Fasting Diets are Gaining Acceptance

O’Connor, A. (2016).  Fasting diets are gaining acceptance. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.dietdoctor.com/fasting-diets-are-gaining-acceptance.

Fasting Diets Are Gaining Acceptance

There are so new many new diets that come on the market.  One new diet that has been gaining acceptance is the “fasting diet”.  One type of fasting involves skipping breakfast and lunch and eating the required calories within a 6 hour period of time.  Another type of fasting diet is the 5:2.  The 5:2 diet encourages eating without restrictions for five days and then consuming just 500 calories on each of the other two days of the week.  Another one is called alternate-day fasting, which involves eating no more than 500 calories every other day.

The proposed health benefits to fasting might result from the fact that fasting lowers insulin.  Another hormone called insulin-like growth factor, or IGF-1 is also lowered, which is linked to cancer and diabetes. The reduction in cell growth and development from the lowering of these hormones may help slow the aging process and reduce risk factors for disease.  According to Dr. Longo, the director of the Longevity Institute at the University of California, when insulin and low IGF-1 hormones are low, the body goes into a state of maintenance.  The cells enter a protective mode and there is not a lot of push for the cells to grow. 

Dr. Mattison, a neuroscientist at the National Institute of Aging in Maryland, also contends that we are “well suited” for fasting.  Our ancestors did not eat three meals a day plus snacks.  Eating sporadically was the norm, as they didn’t always have ready access to food.  The body could be sustained for weeks without eating normally because of the energy reserves store in our fat tissues that can be broken down for energy.  Another physician, Dr. David Ludwig, a professor of nutrition at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, noted that the benefit of fasting is that it forces the body to shift from using glucose to using fat for fuel.  He claims that ketones are a cleaner energy source and burns more efficiently than glucose.

Fasting as a lifestyle goes against everything that I have learned as a dietetic student. It seems to be too restrictive  and doesn't seem realistic for most to only eat one meal a day.  From my experience, when people don’t eat consistently throughout the day, they are unable to or have a hard time losing weight because they have slowed down their metabolism.     The long-term effects of fasting have not been extensively studied so it is not known if this approach is beneficial long term.   

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