I copied this from my email, because I wanted to share. This is from a mailing that I am on, from P.D. Mangan, which I signed up for on the website called: Rogue Health and Fitness.
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Just how important is insulin sensitivity to health and long life?
Very important, as I continue to emphasize. Let’s take a look.
FGF21 is commonly known as the “starvation hormone”. It increases during prolonged fasting in animals and humans.
When scientists added an extra gene for FGF21 to mice, they lived much longer than normal mice.
That’s all they did, just extra FGF21 produced.
FHF21 did not affect food intake, NAD+ metabolism, AMPK, or mTOR, all of which are the usual suspects in lifespan extension.
It did increase insulin sensitivity, however.
And that was enough to extend their lifespan, by a lot, an average of 36%.
Until we humans have FGF21 injections available, we’ll have to do something else to increase insulin sensitivity. (And since FGF21 is a peptide hormone, it would have to be injected, as it would not survive digestion.)
Several things increase insulin sensitivity:
• Intermittent fasting
• Exercise
• Low-carb eating
• Fat loss
• Muscle gain
Having good insulin sensitivity means that levels of the hormone insulin are low.
Since insulin is a growth-promoting hormone, this shows the fundamental dichotomy between growth and longevity. (The copywriting experts tell me I’m not supposed to use big words. Oh well.)
And since insulin is produced in response to food, you can see the huge relation between food intake and lifespan. Less food is the most robust life-extension intervention known to science.
Even if you didn’t particularly feel the need to live a long time, insulin sensitivity is vitally important for your health.
(So, if you care about your health, you’re going to live a long time, like it or not. And if you don’t pay heed to insulin sensitivity, you’re going to have chronic disease during your life.)
Personally, I do intermittent fasting as often as I can – which is a few times a week. Others do it daily.
I rarely eat carbs or sugar.
I try to maintain low body fat and high muscle mass, to the extent that I’m able. (I don’t do extreme dieting though, which is what’s required to get body fat below 10%, i.e. shredded.)
Having more muscle is highly correlated to long life, and that is connected to insulin sensitivity.
And of course I exercise regularly, doing resistance training twice a week for 30 minutes at a time. (And go for walks on my off-days.)
It’s true, you can maintain sterling insulin sensitivity on less than one hour a week of (intense) exercise.
And you can build muscle and get lean in that amount of time too.
But you must know how.
(I removed the link to the webpage this goes to, as it is a sales link)
Peace and health.
Zhang, Yuan, et al. "The starvation hormone, fibroblast growth factor-21, extends lifespan in mice." elife 1 (2012): e00065.
