Is Intermittent Fasting Effective?

Intermittent fasting is a type of diet in which a person limits either his eating times to 6-8 hours per day, or the number of moderate-sized meals that he will eat in a week. The big question is, is it effective?

Mark Manson, a neuroscientist from Johns Hopkins Medicine, says that “it could be a part of a healthy lifestyle”. He has studied the effects of intermittent fasting for 25 years, and he adopted it in his life 20 years ago.

An array of animal and some human studies have shown that alternating between times of fasting and eating supports cellular health, probably by triggering an age-old adaptation to periods of food scarcity called metabolic switching. Such a switch occurs when cells use up their stores of rapidly accessible, sugar-based fuel, and begin converting fat into energy in a slower metabolic process.

Mattson says studies have shown that this switch improves blood sugar regulation, increases resistance to stress and suppresses inflammation. Because most Americans eat three meals plus snacks each day, they do not experience the switch, or the suggested benefits.

More about this study over at EurekAlert.

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