What happens to cancer cells when you fast for 24 hours?

What happens to cancer cells when you don't eat for a whole day? Well, going a whole 24 hours without eating can actually trigger something remarkable inside your body. So today I'm going over what happens to cancer cells when you fast. But before you picture yourself being hangry or miserable without food, please know that this isn't about starving yourself. A 24-hour fast isn't meant to be done every day, and I'm definitely not saying that you have to fast to beat cancer. But thanks to research, we know that our bodies have a built-in system to kill cancer cells, and it's enhanced when we don't eat. Your body's always doing this amazing thing where it's getting rid of damaged cells or pre-cancerous cells before they can turn into cancer. It's called autophagy, and although your body does this on its own, there are ways to enhance autophagy, and fasting is one of the most powerful ways to do so, but it's not the only way. I have another video where I go over how to activate autophagy without fasting, so I'll link that below for you to watch next. Now within just 12 hours of not eating, your insulin levels drop, your blood sugar stabilizes, and your body stops relying on glucose for energy, and it starts burning fat instead. And that shift from using glucose to fat is bad news for cancer cells. But after 12 hours of fasting, your body's only starting to speed up autophagy. The real magic starts at around the 17 to 19 hour mark. That's when autophagy really takes off, and after 24 hours without food, your cells are in full-blown repair mode. Healthy cells thrive, but cancer cells struggle. Fasting creates a stress that cancer cells can't handle. If you've had cancer treatment, or you're going through treatment right now, there's a fascinating researcher you should know, Dr. Walter Longo from USC. He's the real deal when it comes to fasting and cancer research. He's proven that fasting puts your healthy cells in a protection mode when you're having treatments like chemotherapy, but for cancer cells, fasting makes them more vulnerable to chemo drugs. It's something called differential stress resistance. So his studies have not only shown that fasting can make chemo more effective for some patients, but it also helps them have less side effects and an easier recovery. But since fasting isn't safe for everyone, he also created a diet called the fasting mimicking diet, which helps to give you similar benefits of fasting without actually fasting. I'll get into this more in a minute, but basically it's a plant-based low calorie diet, and his clinical studies done on patients undergoing chemo showed that this diet led to better treatment outcomes. So if the idea of going 24 hours without food makes you nervous, you still do have other options, which I'll also be going over in this video. But before we get into these options, I think you'll be happy to learn how fasting affects your immune system. Your immune system is your body's main defense against cancer. So as a cancer survivor, you always want to be doing things to keep your immune system strong through things like your diet, exercise, and getting enough sleep to help prevent cancer recurrence. Now listen to this. A study from MIT found that even short-term fasting gives your immune system a boost by regenerating T-cells. These act like little bouncers in your body. They're the ones that decide which abnormal looking cells need to be kicked out before they can become dangerous. So not only does fasting enhance autophagy, it also strengthens your immune system. Double bad news for cancer cells. But if you're still thinking, there's no way I can go 24 hours without food, there are other options. I'm going to give you three different fasting strategies and you can pick one based on what feels doable and suitable for your lifestyle. Option number one is the daily reset. It's doing intermittent fasting every day with a fasting window of 16 hours. This is my personal favorite and honestly most people find that it does get easier and easier the longer you stick with it. Fasting for 16 hours a day and having an eight-hour eating window, for example, you might eat between 11 a.m and 7 p.m. This gives your body a much-needed break from digesting food and doing it every day helps to keep your insulin levels low. Lower insulin equals lower cancer risk. Now if you've never done intermittent fasting before, it's always good to start slow. Try 12 hours to start and then increase to 13, 14 until you get to 16 and if you can go even longer than 16 as you get used to it, even better. But it doesn't have to be perfect and don't worry if you can't manage it some days. And if you want expert level fasting tips, check out Dr. Mindy Pels right here on YouTube. She's the real MVP when it comes to fasting, especially for women. She goes over how fasting can also help to regulate our hormone levels. Okay, so daily intermittent fasting was option number one. Option number two is doing a weekly