What is this type of fasting? It consists of not eating or eating much less than usual for two to three days (not necessarily consecutive) during the week.
As a reminder, the main advantages of this practice are:
- an increase in sensitivity of cells to insulin ;
- stimulation ofautophagy (self-cleaning function of the body by its own cells);
- a decrease in overweight ;
- lower incidence of metabolic diseases ;
- a better general well-being.
For its research (a randomized controlled trial), the Austrian team recruited 46 participants (22 women and 24 men), with an average age of 63, subjects to type 2 diabetes for an average of twenty-one yearswith an average BMI of 34.3 and an average glycated hemoglobin level of 8.3%.
The protocol consisted of reduce food intake by 75% for 3 days (distributed at leisure) in the week, so as to respect, during these 3 days, a strict fasting for 18 hours out of 24, all for 3 months.
After three months, the fasting group experienced a weight loss of 5 kg on average, saw his glycated hemoglobin decrease significantly and was able to reduce your regular dose of insulin of 9 IU on average, in comparison with the control group whose parameters have, on the contrary, slightly increased. Furthermore, no hypoglycemia occurred during the protocol.
The study did not intervene specifically on the composition of the diet of the participants, but stuck to its caloric value. Knowing that the diet recommended for diabetics is far from ideal with the objective of a hypothetical normalization of metabolic parameters without medication (moreover not at all envisaged, in general), one can imagine that even more notable progress could be obtained with adequate dietary corrections, a fortiori over a longer period.
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