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Periodic
Fasting May Improve Health
The comedian Gallager once said, "I don't
know why they call it fasting, when it goes so slow!" None-the-less, a new
study reported to the National Institute on Aging suggests that fasting may
be good for you. An article on the subject appeared in the Tuesday, April
29, 2003 issue of the Atlanta Journal Constitution, (AJC). That article
starts off by saying, "Periodic fasting may improve health and help people
withstand the stresses of disease and aging."
One of the lead researchers,
Mark Mattson,
explains it by saying, "What we think is happening is when you go an
extended time period without food, it causes a mild stress on the cells.
When a cell reacts to this stress, it may increase its ability to cope with
more serious stress, such as disease and aging."
The actual research was performed on mice
that were denied food on alternate days. These mice subsequently showed
marked improvement in key health indicators. Researchers believe the
results are relevant to human health and are designing an experiment using
human volunteers. The article noted that the mice in the experiment, which
were allowed to eat all they wanted on alternate days, ended up consuming
about the same number of calories and weighing about the same as animals
allowed to eat all they wanted all the time. The mice deprived of food for a
whole day gorged the next, consuming all the calories they'd been deprived
of and more.
The good news was that in the fasting
mice, blood glucose and insulin levels were markedly reduced. The fasting
mice also had a dramatically increased ability to withstand brain cell
damage after injections of a poison into regions of the brain associated
with Alzheimer's disease in humans. These mice lived 30 percent to 40
percent longer than normal, but they didn't lose any weight.
On the other side of this issue was an
article that also appeared the the Atlanta Journal Constitution just three
days later. In that article entitled, "Doctors frown on fasting for
health", Chris Rosenbloom, a nutritionist at Georgia State University,
argues that "fasting isn't normal or healthy and could be harmful. If you're
fasting for religious reasons, fine, but in terms of fasting for long-term
health, I'm not aware of benefits." He goes on to say, "Animals on
restrictive caloric diets may have longer life spans and fewer chronic
diseases, but there aren't any studies to show the benefit with people,
though some subscribe to the philosophy. Without food, we can become
irritated, disoriented, fuzzy-headed. I wouldn't recommend it as a way to
improve longevity or health or to lose weight."
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