reset. It's doing a 19-hour fast once a week for a deeper cellular cleanup. What I find easiest is to stop eating after dinner one night, so say 7 p.m. and then don't eat again until 2 p.m. the next day. Do it once a week, that's it. It gives your body enough time to really tap into a deeper level of autophagy, which again typically starts ramping up around the 17-hour mark. At that point, you're ramping up fat burning, your inflammation levels drop and your cells go through a mild stress response called hormesis, making them more resistant to damage that can lead to cancer. Basically, it challenges your healthy cells just enough to make them stronger, but for cancer cells, they lose their fuel so they get weaker and some don't survive. Now with all this being said, if you're currently on cancer treatment or you suffer from any other sort of medical condition, please don't try to do a long fast without medical supervision. Okay, so the third option I have for you actually doesn't even involve any fasting, but it's what we talked about earlier, Dr. Longo's Fasting Mimicking Diet. This is a five-day, low-calorie, low-protein, high-fat diet that tricks your body into thinking you're fasting, even though you're still eating small meals. There are different versions of this diet now, but most versions avoid all animal protein and processed foods. Following this diet gives you many of the same benefits of fasting, but in a more controlled and safer way. And if you're wondering how you can actually get the same benefits of fasting if you're still eating, and how effective is it compared to fasting, great questions. So your body doesn't know if you've eaten based on you chewing food or tasting it. It responds to nutrient signals, especially from things like glucose, amino acids, or insulin and IGF-1. And the Fasting Mimicking Diet is designed to keep those signals extremely low, even though you're eating some food. When you reduce calories, especially from carbs and protein, your body kind of goes into survival mode. Your body thinks, okay we're low on resources here, so let's shift into survival mode. And this triggers a lot of the same metabolic pathways that water fasting does. Autophagy, reduced inflammation, and lower insulin, but not to the same extent as when you're not eating at all. Apparently the Fasting Mimicking Diet gives you 80 to 90 percent of the same fasting benefits, with less stress on your body, so that's why people prefer it and find it more sustainable. And there have been human trials done, which showed that people on the Fasting Mimicking Diet, only three to five days per month, had lower blood pressure, body fat, glucose levels, IGF-1, and inflammation markers. However, it's not perfect, so I want you to be aware of a few things about this diet. For one, it requires very careful meal planning and very strict macronutrient control to get the benefits. There are pre-packaged meal kits you can buy, but they can be very expensive. Secondly, doing the Fasting Mimicking Diet just once could help a little, but the real benefits come from doing it consistently, like once a month. And thirdly, if you're doing this diet for five days straight, as you can imagine, it's easy to overcompensate afterwards. I know people that finished the diet and then started binging on unhealthy foods afterwards, and that can just undo everything you gained metabolically from doing the diet, so it's very important to ease out of it with whole, non-processed foods. Okay, so we've talked about the benefits of doing daily intermittent fasting, doing a 19-hour fast once a week, and using the Fasting Mimicking Diet, but what happens to your cells when you fast for longer than 24 hours, say 48 to 72 hours? During a two- to three-day fast, basically you get all the same benefits as doing a 24-hour fast, plus an added bonus of something called stem cell regeneration, particularly in your immune system. One study from USC showed that a three-day water fast can regenerate white blood cells, and these are like the superstar cells of your immune system, so that's huge for anyone recovering from chemo or trying to rebuild their immune strength. Now obviously these longer fasts aren't for everyone, but they can be incredibly powerful when they're done occasionally. So what should you do if you're looking for a safe but effective strategy for cancer prevention? Start by trying intermittent fasting and aim to work your way up to 16-hour fasts a day. This will help to keep inflammation and insulin levels low and autophagy humming along, and once you're ready for a deeper reset, add in a 19- to 24-hour fast once a week to amplify autophagy and fat burning. And if neither of those options sound appealing, have a look into the fasting mimicking diet, or check out my video on how to enhance autophagy without fasting. Also, do your friends a favor and share this video with them, because everyone can benefit from learning about autophagy. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you next week.