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Body on a 3-day fast: Real-time data with Basis
- __warlord__ 6y agoI wonder how the TSH levels were a week before the 3 day fasting, I'm curious if that -2.37 delta is from only fasting or your TSH varies that much too often.
- TheJurgen 6y agoGood question. I tend to be on the higher side but after doing a 5-day water fast, several 3-day ones and IF year round I’ve seen that fasting more than 1 day has a significant impact on my* hormones.
- ncrmro 6y agoGood or bad effect on hormones?
- stevematzal 6y agoWhat is the impact of fasting on hormones?
- wlll 6y agoCan anyone explain the significance of these numbers, and their changes?
- zenyc 6y agoIt would be interesting to see the same breakdown analysis with different diets.
- TheJurgen 6y agoWhat type of diet would be of most interest?
- zenyc 6y agoOne that stresses the body and is not a fast
- TheJurgen 6y agoHow about the American diet. A week on pizzas, burgers, sodas and donuts with real time data?
- krageon 6y agoThere are a few fad diets that keep coming back, for example: * Paleo * Keto * Something with (only) liquids
- me_me_me 6y agoKeto is a fad diet that was developed for legitimate reasons. It helps in some cases of epilepsy. Its just a tidbit I wanted to throw in, as not all diets are equal, but some diets are more equal than others.
- qnd 6y agoHey zenyc, we did 2 cycles of Fasting Mimicking Diet (FMD) and tracked our markers during the 5 day fast: [1] blood glucose (trending down) [2] body fat percentage (trending down) [3] ketone levels (trending up) Here the writeup: https://www.artlapinsch.com/fmd/ https://www.artlapinsch.com/fmd/
- peteretep 6y ago> At the 3-day mark, I've hit a key milestone in cellular regeneration. My body has broken down old immune cells and generated new ones (Cheng et al., 2014). ... if you were a mouse. Here's the article being referenced: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24905167/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24905167/
- ivanhoe 6y agoThere's now a number of studies on effects of fasting on chemo therapy patients, and they all make the same claim of regeneration through autophagy for some types of leukocytes.
- peteretep 6y agoCould you explain how this is used to support statements like: > I've hit a key milestone in cellular regeneration What's key about it? In what way is it a milestone? What's the expected health impact in human patients?
- ivanhoe 6y agoWell, if he was a mouse you still would have those same questions in the air until you do the proper blood tests, right? Of course this is a naive, over-simplified interpretation of science findings, but it doesn't mean the science it's inspired by is bad. One thing that I couldn't find any research on is what are the effects of repeated fasting cycles (and that's how most of people do it now). Traditional fasting is something you do few times a year, and then you have a recovery period afterwards. Can't find that research now, but I remember reading a paper saying that it takes about 2 weeks of normal food intake to get back to the initial white blood cells counts. What happens if you don't let the body recover and instead create a new calorie deficit stress seems unclear?
- peteretep 6y ago> Of course this is a naive, over-simplified interpretation of science findings, but it doesn't mean the science it's inspired by is bad. I am complaining entirely and exclusively about the interpretation, I’m sure the science is fine.
- tmd83 6y agoWhat's the sensor being used? Doesn't show any detail on the site. I assume it only tracks glucose and the rest are done at lab?
- TheJurgen 6y agoThere’s a continuous glucose monitor, ketone measurement through urine, hydration tracking, sleep tracking and less relevant to this experiment heart rate analysis in Basis. The more complex blood work was done in a lab that’s correct.
- satellite2 6y agoI might have missed that from the article, but are you male or female? (I wonder wheter the hormonal response would be similar for both sex)
- TheJurgen 6y agoMale
- altvali 6y ago> it’s important to break your fast with a nutritious, balanced meal that will further enhance the all-around cell and tissue health-boosting exercise you just undertook Could you give some examples? What's safe to eat?
- TheJurgen 6y agoMy fast break meal is a piece of watermelon <10 mins break> spinach, avocado and macadamia nut salad with EVOO <10 mins break> one egg omelette. Watermelon is very easy for stomach to digest even though it has a fair amount of fructose and would otherwise not be considered optimal for first meal. The breaks are to see how stomach is reacting to food introduction. Rest of the options are made as options that activate sirtuins (restorative cellular signaling) while system is sensitive to new inputs.
- grishka 6y agoI love how there are exactly zero technical details on the website about how this Basis thing works and what it is. It's chock-full of marketing copy and unnecessary animations instead. But from the early access form I can gather that it's going to have a monthly subscription (of course, it's 2021 after all) and probably need proprietary consumables.
- TheJurgen 6y agoWhat would you like to know?
- grishka 6y agoWhat the device is and how it works.
- TheJurgen 6y agoBasis as a system works with multiple passive, continuous inputs. The goal is to help you track your health without thinking about tracking your health - where many people fail. So to use Basis today (get the minimum benefit) you would need to use a glucose tracking biosensor (that we provide) and have an activity tracking wearable (e.g. Apple Watch, Oura ring, etc). It’s possible to use Basis with your own continuous glucose sensor (if you are diabetic let’s say) and already get those regularly. Depending on the peripherals/wearables you have you could also feed your water intake and temperature in the data as well.
- pella 6y ago> you would need to use a glucose tracking biosensor (that we provide) It is an "Abbott's Libre Sense Glucose Sport Biosensor"[1] or a different sensor ? [1] https://www.libresense.abbott/en/home.html https://www.libresense.abbott/en/home.html
- Pandabob 6y agoOff-topic, but I wonder if/when realtime glucose monitoring will ever come to the Apple Watch and other activity trackers.
- airstrike 6y agoWasn't Google developing contact lenses to monitor glucose a decade ago?
