The Nobel Prize winners of 2016 are out–and notwithstanding singer/songwriter Bob Dylan’s mysterious silence on his win this year–it’s one of those things most of us take only a passing interest in as we go about our daily lives. It is, generally, a lot of highly technical science that tends to only interest others in the relevant fields of study.

But this year, for folks like me, one particular winner really stood out as scientifically confirming something I’ve been recommending to patients (and doing myself) for years: fasting.

Japanese cellular biologist, Yoshinori Ohsumi, has won the Nobel Prize for Physiology & Medicine this year for his discoveries relating to “autophagy.” According to a Nobel Prize press release:

“Ohsumi’s discoveries have led to a new paradigm in our understanding of how a cell processes its contents. His discoveries have opened new ways of understanding the fundamental importance of autophagy for a large number of physiological processes, such as adaptation to starvation and response to an infection.”

What is autophagy? It comes from the Ancient Greek word meaning “to eat oneself.” When it comes to cells, it’s not like the old idiom of a snake eating itself. Rather, in the absence of new sources of energy, the cells turn to built-up waste or old dead cellular components for a source of energy. The cells sometimes even turn to using pathogenic bacteria as a source of energy as well.

The process is highly beneficial for a person’s overall health. It stops the cell from aging too quickly as a result of built-up waste. It also stimulates the regeneration of cells and tissues and removes toxins from the system, which can help prevent a wide range of health concerns, including cancer.

And now, one of the newest Nobel Prize winners has made the cut by basically saying, “hey, you should fast.”

Of course, fasting has several other benefits as well.

• Fasting gives the liver a chance to clear built-up sugars and waste–a process that takes at least 16 hours without the introduction of new materials.
• Fasting promotes the production of ketone bodies, a source of energy (as opposed to sugar) that burns cleaner, promotes weight loss, promotes brain function and more.
• Fasting balances hormones, lowering the production of cortisol, raising the production of testosterone and evening out insulin production.
• Fasting promotes gut health, giving the inner intestinal walls a chance to heal from leaky gut, an affliction most of us suffer from and is at the root of almost all autoimmune diseases as well as the rapid buildup of toxicity in the body.

We recommend a four-day fast once every three months for all of these reasons. We also recommend a one-day liquid fast once a week. It may seem extreme, but it’s like hitting a massive biological reset button every week and the benefits are far-reaching and instantly noticeable. Another thing you’ll find this does for you is that it changes your relationship to food. We tend to have this innate sense that we NEED to eat a meal three times a day. This is simply not true, and part of the reason we are a culture of obesity, especially when you consider all the snacking we do in-between. You don’t NEED to be always full. You don’t NEED to be constantly eating.

Lastly, my practice has long been a proponent of intermittent fasting. This is simply the idea that for 16 hours a day, you don’t eat (that includes the time you are asleep at night). For eight hours a day, you eat as much as you want (of good foods, of course). If you do this, your liver clears itself of sugars and toxins on a daily basis and produces ketones for energy for the first half of your day. Combined with a high-fat, medium-protein, low-carb diet, intermittent fasting will promote major weight loss, higher energy and overall health.

Now, thanks to Yoshinori Ohsumi, we can add the cellular consumption of internal waste to the list. If only we can get science (and even the Nobel Prize Committee) on board with everything else, we’ll be caught up with the people in Biblical times who heuristically knew the benefits of fasting thousands of years ago!