intermittent fastingmeanwhile, proposes to expand the range of hours without eating and raise it, for example, to 16 hours, time in which it will only be possible to drink water, coffee or tea without sugar. During the remaining 8 hours of the day, intermittent fasting allows you to eat practically what you want, with the logic of always opting for foods healthy.
“Fasts are ancestral practices, ancient, present in all religions and all civilizations throughout history; It is something highly implemented throughout humanity for different types of purposes, whether religious or purifying”. Thus she began to explain the Bachelor of Nutrition María Cecilia Ponce (MN 3362) about the practice that adds more and more followers.
“What is known today is that keeping us free from food for a few hours induces digestive rest, and also helps to have a better perception of when one eats out of habit and when out of real hunger,” said the nutrigenomics specialist. , who highlighted that “it is a practice that can be started with certain patients who seek to go a little further, not just restrict calories for a matter esthetic nor of weightif not that what is going to be tried with the extension of the fast is induce certain organic processes that repair and detoxify cells”.
There are different types of fasts -dried, of 12, 14, 16 or 24 hours-, but the one that is talked about the most, because several famous people do it, is the 8/16. This plan consists of 16 hours of fasting and eight hours of food, which must be healthy and balanced, according to the specialist.
“What happens is that from 14/16 hours certain processes of what is called autophagy are revealed, which is like cell ‘recycling’ where the cell is cleaned and can function more correctly again; It is a process that occurs in our body all the time, but giving it a digestive rest, that is, giving the body that space to detoxify and repair itself, is necessary for it to function properly,” Ponce pointed out.
The nutrigenomics specialist suggested that “the ideal, or what is proposed, is that you can have dinner early and extend breakfast a little; With that, the process of digestive rest begins, which would be 12 hours. What happens is that in today’s civilization, most people go to bed late and get up very early, and that fasting window is getting shorter and shorter.”
Does intermittent fasting work for weight loss?
While the debates continue around what are the best strategies to lose weight or create a healthier environment, specialists from the Southern Medical University in Guangzhou in China confirmed, after an investigation which was published in The New England Journal of Medicine (NJEM), that the method known as intermittent fasting it has no significant benefit compared to simple calorie counting in controlling weight gain or loss.
The results obtained by the specialists after 12 months of diets assigned to the two work groups (one with a standard diet and the others with a time restriction for eating meals), mean weight loss was not significantly different between the standard and the one with time restriction (8.0 kg vs. 6.3 kg). Furthermore, no significant differences were observed between the groups in body fat, lean mass, blood pressure, lipid profile, or insulin metabolism.
“Calorie intake restriction explained most of the beneficial effects of a time-restricted eating regimen,” said Huijie Zhang, one of the study’s authors and a researcher at Southern Medical University in Guangzhou. In summary, we can confirm that the determinant variable of weight loss and the other variables that affect it, depends on reduced calorie intake, regardless of time in which the intake of food and beverages during the day is distributed over time”.
What happens in the body during fasting?
“When one is without consuming any food (no proteins, no glucose, no carbohydrates, no fats) insulin levels begin to decrease, which favors in some way organic and metabolic processes of detoxification and cell repairPonce explained.
And he detailed: “There are laboratory studies carried out on rats, in which two groups were fed the same amount of food and calories, one without restrictions and the other that was only given food for eight hours, with a digestive rest of 16. And what was found is that the rats that ate in restricted hours had metabolic benefits such as decreased glucose intolerance and inflammatory processes, better motor skills, less inflammatory profile in general, less aggressive responses. There it began to be deduced that the benefits of extending the hours of fasting by at least 12 hours bring metabolic benefits.”
By lowering sugar levels (because no food is being consumed) “better insulin sensitivity, autophagy and cell regeneration are generated in the long term, which prevents premature aging.”
Also, the expert added, “after those hours the oxidation of fatty acids begins to become evident, more fat begins to be burned and it could be a factor to reduce body adipose tissue, in addition, by facilitating that digestive rest, less fat is produced. intestinal inflammation and -after 16 hours- the expression of some genes related to longevity is promoted which begin to express themselves more correctly”.
How to put it into practice and who cannot do it
Ponce recommended “start at the youngest respecting the 12 hourswhich implies respecting the vital and natural circadian cycle of eating when there is sun and resting when the sun goes down”.
“Thus, just having dinner earlier and having breakfast a few hours later will allow us to respect these cycles, be more aware of when we have a real appetite, rest the digestive system and somehow restore the correct functions for each organism,” the specialist pointed out.
“Later, if other purposes are sought, such as inducing autophagy or mitochondrial biogenesisthat is, to have more mitochondria, which is the energy source of the cells, there you would have to fast for 14/16 hours, for which you have to be more prepared, have a more balanced diet beforehand, be more aware of what you are going to eat before and after, be advised by specific professionals and in this way begin to include those fasts of 16 maybe once or twice a week and do it in a more bearable way, “he advised.
Intermittent fasting is contraindicated “for patients who are underweight, women who are nursing or pregnant, patients with eating disorders, or diabetics who require insulin.” “It is not for everybody; it is simply a strategy to induce genes for longevity, autophagy, repair and mitochondrial biogenesis, which are extremely interesting processes to prevent diseases and induce longevity -Ponce insisted-. But it is not for everyone, you have to be well advised and nutritionally prepared beforehand with a healthy diet”.
