Unlike many trendy diets, intermittent fasting appears to deliver real benefits—provided dieters can stick to the schedule, which usually restricts eating to an eight-hour window each day. Dieters, however, may be able to pad their eating schedules while trimming their waistlines—and extending their healthspans—if the results of a new study can be exploited pharmacologically.
This study, from researchers based at Columbia University, demonstrated that in fruit flies, the benefits of intermittent fasting are attributable to circadian autophagy.
“We found that the life-extending benefits of [intermittent fasting, or] iTRF require a functional circadian rhythm and autophagy components,” The study’s senior author, Dr. Mimi Shirasu-Hiza declared. “When either of those processes were disrupted, the diet had no effect on the animals’ longevity.”
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Besides increasing the flies’ lifespan, iTRF improved the flies’ “healthspan,” increasing muscle and neuron function, reducing age-related protein aggregation, and delaying the onset of aging markers in muscles and intestinal tissues.
Human cells use the same cell-cleaning processes, so the findings raise the possibility that behavioral changes or drugs that stimulate the cleaning process could provide people with similar health benefits, delaying age-related diseases and extending the lifespan.
