Intermittent Fasting – Gut Health Benefits

Have you been wondering what diet works best for long term gut health? You should consider Intermittent Fasting, The Gut Health Protocol way.

This is actually a two part article, there is a separate article on Intermittent Fasting (IF) on the “Cancer: Improving Your Odds” website that covers the benefits of IF for cancer.  If you need a description of Intermittent Fasting, and the best way to implement it, you can find it in the other article, I didn’t want to duplicate everything here.  You’ll find you have more energy (not less!), less brain fog, far fewer cravings, and its very easy (and money saving) to implement.

What is Intermittent Fasting?

Intermittent Fasting (IF) mimics most of the benefits of long term calorie restriction and there are studies going back over 50 years on the many health benefits of a calorie restricted (CR) diet. Generally IF is much easier to implement for most people than a CR diet; even though it has the word “fasting” in its name you’re basically only giving up a late night snack and breakfast. The type of IF that I recommend is the “time-restricted diet”, basically fasting for 16-18 hours (including while you sleep) and consuming all calories in a 6-8 hour period (again, see the other article for more details on this). For best results this should be aligned with your circadian rhythms, so calories should be consumed during daylight hours or shortly before/after. When you do eat there are no calorie, carbohydrate, or fat counting. But if you have gut issues you’ll still need to watch out for your intolerances; if you are on the kill phase you’ll still need to follow those restrictions as well. But for people simply trying to maintain gut health my only additional recommendations are as follows:

• Phase out all sugars over the first 2-4 weeks. Trust me, it gets a lot easier to give up sweets while fasting.
• Avoid snacking, even during your eating period.  You’ll quickly find you don’t even think about snacking, so do not force yourself to have them!  You should be eating 2 good meals per day, not 6 or 7 (even if much smaller).
• Avoid any foods that you are intolerant too. This includes sugars that you may malabsorb (such as lactose and fructose)
• Try to cram as much nutrition into the meals that you do eat. You’re giving up one meal per day, you need to make up those micro-nutrients
• Avoid junk food (this should be a part of any diet or plan for healthy eating). You should know what that means
• At meal time be sure to consume plenty of vegetables high in soluble fibers (insoluble fiber isn’t really very beneficial)
• Intermittent fasting helps the body detoxify, so help it out and try to consume organic foods when possible. This is especially true for foods that concentrate nutrition and toxins (such as dairy, meat, any animal that eats other animals such as large fish)
• Do not over eat. Learn what it feels like to be full without pain or abdomen extension.  Over eating is what of the primary causes of SIBO

See the “Cancer: Improving Your Odds” intermittent fasting article for more information and how I personally implement IF. You will need to join that group to see it, but anyone that is a member of this group automatically gets membership to that one.

Gut / Microbiome Benefits From Intermittent Fasting

The benefits of IF on the health of the gut’s microbiome (and thus gut health) are quite clear. Though many of the studies have been done on animals, the same principles apply to humans. There are also several human studies on IF and gut health.  One of the primary benefits of IF is improvements in your MMC (migrating motor complex), this is essential for fixing and preventing SIBO (all kinds!)

Several studies have shown improvements to inflammation, systemically throughout the body.  This alone is a strong reason to try IF. Some studies were clear to point out that these improvements did not depend on weight loss.

“Investigators compared time-restricted feeding (tRF) to AL access, both in a high-fat diet (HFD) in mice… Zarrinpar et al. have shown that gut microbiota dampened during HFDs in rats can be restored by tRF. Since gut microbiota influence the host’s metabolism, it is an important strategy against obesity and other diseases… IF decreased proinflammatory proteins such as NLRP1 and NLRP3, NF-κB, IL-1 β, and IL-18 in the brain and periphery after cerebral ischemia in mice.” — PubMed ID#PMC6036773

Improvement to T cells and regulatory T cells is huge, this is a big part of our immune system and it is known that these cells leave the gut and enter the systemic environment. Several studies have linked improvements to T cells in the gut to fighting cancers and disease throughout the body. IL-17 is a pro-inflammatory cytokine and has been linked to certain autoimmune diseases such as psoriasis.

