In my regular search for studies on intermittent fasting, I spotted this one that has just been published http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25260660
The study looked at the white blood cells of people after a 36-hour fast. They found changes in the genes that regulate inflammatory mediators such as interferon. In addition, the gene changes were consistent with stimulation of fatty acid oxidation (i.e., fat burning as you might expect), alterations in cell cycling and apoptosis (which suggests the repair function that we hope fasting stimulates is operative).
They also noted that the baseline data (after an overnight fast so likely about 8-12 hours of fasting) seemed to show that overweight people had more inflammatory genes active.
This work builds on a previous study http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17991667 showing that 24 or 48 hours of fasting upregulates PPAR alpha in white blood cells. As PPAR alpha is a pathway that is targeted by some diabetes drugs (the glitazones) and is involved in insulin resistance, this is also very interesting.
The study looked at the white blood cells of people after a 36-hour fast. They found changes in the genes that regulate inflammatory mediators such as interferon. In addition, the gene changes were consistent with stimulation of fatty acid oxidation (i.e., fat burning as you might expect), alterations in cell cycling and apoptosis (which suggests the repair function that we hope fasting stimulates is operative).
They also noted that the baseline data (after an overnight fast so likely about 8-12 hours of fasting) seemed to show that overweight people had more inflammatory genes active.
This work builds on a previous study http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17991667 showing that 24 or 48 hours of fasting upregulates PPAR alpha in white blood cells. As PPAR alpha is a pathway that is targeted by some diabetes drugs (the glitazones) and is involved in insulin resistance, this is also very interesting.
