Go longer by going without: the art of fasting

If there's one healthy practice that came out of organized religion, surprise! It's fasting.

Yep, today my psychobiology professor told the class that fasting twice a year was one of the most healthy things you could do for your body. In fact, he said, people who fast twice per year live significantly longer than those who don't.

Let's not confuse this with some kind of eating disorder or crazy 5-day juice only power diet. My professor doesn't want people to stop eating for more than a day two or three times a year.

Apparently, during fasting, the body's energy is diverted away from the digestive system (because there's nothing going on there, obviously) to regulating the metabolism and beefing up the immune system. Also, slower protein synthesis during fasting means higher efficiency, and therefor healthier cells, ergo healthier tissues and organs.

If you've ever had the flu, you know that any kind of food while your that sick is completely unappealing. That's because when your body is sick, it automatically kicks into fasting-mode to flush out your system and focus all your body's energy on knocking out the virus.

It makes sense, then, that periodic fasting over the years will increase your body's overall health and also your life expectancy. However, be careful about fasting; don't just randomly decide that you're going to stop eating for X amount of days. Personally, I think I'm going to start celebrating Yom Kippur with my Jewish friends - at least in the not eating for 25 hours sense.

Breast and Jerry's?

Hello everyone! This is the first blog post for Unwind! Magazine’s Health blog. I’m Sophie and I’m the Health section editor. I’m hoping that this blog will be entertaining and somewhat educational; I plan on writing about current health news, College Park health issues, or anything health-related I may happen upon that I find interesting.

One of these topics is the recent proposition Peta has made to Ben & Jerry’s to use human breast milk in place of cow’s milk in their ice cream. Peta’s reasoning, according to a recent article in the UK’s The Examiner is that cow’s milk has been linked to "juvenile diabetes, allergies, constipation, obesity, and prostate and ovarian cancer."

Really Peta? Doesn’t it seem like there might be a reason humans stop drinking their mother’s milk as toddlers? If adults consumed human breast milk on a regular basis they would get sick, because the nutrients in breast milk are meant for growing infants.

However, there are a few cancer patients in the U.S. who use breast milk as an immune-booster, according to BBC News. Cancer experts, of course, say that there is no evidence to say that breast milk helps fight off cancer, and that in fact drinking breast milk "might be risky for patients…because drugs and viruses can be transmitted through breast milk." Also, said patients do admit that breast milk has an unpleasant, "oily" after-taste.

In response to Peta, Dairy Council director said that "Dairy foods have been in the diet for thousands of years."

Clearly Peta’s warnings that cow’s milk puts our health in imminent danger should not be taken to heart. Besides, although we may feel comfortable eating weird Ben & Jerry’s flavors like Phish Food, I don’t know how comfortable we would be eating Rackberry or Coffee D-Cup Crunch. And on that note, good luck finding enough breast milk donations to keep the brothers in business.