My lay person assumption is it's more complicated than that, just knowing how the body is always conserving resources and adapting to changing conditions. I'd

My lay person assumption is it's more complicated than that, just knowing how the body is always conserving resources and adapting to changing conditions. I'd expect the body's natural mechanisms responsible for this to wind down operations the more you intervened on its behalf. It's obviously the right choice in the elderly/ill, but for a healthy young person maybe it's better to exercise/strengthen the body's natural abilities in these departments. I think one of the arguments for intermittent fasting is to clean up the detritus being kept around for energy sake, via natural mechanisms...