How extreme fasting and a 'magic pill' could add years to your life
Subjecting your body to extreme fasting might hold the key to avoiding illness that comes with old age, but a "magic pill" already used to treat disease could also unlock the door to a healthier, longer life.
Italian scientist Valter Longo has studied the effects of fasting and believes that by occasionally avoiding solid foods, our bodies will start to grow younger and encourage stem cell growth.
“If you take a bacteria and you starve it, the bacteria live longer, become stronger,” Dr Longo said.
It's an extreme prospect, so Dr Longo's treatment was explored by Sunday Night reporter Denham Hitchcock.
Hitchcock embarked on the controversial five-day diet in which he ate less than a third of the average human's recommended calorie intake. And the results were astonishing.
He endured some "sad" meals of nut bars, lemon teas and oil capsules, but the results spoke for themselves.
According to blood tests, Hitchcock's body showed dramatic growth and restoration in stem cells, which are crucial for replenishing and repairing decaying, damaged and diseased tissue.
These were the results Dr Longo stood by in his firm belief the diet could add not only add years to someone's life, but healthy years.
"But more so, to a percentage of people, this could make the difference between getting cancer and not getting cancer," he said.
In one of Dr Longo's studies of dieting and fasting, several mice were put on strict diets to mimic the fasting process.
Dr Longo found that the mice lived 11 to 18 per cent longer than mice on a normal diet.
Follow-up tests on volunteers suggested the extreme diet caused something extraordinary to happen within the human body: It killed off damaged cells that create diseases like cancer.
“The body gets rid of damaged cells simply to save energy,” he explained.
Remarkably Dr Longo found that when a patient began to eat again after the fast, new stem cells were created.
Dr Longo said that for many, a five-day fast once a year will make a huge difference to health and longevity.
But Dr Longo's prescription for healthy, organic lifestyles and dieting cannot compare to the possibility that a wonder drug could provide the same results.
And the magic pill is already available and has been shown to put the brakes on the ailments that come with ageing.
A pill aleady used to treat diabetes, Metformin, has shown astonishing side effects, including a decrease in likelihood of developing diseases like cardiovascular disease and cancer.
"Very simply, it repairs a lot of alterations we see in ageing," said Nir Barzilai, Director of the Institute of Aging.
Stem cells are the body’s building blocks and have the ability to become any cell in the human body.
Sticking to more conventional and available methods, Dr Longo argued that it is possible to rebuild a healthier body from the inside out by fasting, but recommended the process be completed under the guidance of a GP.
