Intermittent Fasting: Essential Game Changer for Chocolate Lovers
If chocolate is your indulgence, then fasting is your secret camouflage.
During my final year at university, my friend from the nutrition course approached me with a very confusing question.
“How to eat chocolate when you are on a diet?” she asked me.
I just stared at her with eyes wide open, thinking that this combination is impossible.
She wants me to draw a rhombus with 90 degrees angles. “Make a choice, a rhombus or a square”, I thought. But soon, I started solving this puzzle.
There is an increased prevalence of brain diseases worldwide, including dementia, Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, and multiple sclerosis.
Currently, there is no one effective treatment, therapeutic options providing symptom relief exist.
Yet, I found that several studies show evidence for a cheat option!
Intermittent Fasting.
Intermittent fasting (IF) is food abstinence for 12–48 h with alternating periods of food consumption. Animal and human models studies show that even without changes in the diet, you may have a very similar effect on the brain with IF.
What are those different types of IF?
- Time-restricted feeding — your food intake window last 8 hours.
- Alternate Day fasting — you eat one day and restrict from eating on the second day.
- Periodic fasting (5:2) limits food intake to 2 days per week, while you can still eat other 5 days without restriction.
What happens during fasting?
“Flipping them metabolic switch”
Imagine that you were driving a car, and now you stop in order to switch from fuel to hydrogen.
Your body has the same switch from glucose to stored lipids. It starts around 12–36 hours after you begin your fasting. It can vary from individual to individual due to different liver glycogen content, food intake and energy expenditure during fasting.
Now, the main process is switching from glycogenolysis (glycogen breakdown) to lipolysis (fat is utilised from adipose tissue to lipids). Lipids released become now free fatty acids (FFAs).
Afterwards, lipids will be metabolized to ketones affecting signalling pathways and transcription in neurons. Catabolic processes are enhanced now, leading to tissue repair and recycling.
This leads to alteration in metabolism, cellular processes and circadian rhythm, reducing the risk of weight gain and metabolism-related health problems. What’s more, current studies done on mouse models show promising results on its effects on brain disorder treatment and cognitive function.
Circadian clock + IF
Moreover, IF works in harmony with your circadian clock by matching central oscillations in SCN (suprachiasmatic nucleus).
This clock allows us to optimize the physiology and hormonal secretion, ensuring that our system is in balance.
Central and peripheral oscillators should work in synchrony to prepare the body for rest or a fight.
When you consume meals at night or work night shifts, your circadian clock is confused. It receives different signals, preventing a balance of amplitude.
Interestingly, the peripheral amplitude is altered in ADHD, Alzheimer’s disease, and mood disorders.
Circadian insulin secretion reaches its peak early in the morning and then increases during meal intake. If you practice time-restricted fasting in the morning, insulin levels after meals decrease.
Thus, your insulin sensitivity is increased.
Voila! In this way, you just hacked the regulation of glucose metabolism (if we agree to simplify the mechanisms).
Beneficial effects of IF on enhancing insulin receptor sensitivity and improving circadian gene expression might be more efficient later in life when circadian rhythmicity and insulin sensitivity decay — Gudden et al. (2021)
How IF affects gut microbiota?
It is not a secret that there is a strong connection between the gut and the brain.
Imagine that your gut is the headteacher, regulating the classroom tasks in the form of energy homeostasis and synaptic transmission. It affects all the cognitive functions of the classroom.
Researchers investigated the effects of a fasting diet in mice with type 2 diabetes and cognitive impairment in one study.
For 28 days, mice were either fasting (24 h intervals) or were fed an ad libitum diet. Surprisingly, IF increased insulin sensitivity by lowering HOMA-IR values.
Moreover, it stimulated the insulin signalling pathway reaching the hippocampus and increased the expression of BDNF. To my personal surprise, cognition and spatial memory improved, as Morris water-maze test showed. How could all of this happen?
Just restricting caloric intake for 24 hours?
IF has a unique power to alter gut microbiota by changing its composition.
In this graph, you can see that IF has systemic and central effects. If we look at the system, we can notice that certain hormones are increased, such as GH (Growth Hormone), ghrelin (released during fasting), and ketone bodies.
In contrast, there is a reduction in insulin sensitivity and pro-inflammatory cytokines.
How IF can affect your brain?
- Via vague nerve
- Through neurometabolites
- Immune system
- It leads to healthier eating patterns and choice
- IF promotes diversity of the gut microbiota
- If you want to maintain lean mass, IF will help you to keep it, compared to caloric restriction
Summary
The abduction reasoning model helped me a lot (here you can read more) to connect the two sides of this rhombus.
At first, it felt impossible to find a solution, but I started practising IF after understanding different mechanisms.
To my surprise, I could eat chocolate with the ability to stop. Now I choose dark low-sugar chocolate due to its benefits without saying no to what I like.
I found a balance and a camouflage for my secret love.
I hope you find it too.
