Mark Mattson is Chief of the Laboratory of Neurosciences at the National Institute on Aging Intramural Research Program. He is also a Professor of Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University. His 16 minute TEDx talk explains some of the benefits of fasting by challenging your brain and opening up new adaptive stress pathways. Mark also provides various historical examples of fasting including how the Romans would lock epileptics having seizures in a room and force them to fast until the “demons” left them. The discovery being that fasting would stop the seizures. He also explains how we can make our own ketones and increase the mitochondria in our nerve cells.