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The Observable Unknown
Mailbag Episode 8 - The Fasting Instinct: The Ancient Science of Stillness
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Welcome back to the observable unknown. Tonight's question comes from Priya, a writing from Seattle, Washington, who asks your interlude on the gut brain axis fascinated me. Do you think ancient spiritual fasting practices were an early intuitive way of modulating the microbiome? This is a question that touches the oldest hunger in us, not for food, but for meaning. So thank you Priya, for submitting it. In 2014, neuroscientist Mark Matson, then at the National Institute on Aging in Maryland demonstrated demonstrated that fasting triggers molecular cascades that protect neurons from oxidative stress. His team showed that intermittent fasting increases levels of brain derived neurotrophic factor, a protein that strengthens synaptic plasticity. In other words, hunger rewires the brain for clarity. A year later, immunologist Valter Longo at the University of Southern California found that cycles of fasting stimulated stem cell based regeneration of the immune system. Deprivation paradoxically becomes renewal. And then there's the microbiome, that vast unseen cosmos inside the gut. In 2017, Sophie Cerdo and Jose Manuel Moreno at the University of Granada in Spain demonstrated that fasting changes the abundance and diversity of bacterial populations in the intestine, reducing inflammatory markers that are also linked to mood disorders. Fasting is not merely a ritual against appetite is a molecular conversation with life itself. But Priya's question moves deeper. She's asking not only what fasting does, but how humanity could have known. Well across the arc of civilization. We find fasting at the borders of revelation. In the Upanishads, hunger is the hinge between the mortal and the eternal. In the desert fathers of early Christianity, abstinence is a form of purification, not punishment, but perception. Among the Lakota, the Hanblachaya bhi, or vision quest, often undertaken without food or water, opens the participant to voices in the wind. These traditions arose independently. Yet all discovered that emptiness can amplify consciousness. Long before microbiology, our ancestors observed that when the body grows quiet, the mind grows vast. To still the stomach was to still the self. Modern neurochemistry confirms what these traditions enacted. Fasting alters the balance of neurotransmitters. Levels of serotonin and dopamine rise modestly as ketone bodies replace glucose in energy metabolism. Meanwhile, the vagus nerve, the bi directional bridge between gut and brain, slows its firing, creating a physiological state akin to meditative calm. In 2021, Megan Rossi at King's College, London identified how short term fasting increases concentrations of butyrate producing bacteria, which in turn enhance the release of gamma aminobutyric acid, the brain's primary inhibitory neurotransmitt. That is the language of peace written in chemistry. We call it stillness. The cells call it homeostasis. If we consider the microbiome as an ecological organ, a rainforest within, then fasting becomes a form of ecosystem pruning. It gives microbial communities a moment to rebalance, to restore symbiosis between species that digest, signal and protect. In a 2019 review published in Nature Reviews Endocrinology, John Creon and Ted Dinan of University College Cork described the gut brain axis as a bidirectional interface of emotion. Their research into psychobiotics revealed that specific bacteria can regulate mood through the production of neuroactive compounds. What ancient monks learned through intuition, science now measures through metagenomics. The ecology of the gut shapes the ecology of thought Fasting is never only biological it is temporal. Every cycle of eating and abstaining is a metronome, resetting the circadian rhythm, resynchronizing metabolism with light, and even altering patterns of neural oscillation. Satchitananda Panda at the Salk Institute showed in 2012 that time restricted feeding, even without caloric reduction, restores circadian gene expression and improves memory performance in mice. Rhythm, not reduction, is what heals. Ritual fasting aligns us not only with faith but with physics. We step back into the cosmic pulse. So perhaps the answer to Priya's question is yes. Fasting was an early technology of the soul and embodied experiment in metabolic spirituality. Ancient seekers did not know about short chain fatty acids or ketone metabolism, but they knew that transcendence requires tuning and that emptiness, rightly held, becomes a resonant chamber for insight. When the vessel is emptied, the echo becomes more audible. The observable unknown here is that meaning and metabolism are not strangers. We sense the sacred because our bodies are wired to translate chemistry into consciousness. Fasting is not deprivation, it is dialogue. And so to all who fast in body or spirit, know that you are rejoining a conversation as old as hunger itself. What you feel as discipline, the cells feel as song. You can join this ongoing exploration by emailing me at theobservableunknownmail.com or texting me directly at 336-675-5836. I would love to hear your reflections, your questions, your own experiences of fasting, stillness or revelation. And if tonight's dialogue spoke to you, please take a moment to leave a rating and a review wherever you've listened. Every word you share keeps this work alive, keeps this dialogue between mind, body and mystery resonating until next time. Stay curious, stay present and keep listening to the rhythm beneath the silence.