The so-called ‘intermittent fasting’ is a type of diet in which it refuses-voluntarily-any food to the body for 12-18 hours in a row or only 500 calories are ingested one or two days per week.
A diet that, increasingly popular among the population, allows rapid weight loss in the vast majority of cases.However, their results are not so ‘spectacular’ with the future of the weeks.
And it is that as some studies have concluded, up to 70% of the people who decide to fast ‘at times’ end up recovering the weight lost in the medium term.But it seems that the main problem with this type of diet does not have so much to do with body volume.And it is that as a study by the University of Sao Paulo (Brazil) shows, intermittent diets impact very negatively on insulin activity, so they increase, and much, the risk of development of type 2 diabetes - andof other diseases.
As Ana Bonassa, director of this research presented in the framework of the XX Congress of the European Endocrinology Society (ESA) explained in Barcelona, “ours is the first work to show that, despite the weight loss, diets based on intermittent fasting damage the pancreas and affect the function of insulin in healthy individuals, which can lead to the development of diabetes and other serious pathologies ».
long -term effects
Type 2 diabetes is a disease caused by the organism's inability to produce sufficient insulin amounts or to use this hormone in an ‘adequate’ way.And since this hormone synthesized in the pancreas is responsible for regulating blood sugar levels, the circulatory torrent ends up carrying an excess of glucose that, in the long run, ends up damaging multiple organs throughout the body.
A disease suffered by about 400 million people around the world and whose appearance is directly associated with obesity.So much so that one of the first measures that patients with diabetes should adopt is to change their dietary habits to lose weight.Or what is the same, get diet.However, it seems that intermittent fasting is not the most appropriate option.
In this context, intermittent fasting is a type of diet that in recent years has gained a large number of followers eager to lose weight.All this despite the fact that the evidence about its effectiveness is, at least, contradictory.And it is of no use to lose a weight that will end up recovering after a few months.But there is even more.It is not yet known if this type of food may or may not be harmful in the long term.And the indications point out that it is like this: different studies have found that this intermittent fasting can produce reactive oxygen species - the consolidated ‘free radicals’ - whose accumulation is very harmful to cells.
Long -term intermittent diets are beta cells of pancreatic islets, responsible for insulin production
In the new study, the authors resorted to an animal model - adults - to which they submitted to an intermittent fasting for a period of three months.And what they saw is that, as expected, the animals lost weight and ended up reducing their food intake.But the results did not end here.And it is that the loss of fat was not ‘uniform’.In fact, animals experienced an increase in abdominal fat.And what is more important, the authors observed considerable damage in the beta cells of the pancreatic islets - this is, the cells responsible for producing insulin - caused by an increase in free radical levels and an elevation of the markers ofInsulin resistance.
Take withCaution
In short, it seems that intermittent fasting can reduce the body's ability to produce insulin and use this hormone in a ‘correct’ way.Negative effects that could induce long -term the appearance of type 2 diabetes and other metabolic diseases.T
This is how, waiting for subsequent investigations that confirm - or reflects - these results, the authors request caution before potential users decide to eat and fast discontinued, especially in the case of patients who already suffer from a pathologyMetabolic - certainly common situation in the population with obesity.
As Ana Bonassa concludes, «we should consider that the population with overweight or obesity that chooses to follow a diet based on intermittent fasting already has insulin resistance.Therefore, and although this diet can induce rapid weight loss, it could also cause very serious damage to long -term health, in case of the development of type 2 diabetes ».