- Intermittent fasting and calorie counting about equal for weight loss, according to new study Salon
- Intermittent fasting and calorie-counting give similar weight-loss results, study finds. The best diet is the one you can stick to, experts say. Yahoo Life
- Once again, eating less, less often shown to help people manage their weight Boing Boing
- Intermittent fasting is as effective as calorie counting for weight loss, study finds KPRC Click2Houston
- Daytime-restricted feeding enhances running endurance without prior exercise in mice Nature.com
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Tag Archives: Intermittent
Intermittent Fasting May Not Affect Your Chances of Weight Loss, Study Suggests
New research casts doubt on certain claimed benefits of intermittent fasting, finding no link between a person’s timing of meals and their chances of long-term weight loss. The frequency and size of people’s meals, however, was linked to modest changes in weight.
Scientists from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health recruited adult patients from one of three major health care systems to use an app (“Daily 24”) where they would report their sleeping and eating habits for up to six months. These reports were then used as a barometer for people’s routine eating and sleeping behavior. The researchers also kept track of the volunteers’ health outcomes, including weight, before and after the study began through their electronic medical records. About 550 people used the app during the study period, and the researchers were able to track these people’s weight over an average length of six years.
The team found no significant association between the timing of meals and annual changes in weight in their study sample. People who reported skipping breakfast or taking long breaks between meals, for instance, didn’t noticeably lose or gain any more weight on average than those who didn’t do that. The findings were published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
This type of study is known as observational research, which can only be used to find correlations between two variables, not necessarily a cause-and-effect relationship. And this study in particular wasn’t measuring what might happen to people who newly decide to start intermittent fasting, but rather the possible effects of someone’s regular eating habits on their weight over time. That said, several small trials, including one published last April, have tracked people as they started dieting and have found that intermittent fasting may not provide any added weight loss over a typical eating schedule.
“Based on other studies that have come out, including ours, we are starting to think that timing of meals through the day most likely doesn’t immediately result in weight loss,” lead author Wendy Bennett, an associate professor of medicine in the division of general internal medicine at Johns Hopkins, told CNN.
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Bennett and other researchers studying the topic have cautioned that their results don’t necessarily rule out that intermittent fasting can have some unique positives. It’s possible that some populations, such as those with type 2 diabetes, could experience greater weight loss than they would otherwise while fasting. And for some people, intermittent fasting might simply be easier or preferable as a way to keep track of their eating.
Still, for those who are trying to diet, these findings suggest that there are other patterns they should be more mindful about than timing. The study found that people who ate more frequent medium or large meals during the day gained modest amounts of weight over time (up to two pounds a year linked to every extra meal a day on average). Conversely, eating many small meals throughout the day was linked to a small amount of annual weight loss.
Intermittent fasting may not be as helpful for losing weight as once thought, study finds
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Are snacks before bed your vice? Or do you prefer to wait a few hours after you wake up to eat?
The timing of meals may not have as big an impact on weight as once thought, according to a new study.
The study tracked the portion sizes and eating times of 547 people, in addition to data on their health and weight, over the course of six years. The data showed no association between an interval of the day in which people had their meals and their weight, according to the study published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
Restricting eating times, as seen in diet trends such as intermittent fasting, has been a popular method to try to lose weight in recent years.
But the researchers found no association between restricting eating times and weight loss, said principal investigator of the study Dr. Wendy Bennett, an associate professor of medicine in the division of general internal medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. That included how long people ate after waking up, how long their window of eating was throughout the day and how close to going to bed they ate, she noted.
Instead, smaller meals were associated with weight loss, she said.
“Based on other studies that have come out, including ours, we are starting to think that timing of meals through the day most likely doesn’t immediately result in weight loss,” Bennett said, adding the caveat that for some people, timing meals may be a useful tool in tracking nutrition.
The results of this study should be taken with a grain of salt, experts cautioned.
There were few racial and ethnic minorities among the participants, noted Dr. Fatima Cody, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. There are also many social determinants of health, such as stress and people’s environment, that could be added to the data, Cody added.
Those factors could be important for getting a better look at the effects of meal timing, added Alice Lichtenstein, professor of nutrition science and policy at Tufts University.
“I suspect that if they looked more closely at the data, that there would be subgroups (where timing of meals) may have had a significant effect,” Lichtenstein said.
This study was observational, Bennett noted, meaning that they looked at existing patterns for the study instead of making changes to a randomized group. Further work on this topic is underway, she added.
