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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