I have just completed my first 48-hour-fast and I do 16-36 hour fasts throughout the week. You can read about my experience fasting for 48 hours in… Read more “Fasting misunderstood – fact and benefits!”
Tag: Anti-inflammatory
In the News – Anti-inflammatory mechanism of dieting and fasting revealed | YaleNews
This is an older article but still relevant and great info for those interested in fasting as a healing modality.
If you don’t read the whole thing, the take away is this:
Researchers at Yale School of Medicine have found that a compound produced by the body when dieting or fasting can block a part of the immune system involved in several inflammatory disorders such as type 2 diabetes, atherosclerosis, and Alzheimer’s disease.
via Anti-inflammatory mechanism of dieting and fasting revealed | YaleNews
I am copying the whole article here, as links often get broken and I need this research for future reference.
“Anti-inflammatory mechanism of dieting and fasting revealed
Researchers at Yale School of Medicine have found that a compound produced by the body when dieting or fasting can block a part of the immune system involved in several inflammatory disorders such as type 2 diabetes, atherosclerosis, and Alzheimer’s disease.
In their study, published in the Feb. 16 online issue of Nature Medicine, the researchers described how the compound β-hydroxybutyrate (BHB) directly inhibits NLRP3, which is part of a complex set of proteins called the inflammasome. The inflammasome drives the inflammatory response in several disorders including autoimmune diseases, type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, atherosclerosis, and autoinflammatory disorders.
“These findings are important because endogenous metabolites like BHB that block the NLRP3 inflammasome could be relevant against many inflammatory diseases, including those where there are mutations in the NLRP3 genes,” said Vishwa Deep Dixit, professor in the Section of Comparative Medicine at Yale School of Medicine.
BHB is a metabolite produced by the body in response to fasting, high-intensity exercise, caloric restriction, or consumption of the low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet. Dixit said it is well known that fasting and calorie restriction reduces inflammation in the body, but it was unclear how immune cells adapt to reduced availability of glucose and if they can respond to metabolites produced from fat oxidation.
Working with mice and human immune cells, Dixit and colleagues focused on how macrophages — specialized immune cells that produce inflammation — respond when exposed to ketone bodies and whether that impacts the inflammasone complex.
The team introduced BHB to mouse models of inflammatory diseases caused by NLP3. They found that this reduced inflammation, and that inflammation was also reduced when the mice were given a ketogenic diet, which elevates the levels of BHB in the bloodstream.
“Our results suggest that the endogenous metabolites like BHB that are produced during low-carb dieting, fasting, or high-intensity exercise can lower the NLRP3 inflammasome,” said Dixit.
Other authors on the study include Yun-Hee Youm, Kim Y. Nguyen, Ryan W Grant, Emily L. Goldberg, Monica Bodogai, Dongin Kim, Dominic D’Agostino, Noah Planavsky, Christopher Lupfer, Thirumala D Kanneganti, Seokwon Kang, Tamas L. Horvath, Tarek M. Fahmy, Peter A. Crawford, Arya Biragyn, and Emad Alnemri.
The research was funded in part by National Institutes of Health grants AI105097, AGO43608, AG031797, and DK090556. ”
To your health,
Elena
In the news – One of the world’s largest banks has issued a dire warning about the future of food safety. ‘Devastating’ antibiotic resistance – Business Insider
It is pretty clear for so many reasons why you should not buy factory farmed meats. Vote with your dollar, ask your restaurant what type of… Read more “In the news – One of the world’s largest banks has issued a dire warning about the future of food safety. ‘Devastating’ antibiotic resistance – Business Insider”
UAB – News – In cardiac injury, the NSAID carprofen causes dysfunction of the immune system
Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medication, or NSAIDs, are widely used as a pain reliever, to reduce fevers and to lower inflammation. They are readily available in any household in over-the-counter form, such as aspirin or ibuprofen for example.
