Research Roundup #7: This Week’s Fasting News from Around the Web
THE LATEST NEWS AND RESEARCH UPDATES ON FASTING
Welcome to the Fast Insider News Roundup
Every week, we’re bringing you a round-up of the latest fasting, health, and wellness news to hit the wire. There are many ways that fasting converges with lifestyle to improve change day to day life as we know it. This week, we look at how the fasting-mimicking diet (FMD) improves the quality of life and outcomes for breast cancer patients, how 12 minutes of exercise can improve health and longevity, and how immunity to the coronavirus might last years, not months.
A new tool in the fight against breast cancer
A new clinical trial has found that the fasting-mimicking diet (FMD), which simulates fasting in the body with small amounts of food, positively affected both the clinical response to neoadjuvant therapy and the personal experience of patients receiving chemotherapy for Stage II and III HER-2-negative breast cancer.
Although not statistically significant, patients who adhered to the diet for four days per treatment cycle (three days before and the day of chemotherapy), reported better physical, emotional, cognitive, and social functioning and fewer complaints of insomnia, and fatigue on questionnaires when compared to a control group that didn’t adhere to the diet and those who ate normal meals.
The research, which was published in the journal Breast Cancer Research and Treatment, also reported that although participants found that adherence to FMD was a challenge when compared to a regular diet, it improved chemotherapy’s ability to reduce tumors and limited its adverse effects on healthy cells.
It’s good news for patients who are looking to improve their response to treatment but find it difficult to adhere to a water-only fast and are concerned about nutrient deficiencies and lack of energy.
Just 12 minutes of exercise can make you significantly more healthy
Turns out, it doesn’t take as much exercise as previously thought to bring about positive changes in an individual’s markers for metabolic, cardiovascular, and long-term health. A paper published recently in the journal Circulation found that just 12 minutes of vigorous cardiovascular exercise such as brisk walking, running, or lap swimming, affected more than 80 percent of circulating metabolites linked to bodily functions such as insulin resistance, oxidative stress, vascular reactivity, inflammation, and longevity.
The study measured levels of 588 circulating metabolites before and after a 12-minute workout, detecting favorable shifts in many metabolites for which the participants’ resting levels were associated with cardiometabolic disease. Glutamate, for example, which has been linked to heart disease, diabetes, and decreased longevity, fell by 29 percent. DMGV, associated with an increased risk of diabetes and liver disease, dropped by 18 percent. The extent of these changes may be affected by other factors such as a person’s gender and body mass index, with obesity offering some partial resistance to these positive benefits.
The research is a significant step towards understanding the “molecular underpinnings” of how exercise affects the body so physicians can begin to understand real “fitness” and prescribe exercise that can change the trajectory of people’s health and longevity.
Coronavirus Immunity Might Last Years
With vaccines for COVID-19 on the horizon, new data suggests that this immunity might last years, maybe even decades, providing a welcome bit of good news in the fight against the deadly virus.
Eight months after infection most people who have recovered still have enough immune cells to fend off COVID, and this slow rate of decline suggests that these cells may last in the body for a long time to come. This research, published online, has not been peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal, but it is the most comprehensive study of immune memory to the deadly virus to date.
It addresses one of the biggest concerns of scientists – that immunity to the virus might be short-lived –and people would have to be vaccinated repeatedly to keep the pandemic under control. The findings also jibe with another recent discovery that survivors of SARS, caused by another type of coronavirus, still carry certain immune cells 17 years after recovering.
Moreover, another study published last week found that people who recover from COVID-19 have powerful and protective “killer immune cells” even when antibodies are not detectable in a test.
There were a small number of infected people in the new study that did not develop long-lasting immunity after recovering, but that may be because of the amount of coronavirus they were exposed to, and experts say vaccines could almost certainly help cover that gap.
Editor’s Note
Fasting.com is committed to investigating and reporting on the many ways fasting, health, nutrition, and wellness can help all of us rise to meet the challenges we face in life and, in doing so, liberates us to live our lives, longer and better. Together, especially when we are healthy and happy, we can address the world’s greatest problems.
Check-in weekly for our research round-up and look forward to even more in-depth fasting science coverage, analysis, and takeaways in the near future.
P.S. We would love to hear your feedback on any of the ideas above as well as any stories you would like to read in the future. Send us a note anytime at [email protected]
