Wednesday, January 02, 2013

The Fast Diet - Mosley & Spencer

At last the paperback on Intermittent Fasting from the estimable Dr Michael Mosley and science journalist Mimi Spencer.

This is basically the book of the famed Horizon programme, with extra background both on the thoroughly positive bodily effects of intermittent fasting and on how best to do it. It's an easy read - including recipes for those 5-600 calory fast days - and you would indeed be foolish to ignore the messages here.

I was particular struck by the experience of "Nora", diagnosed with breast cancer and embarking on chemotherapy (which aims to kill rapidly-growing cells).

During fasting, normal cells (in particular those of the gut) go into repair mode and don't divide; cancer cells, however, just carry on replicating. Result: fasting during chemotherapy, as Nora did, remarkably alleviates the awful side effects, in particular the debilitating sickness.
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Oh, by the way, I have deactivated my Facebook account. I never post there and its performance and usability is rubbish.