The big takeaways are that there is no one strategy that works for all people when it comes to nutrition, and that quality of the food counts, Lichtenstein said.
“If you make some effort to consume a healthy diet, you make some effort to be physically active, you’re less likely to have diabetes, chronic kidney disease, obstructive pulmonary disease and hypertension,” Lichtenstein said.
It’s the boring stuff no one wants to hear, she added, but there is no getting around eating fruits and vegetables and getting physical activity when it comes to weight management.
For some people, trying intermittent fasting or restricting eating intervals can be a helpful way to take note of personal tendencies, but many people can’t sustain it for enough time to see long-term change — or keep off any weight they lose, Lichtenstein added.
Cody, who is an obesity medicine physician at Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital Weight Center, doesn’t like to focus too strongly on either calorie restriction or intermittent fasting, she said. Instead, she wants her clients to look at the nutritional value of the food they are eating.
To the body, 100 calories of gummy bears is not the same as 100 calories of oatmeal with fruit and nuts, she added.
But different approaches work better in different lifestyles, and everyone should work with their own doctor and their own body without stress and shame, Cody said.
If a nutrition strategy works for someone else, she said, “it just means someone’s body responded and the other one didn’t. It doesn’t mean you’re flawed. It just means that’s just not what your body needed.”
Intermittent fasting a deadly diet? Restricted eating raises risk of early death
PHILADELPHIA — For many people, there’s a constant, nagging inner monologue telling them to start a new diet or get back in the gym. However, some dieting and fitness plans may be doing more harm than good. Whether it’s intermittent fasting, cutting carbs, or going Keto, new research is advising caution for those who restrict their eating habits. Researchers say that eating only one meal per day is associated with an increased risk of death in American adults 40 and older.
According to the international team, skipping meals can have harmful effects to your health. While you might enjoy dropping a few extra pounds, skipping breakfast is associated with a higher risk of cardiovascular disease mortality. Similarly, missing lunch or dinner can lead to a higher risk of death in general.
The timing of your meals also plays role in health. For those who eat three meals daily, researchers say that meals should be spaced out by 4.5 hours of each other. Otherwise, you may be inching closer to death’s door.
“At a time when intermittent fasting is widely touted as a solution for weight loss, metabolic health, and disease prevention, our study is important for the large segment of American adults who eat fewer than three meals each day. Our research revealed that individuals eating only one meal a day are more likely to die than those who had more daily meals,” says lead study author Yangbo Sun in a media release.
2 in 5 people follow a restricted diet plan
The investigators analyzed responses and causes of death from over 24,000 American adults 40 years-old and older who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) between 1999 and 2014. The survey collects data on everything from diet to general health across the U.S.
Researchers found that people who ate less than three meals a day (about 40% of the participants) shared common characteristics such as having less education, lower income, food insecurities, drinking more alcohol, smoking, and have less energy intake overall.
“Our results are significant even after adjustments for dietary and lifestyle factors (smoking, alcohol use, physical activity levels, energy intake, and diet quality) and food insecurity,” adds the study’s senior investigator, Wei Bao.
Dr. Bao explains that skipping meals means obtaining more energy all at once, which can throw off your body’s ability to metabolize glucose. This can result in damage to your metabolism.
So, the next time you’re considering hopping on the newest diet trend, think twice. Limiting your body’s food (and fuel) intake can have serious long-term consequences and that is more important than fitting into the next size down in jeans.
The study is published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.
Can Intermittent Fasting Help Combat Youth Obesity?
Parents and doctors are looking for new strategies to help adolescents with obesity. One controversial approach drawing the interest of some families is intermittent fasting, which limits people to eating for just a part of the day or week.
Intermittent fasting has gained traction among adults who use it to try to manage weight and improve health. Doctors have largely avoided trying it with adolescents out of concern that introducing a fasting period to their schedules might result in nutritional gaps or trigger eating disorders when teens are rapidly growing and developing.
Now, a small number of doctors and researchers are evaluating types of intermittent fasting in adolescents, searching for solutions as rates of obesity and Type 2 diabetes rise. One pediatric endocrinologist in Los Angeles is launching a clinical trial looking at eating within a set time window in adolescents with obesity. Researchers in Australia are completing a separate trial, the results of which they expect to publish later this year.
Roughly one-fifth of children in the U.S. are considered obese, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Pediatricians are so concerned that the American Academy of Pediatrics for the first time this month recommended physicians offer weight-loss drugs for children with obesity.
