10 {Research Based} Intermittent Fasting Benefits in 2016

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10 Research Based Intermittent Fasting
Benefits in 2016
With the rise in interest towards
gyms, fitness and weight loss, in the first month
of this new year we have also seen a spike in
interest towards intermittent fasting. So we
wanted to bring to you 10 Research based
intermittent fasting benefits in 2016 so that you
actually get to know what Intermittent fasting
means to your body.
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1. Intermittent fasting benefits on cellular and
overall body functionality
Alright so this is nothing very new. Intermittent
fasting  has had its predecessors right from the
advent of human beings(the Cave Man). It was very
common amongst hunters, gatherers that they might
go 3 days without food. Its same with the
animals, because they dont have food available
every day. Imagine you are in such situation or
in such times, what would happen to your body
when you fast like this? Well we can see this in
Cells if you put them in cultureArtificial
environment and  starve them for 3 days.What
happens?The cells just shrink in size.All of
these cells they cannibalize themselves and they
shrink in size but they are still fully
functional so everything a larger cell can do, a
smaller cell can do that too and that is how we
maintain full functionality. Our bodies after a
fast are designed to cannibalize ourself, shrink
our bodies, but we retain full functionality so
we can still go out and hunt, fight or whatever
we need to do.This is very basic to biology.Its
also very crucial for our health to go through
this fasting and feeding cycle because when we
are fasting we are cannibalizing thats actually
a very smart process.What happens is our body
looks around for everything inside us that we
dont need like bacteria, viruses, damaged
mitochondria other damaged things.We dont
cannibalize the healthy tissue we cannibalize the
unhealthy tissue. Thus it leads to this internal
and very natural cleaning process of unhealthy
and unwanted materials present in our bodies, and
when you feed your body the next time it can
rebuild all that tissue and cells that shrunk
earlier.
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2. Intermittent fasting benefits on loosing
weight and belly fat

• That extra flab you think you have around you its
  just unused fat or energy sitting around.This is
  what happens every time you eat.
• Your digestive system converts your food into
  energy which goes to your liver and is stored
  there in the form of glycogen. This is the first
  go to source of energy for your body in any case
  of energy deficiency. It takes about 10-12 hrs
  before you deplete the glycogen stores in your
  liver. So if you eat 3 meals a day you never
  deplete glycogen stores in your liver although if
  you exercise you can.
• One thing that when you fast and does not happen
  when you eat 3 meals a day is your energy
  metabolism shifts so that you start burning fats.
• Only once youve burnt the glycogen reserves in
  your liver you start burning fats and you produce
  what is called ketone bodies. It turns out ketone
  bodies are very good for your brain too.
• Intermittent fasting helps you loose those extra
  belly pounds by letting you to switch on the fat
  burning mode present in your body by default.
• Simple steps to turn this fat burning mode on
• Step 1 Have your dinner 2-3 hrs before you sleep
• Step 2 Have a good 7-8 hrs of sleep
• Step 3 Slowly and gradually delay your time of
  breakfast
• what these 3 simple step do is create a fasting
  window for your body by tapping into the 8 hrs
  sleeping(no food) time that already exists.

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3. Intermittent fasting benefits for people with
Diabetes
Diabetes is one of those ailments that just never
got the tag of the epidemic that it is.Majority
of the health community believes that type 2
diabetes is chronic and progressive, but
according to Jason Fung both bariatrics and
fasting proves them wrong. The fact that fasting
can help in curing diabetes has been known for
the last 100 years approximately.According to
Dr. Elliot Joslin- one of the most
famous diabetologists in the history of the
world, The fact that fasting can help in curing
diabetes has been known for the last 100 years
approximately.He wrote about this in Canadian
Medical Association Journal in 1916. Not only
this he thought it was so obvious that this fact
didnt even need any researching.and just to
give you context of the magnanimity of this guy
Harvard University has a Joslin Center for
Diabetes, and yes you guessed it right its after
this guys name. On a general outlook Type 2
diabetes can be cured and reversed with, in
technical language Ketosis (discussed in point
2), in nontechnical language Intermittent fasting
which is a combination of carb negative diet and
exercise in this case. Most of the prescribed
drugs for Diabetes can get your HbA1c down to
6.5 at best (which is well managed but still
diabetic). Where as intermittent fasting with a
carb negative diet can it down to 5 which is non
diabetic.
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4. Intermittent Fasting benefits on reducing
oxidative stress and inflammation in the body
What exactly is oxidative stress? In the simplest
language the imbalance between production of free
radicals and the ability of the body to
neutralize their harmful effects with anti
oxidants is called Oxidative stress. Now what the
hell are Free radicals? A free radical is a
highly reactive molecule containing oxygen. Its
reactive because it has one or more unpaired
electrons. Why they are bad? Well technically not
all reactive oxygen molecules are bad, some are
used to fight pathogens and microbes.But the
free radicals can be nasty.They have the ability
to chemically interact with cell components like
DNA, lipids and proteins.They steal one of their
electrons to stabilize themselves, and force them
to steal from others causing a free radical chain
reaction. Coming back to the topic.There is
evidence not only from the animals but from the
humans that fasting helps the body.It will
reduce inflammation  It will reduce oxidative
stress in organ system throughout the body.
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5. Intermittent Fasting benefits for heart
related issues

