SIB #429- Health Benefits of Intermittent Fasting

The Study:  Impact of intermittent fasting on health and disease processes

 The Facts: 

a. In today’s society people usually eat at least three times a day. 

b. In laboratories animals are usually fed ad libitum (as often as desired).  

c. These patterns of eating and the overconsumption of food often leads to metabolic problems such as insulin resistance and excess visceral fat which is worsened when people are sedentary.  

d. Humans evolved in a time where there was not an abundance of food and they were forced to adapt to periods of caloric scarcity.  

e. In humans, TRF (time restricted feeding) in which the consumption of food is limited to 8 or less hours a day has “demonstrated efficacy for weight loss and improvements in multiple health indicators including insulin resistance and reductions in risk factors for cardiovascular disease.” 

f. In animals both cholesterol and triglycerides were reduced with TRF diets. 

g. “…a study of young adult men who performed resistance training demonstrated that eight weeks of TRF (8h daily feeding period with 16 hours of fasting) resulted in loss of fat mass, with retention of lean mass and improved muscle endurance.”

Take Home:

Eating during a feeding window of 8 hours or less on a daily basis showed improvement in measured health parameters.    

Reviewer's Comments: This article discussed several patterns of fasting. I chose to report on TRF as a method to condense a lengthy article down to the size needed for our report. (Also, I try to confine my own eating to less than 8 hours a day.) But you should read the article as there are a number of different fasting patterns that are also showing promise in improving health parameters. What appears to come through is that various forms of fasting may offer help in some common problems.  As is the case in so many articles, it appears that more study is needed.  

Reviewer:  Roger Coleman DC

Editor: Mark R. Payne DC

Reference: Mark P Mattson, valter d Longo, Michelle Harvie. Ageing Res Rev  2017 Oct;39:46-58.doi: 10.1016/j.arr.2016.10.005.Epub 2016 Oct 31. 

Link to Abstract: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27810402/  

Link to Article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5411330/pdf/nihms831290.pdf