Any approach that limits when and how an adolescent eats must be handled cautiously, doctors say.
Families and doctors need to be very careful with any form of intermittent fasting in youth as it can be a slippery slope with a potential risk of eating disorders, says
Jason Nagata,
a pediatrician and eating-disorder specialist at the University of California, San Francisco. Doctors have also raised questions about the potential long-term effects of intermittent fasting on developing bodies.
Courtney Peterson,
an associate professor of nutrition sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham who studies intermittent fasting in adults, says she would be worried about adolescents’ getting enough nutrients. “I think it’s worth testing but testing with caution,” she says.
Her research has found that adults with obesity who ate between 7 a.m. and 3 p.m. lost on average an extra 5 pounds more than a control group eating over 12 hours or more, and adults with prediabetes who ate over a six-hour period starting early in the day showed improvements in blood-sugar levels.
Intermittent fasting is an umbrella term for eating strategies that involve fasting. One such strategy, time-restricted eating, or TRE, limits eating to a set number of hours a day—often eight—with no limitations on what or how much you eat. In the remaining hours, you refrain from eating or drinking except for water.
Alaina Vidmar,
a pediatric endocrinologist and obesity-medicine specialist at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, is starting a clinical trial to evaluate whether an eight-hour window of eating, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., results in changes in insulin and glucose response for teens with obesity.
The researchers are also looking at weight loss and body-fat mass, as well as blood pressure and cholesterol.
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The research stems from conversations Dr. Vidmar had with families of patients with obesity in recent years. Some had asked her about time-restricted eating, or had tried it and said they liked it. She tested the concept in teenagers with obesity to see if setting an eight-hour window of eating was feasible in a pilot study published in the journal Nutrients in 2021.
“They enjoyed doing it, they felt like their whole family could do it, and over time they were losing weight,” Dr. Vidmar says of the teens.
Now, her lab is enrolling 100 youth between 12 and 21 years old with Type 2 diabetes and obesity in a 12-week trial. Participants are screened and monitored for any negative eating behaviors, she says. So far, she hasn’t found that time-limited eating “impacts eating behaviors or worsens disordered eating in any way,” she says.
In Australia, researchers are studying how teens with obesity respond to a different form of fasting called intermittent energy restriction.
In this approach, for three days a week you eat roughly one-quarter of the calories you normally do, says
Natalie Lister,
a researcher and dietitian at the University of Sydney. On the other four days, you have no calorie limits.
Dr. Lister says she and colleagues started looking into intermittent fasting in adolescents with obesity a few years ago when patients started asking about it. They conducted a pilot trial with 30 adolescents, published in 2019. Now, the researchers are completing a trial whose results they expect to publish later this year.
The health team monitors for eating disorders and depression, and the study doesn’t enroll anyone with a high risk of disordered eating, says Dr. Lister. Dietitians provide guidelines to help ensure participants are meeting nutritional requirements.
In adults with obesity, the data on TRE is mixed when it comes to weight loss, but two systematic reviews of the existing research both found a modest weight-loss benefit overall, says Dr. Peterson. Studies have also found that adults experience improvements in measures such as insulin resistance, reducing blood-glucose levels, particularly when their eating window starts early in the day.
Matthew Muros, a 15-year-old in Carson, Calif., struggles with his weight and prediabetes. Matthew participated in Dr. Vidmar’s pilot studies last year. The first two weeks were challenging, he notes.
“I did feel really hungry. I just kept on drinking water,” he says.
He says it got easier, and when the study was over he decided to stick with the schedule. He has lost about 30 pounds, and his blood-glucose levels have improved.
He has also changed his diet, having less soda, fast food and carbohydrates. “I’m trying to eat a little bit more healthy,” he says.
Write to Sumathi Reddy at Sumathi.Reddy@wsj.com
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Intermittent Fasting—9 Benefits and Best Practices
Through intermittent fasting and controlling the intake of calories, the human body can increase the amount and function of stem cells, which are vital to delay our aging process and reduce inflammation. What is intermittent fasting? What are the benefits of intermittent fasting? How do we know if we are suitable for doing intermittent fasting?
“Fasting” means not eating or drinking anything that contains calories for a period of time. One can drink water, black coffee, or other calorie-free drinks.
Types of Fasting Methods
Twitter founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey told the press that he eats only one meal a day between 6 p.m.and 9 p.m., which consists of proteins and vegetables. Fasting helped him feel more focused and to able devote more attention everyday life.
