01 Intermittent fasting can keep your brain and body young
THE STORY
Intermittent fasting took off back in 2012 with the 5:2 diet. Now, though, it’s the 16:8 approach – created by PT Martin Berkhan – that’s attracting attention. This iteration of the diet involves restricting your daily calorie intake to an eight-hour time window. So, you’d wake up and stick to water until, say, midday, then make sure you’ve got all your calories in by 8pm. Equally, you might fast for 10 hours or one day a week – all are versions of time-restricted eating. Fans say it gives the body’s cells time to renew, reduces organ inflammation and helps keep your weight stable.
THE SCIENCE
In a review published in The New England Journal Of Medicine, Professor Mark Mattson, neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins Medicine in the US, insisted that ‘evidence is mounting’ in favour of the regime as a way to lengthen lifespan. Fasting creates time for important cellular activity, he says, which removes and repairs damaged molecules, suppresses inflammation and increases stress resistance. But other experts believe that these claims may go beyond the current evidence. When it comes to longevity, studies shows the diet can help fight disease in mice; a 2017 study found that it could even reverse diabetes. ‘But that’s not the same as saying we have evidence that timerestricted feeding is beneficial for humans,’ says Professor William Mair, a genetics expert at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health in the US, but he’ll be keeping an eye on the research. ‘The logic makes sense to me and it does make sense to try to restrict the period in which you’re eating to something fairly short,’ he adds.
THE VERDICT
For longevity, you’re far better off paying attention to what you eat rather than when. But if you simply want to shed some weight, intermittent fasting is worth a shot. Consume all your calories within an eight- or 10-hour window during the day – what’s known as a circadian rhythm approach
– for the version with the most evidence behind it.