Even the man behind this stinky wellness trend thinks it’s a bad idea
Humans: We are an interesting species of creatures with all kinds of strange habits and fears.
But what we don’t seem to be afraid of are the many strange and even off-putting “miracle remedies” that claim to reduce our body weight or improve our health.
Sardines are the last in a long series to contain arsenic. rubber underweartapeworms and industrial chemicals used in explosivesIt was first discovered in French munitions factories that workers exposed to the substance lost weight (and often died).
Marija Ercegovac
Once wartime rations and “poor people’s food,” sardines have made a comeback as a last resort for everything that ails us and a superfood to make your body hum (sorry, I had to).
Sardine paste, sardine facials, “Botox in a Bowl” sardine salads, sardines on toast, sardines in pasta, and now sardine fasting. there is There is even a shortage of sardines on supermarket shelves.
According to various claims, sardines and sardine fasting can brighten your skin, reset your metabolism, lower blood sugar, accelerate weight loss and speed up the body’s repair process. But is it all true?
What is the sardine fast and where did it start?
It started after one episode The Tim Ferriss Show podcast late last year. Ferriss was chatting with Dominic D’agastino, a keto diet advocate and associate professor in the Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Physiology at the University of South Florida.
They were talking generally about the virtues of fasting, and D’agastino shared that he preferred what he called the “sardine fast.”
D’agastino collaborated with his sports scientist friend Dr. He told a story about Fred Hatfield breaking the world record by squatting 460 kilograms in 1987.
Hatfield had advanced metastatic prostate cancer and was trying different approaches to slow the cancer’s progression.
One of the approaches he adopted was: Five-day fast that mimics the diet It was developed by Italian biologist Professor Valter Longo.
The basic idea, according to Longo, is that when a cut occurs, our body works to repair it, and short-term fasting acts like a cut, activating an internal self-repair process.
Preclinical studies have suggested that fasting may aid cellular repair and a process called autophagy, which clears out damaged or unused cells so the body can regenerate itself and function more efficiently. one plays key role demonstrated potential in disease prevention and as adjunctive therapy for humans cancerous and other diseases.
Longo’s version involved five days of calorie restriction, allowing the body to enter a fasting state while still providing the body with the nutrients it needs through plant-based whole foods.
But Fred was a low-carb, keto type of guy who loved his nutrient-dense sardines and their high protein content, Omega 3s, selenium, calcium and B12 content.
And so, as D’Agastino tells it, Fred’s take on the fasting-mimicking diet involved nothing more than a few cans of sardines a day for five days, repeated once a month.
“That’s why we called it the sardine fast,” he told Ferris. “And what actually happened was he went into a rapid recovery and the doctors didn’t really know what it was. [why]. Fred passed away perhaps eight years later from something completely unrelated to his cancer.”
What do the experts say?
Sardines and sardine fasting went viral after the D’agastino-Ferriss podcast. The claims were wild and often false, including the claim that sardines were the highest source of creatine.
As all the longevity bros, bio-hackers, and influencer-doctor types jumped on the bandwagon, I wondered what the real experts thought.
“The ‘sardine fast’ story is actually anecdotal,” says Professor Luigi Fontana, director of the Healthy Longevity Research and Clinical Program at the University of Sydney. “It is impossible to infer causality from a single history of recovery, especially in oncology where spontaneous variability and concurrent treatments exist.”
He adds that claims about fasting are inadequate in general, and even less so when it comes to its use as an aid in cancer treatment.
Silvia Fain, a nutritional biologist at the Valter Longo Foundation, agrees: “We still do not have conclusive evidence showing significant effects on cancer recurrence or survival in large populations. Much more rigorous clinical studies are needed before strong clinical claims can be made.”
As for the sardine side of the story, sardines are a good food as part of a broad diet (choose BPA-free canned and unsalted versions(since salting can increase heavy metals). But that doesn’t make them a superfood or give it magical healing powers.
Whatever their nutritional value, public health nutritionist Dr. Rosemary Stanton would never recommend anyone, especially people with cancer, to over-index or monopolize any one food.
“Cancer cachexia is characterized by a dangerous loss of weight, largely muscle tissue,” he says. “Following any type of starvation diet can be dangerous.”
If that’s not enough to convince you, Valter Longo says that while there’s good evidence that a plant-based fasting approach can help treat diabetes and prediabetes, it’s too early to tell if and when it might work in cancer.
He also adds that the logic behind the sardine fast doesn’t make much sense. In fact, it may have the opposite of the desired effect.
“Sardine fasting is a bad idea because sardines are high in protein, and proteins are a major inhibitor of the fasting response,” says Longo. “Actually Igf-1, tor etc. [pathways that are often overexpressed in cancer] It is activated by proteins and autophagy is inhibited by proteins.
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Sarah Berry is a lifestyle and health writer for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect with: X or email.