Skipping breakfast and lunch, Jack gained more time to focus on important things. This intermittent fasting method is known as “samurai fasting,” or OMAD (one meal a day). In ancient times, samurai’s did not eat three meals a day but had one huge dinner instead. This method allows people to drink water, black coffee, and low-calorie things within a 20 hour period, and consume high-calorie food within the remaining four-hour window of the day.
However, the evening may not be the healthiest time to have a huge meal.
Chris Pratt, star of Guardians of the Galaxy, told his fans that intermittent fasting is a “must try.” Pratt claims the fasting helped him play the superhero roles well in his movie. He said he usually drinks coffee and exercises before noon and does not eat anything after 8 p.m. His intermittent fasting method is called 16/8 intermittent fasting or “time restricted eating.” This method involves limiting the intake of foods and beverages to a set window of eight hours per day. Some suggest that 18 hours, rather than 16 hours, produces a better result.
Jimmy Kimmel, host of an American late-night talk show, lost excess body weight by two-days of fasting each week week. Though he did consume some food and drink during the two days (Mondays and Thursdays) kept his intake to within 500 calories.
Jimmy said he got the idea from a BBC documentary about a 138-year-old Indian man whose secret to longevity was restricting calorie intake through fasting. He introduced the fasting method as the 5:2 diet: having five-day regular meals and eating fewer than 500 calories for two days.
There are many celebrities, bodybuilders, and online influencers sharing and promoting their experience of intermittent fasting.
Although they may not be experts in medical or health fields, they do have great influence on the public by sharing their personal experiences.
Does celebrity endorsement that make intermittent fasting just a healthy trend? Or is it scientifically supported? How are real experts on the topic weighing in?
Recently, the New England Journal of Medicine released a collaborative review titled “Effects of Intermittent Fasting on Health, Aging, and Disease.” The article comprehensively concluded the research results of intermittent fasting.
Three kinds of intermittent fasting were studied, including Alternate-Day Fasting (ADF), 5:2 diet, and OMAD.
Benefits of Intermittent Fasting
What are the benefits of intermittent fasting?
1. Anti-aging
Eating less can help our body produce fewer harmful metabolites, including free radicals. More importantly, it can improve the reactivity of cells and organs, promote the regulation of blood sugar and pressure resistance, and simultaneously suppress inflammatory responses.
A free radical is a type of unstable molecule that is made during normal cell metabolism (chemical changes that take place in a cell). Free radicals can build up in cells and cause damage to other molecules, such as DNA, lipids, and proteins. This damage may increase the risk of cancer and other diseases.
The lifestyle of having three meals a day, occasional snacks in between, and mostly sitting, is harmful to our body. More exercise and taking in sufficient or limited calories is beneficial to health. Intermittent fasting protects and heals our bodies.
2. Weight loss.
Normally the body offers energy through glucose transformed from the consumption of carbohydrates, fruits, and vegetables. In overeating, the liver will transform excess glucose into fat and store it up. Overeating, inadequate exercise, and too much sitting, causes fat stored to be stored in our bodies. Fasting for more than 16 hours causes the body to consume stored glycogen first, then burn fat. The dissolution of fat will produce ketone bodies which offer energy to our brain and play the important role of transmitting signals between organs and participating in the function of cells and organs.
3. Igniting autophagy
During fasting, a series of chemical reactions occur in the body, including promoting antioxidant mechanisms, recovering the material of inheritance DNA, increasing protein quality, increasing ATP synthase in the mitochondria, self-renewal function of cells, as well as reducing inflammation. The self-renewal function of cells is done by a mechanism called autophagy. It is very important to our body’s recovery.
4. Improving chronic disease
Intermittent fasting not only assists weight loss, but can also increase the body’s sensitivity to insulin to reduce blood lipids, blood sugar, and blood pressure thus improving chronic inflammatory diseases.
Researchers divided 100 obese women into two groups—one group reduced 25 percent consumption of food, and the other group underwent the 5:2 diet. After six months, both groups lost similar weight, but the 5:2 diet group had a much higher sensitivity to insulin and obvious loss of belly fat.
5. Increased exercise endurance and performance
Researchers compared the physical activity level of mice undergoing ADF and having regular meals. The ADF mice had far better running endurance than the regularly fed mice and showed better balance and coordination ability. In addition, young males, who fasted for 16 hours, lost fat without muscle loss.
