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New research on pre-diabetics reveals that fasting can guard against cardiovascular diseases, eliminate “bad cholesterol” and reduce weight. The study, whose results were presented at the 2014 American Diabetes Association Scientific Sessions in San Francisco, in June of this year.
According to the research, after 10 to 12 hours of fasting time, the body enters into a self-protection mode and starts scavenging for other sources of energy throughout the body to sustain itself—something that on the long haul can help it combat diabetes, among other things.
After multiple episodes of fasting, going into this mode pulls LDL, otherwise known as “bad cholesterol,” from the cells of the body.
“Though we’ve studied fasting and its health benefits for years, we didn’t know why fasting could provide the health benefits we observed.” says Benjamin Horne, director of cardio vascular and genetic epidemiology at the Intermountain Medical Center, and author of the study. “It is likely that Ramadan fasting would provide a similar level of risk reduction,” he adds.
Horne launched this new study to look at the effects of fasting in pre-diabetics over an extended period of time. The study participants included men and women between the ages of 30 and 69 with a least three metabolic risk factors, like large waistlines (the “apple shape” where fat is concentrated in the abdomen), high triglyceride levels, low HDL cholesterol level, high blood pressure or high fasting sugar.
Prior studies have examined obese participants, and focused on weight loss that resulted from fasting, however Horne’s team’s main focus was diabetes intervention—although participants, naturally, also lost weight during this one, precisely three pounds over six weeks.
“During actual fasting days, cholesterol went up slightly in this study, as it did in our prior study of healthy people, but we did notice that over a six-week period cholesterol levels decreased by about 12 percent in addition to the weight loss,” says Horne.
The researchers speculate that fasting uses the body’s fat cells for energy, which should help negate insulin resistance. “The fat cells themselves are a major contributor to insulin resistance, which can lead to diabetes,” Horne says. “Because fasting may help to eliminate and break down fat cells, insulin resistance may be frustrated by fasting.”
The health benefits of fasting of course are not instantaneous—the episodes of fasting have to recur over a long period of time for results to show.
“Our epidemiologic studies do suggest that the standard religious practices of fasting (such as Ramadan fasting) that have been practiced for centuries and millenia are likely sufficient for the general population to obtain beneficial effects on the risk of chronic disease when a fasting regimen is used as a lifestyle over decades (rather than as a short-term weight-loss fad),” Horn says.
“For those who still develop risk factors for chronic disease, though, it may be that a more intense regimen of fasting is needed.”
In another medical study undertaken in the UAE in 2012 by a team of cardiologists led by the chief interventional cardiologist at American Hospital Dubai, Dr. Omar K Hallak to study the effect of Ramadan fasting on cholesterol levels (a key indicator and risk factor for heart disease). The findings of the study were presented at the recent World Cardiology Conference hosted in Dubai in 2012.
Dr Omar K. Hallak commented, “This is especially important in a region where there is a high incidence of obesity and diabetes.”
The study concluded that the UAE group’s average LDL or the bad cholesterol decreased significantly during the fast, while the average HDL or good cholesterol increased, resulting in a significant improvement of the HDL/LDL ratio in spite of increased BMI.
A reduction in LDL is directly proportional to a reduction in heart disease.
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