ketones, which are essentially small pieces of fats that cells can use as energy. This is

known as a metabolic switch.

When fasting you switch from using glucose to using ketones as an energy source, which happens after 10-14 hours of not consuming food, depending on how active you are. Exercising will accelerate the start of this switch.

Going without food for even a day increases your brain's natural growth factors, which support the growth and survival of neurons, the cells throughout your brain and nerves, and boost brain function. Research has been shown that the brain and body perform better when fasting. Cognitive function, learning, memory, and alertness are all increased by fasting.

Fasting and Neurological Diseases

It has also shown that fasting not only boosts the energy levels in neurons but also helps the brain resist disease. In animals, fasting has shown to improve age-related cognitive decline, slow down degeneration, reduce brain damage and increase recovery after strokes, and has been shown positive results with multiple sclerosis and epilepsy. There is also evidence that it can prevent and treat metabolic syndrome, which is a major risk factor for any neurological diseases.

Switching between eating and fasting, also known as metabolic switching, is when cognition is best and degenerative diseases are kept at bay. Metabolic switching impacts multiple signal pathways that promote neuroplasticity and resistance of the brain to injury and disease.

Evidence in animals has been promising in these neurological disorders:

Neurodegeneration (Huntington's, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's):

Improves cognition, and stalls age-related cognitive decline. Usually slows down neurodegeneration.

Stroke:

Reduces brain damage and enhances functional recovery.

Epilepsy:

May lessen the severity and frequency of seizures.

Multiple Sclerosis:

Mitigates pathology and symptoms of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis.

What is neuroplasticity?

Neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to reorganize itself by creating new connections throughout our life. This allows neurons in the brain to compensate for injury and disease. It gives the neurons the opportunity to adjust their activities in response to new situations or changes in the environment.

Fasting Improves Cognitive Function in Mice

In lab animals it has been shown that fasting stimulates the production of a protein, brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF, that plays a critical role in learning, memory, and the generation of new neurons in

an area of the brain called the hippocampus.

The hippocampus is a complex brain structure located deep in the temporal lobe. It is apart of the limbic system and plays a major role in motivation, emotion, learning, and memory.
The protein BDNF also makes neurons more resistant to stress.
Fasting triggers a process where cells remove damaged molecules and dysfunctional mitochondria.
When you are fasting your neurons are conserving their resources and have a higher tolerance for stress.
When the animal eats after fasting neurons shift to a growth mode.
They create proteins, grow, and form new synapses, which are junctions between neurons. It's believed these cycles of fasting and eating in lab mice may improve neuroplasticity, learning, memory, and the resistance of the brain to stress.

According to Philip Horner, Ph.D., scientific director for the Center for Neurogeneration at Houston Methodist Research Institute states, “If you take two mice with an identical diet and one group does every-other-day fasting, their outcome from a head injury or spinal cord injury is much better.” Scientists believe that new nerve pathways and cells important for DNA repair have a better response to a stimulus when in a 12-18 hour fasted state. This 12-18 hour window has been observed in lab mice and observed by dietitians for human patients as well.

Conclusion

Fasting is a cost-free, easy, and effective option for your neurological health and growth. With the number of diseases growing due to the increase in life expectancy, fasting is a great option to incorporate into your lifestyle to not only improve your current quality of life but also your future. Fasting is a multi-targeted therapy with a positive

correlation to neurological health in animals and holds promise as a treatment for similar diseases in humans. Due to the lack of research, there is less evidence available in humans, making more human studies necessary.

If you are interested in the 4 major Stages of Fasting, check out the following post:

4 Stages of Fasting