Intermittent Fasting Could Help Prevent Type-2 Diabetes

Akshay Naik 04 July 2019

Life

Intermittent fasting, which means not eating during certain predetermined time slots in a day, has become more than just a dieting trend with numerous studies claiming it to be beneficial for prevention of obesity. Now, a new study has revealed that it could also act as a protective barrier against the development of type-2 diabetes.

These findings come from a study, conducted by researchers from the German Institute of Human Nutrition (DIfE), published in the journal Metabolism. The results indicate that intermittent fasting improves sensitivity to the blood glucose-lowering hormone insulin and protects against fatty liver.

Fatty liver has been thoroughly investigated as a known and frequently occurring disease; but little is known about the excess weight induced fat accumulation in the pancreas and its effects on the onset of type-2 diabetes. The team, led by Prof Annette Schürmann and Prof Tim J Schulz of DIfE, has found that overweight mice prone to diabetes have a high accumulation of fat cells in the pancreas. They realised that mice resistant to diabetes due to their genetic make-up, despite excess weight, had hardly any fat in the pancreas; instead, they had fat deposits in the liver.

“Fat accumulations outside the fat tissue, for example in the liver, muscles or even bones, have a negative effect on these organs and the entire body. What impact fat cells have within the pancreas has not been clear until now,” said Prof Schürmann, head of the department of experimental diabetology at DIfE and speaker of the German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD).

For the study, the research team divided the overweight animals, which were prone to diabetes, into two groups. One group was allowed to eat without any restrictions, i.e., as much as they wanted, whenever they wanted. The other group underwent an intermittent fasting regimen—one day, the rodents received unlimited chow; but the next day, they were not fed at all. After a period of five weeks, the researchers observed differences in the pancreas of the mice with fat cells being accumulated in the group who had no restrictions placed on food consumption. Conversely, animals in the other group had hardly any fat deposits in the pancreas.

“Under certain genetic conditions, the accumulation of fat in the pancreas may play a decisive role in the development of type-2 diabetes,” said Prof Schulz, head of the department of adipocyte development and nutrition at the Research Centre.

The collated data from this study does seem promising as it presents an alternate way to reduce liver fat and, consequently, prevent type-2 diabetes. Intermittent fasting could be a promising therapeutic approach in the future. The added advantage is that it is non-invasive, easy to integrate into everyday life and does not require drugs. But it is important to realise that this alone may not be enough to prevent the disease.

Comments

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RUSHIKESH YOGENDRA DHEBAR

7 years ago

Dear Akshay marvelous article which provides us day to day how to eat and ignore food in our life. Since long doctors advised to take intake in fracture timing 3/4 time in day. I have experience in two days straching eating and feel better one. Moreover you r requested to more research article on captions subject. God bless you