Intermittent Fasting Completely Reverses Type 2 Diabetes in Study
scitechdaily.com
scitechdaily.com
I have only ever eaten food when I’m actually hungry, ever since I was born, and have always been thin. Some people say I’m too thin.
Often eating is a chore for me, and I’ll push myself to do other things until I am absolutely starving. My eating habits have changed with age. When I was young I would have to eat three or four times a day. As I get older I only need one or two meals.
Some people are hungry a lot. For a variety of reasons. For example, the choice of previous foods they've eaten can result in increased hunger. As can metabolism. And activity level. I suspect microbiome as well, although I don't recall specifically reading anything about that. Depending on the person, stress may increase hunger or decrease it. Depression can have the same impact of either increasing or decreasing hunger. Some of the people experiencing increased hunger may gain weight, some won't.
Different people also get different levels of pleasure from eating. Some very little, some very much. The effects on serotonin, dopamine, and endorphins differs from person to person. I know I saw one study once where they found that the pleasure centers of the brain lit up much more than average in overweight people when they merely thought about their favorite foods, and much less than average in people who had been thin their entire lives.
I think you're correct in that many people eat out of habit. They also eat from boredom. Some people begin to feel hungry merely at the mention of food.
So I don't think it's as simple as telling people to only eat when they are hungry. Although that's a good rule of thumb, you may need to also address some of the other factors (like food choice, depression, etc.) if you want a given individual to remain at a healthy weight.
Intermittent fasting and portion control helped me differentiate the two, as well as, as you point out, see the effects the different kinds of food have on my feeling hungry two hours later.
What I find is that it's usually the second kind of "hunger" which has the worst effect on my concentration. It's when I know I have this or that snack lying around, and I keep thinking about having some, and the only way to calm that thought is to go and eat.
The first kind has a much different effect, I just feel like I have no strength, and it makes me think of eating "actual" food.
> So I don't think it's as simple as telling people to only eat when they are hungry.
I think you're right, but I also think that it's possible to teach people to listen to their bodies and learn the effects different foods have on the feeling of hunger.
The issue is that some foods, especially in restaurants, are "foods that make you hungry" disguised as "healthy meals". Think salads or just a piece of meat with vegetables, but drenched in some sugary-fatty sauce.
If you don't eat for about day (or longer), the short-term glucose storage will be depleted, ketosis starts and you'll actually feel hungry - though it usually fades once the body adapts to breaking down fat and proteins.
Having an empty, possibly even grumbling stomach or feeling appetite/ craving for sugar isn't hunger. I can recommend trying out to fast for a couple of days in order to experience the difference. I've kinda intuitively shifted to intermittent fasting afterwards and usually don't have any urge to eat food until after noon.
The best way for me to mitigate it is to eat very large amount of vegetables, the problem is that I can really have those amounts at home, not really at a restaurant.
That's very good for you, be glad your genetics / environment enable you to not be hungry, as stupid as it sounds. I'm always hungry, I can always just eat until my belly hurts (with regrets after). I'm under control, do a lot of high intensity cardio and muscle training to increase my total metabolism and practice strong discipline to not overeat. I'm thin with some nice muscles now, but as soon as I let myself go and let "nature" take over, I'll gain weight again because I'm hungry and always was. I'm not complaining, my genetics / environment enabled me to do other things most other people can't do. Life is not fair and the universe owes us nothing.
I'm pretty sure some people (like me) get endorphins from food and get actual enjoyment from the process. These people have issues with overeating and eating too often because food tastes GOOD.
Then for others it's just that boring time when you have to chew and swallow stuff for your stupid body not to die. These are the folks who could just sustain themselves with Soylent Green and be 100% happy.
Whenever I have the opportunity to dine at a foreign restaurant, or in a foreign country, or with someone who is simply a good cook, the food is much better. There is something wrong with America’s food.
EDIT: A good example of this is Costco’s chickens. They are just a salty mess. I had a meal recently where there was some good homemade food coupled with that chicken as a disgusting centerpiece. I didn’t eat very much of it.
Most definitely. There are multiple anecdata of people coming from US to anywhere in Europe and eating whatever they can find - and still they lose weight and feel better.
