Abstract
Fasting is increasingly practiced to improve health and general well-being, as well as for its cytoprotective effects. Changes in blood redox status, linked to the development of a variety of metabolic diseases, have been recently documented during calorie restriction and intermittent fasting, but not with long-term fasting (LF). We investigated some parameters of the blood redox profile in 109 subjects before and after a 10-day fasting period. Fasting resulted in a significant reduction in body weight, improved well-being and had a beneficial modulating effect on blood lipids and glucose regulation. We observed that fasting decreased lipid peroxidation (TBARS) and increased total antioxidant capacity (TAC) in plasma, concomitant with a uric acid elevation, known to be associated with fasting and did not cause gout attacks. Reduced glutathione (GSH), glutathione reductase (GR), glutathione peroxidase (GPx) and catalase in erythrocytes did not show significant changes. In addition, reduction in body weight, waist circumference, and glucose levels were associated to a reduced lipid peroxidation. Similar results were obtained by grouping subjects on the basis of the changes in their GSH levels, showing that a period of 10 days fasting improves blood redox status regardless of GSH status in the blood.
Highlights
All living organisms alternate between periods of food intake and fasting throughout their lives.Humans fast daily during night sleep phases, which generally last from 6 to 10 h
thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS), total antioxidant capacity (TAC), glutathione reductase (GR), associations between the six redox parameters measured in this study
We found that lipid peroxidation measured was decreased while TAC was increased significantly post-fasting compared to the pre-fasting values
Summary
All living organisms alternate between periods of food intake and fasting throughout their lives. Humans fast daily during night sleep phases, which generally last from 6 to 10 h. Longer periods of fasting were quite frequent in the course of evolution due to seasonal cycles. Food access could be difficult and conservation technologies were limited. Humans and animals were obliged to survive without exogenous food until it was available again, switching their metabolism toward endogenous fat utilization [1,2,3]. The first publications of long-term fasting (LF) came up in the 20th century [4]
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