I was wondering what you guys thought of intermittent fasting. I've been reading a little lately about mTOR and AMPK. mTOR seems to be an indicator of protein synthesis, as there are a couple of different pathways can be done to build muscle, but they all go through mTOR (kind of like a major intersection of roads). So if mTOR is being expressed, you know you're building muscle. Studies have shown mTOR to climb starting at 30-120 minutes post workout (after your shake), and peaks at about 5 hours, then slowly declines over the next few days, back to baseline.

AMPK seems to be a sensor of nutrient supply and cell energy. Its levels are crushed by eating (so its sort of the opposite of mTOR). The longer since last meal, the higher AMPK is. If you deplete your liver glycogen (~16 hours), AMPK will be 2.5x higher than baseline. There's two types of AMPK alpha 1 and 2. The 1 seems to be from not eating, and 2 is from exercise. AMPK elevation has a variety of benefitial effects.

I copied this from suppversity.blogspot.com

High AMPK levels results in

* ...broken DNA strands to be fixed, before their (re-)use results in cancerous growth (Habib. 2010),
* ...cancer and defect cells to initiate apoptosis, i.e. to kill themselves (Chen. 2011)
* ...life extension via reduction of dietary glucose to work (Schulz. 2007)
* ...fat to be used as a substrate (Hardy. 2002),
* ...inhibiting adipogenesis = fat cell differntiation (Lee. 2011)
* ...mitochondrial biogenesis to be initiated (Zong. 2002),
* ...muscular GLUT4 activity and thus glucose uptake to be restored/increased (Holmes. 1999),
* ...gluconeogensis in the liver to be suppressed (Rutter. 2003),
* ...much much more healthy stuff ;-)

AMPK promoters:

* Adiponectin (Yamauchi. 2002; Handy. 2010; Iwabu. 2010)
* Alpha lipoic acid (Lee. 2005; Wang. 2010; Packer. 2011)
* Artemisia sacrorum Ledeb (Yuan. 2010)
* Aspirin (Sung. 2011)
* Astragalus (Zhou. 2009)
* Berberine (Ma. 2011)
* Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (Matthews. 2009)
* Caffeine (Jensen. 2007; Spirydopulos. 2008; Egava. 2009)
* Capsaicin (Kim. 2010)
* Catechins / green tea (Huang. 2009; Murase. 2009; Reiter. 2010)
* Chromium (Wang. 2009)
* Ciliary neurotrophic factor (CNTF) (Watt. 2006)
* Cinnamon (Huang. 2011)
* Conjugated Linolic Acid (CLA) (HSU. 2011)
* Coptidis Rhizoma (CR), the dried rhizomes of Asian herbs (Egawa. 2011)
* Cordiceps sinensis (Wong. 2010)
* Creatine (Ceddia. 2004)
* Curcumin (Kim. 2010)
* DHA (Jing. 2011)
* Ecklonia Cava (Kim. 2010)
* Garlic (Lee. 2011)
* Ginseng (Juang. 2010)
* Glucosamine (Kong. 2009)
* Grape seed extract (Meeprom. 2011)
* Hibiscus sabdariffa extract (Yang. 2010)
* Interleukin-6 (Kelly. 2009)
* Kidney bean extract (Lee. 2009)
* Malva verticallata seeds (Jeong. 2011)
* Metformin (Zhou. 2001; Freyer. 2002; Ohira. 2009)
* Mulberry extract (Tsuduki. 2009)
* Nicotine (Cheng. 2007)
* Prostaglandin E2 (Zhu. 2011)
* Pu-erh tea (Way. 2009)
* Quercitin (Jung. 2010)
* Raishi Mushroom (Lane. 2011)
* Resveratrol (Fullerton. 2010; Lin. 2010; Breen. 2008)
* Tiozolidinediones (diabetes meds. like rosiglitazone) (Freyer. 2002; LeBrasseur. 2005; Yang. 2011)
* Vanadium (Hwang. 2011)

mTOR seems to be the opposite. It causes cells to grow and differentiate. It grows cancer cells (because it grows all cells).

This all tells intermittent fasting is the best. There's evidence that shows fasted cardio/lifting is not beneficial, so my theory is to eat 2 hours before workout, lift/cardio, then protein shake, then go home and eat. Then binge eat for the next 5-8 hours (mTOR peaks at 5 hours). Which is about bed time for me, then fast until about noon the next day where I start it all again.

Thoughts?