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Fasting as he is genuinely worried about the likely effects of the current obesity epidemic on our brainsand our society. He also thinks if that if you are considering Intermittent Fasting you should get going sooner rather than later: ‘The age-related cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s disease, the events that are occurring in the brain at the level of the nerve cells and the molecules in the nerve cells, those changes are occurring very early, probably decades before the subject starts to have learning and memory problems. That’s why it’s critical to start dietary regimes early on, when people are young or middle-aged, so that they can slow down the development of these processes in the brain and live to be 90 with their brain functioning perfectly well.’
    Like Mark, I’m convinced the human brain benefits from short periods abstaining from food. This is an exciting and fast-emerging area of research that many will watch with great interest. Beyond the brain, though, Intermittent Fasting also has measurable, beneficial effects on other areas of the body – on your heart, on your blood profile, on your risk of cancer. And that’s where we’ll turn now.

Fasting and the heart
     
    One of the main reasons I decided to try fasting was that tests had suggested I was heading for serious problems with my cardiovascular system. Nothing has happened yet, but the warning signs were flashing amber. Thetests showed that my blood levels of LDL (low-density lipoprotein, the ‘bad’ cholesterol) were disturbingly high, as were the levels of my fasting glucose.
    To measure ‘fasting glucose’ you have to fast overnight, then give a sample of blood. The normal, desirable range is 3.9-5.8mmol/l. Mine was 7.3mmol/l. Not yet diabetic, but dangerously high. There are many reasons why you should do all you can to avoid becoming a diabetic, not least the fact that it dramatically increases your risk of having a heart attack or stroke.
    Fasting glucose is an important thing to measure because it is an indicator that all may not be well with your insulin levels.
Insulin – the fat-making hormone
     
    When we eat food, particularly food rich in carbohydrates, our blood glucose levels rise and the pancreas, an organ below the ribs and near the left kidney, starts to churn out insulin. Glucose is the main fuel that our cells use for energy, but the body does not like having high levels of it circulating in the blood. The job of insulin, a hormone, is to regulate blood glucose levels, ensuring that they are neither too high nor too low. It normally does this with great precision. The problem comes when the pancreas gets overloaded.
    Insulin is a sugar controller; it aids the extraction ofglucose from blood and then stores it in places like your liver or muscles in a stable form called glycogen, to be used when and if it is needed. What is less commonly known is that insulin is also a fat controller. It inhibits something called lipolysis, the release of stored body fat. At the same time, it forces fat cells to take up and store fat from your blood. Insulin makes you fat. High levels lead to increased fat storage, low levels to fat depletion.
    The trouble with constantly eating lots of sugary, carbohydrate-rich foods and drinks, as we increasingly do, is that this requires the release of more and more insulin to deal with the glucose surge. Up to a point, your pancreas will cope by simply pumping out ever-larger quantities of insulin. This leads to greater fat deposition and also increases the risk of cancer. Naturally enough, this can’t go on forever. If you continue to produce ever-larger quantities of insulin, your cells will eventually rebel and become resistant to its effects. It’s rather like shouting at your children; you can keep escalating things, but after a certain point they will simply stop listening.
    Eventually the cells stop responding to insulin; your blood glucose levels now stay permanently high and you will find