Ditch the snacks, keep a long interval between meals can improve health and longevity | aptitude

Do you eat food more often? According to one study, longer daily fasting times or increased length of time between meals, regardless of caloric intake and diet composition, can make men healthier and help them live longer .

In the study, male mice fed with calorie-reduced meals and calories showed an improvement in their general health (liver and other organ-related lesions) and a increased longevity. Calorie restricted mice also showed significant improvement in fasting glucose and insulin levels.

"Increasing daily fasting times, with no reduction in calories and regardless of the type of diet consumed, has resulted in an overall improvement in health and survival in male mice," he said. lead author Rafael de Cabo of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). . "Maybe this extended daily fasting period allows for repair and maintenance mechanisms that would be absent during continued exposure to food," added De Cabo.

For the study, published in the journal Cell Metabolism, the team randomly allocated 292 male mice in two groups of diets.

The first group of mice had access to food 24 hours a day. A second group of mice received 30% fewer calories per day than the first group. The third group was fed at mealtime, receiving a single meal that exactly matched the number of calories in the group 24 hours a day.

"This study showed that mice that ate a meal a day and thus had the longest period of fasting seemed to have a longer life span and better results for liver diseases and common metabolic disorders related to breastfeeding. age, "said Richard J. Hodes, director at NIH. "These intriguing results in an animal model show that the interaction between total caloric intake and the duration of feeding and fasting periods deserves closer examination," he noted.

The findings could encourage future studies of how these types of time-limited dietary patterns could help humans maintain a healthy weight and reduce some age-related metabolic disorders.

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First published: September 08, 2018 10:04 am IST