Fasting - to lower white blood cell count - CLL Support Association

Curious if anyone has tried fasting. This study seems to point to fasting as a way to lower white blood cell count. " Human clinical trials were conducted using patients who were receiving chemotherapy. For long periods of time, patients did not eat, which significantly lowered their white blood cell counts. In mice, fasting cycles “flipped a regenerative switch, changing the signalling pathways for hematopoietic stem cells, which are responsible for the generation of blood and immune systems.”

This means that fasting kills off old and damaged immune cells, and when the body rebounds it uses stem cells to create brand new, completely healthy cells.

“We could not predict that prolonged fasting would have such a remarkable effect in promoting stem cell-based regeneration of the heatopoietic system. . . . When you starve, the system tries to save energy, and one of the things it can do to save energy is to recycle a lot of the immune cells that are not needed, especially those that may be damaged. What we started noticing in both our human work and animal work is that the white blood cell count goes down with prolonged fasting. Then when you re-feed, the blood cells come back. ” – Valter

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12 Replies

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Splash24

in reply to AAli

2 years ago

I have fasted on and off for the last 1 1/2, it has made a difference, without question, I read studies back as far as the 1950's/60's Dr.s in those days had very good success with implementing fasts....having said that I understand completely why it has not gone "mainstream" in spite of some success, its not for the faint of heart! I believe that USC is in the process of raising money for another study. The point of the initial study was that the fasting left cancer cells much more vulnerable, thus rendering the chemo more effective. I can tell you that the impact that it has had in my case has been significant, on both my WBC and the Abs Lymph numbers. I think that I would actually research the science/studies before labelling as "crank research", Dr. Longo at USC is into some ground breaking research, needs to be commended, any possible advantage in cancer has to be studied.

SheAlLi

in reply to Splash24

a year ago

Splash24, the same thing happened to me. I am going through chemotherapy do or die was the reason because my autoimmune disease had stated liquifying my inner organs starting with my lung and life expectancy was 3 months to max a year (very much in question at that stage) so I was put on a high dosage of steroids and cyclophosphamide. After 3/4 of a year my white blood cells were badly down. So I did research and came full circle back to fasting Longo and Dr. Dawn Lemanne. I started Intermittent fasting and got up from 2.2 to 2.9 over about 4 months without any change in meds.

It worked and I felt a million times better. Being born in Germany , I knew about fasting for healing purposes but now they even have hospital wards just dedicated to fasting to cure all kinds of illnesses especially autoimmune diseases. I wish it would come to Canada too.

sweetsue49

in reply to SBMACLL

3 years ago

Excellent source! I appreciate the referral to some scientific evidence - as opposed to conjecture. I found fasting to be pretty helpful years ago - but I really haven't done it for years - so I think based on this evidence - it actually might be worth a try. “We could not predict that prolonged fasting would have such a remarkable effect in promoting stem cell-based regeneration of the hematopoietic system,” said corresponding author Valter Longo, Edna M. Jones Professor of Gerontology and the Biological Sciences at the USC Davis School of Gerontology and director of the USC Longevity Institute. Longo has a joint appointment at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

“When you starve, the system tries to save energy, and one of the things it can do to save energy is to recycle a lot of the immune cells that are not needed, especially those that may be damaged,” Longo said. “What we started noticing in both our human work and animal work is that the white blood cell count goes down with prolonged fasting. Then when you re-feed, the blood cells come back. So we started thinking, well, where does it come from?”

kragb

6 months ago

Hi Sue, I am 49, believed to be close to stage 0, w & w, but they are still testing me for some tick borne ailments...and was looking to try the Longo fast for overall health improvement. I fasted in May in a similar style to Dr. Longo's method, and with my family doc on board, and he had a cbc with diff. drawn on day 6 after my 5 day near fast. My abs lymphs were sky high and neuts low as I read would happen, with a total wbc hovering around 10 total. A couple weeks later I had another cbc with my onc. and found my neuts had jumped higher than they had in months and abs lymphs were lower, barely above 5k and my wbc overall changed very little hanging around 9.75k for me. My platelets also jumped up slightly too which was nice to see. I felt very good following the fast and also lost 10 pounds or so and lost the cravings for bad foods I had prior to the fast. I have since purchased the L-nutra plan for a "proper" 5 day mimic fast and plan on doing it for 3 consecutive months in a row as recommended by the research. If you have not watched the netflix video on fasting, check it out.

AussieNeilAdministrator

in reply to kragb

Hi Krab and welcome to our community,

In the interest of perspective, an absolute lymphocyte count (ALC) of under 10 (given your WBC was around 10) is NOT sky high. CLL specialists only look at lymphocyte doubling time when absolute lymphs climb above 30 and we have members in watch and wait with ALCs of 200 to 300. The highest ALC I know of is in someone with CLL is about 1,400!

You mention your neutrophils being low initially, but if they were under say 1.5 (depends on the lab) then you are neutropenic and need to take additional precautions against infections. If they were above 1.5, then your ALC would be under 8.5, so you saw a drop to 5 which is really inconsequential - it's well within the normal fluctuations observed without any external influence. While it is good to hear you are recognising benefits from your fasting and are doing so with medical oversight, I don't consider that you have even moderate evidence that it is affecting your CLL. There is some research being done on fasting and cancer, but in mouse models and other animals. It may provide benefits, but I don't know of any specific double blind clinical trials in humans confirming this.

With CLL, we need to look at overall trends and these posts reference spreadsheets that can help you do this: healthunlocked.com/cllsuppo...

cllsupport.org.uk/cll-sll/s...

cllsociety.org/toolbox/keep...

This post summarises what many have found does help us live better with CLL:

healthunlocked.com/cllsuppo...

Neil