The benefits of intermittent fasting for the liver
How Intermittent Fasting affects liver health
What is Intermittent Fasting
You probably heard about Intermittent Fasting (IF). It is currently one of the most popular health and fitness trends because of its many health benefits. People use it for weight loss, health improvement and to simplify their lifestyle.
Intermittent fasting is an eating pattern that cycles between periods of fasting and eating. It is not based on which type of foods you should eat, but WHEN to eat them.
There are various ways to do intermittent fasting, but these are the most popular:
- The 16:8 method: this is the most popular method. Called the Leangains protocol, it is a daily 16-hour fast, followed by an 8-hour eating window. So for example, you could skip breakfast and fast till 1 pm. Then you are allowed to eat from 1–9 pm. Then after 9 pm, you fast for 16 hours, until 1 pm the next day.
- Eat-Stop-Eat: Another popular method is fasting for 24 hours, once or twice per week.
- The 5:2 diet: With this method, you only consume 500–600 calories on two non-consecutive days every week. The other five days you eat normally.
Even though it’s a relatively new trend, fasting has been common throughout human evolution. Our ancestors did not have supermarkets, refrigerators, or food available on a daily basis. Therefore, humans evolved to be able to go without food for extended periods. I genuinely believe fasting from time to time is more natural than eating 3 to 4 or even 6 meals per day.
Health Benefits of Intermittent Fasting
Research shows that many health benefits come with intermittent fasting.
- Positively affects cells, genes, and hormones
- Helps with weight loss
- Can reduce insulin resistance, which lowers your risk of type 2 diabetes
- Can lower oxidative stress and inflammation
- Induces various cellular repair processes
- May benefit heart health
- may help prevent cancer
- Benefits the brain
- May assist in preventing Alzheimer’s disease
But, more research is still needed to know the long-term effects of intermittent fasting.
How intermittent fasting affects the liver
As a liver health passionate, I was especially interested in the benefits of intermittent fasting for the liver. I stumbled upon research from a team in Australia who researched how fasting at controlled periods of time impacted the liver.
The study involved mice and state-of-the-art technology to find out how fasting every other day affects the liver proteins. Lead researcher Dr. Mark Larance, from the Sydney University, said: “We know that fasting can be an effective intervention to treat disease and improve liver health. But we haven’t known how fasting reprograms liver proteins, which perform a diverse array of essential metabolic functions.”
Dr. Larance explained that for the first time, they showed that HNF4-(alpha) is inhibited during intermittent fasting. This brings downstream consequences, such as reducing the excess of blood proteins in inflammation or affecting bile synthesis. This new knowledge assists in explaining some of the previously known data about intermittent fasting.
They also found out that fasting every other day changed the metabolism of fatty acids in the liver. Knowing they, they can further research glucose tolerance and the regulation of diabetes.
Dr. Larance said: “What’s really exciting is that this new knowledge about the role of HNF4-(alpha) means it could be possible to mimic some of the effects of intermittent fasting through the development of liver-specific HNF4-(alpha) regulators. Last year we published research into the impact of every-other-day-fasting on humans. Using these mouse data, we can now build up improved models of fasting for better human health.”
The findings of this research will assist medical scientists in their research in cancer, cardiovascular, and diabetes to develop new interventions to reduce disease risk and identify the best intervals for fasting.
