The fountain of youth may be a myth, but you can turn to the next best option: the anti-aging impact of intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting triggers multiple changes in your body that slow down aging by keeping cells and DNA healthy.
Intermittent fasting is one of the easiest ways of building muscle, decreasing body fat and increasing your energy. And by triggering the cellular cleansing process of autophagy, intermittent fasting also improves your life span – and makes your skin look smoother and younger.
More specifically, fasting can help reduce wrinkles, one of the most dreaded side-effects of aging. This is because fasting activates DNA-repair genes in the body that help reduce inflammation in the body. Fasting also leads to the production of somatropin, which helps minimize wrinkles and fine lines.
A new scientific study has backed up some health claims about eating less. The clinical trial reveals that cutting back on food for just 5 days a month could help prevent or treat age-related illnesses like diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Intermittent Fasting Increases Collagen Production
Human growth hormone helps to build up and even repair collagen. Fasting is one of the most effective ways to raise growth hormone. It can increase it by up to 2000% in men and 1300% in women.
Fortunately, autophagy has a direct effect on skin aging, and inducing the process can help tighten your skin and reduce the amount of loose skin on your body. It supports the processes that keep your skin more elastic and able to tighten up faster.
When you fast, it improves the health of the gut so that the systemic inflammation of the skin reduces. The lowered inflammatory state in the gut makes the skin look younger, healthier, and clearer. In addition, fasting increases the body's metabolic activity, which also leads to a healthy body and skin.
The theory behind skin fasting Your skin produces an oily substance called sebum that helps prevent moisture loss. The idea behind “fasting” is to let the skin “breathe.” It's thought that cutting out products will let the skin neutralize and sebum naturally moisturize.
Intermittent fasting gets rid of facial fat and increases insulin sensitivity. Intermittent fasting helps shed unwanted pounds all over the body, including smaller cheeks and neck. Facial fat may be the first indicator that a person is developing insulin resistance or is pre-diabetic and at risk for diabetes.
Williams stresses that before you try intermittent fasting (or any diet), you should check in with your primary care practitioner first. Some people should steer clear of trying intermittent fasting: Children and teens under age 18. Women who are pregnant or breastfeeding.
The clogged cells that produce collagen and elastin are cleaned so they can function correctly. Periodic water fasting for up to 3 days is recommended to combat sagging skin. Intermittent fasting, good nutrition, supplements, and exercise – along with skin massage and lotions – can also help.
Intermittent fasting is fantastic for weight loss and may prevent aging skin for other reasons. Intermittent fasting makes your skin healthy and lends it a glow, because it lowers down your blood sugar levels, improves your insulin sensitivity. Your skin health is also connected to your mental health.
A key sign of autophagy is reduced appetite. It's likely due to changed levels of hormones like glucagon and insulin. Specifically, levels of glucagon tend to increase during autophagy. Glucagon helps manage your blood sugar levels and has been shown to suppress appetite ( 6 , 10 , 11 ).
Fasting may cause temporary hair loss in women due to calorie and nutrition changes but promotes hair growth in the long term. Hair loss can cause concern or even severe distress for some women. Daily hair shedding is normal, but you may notice increased hair loss when beginning intermittent fasting.
“Think of autophagy as a Roomba inside your cells, cleaning and clearing damaged parts,” says Whittel. “When autophagy functions optimally, it works to clear away the cellular junk that can lead to fat and wrinkles.”
As mentioned earlier, fasting can have a positive effect on tightening loose skin. That's because fasting is one of the best ways to help induce autophagy throughout your body.
How long do you have to fast for autophagy to occur? Studies involving animals suggest that autophagy may begin between 24 to 48 hours of fasting. Not enough research has been collected on the ideal timing to trigger human autophagy.
What turns off autophagy? Eating. Glucose, insulin (or decreased glucagon) and proteins all turn off this self-cleaning process. And it doesn't take much.
Numerous studies have provided evidence that autophagy is activated in skeletal muscle in response to exercise. The exercise-induced regulation of autophagy includes both increased autophagy flux as well as transcriptional activation of important autophagy genes potentially resulting in enhanced autophagy capacity.
Autophagy can help remove cellular waste and keep genes stable within a cell. It may also help get rid of aging cells and decrease inflammation in the body.
Studies have shown that autophagy is believed to begin after 24 hours of fasting, and autophagy fasting evidence has shown it can peak around 48 hours of fasting. Every human is different, and this can vary from person to person.
For some people, this can start to happen within as little 12-16 hours of fasting. But for maximum autophagy levels, the sweet spot appears to be somewhere between 24 and 48 hours of fasting (8, 9).
“Fasting is [the] most effective way to trigger autophagy,” explains Petre. “Ketosis, a diet high in fat and low in carbs brings the same benefits of fasting without fasting, like a shortcut to induce the same beneficial metabolic changes,” she adds.
If you don't eat for 10–16 hours, your body will go to its fat stores for energy, and fatty acids called ketones will be released into the bloodstream. This has been shown to protect memory and learning functionality, says Mattson, as well as slow disease processes in the brain.
Tissues and organs are repaired more rapidly during a fast than while eating nourishing food. As the body undergoes a complete internal renovation, new structures are built and the redistribution of nutritive material is also seen during a fast.