Originally Posted by
Carbonfiberboy
Hilarious. I just did The Google, except I googled "fasting and longevity
studies". No human studies came up, just fruit flies and mice.
I followed all four study links for "Sources Cited" in the bluezones article. The only one which led to a human study was titled: "Exercise-induced BCL2-regulated autophagy is required for muscle glucose homeostasis" Nothing to do with fasting. Autophagy is a natural process which happens to everyone. It just means "cell turnover". Cell turnover means cells are removed and new cells created.
More about cell turnover here:
» How quickly do different cells in the body replace themselves?
So please post links to the human studies showing that fasting increases longevity, as published in peer-reviewed journals. Period.
Well you may ask!
To my knowledge the only data on diet, fasting etc. and human longevity come from observational studies on the so-called Mediterranean diet, but it's hard to separate diet from genetics and culture in that kind of work. I eat pretty Mediterranean and look, I'm still alive!
Intermittent fasting is almost certainly good for you and reduces markers of metabolic disease, but it's impossible to compare to other forms of calorie restriction in humans because the non-fasting group would have to be maintained "iso-caloric" and for that, you would need tight control of lots of peoples' diets over a matter of years. Ain't happening.
The autophagy thing comes up because mTOR pathway activation inhibits it and fasting turns off mTOR signaling. It's a purely theoretical benefit.