It's just the fact that in the EU producers need to prove their ingredients aren't harmful. In the US they just need to prove they aren't literal poison, and even that's ok if the amounts are small enough and you lobby the correct senators.
Or just the fact that Subway's bread is legally considered cake in Ireland, because it has too much _sugar_ in it.
then winter hit and I lost control again. I made almost all of that back again.
winter makes me stay up late, and eat poorly (soul food, comfort food). Sleeping in, getting not enough sleep and cold weather are all known triggers for me.
> I have only ever eaten food when I’m actually hungry
When I was quite young we ate everything because of food anxiety. My parents were very good at trying to keep those risks become overtly visible to us kids, though there were of course some lapses, but they required behavior like always finishing with completely empty plates, regardless with what had been on them. Who knew what might be for dinner tomorrow, much less how much?
Later things were not as precarious, and as an adult, never have been. Nevertheless I was unable to shed the "grad student at a buffet" mentality until I happened to try IF.
Nowadays I work out every day and still only eat once or twice a day. I can never finish even one dish at a restaurant any more.
You talk as if people just need to "learn" about how/when to eat. I assure you, the majority of people that overeat know they are overeating.
My own problem is that if I skip any meal I get hungry enough that my brain doesn't work well and I can't sleep. But I'm already as light as I can get without being dangerously underweight, so maybe that's my body sending a valid message.
IF isn't really about reducing caloric intake as such.
If I remember correctly Terry Crews eats something like 4000 calories during his window of eating, but fasts for the remaining 16 hours.
That said, if you're trying to lose weight, it is probably the laziest way to eat less for someone who can't cook their own food (or doesn't want to).
Skipping a meal is much easier than convincing the family to add cauliflower rice or go keto with the breads. There's very little substitution going on that someone else has to sign up, if you share a life with them. You can share meals when it is the family meal time.
I will say that fasting is much less social media friendly, because I can't really post a bunch of photos of meals I've skipped to feel good about the life change I've made.
The #1 trigger for me to eat something boredom, the #2 the clock, #3 food being within arms reach, #4 food being visible ... #99 actual hunger.
I've dropped alcohol starting January, for a whole lot of 6 days. Instead I found eating way more just seeking for some pleasure/dopamine.
Gaming and similar time wasting did help a little, but not enough.
NIH abstracts mention in addition to the intermittent fasting the use of a "chinese medical nutrition therapy" diet. Earlier abstract from Jul 2022 says the treatment group did IF 5 days and then 10 days of habitual eating, repeated for a 90 day (3 month) period.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36192924/ (Jul 2022 - 3 mo treatment, 3 mo follow-up) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36515429/ (Dec 2022 - 1-year follow up)
Presumably we won't know "within 5 years" until four years from now (and that assumes the participants in the original study can still be reached by then).
Many groups (e.g. for religious reasons) do fasting regularly, and have done it for millennia.
At worst, IF just limits your food intake, but it does not seem like it would provide you with an unbalanced diet.
As for my blood glucose levels, based on the continuous monitoring devices I've used, it's pretty stable. I may see a slight dip in the afternoon, then returns to baseline and stabilizes. After a meal, it will rise for about 30 minutes (within normal parameters), then back to baseline.
IF is anything but a fad diet and shouldn't be lumped in with such. If anything, one could argue that IF is one of (if not) the original eating patterns based on the lifestyles our hunter/gatherer ancestors and modern nomadic cultures. The modern concept of 3 squares a day might in fact be the fad.
Food has only been plentiful since the agriculture revolution about 12,000 years ago. Before then, it was feast and famine.
For anyone on the fence, I say give it a try (after consulting with your physician). The more studies we are seeing about this pattern, the more benefits we are discovering.
They're a bit pricey if you buy them direct (sans insurance). It feels like you have an additional sense when wearing it.
But "works for me" and "there are many studies that prove it's useful" is what everyone says about whatever diet they are currently doing.
I have seen the same (on this forum too!) for keto, paleo, vegetarian, piscitarian, vegan, carnivore, mediterranean. The "it's how our ancestors ate!" claim is also applied to all of the above.
Only time will tell which diet sticks, and which one was a fad.