- Pandabob 6y agoI'd forgotten about that. Apparently they stopped development on it in 2018 [0]. [0]: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46262520 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46262520
- lytefm 6y agoSome non-invasive solutions for CGM devices are quite good already. I'd expect that the technology will be included in many higher-end health tracking devices within this decade.
- simplemen 6y agoIs this Basis same as Basis watch?
- je42 6y agoI wonder what this "biosensor" is. There are several Glucose monitoring products out there however connecting them and retrieving data (for other purpose) is usually a non trivial task.
- lytefm 6y agoI'm also wondering about that. Abbott isn't known for making the raw CGM data easily available. Neither is Oura. It might be possible via Google fit/ Apple health or via nightscout for the CGM devices, but the latter would imply some legal trouble. Maybe OP can clarify some details of how the integration works in this product.
- je42 6y agoYeah. However, if you have a libre2 you need a patched app and then nightscouts xdrip etc to get the data of the cgm into a db. Or you need bubble or miaomiao and again xdrip ;) Adding a description of the setup that the author used would make the article much more substantial than it is now.
- TheJurgen 6y agoI used the system I built with my team for real time health data tracking that includes data from a continuous glucose sensor, Apple Health data (sleep, activity, heart rate, etc), urinalysis feature within Basis for the majority of this. The only data that wasn’t acquired via Basis was the blood panel.
- FriedrichN 6y agoI don't believe in these over-engineered 'quanitified self' solutions. Just get yourself a simple step counter and go for one or two walks a day and try to up the step count by a bit every time and don't eat like an asshole. It's worked for me for a long while now.
- hsuduebc2 6y agoThis is kinda unexpected comment on hackernews. :)
- dorchadas 6y ago> don't eat like an asshole Man, it feels like you're taking a shot at me. I've averaged my 10k steps a day for almost a year now (actually averaged close to 11k in 2020 on a whole,but didn't get consistent until mid-March), and, while I have lost weight, I just can't get my diet under control. It's quite frustrating, honestly, and stems form my lack of desire to meal prep.
- FriedrichN 6y agoYou don't have to meal prep per se, but I find having a plan helps. Buying and preparing food when you're hungry will make you eat more of the wrong stuff than if you had a plan. I also found that by basically tripling my intake of vegetables helps a lot with feeling satiated. No one ever got fat because they ate too much broccoli, lettuce, and spinach.
- mycall 6y ago> No one ever got fat because they ate too much broccoli, lettuce, and spinach. Challenge accepted.
- jermaustin1 6y agoA personal story about fasting: About 8 years ago, I had a particularly stubborn stomach bug, that just would not go away. After a week I went back to the doctor, and he was reluctant to put me on anti-biotics incase it was viral, and also he was generally anti-anti-biotics if your immune system could do it on its own. So he had me do a 3 day fast. Only water, and once a day a small bottle of Gatorade. Day 1 was easy, day 2 was hard, day 3 was actually easy again. On day 4, I was told to reintroduce food slowly and to eat as close to unprocessed foods as possible, so I had a bowl of watermelon for breakfast, a cup of oatmeal for lunch, then for dinner... McDonalds. The outcome was the bug did die, but I no idea if it was from the fasting or just that it had been 10 days. But the fasting wasn't that hard, and I felt better afterward.
- bfieidhbrjr 6y agoThe gatorade sounds horrendous, to dump a ton of sugar on you when fasting. It was probably for the electrolytes, a pinch of salt would have worked without all the junk in gatorade. And then you rarely need it on just a three day fast, only if you're dizzy. And if you're dizzy it means you've drunk too much water. Glad you're better though! Reddit fasting sub is ok to learn more, though they have some hangups like dry fasting.
- IgorPartola 6y agoA small bottle of Gatorade is 140 calories, I believe. Not nothing but also not too much to work through. Also you don’t have to chug it all in one gulp.
- jermaustin1 6y agoI was just following the doctor's orders. I assume he wanted me to have caloric intake along with salt, but I'm not a doctor, I didn't question him, I don't know anything about fasting, and don't even know if it was necessary. I've done a couple of 2 day fasts since then, just to see if I can still do it without much trouble, it gets harder as I get older.
- 6y ago
- hsuduebc2 6y agoIs it possible to measure cholesterol and blood fat levels via wearables? That would be killing feature.
- hsuduebc2 6y agoI'm not biochemist but: 1) If you are not eating for some extended period of time, your body starts to have deficit of not only glucose but also proteins which are then accquired from your own muscles. E.g you are not losing only weight but muscles too. 2) There are various types of immune system cells and they all have different lifespan. If your body detects new pathogen it start's to produce various new immune system cells to fight infection. For example: B-lymphocytes serves as "memory cells" for specific pathogens so it is required for them to live as long as they can. What exactly are "old immune cells" then? Thanks for answers :) Your idea of continuous health monitoring is exactly what I'm searching for, like for years.
- hrjet 6y agoFor the first problem, you need to ensure that you exercise the muscles along with fasting, to nudge the body away from salvaging proteins from muscle tissue. (Not a bio chemist either, this is what I have read in most articles about intermittent fasting)
- lytefm 6y agoJust wondering - how has your experience with obtaining and aggregating relevant data like sleep duration and quality, heart rate, physical activity,... been and which sensors are you using? I was considering Empathica e4 + Freestyle Libre for a similar research project seeking to quantify influences on BG levels.
- number6 6y agoSo I fasted 3 days about 3 weeks ago (after Christmas) ok my spouse thought I was insane but I overate so much that I had the need to swing the pendulum in the other direction - after this 3 days I ate a Pizza - no cramps; nothing; just operated as usual. So I am not so sure about the whole story...
- vicaya 6y agoFasted for 3 days and muscle mass increased by 2.4kg. Yeah, right.
- TheJurgen 6y agoThat’s a percentage increase as a byproduct of losing overall weight.