Fasting may help protect against heart disease

Abstaining from food at certain periods is
beneficialPeople abstain from food at regular intervals for different reasons, some even for religious purposes. Interestingly too, experts have discovered that fasting at regular intervals in the month can help make the heart healthy, reports Sade Oguntola.

Abstaining from food at regular intervals as dictated by several religious groups has been identified by experts as offering protective mechanism against heart diseases. This has been confirmed by a study involving mormons, a sect of religious people that, before now, was found to have less heart diseases. This is something that doctors have thought had to do with their religion demanding that they abstain from smoking.

The research observed that aside from their clean living habits that had helped them to live healthy, fasting for one day each month also may have helped to protect them against developing heart diseases. The study in Utah, where the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is based, found that people who skipped meals once a month (skipping two meals once a month, 24-hour fast), were about 40 per cent less likely to be diagnosed with clogged arteries than those who did not regularly fast.

Though they conceded that their study is far from a proof that periodic fasting is good for everyone, they however said that the benefits they observed deserved further testing. Benjamin Horne, a heart disease researcher from Intermountain Medical Centre and the University of Utah in Salt Lake City that led the study however declared that this in a way is suggestive of the fact that when people control their eating habits better its benefits will be extended to other areas of their lives, including their health.

Researchers got the idea to study fasting after analysing medical records of patients who had X-ray exams to check for blocked heart arteries between 1994 and 2002 in the Intermountain Health Collaborative Study, a health registry. Of these patients, 4,629 could be diagnosed as clearly having or lacking heart disease — an artery at least 70 per cent clogged.

Researchers saw a typical pattern: only 61 per cent of Mormons had heart disease compared to 66 percent of non-Mormons. They thought tobacco use probably accounted for the difference. However, after considering smoking, they still saw a lower rate of heart disease among Mormons and designed a survey to explore why.

It asked about Mormons’ religious practices: monthly fasting; avoiding tea, coffee and alcohol; taking a weekly day of rest; going to church, and donating time or money to charity. Among the 515 people surveyed, only fasting made a significant difference in heart risks: 59 percent of periodic meal skippers were diagnosed with heart disease versus 67 percent of the others.

The difference persisted even when researchers took weight, age and conditions like diabetes or high cholesterol or blood pressure into account. About eight per cent of those surveyed were not Mormons, and those who regularly fasted had lower rates of heart disease, too. The expert speculated that when people take a break from food, it forces the body to dip into fat reserves to burn calories. It also keeps the body from being constantly exposed to sugar and having to make insulin to metabolise it. He however cautioned on people interpreting this as merely skipping meals. In diabetes, it can cause swings in blood sugar and for dieters it can reset the metabolic rate, slowing it down to adjust to less food and forcing the body to store calories as soon as people resume eating.

Dr. Ranti Familoni, a consultant cardiologist at the Olabisi Onabanjo teaching Hospital (OOUTH), Sagamu, said in fasting the body tries to find an equilibrium by converting some proteins, carbohydrate and fats stored in the body into energy so that the individual does not faint or die. When there is excess fat, say clogging the blood vessels, it also tries removing this.

According to him, when through regular fasting and at regular intervals, the excess fat is removed, it does the heart much good. “Since there is no excess fat, no deposit of cholesterol will be available to block the blood vessels. Invariably, this means less strain to the heart since there is a free flow of blood in and out of the heart. The bigger you are the more effort the heart will have to make in pumping blood around the body.

“So a regular fasting is good if there are no conditions or diseases that the individual has that may become worse as a result of fasting. However, for a person that fasts, say once in a year and not regularly, such a person may not be able to benefit and achieve a healthy heart.”

“We don’t recommend that pregnant women, nursing women, people with serious chronic diseases like diabetes or seizures should fast. Even a short fast may cause problems”, he added. Currently, there are very few good medical studies on the benefits of fasting to the body even though it is a widely used religious practice. Most religions encourage fasting.

However, as we await more evidences to prove that periodic fasting is good for anyone, the benefit this study observed poses a theory that deserves further testing.