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A friend recently alerted me to this issue, which I think will transform our approach to health. This has been recognised by a recent Nobel Prize: https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2016/press.html Basically, in autophagy, the body's cells are switched to clean up the molecular rubbish that has accumulated in and around the cells. Certain types of stressor can do this, and intermittent fasting, such as low food intake one day per week is one such stressor. Based on animal studies, it can help improve many disease states (e.g. cardiovascular, cancer, neurodegenerative diseases etc). Clearly, it is difficult to get very precise and detailed information in human beings, but I expect that it will come over time; and none of the information from human beings contradicts the animal work. I have tried reading some of the original biomedical literature - it is an immensely complicated area to get your head around even for a biomedical scientist. However as things get worked out I expect that we will hear a lot more about this. Meanwhile, what are the practical implications? I suggest intermittent fasting (low/no food intake one day/week), intermittent exercise stress (brief bursts of high activity, interspersed with longer periods of lower level activity) plus the other intermittent stressors that have been in the news recently as being beneficial. Jim.