09/24/18: Fasting

GOAL AND BACKGROUND:
I look to investigate the various causes and treatments associated with the auto-immune and neurological problems I suffer from. My goal through this blog is to synthesize my ideas and things I have learned through researching inflammation.

I first became interested in the ketogenic diet and fasting mid-2018 through the introduction of Dr. Dom D'Agostino's work. Through further investigation, I saw that people, albeit anecdotally, have successfully been treating chronic inflammatory and autoimmune disease through diet and fasting. There were some peer-reviewed articles that showed great improvements, but none of it seemed practical nor necessarily convincing to me. I thought: "Surely if it works so wonderfully in treating rheumatoid arthritis (RA) then more people would be doing it".

09/24/18: 
(Longo and Mattson, 2013)
Although I read bits and pieces about the keto diet and fasting, today was the first day in which I began to thoroughly delve into the literature. I started off with a review by Longo and Mattson's (2013) review of the clinical applications of fasting was an interesting read. It definitely helped me get an understanding of the mechanisms involved and shaped my background knowledge slightly. It did a nice job detailing the applications where fasting was used to treat a variety of neurodegenerative, metabolic, and inflammatory diseases.

Rebuttals and questions:

• Why specifically does fasting induce cancer-killing properties during chemo. I need to further read the studies and determine the cancer killing mechanisms each study is using. I think there is a fair consensus that fasting will kill cancer cells but there might be a different mechanism involved when fasting is used in conjunction with chemotherapy. If we were targeting proliferative cells, then I am not convinced that fasting will enhance the effects of chemo because that would imply specific drugs, (eg. methotrexate) would be less effective in killing non-proliferating cancerous cells. Perhaps fasting changes something in the immune system causing it to prioritize the most dangerous threats first, in this case, cancer. This may perhaps already be stated in the immunotherapy literature. 
• If this is the case, I propose that prioritization by the immune system is why we observe depression of autoimmune symptoms. Further readings and investigations are necessary before these claims can be substantiated. 
• Additionally, fasting may not interact with the chemo pathways at all. It may be that when working in conjunction, they simply act in a poly-therapeutic manner. Either way, my understanding of cancer therapy leads me to believe that the immune system would be the play eradicator. 

Glucose and eczema 
There is a series of papers previously published discussing the relationship between glucose and eczema. Almost all of the papers were published in the early 1900's. They may not be as relevant today but are worth taking a look at. I have some prior knowledge of the relationship between glucose and systemic inflammation. 

PERSONAL:
I need to manage my sleep better. I cannot allow myself to fall back asleep after turning off the alarm. Tomorrow morning I will wake up and walk to the bathroom right away with my toothbrush. The constant travelling from August 25th - Sept 15th left me sleep deprived and exhausted; I have been trying to recover since. It may be helpful to get back into ketosis the next few weeks since it dramatically helped with my sleep schedule. 

During ketosis I did not have any trouble going to bed, falling asleep, and getting up. It felt like my circadian rhythm was perfect. I did not need an alarm to wake up and was not feel groggy in the mornings. 

REFERENCES:
Longo, V.D. and Mattson, M.P., 2014. Fasting: molecular mechanisms and clinical applications. Cell metabolism, 19(2), pp.181-192.