This is a great research piece and a very important one especially for the world of sports, where the use of NSAIDs is very prevalent. K (aka my husband Konstantin, Coach K) forwarded it to me this morning. I would like to make sure I have it for easy future reference, so I will paste the text here as well as provide the link to the actual paper. Links often get broken and I like to have the material accessible for me and for our readers.
The reason this research caught K’s attention is that he has suffered from chronic inflammation for years. It stems from sports injuries, overuse after years of training, and not sufficiently recovering. Of course, now we understand that an inflammatory diet full of processed foods, toxic oils, high levels of sugar, and bad quality fats, as well as the inability to effectively manage stress among other things, were some of the main epigenetic factors he was exposing his system to over the years. Hence his complete dependency on NSAIDs for years. He was only able to get off of them after fully embracing an anti-inflammatory diet, Bulletproof lifestyle, Deep Nutrition principles, stress management and finally developing his 108Strong Fitness system.
The latest scientific research shows that these painkillers can have negative side effects and increase the danger of heart attacks, strokes, and kidney or heart failure. In our household, these are treated as serious medications and we no longer keep them on a kitchen counter for a casual everyday-headache-or-any-other-pain-relief go-to option.
So here is the article, unedited:
“Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDs, are commonly used as inflammation blockers worldwide. However, recent clinical data show these painkillers can have serious side effects that create some risk of heart attacks, strokes, and kidney or heart failure.
Attention has focused on how NSAIDs may cause dysfunction of the immune system, including disrupting the normal immune response involved after heart injury. This normal response has two stages — the acute phase, where leukocytes from the spleen migrate to the heart’s left ventricle to clear out dead heart-muscle cells and form scar tissue, followed by a resolving phase to dampen the acute inflammation.
University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers, led by Ganesh Halade, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the UAB Department of Medicine’s Division of Cardiovascular Disease, have now studied such dysfunction associated with the NSAID carprofen. In a study published in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology, they found that sub-acute pretreatment with carprofen before experimental heart attack in mice impaired resolution of acute inflammation following cardiac injury.
They focused on three aspects of the inflammation resolution axis — cardiac function, leukocyte profiling and inflammation-resolution markers.
They found that, after heart attack, the carprofen-pretreated mice had a greatly intensified amount of the CD47 cell-surface marker in the left ventricle and the spleen. The CD47 marker is a “don’t eat me” signal, and the increased CD47 was found to be on neutrophil cells, which are involved in acute inflammation after heart injury. Thus, the amplified CD47 on neutrophils resisted clearance of the neutrophils and developed a non-resolving inflammation.
The UAB researchers also found that carprofen treatment before heart attacks pre-activated neutrophils in the spleen to make them more inflammatory, and it also activated pro-inflammatory macrophages. This helped trigger the swarming of activated neutrophils from the spleen to the left ventricle after the heart attack. At the same time, reparative leukocytes in the left ventricle were compromised.
Carprofen pre-treatment failed to limit expression of the enzymes cyclooxygenase-1 and cyclooxygenase-2, further dysregulating the production of resolving lipid mediators, which created a deficit in the resolution of inflammation in the injured heart.
Furthermore, the carprofen pretreatment led to an imbalance of inflammatory and reparative cytokines after cardiac injury, and this expanded the inflammatory phase in the injured heart.
Co-authors with Halade of the study, “Subacute treatment of carprofen facilitates splenocardiac resolution deficit in cardiac injury,” are Vasundhara Kain, Griffin M. Wright and Jeevan Kumar Jaddapalli, Division of Cardiovascular Disease, UAB Department of Medicine.
Support came from National Institutes of Health grants AT006704 and HL132989, a University of Alabama at Birmingham Pittman Scholar Award, and American Heart Association postdoctoral fellowship POST31000008.”
via UAB – News – In cardiac injury, the NSAID carprofen causes dysfunction of the immune system
To your health,
Elena
Do you still use products containing artificial sweeteners?!
If you are still using artificial sweeteners you are ruining your gut microbiome. It is important to have a healthy gut flora because it helps us digest… Read more “Do you still use products containing artificial sweeteners?!”