Fasting day protects against diabetes
All content is checked by medical journalists.MunichPeople who regularly take a day of fasting improve their metabolism and reduce their risk of illness. This also applies to those who have already developed a preliminary stage for diabetes.
Doctors call prediabetes a metabolic condition in which blood sugar levels are already elevated, but not yet as high as they are typical for diabetes. So that people with prediabetes do not really get diabetes, medicine is currently focusing on lifestyle changes such as weight loss and exercise.
Now it seems like there can be another effective strategy for doing this: regular fasting. "Fasting has the potential to avert the threat of diabetes," explains study director Benjamin Horne. The physician from Intermountain Medical Center in Murray has been studying the health effects of regular fasting for years. In previous studies he found that people who fasted regularly for years - mostly for religious reasons - were less likely to develop diabetes or coronary heart disease. "We have known for a long time that fasting is healthy - but we have only now found the biological mechanism behind it," explains the researcher.
Risk Candidates for Diabetes
For the pilot study, Horne's team recruited twelve overweight and normal weight participants of both sexes who were at high risk of developing type 2 diabetes: They all already had prediabetes, a precursor to diabetes. This means that her fasting blood sugar was above 100 mg / dL. In addition, each of the participants brought one of the following additional risk factors:
- a relatively large waist circumference
- high levels of triglycerides
- a low level of good HDL cholesterol
Participants fasted for 24 hours once a week over a period of six weeks. On those days they consistently only consumed water.
Falling cholesterol levels
Even after this comparatively short period of time, an effect became apparent: Although the cholesterol levels rose slightly on the days of fasting, they fell overall by twelve percent over the course of the six weeks.
After ten to twelve hours of fasting, the body begins to look for sources of energy other than blood sugar, the authors write. "We believe that fasting breaks down cholesterol," says Horne - especially the bad LDL cholesterol in fat cells. In the long term, this could reduce the cells' insulin resistance, an important mechanism in the development of diabetes.
Doctors understand insulin resistance to be the lack of sensitivity of the body's cells to the hormone insulin, which transports sugar into the cells. To compensate for this, the pancreas has to produce ever larger amounts of insulin. At some point it reaches its limits and the blood sugar level rises. At first this develops pre- and later full type 2 diabetes.
Cells in self-protection mode
Fasting could reverse this process by increasing the breakdown of LDL cholesterol, the researchers believe. In addition, fasting could put the body's cells into a self-protection mode in which they optimize their function - and become more sensitive to insulin again. In addition, the participants lost weight - this also contributes to an improved metabolic situation.
The scientists were not yet able to determine decreased blood sugar levels after the six-week test period. The researchers explain that a longer period of fasting days is apparently necessary for this.
In further experiments, they now want to clarify how long and how often people should fast in order to benefit from the advantages. There is not yet enough data to recommend fasting in general for the prevention of diseases. (cf)
Source: Fasting Reduces Cholesterol Levels in Prediabetic People Over Extended Period of Time, New Research Finds, Press Release 2014 American Diabetes Association Scientific Sessions
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