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Intermittent Fasting (IF): Fad or Fact

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If you are wondering how to get over that state of sluggishness, plumpness, high blood sugar and pressure, and want to get your body’s metabolism into good gear, you may consider trying Intermittent Fasting as your New Year resolution.

Abstaining from food for 16 to 18 hours a day helps restore your disordered metabolism, and aid you live longer, reveals a study published recently in a prestigious medical journal (New England Journal of Medicine, Dec 26, 2019).
The findings validate what has till now been considered an eating fad appearing in the social media, and might encourage many of the 500 million Indians suffering from diabetes, hypertension or obesity to transform their fat-stuffed sloppy bodies into robust sprightly energetic ones.
What is Intermittent Fasting (IF)?
IF requires you to abstain from food for 16 to 18 hours a day, and eat only during the slim window period of 6 to 8 hours. This is referred to as the 16:8 diet regimes.
Another form is to eat “normally” for 5 days a week, and “fast” for two days, consuming no more than 500 Kcal/day during those 48 hours
How does IF work?
During the period of “fasting”, scientists have discovered that the body’s metabolism “switches” from burning of glucose for energy, to burning of fats and ketones. Weight loss, which is also achieved, is done not so much by restriction of total calories, but by burning excess fat during fating periods.
What health benefits does IF achieve?
This periodic deprivation of calories not only helps reduce weight, it restores insulin sensitivity and improves diabetes as well. In fact several overweight patients with diabetes ( Type 2) have been able to come off medications and insulin injections by changing the way they eat!
The benefits of IF extend to lowering of elevated blood pressure, improved brain function, lower incidence of cancers and increase life span.
Dr. Mattson, a neuroscientist and one of the authors of the study, also noted enhanced brain function in the form of improved verbal memory, as well as improved resistance to stress.
How did the idea come?
It seems to have come from observing residents of the island Okinawa of Japan, who are famed for living healthy long lives; they eat sparsely and in lengthy intervals, and consume mainly nuts, fruits and legumes.
This observation led to several studies in experimental animals and humans that have validated the benefits of this eating regime.
What are the challenges and hazards?
The main challenge seems to be to beat the hunger during the fasting phases; it takes around 2 weeks to overcome. The other is “psychosocial”. We are culturally so tuned to the idea of daily three meals and interval snacks, that the “new diet” shakes our conventional habits quite a bit!
Diabetics on insulin or medications should be careful and consult their doctors to avoid precipitous fall in blood sugar levels.
Tailpiece: Intermittent or periodic fasting has been a practice in most cultures and faith, and now science is beginning to understand why!
Wish you a healthy and happy 2020.

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