- Fasting has been linked to many health benefits, but a new study in mice suggests that there may be a cost in terms of reduced immunity.
- The study found that immune cells migrated from the animals’ blood to their bone marrow during fasting and surged back when feeding re-started.
- Hunger triggers a hormonal stress response in the brain, which may compel the immune system to conserve resources when food is scarce.
- The research hints that regularly skipping breakfast could compromise immune defenses in humans, though this has yet to be established.
Breakfast is popularly known as “the most important meal of the day”, but scientific research into the health effects of skipping breakfast remains inconclusive.
Confusingly, a large number of studies have found that regular daytime fasting — such as limiting meals to a narrow window of time or “time-restricted feeding” — has several health benefits.
For example,
But a new study in mice now suggests that fasting has a potential downside.
The research found that there was a rapid reduction in the number of circulating immune cells in animals that were not allowed to eat in the hours after they awoke.
“There is a growing awareness that fasting is healthy, and there is indeed abundant evidence for the benefits of fasting,” explains lead author Filip Swirski, Ph.D., director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, NY.
“Our study provides a word of caution as it suggests that there may also be a cost to fasting that carries a health risk,” he adds.
The study has been published in
Mice are nocturnal, which means they are inactive during the day and forage for food at night.
The researchers compared mice that could eat whenever they wanted with mice that had no access to food in the…
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