Some studies suggest the benefits are significant, others suggest they’re neutral, but I’ve yet to find anything indicating that it’s innately risky to fast intermittently. Me not being aware of studies showing harm doesn’t mean it’s not possible, but it seems unlikely at this point. I’ve been doing it for the better part of 10 years or so and I always regret it when I stop. Fasting in general appears to be good for people when it’s controlled and done sensibly.
In the developed world it really does seem we do more harm to ourselves with what we do consume rather than what we don’t. Less is more (health) with common western diets.
You're pretty much correct:
The most relevant contraindication for any kind of fasting are eating disorders like anorexia. Also, don't try out fasting if you're taking metabolism related medication without consulting with your doctor.
A lot of research suggests that most lifestyle diseases that are prevalent in the developed world (like obesity, diabetes, heart attack, even some types of cancer and possibly also neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimers) can be prevented and sometimes treated with a dietary intervention.
The optimal diet seems to be whole foods and mostly plant-based (though some people seem to thrive on meat) with occasional fasting periods.
It makes a lot of sense from an evolutionary perspective: Our ancestors didn't have all that sugary and industrially processed food and often spend extended periods fasting and searching/hunting for food. Processed foods highjack our preference for calorie rich, sweet and savory food but are often deficient in nutrients.
I'm on IF for 10 years, it's not a diet but a lifestyle. This is not a "drink only tea and broth" or "you can only eat raw veggies" type of thing
Unless I stuff my face late at night, I get 14-15 hour fasts every day regularly.
And if I eat something I usually get hungry a lot faster than if I'd just skip the whole breakfast.
The only times I’ll eat in the morning is if I’m traveling, or know I’m going to be doing something intensely physical in the early afternoon (Muay Thai or two hours of yoga practice).
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181126-is-breakfast-goo...
https://share.upmc.com/2017/07/reasons-breakfast-is-importan...
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/do-you-really-need-to-eat...
Was able to get some quick references from Google, but I really did read and hear about it from multiple sources as well.
Sauce please?
Breakfast Isn't the Most Important Meal of the Day — Here's Why - https://www.livestrong.com/article/13721066-breakfast-most-i...
A balanced breakfast is really helpful, but getting regular meals throughout the day is more important to leave blood sugar stable through day - https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181126-is-breakfast-goo...
Scientists got it wrong, breakfast is not the most important - https://theprint.in/science/scientists-got-it-wrong-breakfas...
Breakfast is no longer the most important meal of the day - https://www.sbs.com.au/food/article/2019/01/31/breakfast-no-...
Additionally, a vast majority of people do experience weakness and hunger as soon as they wake up. I see that as a good enough need to address that situation, or else getting things done while starving would either be a pain or end up going wrong. Again, if you have conditioned your body to go without breakfast for 20 years, you might as well stick to it.
Yes and eating fat make you fat too !!!
Can we stope with 1960s era food lobby rhetoric now ?
The abstracts posted below ( https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36192924/ and https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36515429/ ) indicate that the participants also had their diets altered (to "a MFH plants and wholegrains diet") and lost weight implying that their caloric intake fell. Is the real effect here that they ate healthier and lost weight, or did the fasting specifically have an effect on top of that?
A nice podcast episode on the topic is https://peterattiamd.com/jasonfung/
A lot of these types of eating strategies simply create a caloric deficit easily. For instance for me, keto creates satiety feeling with less calories then other diets I have tried. IF and OMAD eating strategies kind of does the same thing in my experience. The fast breaking meal eliminates the hunger and satiety usually sets in pretty quickly with less calories.
From what I can find online, I’m. It convinced they did that. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36515429/ says:
“The mean body weight of participants in the CMNT group was reduced by 5.93 kg (SD 2.47) compared to 0.27 kg (1.43) in the control group”
I also found https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-study-..., which says (cherry-picking a bit rom that page, but IMO, that’s not a problem for this argument):
“This is a relatively small study and the main problem is that weight loss was much greater in those allocated to intermittent fasting. This is not surprising but a proper comparison would be with individuals who reduced their food intake uniformly over time to the same degree as those doing intermittent fasting. The bottom line is that if obese/overweight persons with diabetes lose substantial amounts of weight their diabetes is likely to go into remission. This study does not show that intermittent fasting is superior to uniform caloric restriction.“
and
“So, this study did not compare two diets with the same energy intake as the intermittent diet was about 75% of energy intake compared to normal intake. Therefore there is no surprise that the intermittent diet group lost weight (almost 6kg on average or about 10% of starting body weight). As one of the best predictors of achieving remission in type 2 diabetes is weight loss, it is impossible to say if it is intermittent fasting which is helping to induce remission as it is most likely to be the result of the weight loss”
(It surprised me to read “almost 6kg on average or about 10% of starting body weight”. I know not all Chinese are large, but 60kg and (from the pubmed link “body mass index (BMI) of 19.1 to 30.4”?)
