Health & Medicine
Feast or Famine? This Diet May Extend Your Life
Catherine Griffin
First Posted: Feb 27, 2015 09:49 AM EST
A certain diet may be able to extend your life. Scientists have found that putting people on a feast-or-famine diet may mimic some of the benefits of fasting, and that adding antioxidant supplements may counteract some of those benefits.
Fasting has been shown to extend lifespan in mice and improve age-related diseases. Fasting every day, though, can be hard to maintain. Now, scientists have found that there may be an alternative to claim some of the same benefits.
"People don't want to just under-eat for their whole lives," said Martin Wegman, one of the researchers, in a news release. "We started thinking about the concept of intermittent fasting."
Fasting in mice causes an increase in SIRT3. The SIRT3 gene econdes a protein also called SIRT3. This protein belongs to a class of proteins called sirtuins which, if increased in mice, can extend their lifespans. Scientists believe that proteins such as SIRT3 are activated by oxidative stress, which is triggered when there are more free radicals produced in the body than the body can neutralize with antioxidants.
Yet it seems that fasting isn't the only thing that causes this effect. The scientists recruited 24 study participants in a double-blinded, randomized clinical trial. During a three-week period, the participants alternated one day of eating 25 percent of their daily caloric intake with one day of eating 175 percent of their daily caloric intake.
At the end of three weeks, the researchers found that beneficial sirtuin proteins tended to increase as a result of the diet. But when antioxidants were supplemented on top of the diet, some of these increases disappeared.
The findings reveal a bit more about what diets may help your health. Currently, scientists hope to conduct future studies that examine a larger cohort of participants and include studying a larger number of genes.
The findings are published in the journal Rejuvenation Research.
For more great science stories and general news, please visit our sister site, Headlines and Global News (HNGN).
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First Posted: Feb 27, 2015 09:49 AM EST
A certain diet may be able to extend your life. Scientists have found that putting people on a feast-or-famine diet may mimic some of the benefits of fasting, and that adding antioxidant supplements may counteract some of those benefits.
Fasting has been shown to extend lifespan in mice and improve age-related diseases. Fasting every day, though, can be hard to maintain. Now, scientists have found that there may be an alternative to claim some of the same benefits.
"People don't want to just under-eat for their whole lives," said Martin Wegman, one of the researchers, in a news release. "We started thinking about the concept of intermittent fasting."
Fasting in mice causes an increase in SIRT3. The SIRT3 gene econdes a protein also called SIRT3. This protein belongs to a class of proteins called sirtuins which, if increased in mice, can extend their lifespans. Scientists believe that proteins such as SIRT3 are activated by oxidative stress, which is triggered when there are more free radicals produced in the body than the body can neutralize with antioxidants.
Yet it seems that fasting isn't the only thing that causes this effect. The scientists recruited 24 study participants in a double-blinded, randomized clinical trial. During a three-week period, the participants alternated one day of eating 25 percent of their daily caloric intake with one day of eating 175 percent of their daily caloric intake.
At the end of three weeks, the researchers found that beneficial sirtuin proteins tended to increase as a result of the diet. But when antioxidants were supplemented on top of the diet, some of these increases disappeared.
The findings reveal a bit more about what diets may help your health. Currently, scientists hope to conduct future studies that examine a larger cohort of participants and include studying a larger number of genes.
The findings are published in the journal Rejuvenation Research.
For more great science stories and general news, please visit our sister site, Headlines and Global News (HNGN).
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone