This new study designed a diet that mimics fasting without completely abstaining from food.
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Many studies had shown that fasting – drinking only water without eating anything else – quickly contributes to overall health, but it is not an easy bite for everyone, especially the sick and the elderly. Valter Longo, the lead researcher of the University of Southern California said:
“Strict fasting is hard for people to stick to, and it can also be risky, so we developed a complex diet that triggers the same effects in the body”.
The five day fasting diet is beneficial to those who want to lose weight but are anxious about the adverse side effects. The diet supplies necessary carbohydrates in the form of vegetables, which reduces the amount of sugars the body is required to metabolize.
Fast diets are back in fashion.
You can split the calories into two or three separate meals. The rest of the month the volunteers could eat normally. “That’s the most exciting” finding, Longo says.
Well, it isn’t looking much better for us.
By doing this, the body is able to cleanse itself, the researchers believe, reprogramming the body so that it enters a slower aging mode and allowing stem cells to rejuvenate. One day’s fare furnishes between 725 and 1090 calories. Longo has a joint appointment at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. For the study, three cycles of a similar diet given to 19 subjects once a month for five days. Then for the balance 5 days, they will decrease the calorie intake incrementally along with a corresponding reduction in protein, fat, and carbohydrate intake.
Now scientists say they’ve developed a five-day, once-a-month diet that mimics fasting – and is safe.
Other researchers say the results of the study are encouraging.
Till now all these experiments are done on mice, but this time it was on human beings. The study shows that cutting calories all the time may not be necessary, adds biochemist James Mitchell, also of the Harvard School of Public Health. While new diets have created multi-million empires for some, it seems this is not a money-making project. “The [diet that mimics fasting] intervention will now undergo the rigorous process needed for FDA approval, which will first require confirmation and additional tests in 60 to 70 participants, followed by a trial with 500-1,000 participants”.
Before you consider going on a prolonged fasting diet like this, Longo suggested people consult their doctors first. “There is a lot of information to figure out”.
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