The study, done by neuroscientist Mark Mattson, and published in The New England Journal of Medicine, suggests that triggering the metabolic switch in the body through intermittent fasting, frequently and for longer durations, can benefit your health in many ways - starting with shedding the extra kilos.
What is metabolic switching?
Metabolic switching is one of the key factors behind evolution, Mattson claims. Individuals who thrived despite long durations of food scarcity — that is, their brain and body function improved when they fasted — were more successful at surviving. During a period of food scarcity or fasting, the metabolism of the body switches: the cells break down the easily accessible stores of sugar or glucose and fat to get fuel.
If paired with exercise or physical activity, this metabolic switching results in the depletion of glycogen stores in the liver and fatty acids from adipose cells. What’s more, it also triggers autophagy, which is the body’s way of flushing out damaged cells which can be replaced by newer and healthier ones. This replacement happens when the period of fasting is over and the body goes through a recovery period by eating, resting and sleeping.
Sounds familiar? Intermittent fasting, a type of diet where the body is put in fasting mode for a particular period and then in recovery mode for a fixed duration, depends exclusively on triggering the metabolic switch.
Benefits of metabolic switching
The way metabolic switching works is very simple, but if you have a sedentary lifestyle then the switch can never be triggered, no matter how long you fast for. The period of fasting has to be paired with physical exercise or activity so that your metabolism actually switches and starts to break down the stored fats and glucose in the body.
The benefits you can reap from metabolic switching are many, and not limited to weight loss. Mattson claims that apart from regulating blood sugar levels, cholesterol levels and blood pressure, metabolic switching also suppresses inflammation, reduces the resting heart rate, builds resistance to stress and improves brain health (especially memory and cognitive function). So giving intermittent fasting a try might just be what you need to do to maintain a healthy lifestyle.