Dr. James Johnson wrote the book, The Alternate Day Diet. His website (link below) calls it the Up Day Down Day Diet.
His
regimen is different from mine. He alternates calendar days, eating as
much as you want one day, and 20% to 50% of your maintenance calories
the next. I'll post my experience with his method later, but for now I
want to focus on his results with treating asthma patients. The
following is from his website (http://www.johnsonupdaydowndaydiet.com/html/diet-science.html#the-asthma-study):
The Asthma Study
Dr.
Johnson conducted the first study that examined the ability of
alternate-day calorie restriction to treat symptoms of disease in
humans. He selected asthma because it is associated with obesity and
inflammation, and its symptoms are very easy to observe and monitor.
Twenty overweight people with asthma were chosen to participate in the
study. Every other day, they were allowed to eat as they normally would,
and on alternate days they were instructed to consume no more than 20
percent of their normal caloric intake. Only one person was not able to
comply with the diet. At the end of the eight-week study, the
participants had lost, on average, about 8 percent of their initial body
weight. They all experienced a drastic improvement in their asthma
symptoms as well as increased energy. In addition, their nitrotyrosine
levels, a measure of oxidative stress and an indicator of heart disease,
decreased by 90 percent, and their levels of TN-alpha, a marker of
inflammation, were reduced by two-thirds.
By
demonstrating the anti-inflammatory effect of alternate-day calorie
restriction on asthma sufferers, Dr. Johnson believes that this diet has
the potential to have profound effects on other diseases associated
with inflammation and aging, including heart disease, diabetes, and
Alzheimer's.
The asthma study also showed that many of
the health benefits of alternate-day dieting take effect in a very short
period of time. Although the study lasted eight weeks, most of the
improvement took place in the first two to three weeks of the study. Dr.
Johnson believes that the SIRT1 gene is the reason why the diet is so
effective, and SIRT1 levels are increased very quickly after the gene is
activated.
In his book, The Alternate Day Diet,
Dr. Johnson devotes chapter 4 to this study, and gives the actual
measurable, clinical results. It's amazing, really. Who would have
thought you could achieve a near complete remission in symptoms, with no
medication? But that is essentially what happened, simply by
restricting the patients' food intake every other day.
Even for
those of us without asthma, the inflammation reducing effects of
alternate day fasting can have profound effects. In my own case, it's
rheumatoid arthritis I struggle with, and in my next post I'll talk
about the effects of IF so far in my effort to beat this disease.
Bon repos,
Tom
http://eatingandfasting.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/intermittent-fasting-is-natural.html
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