6. Cancer prevention
Most animal research found that restriction of calorie intake and ADF can reduce the risk of tumors, inhibit tumor growth, and increase sensitivity of tumors to chemotherapy and radiotherapy. The curative effect is shown to be noticeably magnified.
7. Decreasing the progression of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease
Through animal research, it was found that both occurrence and progression of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s can be postponed through ADF. Intermittent fasting brings many benefits to our brain, including promoting neuronal remodeling to counteract nutritional stress, strengthening the function of brain mitochondrion, stimulating cell renewal and the generation of nerve protection factors, antioxidant function, and recovering inheritance genes.
8. Reducing immune disease
Recent research found that if patients of multiple sclerosis (MS) persist in intermittent fasting, the disease symptoms improved within two months. This might have to do with the function of reducing inflammation.
Therefore, it can also benefit rheumatoid arthritis and other immune diseases. MS is a potentially disabling disease of the brain and spinal cord. In MS, the immune system attacks the protective sheath (myelin) that covers nerve fibers and causes communication problems between your brain and the rest of your body.
9. Reduction of damage caused by concussion
This may come as a surprise—repairing damage such as memory loss, lack of concentration, increased temper tantrums, and hypersomnia due to concussion is an unexpected boon for people with brain injuries.
One significant benefit of intermittent fasting is that it can directly activate the anti-aging tunnel in our body and thus reduce the aging process.
Three Notes to Consider in Intermittent Fasting
Which kind of intermittent fasting is suitable for you? In learning about the multiple benefits of intermittent fasting, many people are willing to give it a try. Here are some things to consider.
- Even though there are many benefits of fasting, it can be challenging. Many people are accustomed to eating three meals a day and also having snacks. The influence of advertisements plying consumers with an endless array of tempting foods makes abstaining difficult. To fast, absolute determination is required.
- Many people feel misadjusted while beginning to fast. During fasting, one feels hungry, may have a short temper, and lack concentration, but these symptoms will gradually disappear within a month. One needs to be mentally prepared for a fast.
Fasting through breakfast maybe an easier choice than fasting through dinner—however, as dinner tends to be a larger meal, letting it be the meal skipped may provide better results. As well, skipping dinner does not tend to affect sleeping quality as much as skipping breakfast may. It is not recommended to fast every day in the beginning. You can gradually increase fasting time day by day starting from 12 hours and gradually increasing to 18 then 20 hours.
- If you have any current medical conditions such as diabetes do not attempt to fast without first consulting your physician. Only regulate your eating habits under the monitoring of a doctor. You may like to try a few weeks on the Mediterranean Diet before easing into fasting.
According to the Taiwanese Society for Nutritional Psychiatry Research, the Mediterranean Diet is a comprehensive eating habit. It promotes the intake of fruits, vegetables, nuts, whole grains, fish, and healthy oil, and choosing natural food rather than processed food to lower inflammation.
How to Practice Intermittent Fasting
If you’ve read the article up to this point, you may feel prepared for fasting. There is a recommended proper approach to safe and effective fasting.
For ADF one takes regular, wholesome meals one day then consumes less than 500 calories the next.
For 5:2 fasting one takes regular meals on weekdays then consumes less than 500 calories on each weekend day. In addition to both, one has 16 hours a day between meals.
Westerners sometimes promote skipping breakfast and finishing their meals between noon and 8 p.m. but having meals between 7 a.m. and 3 p.m. is more compatible with our bio clock. When you have a late dinner, the body will emit melatonin, affecting sleep quality— and the digestive system does not function well while sleeping.
Take caution to not overeat during the non-fasting times. Continue to enjoy regular sized meals and a balanced diet with two portions of fruits and vegetables, one portion of animal or plant-based protein, one portion of carbohydrates, and some healthy fats. In addition, slow down your time eating time to allow a greater sense of satiation and healthy digestion.
In accordance with your own situation, you can begin intermittent fasting with one day a weekend gradually increase to insure accomplishing your goals.
Intermittent Fasting Might Not Be As Safe as We Thought
Intermittent fasting is a popular dietary trend that involves cycling between periods of eating and fasting. It is believed to have various health benefits such as weight loss, improved insulin sensitivity, and reduced inflammation.
The popular dietary trend has been linked to dangerous eating disorder attitudes and behaviors among adolescents and young adults.
