What if I told you that most of the ailments of the human body could be solved by simply not eating. Sounds crazy, right? What if the neuroscientist, who according to Thomson Reuters’ database, is the most cited source in scholarly journals worldwide told you that fasting was good for you?
According to Mark Mattson from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, “One of the only ways to slow down the progression of aging that involves disease or organ malfunctions is to reduce energy intake. As is similar to what happens when muscles are exercised, the neurons in the brain benefit from being mildly stressed. To achieve the right kind of stress, people might benefit from severely minimizing their food intake.”
Mattson has spent years testing the theory of the effects of fasting on the body and says, “What we’ve discovered in both animal and human studies is that it’s good to submit your brain to challenges, especially in the short term.” He explains, “Fasting imposes more stress on the cells, but in a good way. There’s an increase in adaptive stress responses when people intermittently fast that is good for maintaining the brain.”
Read: Scientifically-Proven Health Benefits Of Fasting
In the Following TedX video from Mattson, he raises the question:
“Why is it that the normal diet is three meals a day plus snacks? It isn’t that it’s the healthiest eating pattern, now that’s my opinion but I think there is a lot of evidence to support that. There are a lot of pressures to have that eating pattern, there’s a lot of money involved. The food industry — are they going to make money from skipping breakfast like I did today? No, they’re going to lose money. If people fast, the food industry loses money. What about the pharmaceutical industries? What if people do some intermittent fasting, exercise periodically and are very healthy, is the pharmaceutical industry going to make any money on healthy people?”
Check out Mattson’s TedX talk, and think about this: the pharmaceutical industry makes money from patients, not wellness. Is it any surprise to anyone that they don’t fund research into things like fasting?
