Intermittent Fasting Health Benefits: New Study Claims It Is The Key To Longevity

Many health experts claim that intermittent fasting has a lot of health benefits. It is a method of dieting in which a person consume calories during a specific window of the day, and choose not to eat food for a larger window of time.

Well, a new study conducted by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) suggests that intermittent fasting could be the key to longevity. A team of researchers from the NIA, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana has found that increasing time between meals can make one healthier and live longer, reported USA Today.

The study conducted on mice found that increasing time between meals improved the health of mice as well as lengthened their lives as compared to those who ate more frequently. What’s more interesting to note is that the health benefits were seen regardless of how many calories the mice consumed.

For the purpose of the study, the researchers divided 292 mice into two groups and closely monitored their diet. The first group of mice was fed a low-fat and naturally-sourced diet, while the second group was fed a protein and fiber-rich diet.

Each of the two groups was then divided into three sub-groups. One of the sub-groups had access to food 24 hours a day, another with 30 percent fewer calories per day and the third group only had access to food once per day.

At the end of the study, it was found that the meal-fed and calorie-restricted mice showed improvements in overall health and extended longevity. The calorie-restricted mice also showed significant improvement in fasting glucose and insulin levels compared to the other groups.

“This study showed that mice who ate one meal per day, and thus had the longest fasting period, seemed to have a longer lifespan and better outcomes for common age-related liver disease and metabolic disorders,” said NIA Director Richard Hodes, M.D.

He added that the intriguing results prove that the interplay of total caloric intake and the length of feeding and fasting periods need to be observed closely.

“Prolonged, daily fasting times could help improve health and survival for humans,” said Rafael de Cabo, the study’s lead author.

According to Cabo, when a person stops eating for a number of hours, his/her metabolism goes into standby mode. This is the time when the body fixes and removes all the garbage. So, the person becomes better prepared to use the energy from the next meal. On the other hand, when one eats continuously throughout the day, his/her metabolism doesn’t get time to readjust or rest.

The researchers are now looking forward to conducting more such experiments in other strains of mice and other lab animal species using both sexes in order to find the potential translation of the findings in humans.

The research study has been published in the September 2018 issue of Cell Metabolism.