A recent study published in the journal Eating Behaviors has shed light on the potential negative effects of intermittent fasting, a popular dietary trend in which people abstain from eating for more than 8 hours at a time. Although intermittent fasting is often promoted as a way to improve health and control or lose weight, few studies have examined its potential risks.
According to the study which analyzed data from over 2,700 adolescents and young adults in Canada, intermittent fasting was found to be linked to disordered eating behaviors in women, including binge eating and compensatory behaviors such as vomiting and compulsive exercise. Men who practiced intermittent fasting were also more likely to report compulsive exercise.
The prevalence of intermittent fasting behaviors among adolescents and young adults was notable. In total, 47% of women, 38% of men, and 52% of transgender or gender non-conforming individuals reported engaging in intermittent fasting in the past 12 months.
“Given our findings, it is problematic how prevalent intermittent fasting was in our sample,” says lead author Kyle T. Ganson, Ph.D., MSW, assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work.
In all three groups, participants reported an average of 100 days where they engaged in intermittent fasting over the past 12 months.
“The associations found between intermittent fasting and eating disorder behaviors are particularly salient, given the significant increase in eating disorders among adolescents and young adults since the start of the
Intermittent fasting can reverse type 2 diabetes in in MONTHS
Intermittent fasting can reverse type 2 diabetes in half of patients within three MONTHS, study finds
- Diet involved eating 840 calories for five days, then 10 days of eating normally
- Study found 33% managed to reverse condition and remain free of it a year later
- Experts caution study was very small – involving just 36 people – and quite short
Fasting for five days at a time could help some people reverse type 2 diabetes, a study suggests.
It is increasingly fashionable to try the 5:2 diet, fast on alternate days or eat within an eight-hour window each day to lose weight.
Now another type of fasting diet appears to overcome type 2 diabetes, based on the results from a small Chinese study.
The strict regime involved five days of eating only around 840 calories a day, followed by 10 days of eating normally.
Fasting for five days at a time could help some people reverse type 2 diabetes, a study suggests (stock)
The foods on offer for each meal during the fasting period, which required only boiling water to be added, included ‘nutritional rice’, a meal-replacement biscuit containing black beans, maize and oats, and fruit and vegetable gruel.
Among 36 people on this diet for three months, almost half managed to reverse type 2 diabetes and remain free of it a year later.
The study was extremely small and it is important to follow the participants up for more years, as high blood sugar can often return.
But the results add to evidence from a trial led by the University of Newcastle in the UK, which found almost half of people on an extremely low-calorie diet of soups and shakes could drop their blood sugar to a level where they were no longer considered diabetic.
This approach, which has been piloted by NHS England, is planned to be rolled out nationwide.
Dr Dongbo Liu, senior author of the study from Hunan Agricultural University in Changsha, China, said: ‘Diabetes remission is possible if patients lose weight by changing their diet and exercise habits.’
Commenting on the results, Dr Duane Mellor, a registered dietitian and senior lecturer at Aston University, said: ‘Although there have been studies to show low-calorie diets and low-carbohydrate diets can help people with type 2 diabetes achieve remission, this relatively small study is the first to show the use of intermittent fasting.’
But he said it was impossible to say if fasting, rather than simple weight loss, was responsible for putting type 2 diabetes into remission, adding: ‘There is no one best dietary approach to manage type 2 diabetes or bring about remission – it is the diet that is most suitable for that individual living with type 2 diabetes.’
Around 3.7 million people in the UK are known to have a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes, which is linked to obesity and an unhealthy diet.
The Chinese study recruited people who had lived with the condition for one to 11 years, and who were aged 38 to 72.
Half tried the intermittent fasting diet over three months, while the others ate normally.
The 36 people who fasted lost an average of almost 6kg (13 pounds), while the others 36 lost only 0.27kg (0.6 pounds) in average.
Three months after completing the diet, 17 out of 36 people who fasted had reversed their type 2 diabetes, compared to only one out of the 36 who ate their usual diet.
A year after completing the diet, 16 out of 36 out of the people on the fasting diet – 44 percent – were still in remission from type 2 diabetes.
Remission, the medical word for reversing diabetes, was defined as having an average blood sugar level of less than 6.5 per cent at least one year after stopping diabetes medication, according to the study published in the Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.
People with type 2 diabetes who are thinking about changing their diet or wonder if they might be able to put their diabetes into remission should speak to a health professional to discuss the potential effects on their medication.
Supporters of intermittent fasting say it is simpler than calorie-counting, so may work better to lose weight.