• Egyptian pyramid inscription, 3800 BC- Humans
  live on one-quarter of what they eat on the
  three-quarters lives their doctor about 6000
  yrs ago
• With a sharp increase in cardiovascular diseases
  over the past decade, looking at this situation
  with a new perspective is a dire need of the day.
• Let Intermittent Fasting Light the path.
• A lots of research on animals show lower total
  cholesterol and triacylglycerol concentrations, a
  lower heart rate, improved cardiac response to
  myocardial infarction, and lower blood pressure
  using intermittent fasting.
• If you did not understand half the terms given
  above dont worry, this is all you need to know.
  Test on animals show Intermittent fasting is good
  for their health.
• The limited data on humans shows
• Higher HDL-cholesterol concentrations
• Lower triacylglycerol concentrations
• Decreased LDL-cholesterol and TAG concentrations
• Peak LDL particle size increased
• Proportion of small LDL particles decreased
• proportion of large LDL particles increased 
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• All these evidences suggest that Intermittent
  fasting can be used to improve your cardiac
  conditions

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6. Intermittent Fasting Benefits for Rheumatoid
arthritis
Arthritis the disease of the bones and old age.
Causing you or your loved ones pain in their
joints, especially in the winter season. Well we
have some good news for you here too. According
to a study, some healthy patients of rheumatoid
arthritis had shown significant improvement by
practicing prolonged fasting for 7-10 days. The
logic behind this can be the anti inflammatory
effect(talked in point no. 4) that Intermittent
fasting brings along with all the benefits it
comes with. When reviewing these test subjects
many showed reduced pain, stiffness and overall
discomfort, similar to the effects of consumption
of analgesics, several clinical variables, and
serum concentration of orosomucoid.
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7. Intermittent Fasting Benefits for Cancer and
its prevention.
Alright time to enter the big league. The bad boy
of all diseases. Cancer simply put, is the
overgrowth or uncontrolled growth of cells in a
particular part of the body. Chemotherapy is the
most prominent cure for this disease, but with it
brings lots of side effects and other discomforts
to the patients. According to a 2009 case study
Ten cancer patients underwent fasting prior to
and after chemotherapy treatment. With fasting
times ranging from 48-140 hrs prior to and 5-56
hrs after all were successful in reducing the
side effects of chemotherapy. Round 1 A woman
of 51 yrs of age suffering from breast cancer
went through chemotherapy in a fasted state of
140 hrs. She felt well enough to go to work and
continue with her daily activities. Round 2  In
this case she underwent 2 chemo therapies but
with her regular diet and suffered from really
pronounced side effects Round 3 This time she
fasted again and the effects were minimized again
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8. Intermittent Fasting benefits to your Brain
Intermittent Fasting does good things to the
brain, according to studies, in the animals we
have seen some neurochemical changes happening in
the brain which makes us say this. Everyone knows
in certain religion people will fast
periodically. Down through history many famous
people with good brains have fasted
regularly Plato- i fast for greater physical and
mental efficiency Why does Intermittent fasting
bolsters brain power? During development of your
brain but also during adulthood neurons are
developed from stem cells.They grow out their
axons and dendrites , they form connections with
each other(synapses) and communicate with each
other. During aging many peoples brain ages
successfully, the stay cognitively intact whereas
unfortunately others develop disease. Take home
bit Fasting is a challenge to your brain and
your brain responds to that challenge of not
having food by activating adaptive stress
response pathways that help your brain cope with
stress and risk resist disease. Does this make
sense in evolutionary terms? If your hungry and
havent found food you better figure out how to
find food. You dont want your brain to shut down
if your hungry in fact that is what we find in
the animals neural circuits are more active. The
neurochemical changes happening in the brain
during intermittent fasting are very similar to
exercise. A runner in a cross country race fells
this extreme challenge in his brain, that why
even am i running, but after it is over they feel
great and they feel relaxed. Why this
happens? Exercise and intermittent fasting both
produce proteins in the brain called
neurotrophic factors which promote the growth
of neurons, promote the connection of neurons and
strengthens the synapses.
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9. Intermittent Fasting Benefits for Alzheimer
Studies on Effects of Intermittent Fasting on
brain in the context of age related
neurodegenerative disorders found that we could
slow down the abnormal accumulation of amyloid or
degeneration of dopamine neurons in Alzheimers
and Parkinsons  by reducing energy intake, which
we also term as Intermittent Fasting. As
discussed earlier Intermittent Fasting imposes
stress on the brain(in a good way) that puts in
in a shocked state. In this state to cope up with
this shock the brain has to create new neurons
which makes the brain more resistant towards
protein plaques which cause diseased
like Alzheimer and Parkinson. In these conditions
of hunger induced stress by fasting the brain
produces neurotropic factor which coaxes the
brain stem cells to convert into neurons and
trigger chemicals promoting neural health.
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10. Intermittent Fasting Benefits for extended
lifespan
Well this has been known for a long time one way
to extend the lifespan of lab animals is to
reduce their energy intake and in rats and mice
one can increase their lifespan by 30-40 When it
comes to humans there are no particular studies
that we could find that pointed out to the
conclusion of this statement. But come on use you
common sense, you have just read 9 amazing
research backed health benefits of intermittent
fasting so far. If it can help you in achieving
even in some of the above mentioned benefits,
well half your journey towards this goal of yours
is taken care of.
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Conclusion
Which was the most relevant Intermittent fasting
benefit for you?  Which one you think we
missed?  Let us know about your thoughts
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