Fasting could prolong life

UNLIKE many fad diets, fasting seems to get the tick of approval from experts, thanks to its benefits ranging from weight loss and blood sugar control to reducing inflammation.

So we might as well consider this another trophy to add to fasting’s cabinet. According to a new study, the largest of its kind, it might also be the secret to a longer life.

The study, the largest to investigate the health effects of fasting every other day in humans in a controlled experiment, took 60 people of a healthy weight and split them into two groups. One could eat normally and the other ate nothing for 36 hours, then could eat unrestricted for 12.

So while there are various forms of fasting, such as the 5:2 diet (where you eat just 500–800 calories a day two days a week) or the 16:8 diet (where you eat inside an eight-hour window), for this particular study, researchers focused on alternate-day fasting.

The findings, published in the journal showed that even though those fasting attempted to compensate during those 12-hour periods, they never entirely made up the calorie deficit. Despite none of the participants being obese, all of them began to benefit from the corresponding weight loss and showed signs that their rate of ageing had slowed.

“What we found is it improved cardiovascular risk factors,”

Harald Sourij, from the University of Graz in Austria and an author of the research, said. “There was a reduction in blood pressure, in inflammatory markers ... all these things that are shown in animal data to be associated with longevity.”

He also noted there was

“no sign of any adverse events or deficiency” in those people that had been fasting.

However, Frank Madeo, a co-author of the study and professor at the University of Graz, warned that people should still be wary of routine fasting. Instead, he recommended it as “a good regime for some months for obese people to cut weight”. He said more research was needed before it would be recommended as a daily practice.

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