Intermittent fasting has becoming increasingly popular as a dietary pattern than focuses not on what to eat but when to eat. This way of eating has become popular as practice to improve your health.
Intermittent Fasting (IF) is the idea of restricting your feeding window and increasing your fasting window. For example, if you eat breakfast at 9am and finish dinner at 7pm, that's a 10-hour feeding window and a 14-hour fasting window.
Feeding windows can be as small as you'd like, but not longer than 12 hours to get the full benefits. Intermittent fasting has exploded in positive research over the past decade.
As you all know, I practice evidence-based medicine, so here's the evidence!
▫ H E A R T - studies in rats link intermittent fasting to the prevention of heart attacks & stroke (Wan) and is also shown to decrease blood pressure.
▫ B L O O D S U G A R - The most prominent research with IF has been on people with Type 2 diabetes. Studies show IF helps to decrease blood sugar, increase sensitivity to insulin, and increase resistance to stress (Anson).
▫ A G I N G - In addition to being more able to handle stress, IF stimulates pathways in the body that promote the healthy aging, neuron health, and resistance against disease (Martin)
▫ B R A I N - Studies show that IF helps in the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease (Mattson) ***If you're only going to look at one study, look at this one! It covers a lot!
▫ B O D Y - Lastly and perhaps the most popular reason why people do IF is that it is shown to aid in weight loss and decreasing inflammation (Mavrommatis)
You may have seen the post from earlier this year on how Intermittent Fasting can Affect Women's Hormones. If you missed it, check it out here!