New Study Shows How Fasting Helps Fight Inflammation

Rebecca Lewis May 24, 2016

Vast research has proven the amazing health benefits of fasting. It has been established that fasting can promote not only weight loss but longevity and lower risk of diseases. But the benefits don’t seem to end there. New research revealed that fasting also helps reduce the number of bad bacteria in our gut.

The study, carried out by the researchers from Salk Institute, identifies a molecular pathway by which the brain communicates with the gastrointestinal tract. This process, which takes place during fasting, prevents the unnecessary activation of the immune system and strengthens the barrier against gut microbes.

These ground-breaking results may lead to better treatment of inflammatory bowel diseases in people.

"Fasting has a positive value that spills over not just into the metabolic system, but also inflammation and brain function," said Marc Montminy, lead author of the study and professor in the Clayton Foundation Laboratories for Peptide Biology and holder of the J.W. Kieckhefer Foundation Chair.

The new study is part of an ongoing collaborative work designed to pin down the mechanisms which a genetic switch (called Crtc) in the brain utilises to control energy balance. The researchers found that the normal role of Crtc is to fortify the barriers of the gut to prevent bacteria from entering the bloodstream and awakening the immune system. Without Crtc, the connections between cells that line the gut tube become disrupted, causing bacteria to leak out, activating the immune response and depleting energy reserves.

The researchers are conducting more experiments to further understand how the neuropeptides activate the gut receptors that help protect it from bacterial invasion.

Findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.

Source of this article:

Neuronal energy-sensing pathway promotes energy balance by modulating disease tolerance, PNAS,