United States: Reports suggest that intermittent fasting is one of the most used diets, and there are many benefits associated with it.
More about the finding
According to a mouse study led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States, the researchers discovered how fasting can assist intestinal stem cell self-renewal.
They observed three groups of mice: The first group, who fasted for 24 hours; the second group, who fasted for the next 24 hours and ate freely in the next 24 hours; and the third, non-fasting, control group.
The scientists found out that there is a certain network that is turned on to enhance the performance of regeneration when the mice are eating just after a certain period of fasting, the research team revealed this in their publication of the Nature Journal, as Euro News reported.
What more are the experts stating?
According to Shinya Imada, a postdoctoral researcher at MIT and one of the study’s lead authors, “We think that fasting and refeeding represent two distinct states,” as Euro News reported.
“In the fasted state, the ability of cells to use lipids and fatty acids as an energy source enables them to survive when nutrients are low. And then it’s the postfast refeeding state that really drives the regeneration. When nutrients become available, these stem cells and progenitor cells activate programs that enable them to build cellular mass and repopulate the intestinal lining,” he continued.
How is cancer risk involved?
However, there’s a caveat: when such mutations occur during this regenerative phase, the mice are predisposed to developing early-stage intestinal tumors, according to the research.
According to Omer Yilmaz, an associate professor of biology at MIT and the senior author of the new study, “Having more stem cell activity is good for regeneration, but too much of a good thing over time can have less favorable consequences.”
Stem cells are also found in small intestinal crypts, where the lining of the intestines is replaced daily in 5-10 days.
This rapid division makes them more prone to undergo certain changes that are precancerous in nature when compared with other cell types within the intestinal tract.
Scientists also found that some mutations that arose during the refeeding stage were associated with polyp formation, and some of these mutations were seen only in the mice that fasted.
Some authors stressed that the experiments were done on mice with certain genetic mutations to cancer and that the more complex human scenario could produce different outcomes.
As Yilmaz stated, “We still have a lot to learn, but it is interesting that being in either the state of fasting or refeeding when exposure to mutagen occurs can have a profound impact on the likelihood of developing cancer in these well-defined mouse models,” as Euro News reported.