Health Benefits Of Intermittent Fasting Intermittent fasting is an eating pattern that yields great health benefits for your brain and your body. You can do this following a cycle between periods of fasting and eating. This can change the function of hormones, cells and genes. When you are fasting, your body starts an important cellular repair processes. It can change the hormonal levels making the stored body fat accessible. During fasting, your insulin level significantly drops and facilitates fat burning. Your growth hormone may increase. Having higher hormones of this kind helps you burn more fats and gain more muscles. It can also eliminate waste materials from the cells. Intermittent fasting can cause numerous changes in the molecules and …show more content…
Intermittent Fasting Can Reduce Insulin Resistance, Lowering Your Risk of Type 2 Diabetes Type 2 diabetes has become incredibly common in recent decades. Its main feature is high blood sugar levels in the context of insulin resistance. Anything that reduces insulin resistance should help lower blood sugar levels and protect against type 2 diabetes. Interestingly, intermittent fasting has been shown to have major benefits for insulin resistance and lead to an impressive reduction in blood sugar levels (12). In human studies on intermittent fasting, fasting blood sugar has been reduced by 3-6%, while fasting insulin has been reduced by 20-31% (12). One study in diabetic rats also showed that intermittent fasting protected against kidney damage, one of the most severe complications of diabetes (13). What this implies, is that intermittent fasting may be highly protective for people who are at risk of developing type 2 diabetes. However, there may be some differences between genders. One study in womenshowed that blood sugar control actually worsened after a 22-day long intermittent fasting protocol (14). Bottom Line: Intermittent fasting can reduce insulin resistance and lower blood sugar levels, at least in