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Fasting potentially healing affect for HPPD?


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               I have only done about 10 hours of research on this, which is not much. Ideally I would like a couple more weeks to wrap my head around something before I recommend it and I need time to see the long-term effects for me also. But I have a strong inclination to quickly get this information to the group, so perhaps this will help someone else suffering. Maybe this works, maybe it doesn't. I cannot recommend this as a cure, but I can only say this has helped me. However, I am not sure if it placebo. Anyways, I did an 18 hour fast and it helped with my HPPD.


             I will keep the anecdote short, because anecdotes never matter. What really matters is science and peer-review. I did this short-fast because I saw someone on here mention in a success story of curing HPPD on a 3 day fast. Someone commenting suggesting that it has to do with "neurogenesis". I did research on neurogenesis and it happens throughout our lives, such as during exercise or sex, so it doesn’t seem very significant. But, I stumbled upon a term called "autophagy"
ah-ta-fa-gee. Researching this process gave me motivation to try a 18 hour fast. My HPPD since then has gotten better. On a scale of 1-10 my symptoms have been at a 5 since Saturday, when they usually average about 7 or 8. I am theorizing my symptoms decreased because fasting induces autophagy.


            Here is Autophagy from an article . "Short-term fasting induces profound neuronal autophagy"
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3106288/ Autophagy is a key homeostatic mechanism whose physiological importance is reflected by its preservation throughout the eukaryotic phylogenetic tree, from yeast to mammals. In recent years, autophagy has been recognized as a crucial defense mechanism against malignancy, infection and neurodegenerative diseases


                    Here is another definition. "Autophagy: cellular and molecular mechanisms" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2990190/ Autophagy is a self-degradative process that is important for balancing sources of energy at critical times in development and in response to nutrient stress. Autophagy also plays a housekeeping role in removing misfolded or aggregated proteins, clearing damaged organelles, such as mitochondria, endoplasmic reticulum and peroxisomes, as well as eliminating intracellular pathogens. Thus, autophagy is generally thought of as a survival mechanism. Autophagy is strongly induced by starvation and is a key component of the adaptive response of cells and organisms to nutrient deprivation that promotes survival until nutrients become available again.


               Stay with me here. But it pretty much takes out damaged cells from our brains and recycles them in the liver. This process is activated via fasting.
"Neuronal autophagy: going the distance to the axon." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18000396/ Furthermore, our study implicates dysfunction of axonal autophagy as a potential mechanism underlying axonopathy, which is linked to neurodegeneration associated with numerous human neurological disorders
Let me know what you think, I am always prepared to be entirely wrong. There is no research on a link between autophagy and HPPD obviously. So I am assuming a causal relationship that bad neurons are the cause of HPPD.


Here are more articles. I am hoping someone can partner and help me with this.
"Disruption of Neuronal Autophagy by Infected Microglia Results in Neurodegeneration" http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0002906
"Constitutive autophagy: vital role in clearance of unfavorable proteins in neurons." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17332773/

 


I found 2 posts of anecdotal claims.
2013 bluelight.com post about fasting curing hppd. http://www.bluelight.org/vb/archive/index.php/t-688613.html
2017 Reddit.com hppd forum success story about fasting curing hppd https://www.reddit.com/r/HPPD/comments/6ybbcs/success_story/

 

 

                    You can do an easy 18-hour fast by not eating after dinner at 5pm, and then not eating until noon the next day. Make sure you are healthy and talk to your doctor. I would like a couple people to try this to see if this actually works. I am going to start another fast today and I will report back in a week or so. Hopefully it works.

                Potential adverse effects for women. there are claims that fasting can cause missed periods.  Also, unfortunately it seems autophagy is less profound with females. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19036730/ In other words, the damaged neurons have a harder time dying off. For men, fasting will temporary lower testosterone. Do your own research and talk to your doctor.

 

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I've experimented with fasting quite a bit as well as keto which has the same effects. Fasting too long and eating keto can be dangerous for some people with additional health conditions so you really have to study up and make sure you're doing it properly. (For example, don't eat tons of protein just because your going keto and don't crash your blood sugar by eating candy and ice cream once you break your fast.) That said, I've noticed a definite improvement in my symptoms when doing these. You just feel lighter, like your brain is finally running on the type of fuel it needs. The problem is you have to do these for long periods of time to really feel the benefits and it's tough, especially going keto. As long as you eat healthy whole foods, limit your carb intake and do intermittent fasts for 12-18 hours per day I think you'll see mostly the same benefits as going all out with keto or multi-day fasts. Again, the key is doing a little every day rather than a lot a few days a week. To heal HPPD takes a completely lifestyle change, not a magic bullet. 

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I’ve been doing keto for about a year and a half now and 12-18 hour fasting on and off for roughly the same time. I find both to be extremely helpful in overall health and wellness. I’m more stable and have better energy levels when I’m practicing both these things.

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