Intermittent Fasting Improves Biomarkers in Metabolic Syndrome Patients
There is a blurry gray area between intermittent fasting and time restricted feeding. The study here is somewhere in that zone, as the participants did eat daily, with less fasting time between meals than would be the case for, say, alternate day fasting. Time spent hungry does appear to be influential to the outcome, but perhaps less so than overall calories consumed. Inevitably, people eat fewer calories if given less time in which to consume calories. Unsurprisingly, eating less improves metrics in people with metabolic syndrome, a condition achieved by being overweight as a result of eating too much. The point of interest here is the specific metrics measured and the results: by now we all know that calorie restriction and fasting are beneficial, but there is plenty of work yet to do when it comes to quantifying those benefits.
Metabolic syndrome is characterized by central obesity, insulin resistance, elevated blood pressure, and dyslipidemia. Metabolic syndrome is a significant risk factor for several common cancers (e.g., liver, colorectal, breast, pancreas). Pharmacologic treatments used for the components of the metabolic syndrome appear to be insufficient to control cancer development in subjects with metabolic syndrome. Murine models showed that cancer has the slowest progression when there is no food consumption during the daily activity phase. Intermittent fasting from dawn to sunset is a form of fasting practiced during human activity hours. To test the anticancer effect of intermittent fasting from dawn to sunset in metabolic syndrome, we conducted a pilot study in 14 subjects with metabolic syndrome who fasted (no eating or drinking) from dawn to sunset for more than 14 hours daily for four consecutive weeks.
We collected serum samples before 4-week intermittent fasting, at the end of 4th week during 4-week intermittent fasting and 1 week after 4-week intermittent fasting. We performed serum proteomic analysis using nano ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. We found a significant fold increase in the levels of several tumor suppressor and DNA repair gene protein products (GP)s at the end of 4th week during 4-week intermittent fasting (CALU, INTS6, KIT, CROCC, PIGR), and 1 week after 4-week intermittent fasting (CALU, CALR, IGFBP4, SEMA4B) compared with the levels before 4-week intermittent fasting. We also found a significant reduction in the levels of tumor promoter GPs at the end of 4th week during 4-week intermittent fasting (POLK, CD109, CAMP, NIFK, SRGN), and 1 week after 4-week intermittent fasting (CAMP, PLAC1) compared with the levels before 4-week intermittent fasting.
Fasting from dawn to sunset for four weeks also induced an anti-diabetes proteome response by upregulating the key regulatory proteins of insulin signaling at the end of 4th week during 4-week intermittent fasting (VPS8, POLRMT, IGFBP-5) and 1 week after 4-week intermittent fasting (PRKCSH), and an anti-aging proteome response by upregulating H2B histone proteins 1 week after 4-week intermittent fasting. Subjects had a significant reduction in body mass index, waist circumference, and improvement in blood pressure that co-occurred with the anticancer, anti-diabetes, and anti-aging serum proteome response. These findings suggest that intermittent fasting from dawn to sunset actively modulates the respective genes and can be an adjunct treatment in metabolic syndrome. Further studies are needed to test the intermittent fasting from dawn to sunset in the prevention and treatment of metabolic syndrome-induced cancers.
I'm not convinced that we should be promoting 'calorie restriction' as a generally beneficial name for the behaviour suggested. To those who do not look into it, calorie restriction would simply mean reduce your food intake, primarily, even solely. The caveat of high nutrition, which is not reasonable to assume is obvious (as opposed to common levels of nutrition), is of great risk if neglected. Get the nutrition right first, then manage and optimize your intake relative to lifestyle or vulnerability level, with the increased benefit of restricting it. Further, Is there compelling evidence that people in their last 5 - 10 years of life, with no other non-ageing indications, benefit from a calorie reduced but still nutritionally optimal diet as opposed to just a nutritionally optimal diet? The point is that: calorie restriction with ideal nutrition likely maximizes 'potential' health-span of certain individuals in certain circumstances/ stages of life/ conditions of health, but ideal nutrition increases likely 'common' lifespan of all individuals in all circumstances (probably). Getting the nutrition wrong is more of a detriment than the converse benefit of getting the calorie restriction AND nutrition right -- fully realizing that different lifestyles and states of health likely need very different protocols and management. I suppose the same could be said for exercise - attaining optimum exercise benefit usually only co-exists with a decidedly higher-risk of activity -- which if done wrong could be worse than having not exercised at all. A bit pedantic perhaps, but if we want to appeal to the general public, we can't assume high levels of health sophistication.