Intermittent Fasting May Help Heal Nerve Damage
Intermittent fasting may help heal nerve damage by changing the gut microbiome.
Intermittent fasting alters the gut bacteria activity of mice and increases their ability to recover from nerve damage.
Scientists observed how fasting led to the gut bacteria increasing the production of a metabolite known as 3-Indolepropionic
“When IPA cannot be produced by these bacteria and it was almost absent in the serum, regeneration was impaired.” — Professor Simone Di Giovanni, Chair in Restorative Neuroscience
Although this novel mechanism was discovered in mice, it is hoped to also hold true for any future human trials. The research team states that the bacteria that produce IPA, Clostridium sporogenesis, is found naturally in the guts of humans as well as mice and IPA is present in human bloodstreams too.
“There is currently no treatment for people with nerve damage beyond surgical reconstruction, which is only effective in a small percentage of cases, prompting us to investigate whether changes in lifestyle could aid recovery,” said study author Professor Simone Di Giovanni from Imperial’s Department of Brain Sciences.
“Intermittent fasting has previously been linked by other studies to wound repair and the growth of new neurons – but our study is the first to explain exactly how fasting might help heal nerves.”
Fasting as a potential treatment
The experiment assessed nerve regeneration of mice where the sciatic nerve, the longest nerve running from the spine down the leg, was crushed. Half of the mice underwent intermittent fasting (by eating as much as they liked followed by not eating at all on alternate days), while the other half were free to eat with no restrictions at all. These diets continued for a period of 10 days or 30 days before their operation, and the mice’s recovery was monitored 24 to 72 hours after the nerve was severed.
The length of the regrown axons was measured and was about 50% greater in mice that had been fasting.
Professor Di Giovanni said, “I think the power of this is that opens up a whole new field where we have to wonder: is this the tip of an iceberg? Are there going to be other bacteria or bacteria metabolites that can promote repair?”
Investigation reveals metabolism link
The scientists also studied how fasting led to this nerve regeneration. They discovered that there were significantly higher levels of specific metabolites, including IPA, in the blood of diet-restricted mice.
To confirm whether IPA led to nerve repair, the mice were treated with antibiotics to clean their guts of any bacteria. They were then given genetically-modified strains of Clostridium sporogenesis that could or could not produce IPA.
“When IPA cannot be produced by these bacteria and it was almost absent in the serum, regeneration was impaired. This suggests that the IPA generated by these bacteria has an ability to heal and regenerate damaged nerves,” Professor Di Giovanni said.
Importantly, when IPA was administered to the mice orally after a sciatic nerve injury, regeneration and increased recovery were observed between two and three weeks after injury.
The next stage of this research will be to test this mechanism for spinal cord injuries in mice as well as testing whether administering IPA more frequently would maximize its efficacy.
“One of our goals now is to systematically investigate the role of bacteria metabolite therapy.” Professor Di Giovanni said.
More studies will need to investigate whether IPA increases after fasting in humans and the efficacy of IPA and intermittent fasting as a potential treatment in people.
He said: “One of the questions that we haven’t explored fully is that, since IPA lasts in blood for four to six hours in high concentration, would administering it repeatedly throughout the day or adding it to a normal diet help maximize its therapeutic effects?”
Reference: “The gut metabolite indole-3 propionate promotes nerve regeneration and repair” by Elisabeth Serger, Lucia Luengo-Gutierrez, Jessica S. Chadwick, Guiping Kong, Luming Zhou, Greg Crawford, Matt C. Danzi, Antonis Myridakis, Alexander Brandis, Adesola Temitope Bello, Franziska Müller, Alexandros Sanchez-Vassopoulos, Francesco De Virgiliis, Phoebe Liddell, Marc Emmanuel Dumas, Jessica Strid, Sridhar Mani, Dylan Dodd and Simone Di Giovanni, 22 June 2022, Nature.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04884-x
Intermittent Fasting May Help Heal Nerve Damage
Summary: Intermittent fasting alters the gut bacteria in mice, facilitating an increased ability for damaged nerves to recover.
Source: Imperial College London
Intermittent fasting changes the gut bacteria activity of mice and increases their ability to recover from nerve damage.
The new research is published in Nature and was conducted by Imperial College London researchers.
They observed how fasting led to the gut bacteria increasing production of a metabolite known as 3-Indolepropionic acid (IPA), which is required for regenerating nerve fibers called axons—thread-like structures at the ends of nerve cells that send out electro-chemical signals to other cells in the body.
