How Intermittent Fasting Might Help You Live A Longer and Healthier Life

Image: Kelly Blair

In E. B White's beloved novel Charlotte's Web, an old sheep advises the gluttonous rat Templeton that he would live longer if he ate less. “Who wants to live forever?” Templeton sneers. “I get untold satisfaction from the pleasures of the feast.”

It is easy to empathize with Templeton, but the sheep's claim has some merit. Studies have shown that reducing typical calorie consumption, usually by 30 to 40 percent, extends life span by a third or more in many animals, including nematodes, fruit flies and rodents. When it comes to calorie restriction in primates and people, however, the jury is still out. Although some studies have suggested that monkeys that eat less live longer, a new 25-year-long primate study concluded that calorie restriction does not extend average life span in rhesus monkeys. Even if calorie restriction does not help anyone live longer, a large portion of the data supports the idea that limiting food intake reduces the risks of diseases common in old age and lengthens the period of life spent in good health.

If only one could claim those benefits without being hungry all the time. There might be a way. In recent years researchers have focused on a strategy known as intermittent fasting as a promising alternative to continuous calorie restriction.

Intermittent fasting, which includes everything from periodic multiday fasts to skipping a meal or two on certain days of the week, may promote some of the same health benefits that uninterrupted calorie restriction promises. The idea of intermittent fasting is more palatable to most people because, as Templeton would be happy to hear, one does not have to renounce the pleasures of the feast. Studies indicate that rodents that feast one day and fast the next often consume fewer calories overall than they would normally and live just as long as rats eating calorie-restricted meals every single day.

In a 2003 mouse study overseen by Mark Mattson, head of the National Institute on Aging's neuroscience laboratory, mice that fasted regularly were healthier by some measures than mice subjected to continuous calorie restriction; they had lower levels of insulin and glucose in their blood, for example, which signified increased sensitivity to insulin and a reduced risk of diabetes.

The First Fasts

Religions have long maintained that fasting is good for the soul, but its bodily benefits were not widely recognized until the early 1900s, when doctors began recommending it to treat various disordersâ€"such as diabetes, obesity and epilepsy.

Related research on calorie restriction took off in the 1930s, after Cornell University nutritionist Clive McCay discovered that rats subjected to stringent daily dieting from an early age lived longer and were less likely to develop cancer and other diseases as they aged, compared with animals that ate at will. Research on calorie restriction and periodic fasting intersected in 1945, when University of Chicago scientists reported that alternate-day feeding extended the life span of rats as much as daily dieting in McCay's earlier experiments. Moreover, intermittent fasting “seems to delay the development of the disorders that lead to death,” the Chicago researchers wrote.

In the next decades research into antiaging diets took a backseat to more influential medical advances, such as the continued development of antibiotics and coronary artery bypass surgery. More recently, however, Mattson and other researchers have championed the idea that intermittent fasting probably lowers the risks of degenerative brain diseases in later life. Mattson and his colleagues have shown that periodic fasting protects neurons against various kinds of damaging stress, at least in rodents. One of his earliest studies revealed that alternate-day feeding made the rats' brains resistant to toxins that induce cellular damage akin to the kind cells endure as they age. In follow-up rodent studies, his group found that intermittent fasting protects against stroke damage, suppresses motor deficits in a mouse model of Parkinson's disease and slows cognitive decline in mice genetically engineered to mimic the symptoms of Alzheimer's. A decidedly slender man, Mattson has long skipped breakfast and lunch except on weekends. “It makes me more productive,” he says. The 55-year-old researcher, who has a Ph.D. in biology but not a medical degree, has written or co-authored more than 700 articles.