Following a fasting-mimicking diet – that is, reducing calories 5 days a month – would help reduce biological age by 2.5 years by acting on insulin resistance, liver fat and aging of the immune system.
- A fasting-mimicking diet reduces insulin resistance, liver fat and aging immune system, a new study suggests.
- According to researchers’ calculations, it would reduce biological age by 2.5 years.
- “This is the first study to show that a diet-based intervention that does not require chronic diet or other lifestyle changes can make people biologically younger,” says the lead author. .
Weight loss, preservation of cognitive functions, improvement of sleep… many benefits are attributed to fasting. To evaluate them, researchers from the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology (USA) asked volunteers to follow a diet imitating fasting 5 days a month.
Result: their organism presented a biological age 2.5 years younger than their real age after 3 months.
Fasting for 5 days improves several health indicators
For this study published in the journal Nature Communications on February 20, 2024, scientists brought together around a hundred people aged 18 to 70. Some followed a specific diet imitating fasting for 5 days per month. That is to say food intake composed of unsaturated fats (omega-3, 6 and 9) but low in calories, proteins and carbohydrates. They consisted of herbal soups, energy bars or even tea as well as mineral supplements. The next 25 days were based on a normal diet. This cycle was repeated 3 to 4 times. The volunteers in the control groups followed a normal or Mediterranean-type diet.
Individuals who did the 5-day fast showed notable reductions in insulin resistance, liver fat levels, and signs of immune aging. Physiological measures – such as reduced abdominal and liver fat, were corroborated by blood tests showing a reduced risk of metabolic syndrome. Additionally, fasting cycles appear to increase the lymphoid/myeloid ratio – an indicator of a younger immune system.
Furthermore, the team was able to establish with in-depth analyzes an average biological rejuvenation of 2.5 years in these participants.
Fasting: a simple solution to rejuvenate
“This is the first study to show that a diet-based intervention that does not require chronic diet or other lifestyle changes can make people biologically younger, based on both changes in risk factors for aging and disease and a method for assessing biological age”explains Professor Valter Longo of the USC Leonard Davis School, the lead author of the study.
For him, his work confirms that fasting is an interesting option for reducing patients’ risk of illness and improving their health without too significant changes in their lifestyle.
“Although many doctors already recommend fasting in the United States and Europe, these results should encourage many more health professionals to recommend fasting cycles to patients with elevated levels of disease risk factors as well as to the general population who would like to improve their health and biological age.”