This novel mechanism was discovered in mice and is hoped to also hold true for any future human trials. The team state that the bacteria that produces IPA, Clostridium sporogenesis, is found naturally in the guts of humans as well as mice and IPA is present in human’s bloodstreams too.
“There is currently no treatment for people with nerve damage beyond surgical reconstruction, which is only effective in a small percentage of cases, prompting us to investigate whether changes in lifestyle could aid recovery,” said study author Professor Simone Di Giovanni from Imperial’s Department of Brain Sciences.
“Intermittent fasting has previously been linked by other studies to wound repair and the growth of new neurons—but our study is the first to explain exactly how fasting might help heal nerves.”
Fasting as a potential treatment
The study assessed nerve regeneration of mice where the sciatic nerve, the longest nerve running from the spine down the leg, was crushed. Half of the mice underwent intermittent fasting (by eating as much as they liked followed by not eating at all on alternate days), while the other half were free to eat with no restrictions at all.
These diets continued for a period of 10 days or 30 days before their operation, and the mice’s recovery was monitored 24 to 72 hours after the nerve was severed.
The length of the regrown axons was measured and was about 50% greater in mice that had been fasting.
Professor Di Giovanni said, “I think the power of this is that opens up a whole new field where we have to wonder: is this the tip of an iceberg? Are there going to be other bacteria or bacteria metabolites that can promote repair?”
Investigation reveals metabolism link
The researchers also studied how fasting led to this nerve regeneration. They found that there were significantly higher levels of specific metabolites, including IPA, in the blood of diet-restricted mice.
To confirm whether IPA led to nerve repair, the mice were treated with antibiotics to clean their guts of any bacteria. They were then given genetically-modified strains of Clostridium sporogenesis that could or could not produce IPA.
“When IPA cannot be produced by these bacteria and it was almost absent in the serum, regeneration was impaired. This suggests that the IPA generated by these bacteria has an ability to heal and regenerate damaged nerves,” Professor Di Giovanni said.
Importantly, when IPA was administered to the mice orally after a sciatic nerve injury, regeneration and increased recovery was observed between two and three weeks after injury.
The next stage for this research will be to test this mechanism for spinal cord injuries in mice as well as testing whether administering IPA more frequently would maximize its efficacy.
“One of our goals now is to systematically investigate the role of bacteria metabolite therapy.” Professor Di Giovanni said.
More studies will need to investigate whether IPA increases after fasting in humans and the efficacy of IPA and intermittent fasting as a potential treatment in people.
He said: “One of the questions that we haven’t explored fully is that, since IPA lasts in blood for four to six hours in high concentration, would administering it repeatedly throughout the day or adding it to a normal diet help maximize its therapeutic effects?”
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About this neuroscience research news
Author: Press Office
Source: Imperial College London
Contact: Press Office – Imperial College London
Image: The image is in the public domain
Original Research: Closed access.
“The gut metabolite indole-3 propionate promotes nerve regeneration and repair” by Elisabeth Serger et al. Nature
Abstract
The gut metabolite indole-3 propionate promotes nerve regeneration and repair
The regenerative potential of mammalian peripheral nervous system neurons after injury is critically limited by their slow axonal regenerative rate.
Regenerative ability is influenced by both injury-dependent and injury-independent mechanisms. Among the latter, environmental factors such as exercise and environmental enrichment have been shown to affect signalling pathways that promote axonal regeneration.
Several of these pathways, including modifications in gene transcription and protein synthesis, mitochondrial metabolism and the release of neurotrophins, can be activated by intermittent fasting (IF). However, whether IF influences the axonal regenerative ability remains to be investigated.
Here we show that IF promotes axonal regeneration after sciatic nerve crush in mice through an unexpected mechanism that relies on the gram-positive gut microbiome and an increase in the gut bacteria-derived metabolite indole-3-propionic acid (IPA) in the serum.
IPA production by Clostridium sporogenes is required for efficient axonal regeneration, and delivery of IPA after sciatic injury significantly enhances axonal regeneration, accelerating the recovery of sensory function. Mechanistically, RNA sequencing analysis from sciatic dorsal root ganglia suggested a role for neutrophil chemotaxis in the IPA-dependent regenerative phenotype, which was confirmed by inhibition of neutrophil chemotaxis.
Our results demonstrate the ability of a microbiome-derived metabolite, such as IPA, to facilitate regeneration and functional recovery of sensory axons through an immune-mediated mechanism.