Posted on 04/09/2025 9:11:51 PM PDT by ConservativeMind
New research may reshape our understanding of what happens to the immune system when we fast. The study on mice shows that the brain's hypothalamus controls how the immune system adapts during fasting, through a handful of highly specialized neurons responsible for making animals hungry.
The study shows the brain's perception of hunger or fullness, rather than actual eating or caloric restriction, is enough to drive changes in the body's immune cells.
The findings cast doubt on the current view that a lack of nutrients alone controls how the immune system responds to fasting, indicating the brain has a critical role, beyond the simple absence of food.
By artificially switching on specific brain neurons in mice—which typically signal low energy levels—scientists induced a synthetic sense of hunger. Remarkably, within hours, they saw a fast reorganization of immune cells in the blood, with a noticeable drop in inflammatory monocytes. These artificially hungry mice looked, from an immune perspective, just like mice that had fasted for real.
This discovery could have important implications for developing new therapies to treat a range of inflammatory diseases as well as for treating wasting syndromes seen in cancer, in which individuals lose weight despite eating normally.
It may also explain why obesity often accompanies inflammatory conditions and why malnourished individuals are more prone to infections and inflammation.
Professor Matt Hepworth added, "This work challenges the long-standing view that fasting's immunological impact is driven purely by nutrient levels. It highlights the nervous system's profound influence on how the immune system adapts during fasting."
Dr. Cavalcanti de Albuquerque said, "By showing how the brain exerts top-down control over immune cells, we can further explore when and how fasting might deliver health benefits. It also opens up potential ways to treat infectious, inflammatory, metabolic, and psychiatric conditions."
(Excerpt) Read more at medicalxpress.com ...
In our current world, we never have to feel hunger for long, and, guess what, we have a lot of inflammation maladies plaguing us.
Every drug I see advertised on TV seems to be for an inflammation-related illness.
When you hold off eating for most of the day, or days, your body can shift into a major housecleaning mode and autophagy really gets to work, cleaning up junk and damaged cells in the body. It can recycle things for new cells, and get rid of garbage it can’t.
But it cant do it to this high degree if you are continually eating through the day.
Thats because people snackerbate so much these days.
As hunter-gatherers, hunger was natural. There were times of plenty when hunting and gathering were good, and we ate all we could and stored it in the best way possible—as fat. Then in the winter when hunting and gathering were not so good, we would burn more fat than we took in, feeling hungry the whole time. Our modern perception is that it’s healthy to eat every time we feel hungry, when what it really means is that your body has just switched to burning fat.
I’m on a mission to eliminate hunger.
Starting with the man in the mirror.
I’m up at 2:30 in the morning because cheese grits were calling to me and wouldn’t be quiet.
You have to silence them. Can’t sleep with all that noise.
Never liked going into a fast, but have always been amazed at how great I feel afterwards.
90% of Americans will never realize hunger. 50% could probably fast for a couple weeks and finally get down to a reasonable weight.
lol...that’s my favorite breakfast in the cool months. I go to bran cereal in the hot months.
bkmk
They still don't get it.
I had 7 pancakes with butter and real maple syrup on friday followed by soda and chips then for dinner I had a salad followed by soda and chips and a yogurt and two peanut butter cookies.
I fast when I sleep 💤
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