Fasting diets like the 5:2 'can help prevent diabetes by reducing cholesterol after 10 to 12 hours'
- Study identifies process that converts bad cholesterol to energy
- Researchers say these diets can help combat diabetes risk factors
Researchers at the Intermountain Medical Centre in Salt Lake City, Utah, fasting reduces cholesterol levels in people with pre-diabetes (file picture shows a patient testing for the condition)
Diets that involved fasting - such as the 5:2 - can reduce cholesterol, according to a new study.
Researchers found fasting reduces cholesterol levels in people with pre-diabetes over an extended period.
The study of periodic fasting has identified a biological process in the body that converts bad cholesterol in fat cells to energy, thus combating diabetes risk factors.
Researchers at the Intermountain Heart Institute at Intermountain Medical Centre in Salt Lake City, Utah, noticed that after 10 to 12 hours of time fasting, the body starts scavenging for other sources of energy throughout the body to sustain itself.
The body pulls LDL cholesterol, which is considered bad, from the fat cells and uses it as energy.
Lead researcher Doctor Benjamin Horne, director of cardiovascular and genetic epidemiology at the Intermountain Medical Centre Heart Institute, said: 'Fasting has the potential to become an important diabetes intervention.
'Though we've studied fasting and it's health benefits for years, we didn't know why fasting could provide the health benefits we observed related to the risk of diabetes.'
Pre-diabetes means the amount of glucose, also called sugar, in the blood is higher than normal but not high enough to be called diabetes.
Previous research by Dr Horne and his team focused on healthy people during one day of fasting and showed that routine, water-only fasting was associated with lower glucose levels and weight loss.
Dr Horne said: 'When we studied the effects of fasting in apparently healthy people, cholesterol levels increased during the one-time 24-hour fast.
'The changes that were most interesting or unexpected were all related to metabolic health and diabetes risk.
'Together with our prior studies that showed decades of routine fasting was associated with a lower risk of diabetes and coronary artery disease, this led us to think that fasting is most impactful for reducing the risk of diabetes and related metabolic problems.'
Due to the findings in the previous study, Dr Horne launched this new study to look at the effects of fasting in pre-diabetics over an extended period of time.
The study participants were pre-diabetics, including men and women between the ages of 30 and 69 with a least three metabolic risk factors.
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The 5:2 diet is a plan that let you eat what you want five days a week, before sending your body to starvation mode for two
Some of the participants were overweight or obese while some were not. Previous fasting research by other institutions have all only involved obese people and focused on weight loss due to fasting.
Though weight loss did occur in the Intermountain Medical Centre study, three pounds over six weeks, the main focus of the new study was diabetes intervention.
Dr Horne said: 'During actual fasting days, cholesterol went up slightly in this study, as it did in our prior study of healthy people, but we did notice that over a six-week period cholesterol levels decreased by about 12 per cent in addition to the weight loss.
'Because we expect that the cholesterol was used for energy during the fasting episodes and likely came from fat cells, this leads us to believe fasting may be an effective diabetes intervention.'
The process of extracting LDL cholesterol from the fat cells for energy should help negate insulin resistance. In insulin resistance, the pancreas produces more and more insulin until it can no longer produce sufficient insulin for the body's demands, then blood sugar rises.
Dr Horne said: 'The fat cells themselves are a major contributor to insulin resistance, which can lead to diabetes.
'Because fasting may help to eliminate and break down fat cells, insulin resistance may be frustrated by fasting.'
Dr Horne said that a more in-depth study is needed but the findings lay the groundwork for that future study, adding: 'Although fasting may protect against diabetes it's important to keep in mind that these results were not instantaneous in the studies that we performed. It takes time.
'How long and how often people should fast for health benefits are additional questions we're just beginning to examine.'
The research was presented at the annual American Diabetes Association Scientific Sessions.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2658502/Fasting-diets-like-5-2-reduce-cholesterol-10-12-hours.html#ixzz35G3IkhxM
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