How Intermittent Fasting Curbs Diabetes

Christiane Fux studied journalism and psychology in Hamburg. The experienced medical editor has been writing magazine articles, news and factual texts on all conceivable health topics since 2001. In addition to her work for, Christiane Fux is also active in prose. Her first crime novel was published in 2012, and she also writes, designs and publishes her own crime plays.

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Intermittent fasting is not only supposed to help you lose weight, but could also protect people with a predisposition from diabetes. The decisive mechanism seems to be fat reduction in the pancreas.

When the body becomes fat, fat not only collects in pads under the skin. It also accumulates in and around the organs. Intermittent fasting is particularly effective at tackling this hidden fat, according to various studies. For example, a fatty liver can be effectively slimmed down and visceral fat tissue, which surrounds the organs and fuels harmful inflammatory processes there, is reduced.

Fatty pancreas promotes diabetes

Studies have already shown that intermittent fasting can prevent diabetes and improve existing diabetes. Researchers from the German Institute for Nutrition Research (DIfE) have now found a mechanism that could explain this effect.

They found that mice, which are particularly susceptible to type 2 diabetes due to their genes, store a particularly large amount of fat in the pancreas. Mice without such risk genes, on the other hand, had a lean pancreas, even if they were overweight.

Overproduction exhausts "insulin factories"

The beta cells that are responsible for producing insulin are located in the pancreas. If they consume too much feed, they have to produce large amounts of insulin in order to transport the sugar from the blood into the body's cells. In addition, the body cells react more and more slowly to insulin - which means that production has to be increased even further. At some point the insulin factories run out, so that eventually type 2 diabetes manifests itself.

Intermittent fasting slows down the accumulation of fat in the pancreas

Intermittent fasting seems to counteract this mechanism. In overweight mice with diabetes risk genes, the percentage of fat in the pancreas increased rapidly within five weeks if they could eat as much food as they wanted every day. Not so with their genetically identical conspecifics, who only received food every other day. Their pancreas did not become fatty.

Fat deposits fuel insulin production

In a laboratory test, the researchers were able to show what causes too much fat storage in the pancreas. To do this, they cultivated fat cells together with so-called islets of Langerhans. The beta cells in it then release more insulin.

"We suspect that the islets of Langerhans in diabetes-prone animals exhaust more quickly due to the increased release of insulin," says study director Prof. Annette Schürmann. "In this way, fat in the pancreas could contribute to type 2 diabetes."

How intermittent fasting protects people at a genetic risk for diabetes from diabetes remains to be seen. It is also still open whether the fasting intervals can extend over whole days or whether shorter phases are sufficient.

Intermittent fasting is the trend

Intermittent fasting has been a strong health trend for a while. In fact, there are many ways in which health is said to benefit from going without food. Not only can you lose weight in this way, the regeneration of the body cells is also promoted, blood pressure is lowered and the metabolism is normalized.

In intermittent fasting, you do not consume calories in certain time windows. Water, unsweetened tea, and black coffee are allowed. Depending on the method, the food breaks last between 16 and 36 hours.

Alternatively, a maximum of 500 to 600 calories are consumed over two days per week. The simplest form of intermittent fasting is the 16: 8 method: You are allowed to eat eight hours of the day, the other 16 hours are fasted. One meal - usually breakfast - is skipped. This variant is often easier to integrate into everyday life than a whole day without food.

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