Because of that, I doubt the conclusion is correct, and it wasn’t the intermittent fasting but the weight loss that was the main factor.
(That page also gives some info about the experiment:
“for five days people ate only 840kcal per day and for the following 10 days they ate according to their appetite following the Chinese dietary guidelines for a total of 3 months”)
If the links I found are correct, the subjects in this study on average weighed 60kg and had BMIs in the range 19.1 to 30.4.
If you’re 60kg and have a BMI of 25, you must be √(60/25) m tall. That’s 1.55m.
There's only so much food you can stuff in your face during the eating window - and if you time it right, you'll be asleep for pretty much half the fast time anyway.
Last meal around 20:00 in the evening, skip breakfast, lunch at noon. That's a 16 hour fast easily.
After you fast for a while (a week or two) your body gets used to it and it gets easier, any feelings of hunger go away pretty fast.
IF on the other hand doesn't require you to eat less calories than your body requires. Skipping breakfast works pretty effortless on the long term.
That critique out of the way, I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in September of last year. There's definitely genetic predisposition for it on my paternal side, but I have also been eating like a king and dipped even deeper into my indulgences as a primary coping strategy for social distancing associated with COVID.
In September, my average blood glucose was 180. Following the advice of a nutritionist (my sister), I switched to a mostly whole food plant based diet with some intermittent fasting (skipping supper, sometimes breakfast). At present, my average blood glucose is 125. I'm also down 25 lbs since September if last year. I'm still taking metformin, which I expect to take until doing so gives me sugar lows.
It hasn't been all at once and I'm not terribly strict about it. My meal plan generally looks something like this:
Morning: an apple, a pear, a banana, other fruit, vitamins, ~1000ml water (I found that if I have a clear Nalgene water bottle next to me while I work that I just drink water; who knew).
Lunch: whole food plant based leftovers (I love to cook and am currently making a lot of Indian food and soups), an apple, some other fruit, maybe going out to lunch with friends and eating whatever the hell I want (whatever the hell I want progressively is becoming fruits and vegetables, which feels weird emotionally).
Afternoon: ~1000ml water, fruit.
Dinner: fruit, something I or my SO cooks (generally whole food plant based), maybe dining out and eating whatever the hell I want (see above).
I don't drink soda and have not since the early 2000's. I really don't drink anything but water, unless it's Thanksgiving, Christmas, or I'm on an airplane.
I stopped thinking about Diets and have started thinking about my diet. I see this shift in food intake as a permanent thing, permanent enough that my SO and I are considering moving somewhere closer to year round fresh fruits and vegetables.
Resources that have been helpful have been a good diabetes specialist (mine is also diabetic and also familiar with a whole food plant based approach to living with diabetes), a great nutritionist (I'm biased and she's my sister), and the book Mastering Diabetes (it can be a little "scare your grandma" and they're selling something beyond the book, but as I have been led to understand it is a strong representation of the state of our understanding of diabetes and diet).
If you decide to try a whole food plant based approach, don't rush it. It can be really hard space mentally and emotionally. I had time where I was literally sobbing on the floor because I didn't know how to feed myself anymore and really didn't want to retread my dad's path. It can be hard at first, but it's yielded real results for me (in my 3 month study) and it's something that continues to get both easier and more enjoyable and which I am planning on doing for the rest of my life.
I hope my sampling of 1 is helpful. I watched my dad struggle and slowly die from diabetes complications my whole life, losing toes and a kidney, not sleeping because of severe neuropathy, having dry itchy skin that would bleed when he scratched it and then not heal, and needing insulin injections multiple times a day. I don't wish that on anyone.