72 hours of going without food can trigger the creation of new white blood cells, essentially regenerating the body’s immune system.

72 hours of going without food can trigger the creation of new white blood cells, essentially regenerating the body’s immune system.

According to researchers at the University of Southern California, when the body doesn’t have enough energy to run itself, it starts to look for other sources.

Glucose and fat are the typical places it’s found, but the body will start to consume anything it doesn’t feel it needs.

Among the things it considers excess are damaged immune cells, so it will use those as well.

Once eating resumes, it’s as if a switch has been flipped in the stem cells, and they begin to make new and healthy replacements.

Fasting also prompted the body to decrease its levels of IGF-1, a growth-factor hormone that’s been linked to cancer, tumor growth, and aging.

Among the many areas where this study could benefit people is in countering the damaging effects of chemotherapy, which causes a great deal of damage to the immune system.

It’s also believed that the information gleaned will be of great importance in future studies on aging and autoimmunity disorders.

The researchers do admit that the results came as quite a surprise.