“IF led to increased gut bacteria richness, enrichment of the Lactobacillaceae, Bacteroidaceae, and Prevotellaceae families and enhanced antioxidative microbial metabolic pathways. IF altered T cells in the gut with a reduction of IL-17 producing T cells and an increase in regulatory T cells… IF has potent immunomodulatory effects that are at least partially mediated by the gut microbiome.” — PubMed ID#29874567

Intermittent Fasting is one of the “Fasting-Mimicking Diets” (FMD). Here it was shown to improve Inflammatory Bowel Disease and modulate gut microbiota in ways that improves gut inflammation.

“Fasting-Mimicking Diet Modulates Microbiota and Promotes Intestinal Regeneration to Reduce Inflammatory Bowel Disease Pathology… These FMD cycles reduced intestinal inflammation, increased stem cell number, stimulated protective gut microbiota, and reversed intestinal pathology… In a clinical trial, three FMD cycles reduced markers associated with systemic inflammation. The effect of FMD cycles on microbiota composition, immune cell profile, intestinal stem cell levels and the reversal of pathology associated with IBD in mice, and the anti-inflammatory effects demonstrated in a clinical trial show promise for FMD cycles to ameliorate IBD-associated inflammation in humans.  — PubMed ID#30840892

Calorie Restricted Diets have been studied for decades for their anti-ageing and life extension properties. Here IF was studied in humans to improve general health over a person’s lifespan and possible life extension properties.

“Studies on the mechanism of ageing and senescence have led to the development of certain anti-ageing approaches, which have proved their worth on animal models… Dietary restriction has been shown to be effective in several species (yeast, fruit flies, nematodes, rats, dogs, primates); however, it is difficult to apply it to humans. Nonetheless, a similar approach, namely intermittent fasting (IF), gave comparable results. The effects of CR are related not only to lifespan extension but, first of all, to healthspan improvement, that is alleviation of neurodegeneration, sarcopenia, cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, and decreased incidence of cancer” — PubMed ID#PMC6628342

Here they showed that even though a high fat diet may depress microbiota diversity in the gut, intermittent fasting can completely reverse it. This negates a major disadvantage of a high fat / low carb diets by restoring microbial diversity to the gut.

“they have concluded that a tRF (time-Restricted Fasting) regimen improved CREB, mTOR, and AMPK pathway functions and oscillations of the circadian clock. Moreover, Zarrinpar et al. have shown that gut microbiota dampened during HFDs in rats can be restored by tRF. Since gut microbiota influence the host’s metabolism, it is an important strategy against obesity and other diseases.” (2018)  — PubMed ID#PMC6036773

Ramadan is a classic “intermittent fast”, as fasting is from sunrise to sunset.  Depending on the person’s geographic location this can mean a fast of 11-22 hours everyday for about 4 weeks. Good levels of Akkermansia muciniphilia are a sign of a balanced microbiome and confer many benefits of their own.

“Islamic fasting leads to an increased abundance of Akkermansia muciniphila and Bacteroides fragilis group: A preliminary study on intermittent fasting… The altered functions of gut microbiota in fasting group induce beige formation (white adipose tissue to brown adipose tissue transition-which is a beneficial reaction)… Results of the study indicated increased amounts of Akkermansia muciniphilia (signature of metabolic health) at the end of the fasting period (approximately one month).” (2019)– PubMed ID#PMC6924599

I highly recommend at least trying intermittent fasting a couple of times per week. Once you adjust to it you should have little trouble doing it 5 times per week or more. The benefits are huge, these two articles only touched on a two health aspects, gut health and cancer prevention/treatment. There are many other health benefits to intermittent fasting.

As mentioned in the other article, this topic is covered in much more detail in Chapter 4 of my new book, Cancer: Improving Your Odds, see the sidebar to the right of the article for a link.

Intermittent Fasting – Cancer Benefits

Intermittent fasting (with no sugar intake), Phage Complete and Cinnamon oil are an unbeatable combination.  One that leaves the microbiome better than before, not worse (like nearly all other treatments).

 

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