Intermittent Fasting Benefits | Intermittent Fasting Plan | Best Intermittent Fasting For Weight Loss
Intermittent fasting for weight loss and diabetes reversal is a new way to manage your calories. It can be a boon for pre-diabetic and obese people. Also helpful for people having a family history of diabetes mellitus.
Here many questions come to your mind first. How does this affect our body system? How does it manage blood sugar levels and body weight? Is intermittent fasting really helping full diabetes mellitus and weight loss?
To answer these questions, we will cover the following points in this article:
- What is intermittent fasting?
- Is intermittent fasting safe for diabetic patients?
- Can intermittent fasting prevent diabetes mellitus?
- Key intermittent fasting diets for diabetics
- Benefits of intermittent fasting
This will help us to understand the relationship in-between intermittent fasting diabetes and fasting weight loss
Fasting weight loss, Intermittent fasting, and diabetes have a strong relationship. It may help in lowering calorie consumption and with weight loss. Which can help in reducing the risk of high blood sugar, complications of diabetic syndrome, and obesity.
Weight loss and blood sugar control can be managed with the help of intermittent fasting. It is very beneficial for diabetics. It prevents various lifestyle diseases including obesity, heart attack at a young age, stroke, and diabetes but more research is needed to determine the risks and other benefits of intermittent fasting.
What is Intermittent Fasting?
Let’s understand first what is intermittent fasting? Intermittent fasting can be defined as a type of diet when you stop eating or drinking or both for a certain period. Then start eating after in a cyclic manner till you achieve your goals.
A person limits and stretch meal to a certain period of time followed by a period of fixed hours of eating nothing or little. The ideal duration for intermittent fasting is 4 weeks minimum. However fasting period can last anywhere from a few hours to many days.
The fasting weight loss technique is very effective in young Obese adults. They can go with intermittent fasting to prevent the risk of diabetes and reverse diabetes if any family history of DM type 2 and obesity.
People may Fast for various reasons including:
- As a religious reason or practice
- To improve health and eliminate body toxins
- To reduce weight
- In preparation for medical procedures especially before major surgeries
It is also an eating pattern and a dieting technique, unlike many other diets. Intermittent fasting usually focuses on restricting the timings of your eating and drinking. It doesn’t focus on the quantity and the type of food on your plate.
Essentially, fasting detox our body and cleanse toxins. The effect of intermittent fasting is shown on the cell’s functions. It optimizes insulin & growth hormones release; and gene expression. Cells also start the cellular repair process during intermittent fasting.
Some research has shown that intermittent fasting is very useful for obese in reducing weight and controlling blood sugar. However, this can be dangerous if there are major adjustments in eating patterns. A swing in blood sugar levels can be observed during intermittent fasting.
Is intermittent fasting safe for diabetic patients?
A million-dollar question if intermittent fasting is safe for diabetic patients? Not only this but people do ask about the role of intermittent fasting for diabetes? What if a healthy person wants to go with intermittent fasting?
IF (intermittent Fasting) is the best tool to prevent diabetes in the patient who is in a prediabetes state. The pre-diabetic state is when a person is at risk of borderline diabetes with glycated hemoglobin (HbA1C) levels between 5.7% to 6.4%. IF shown very good results in weight reduction and Obesity management. But it may present some risks for people with diabetes.
This can be riskier in patients who are on insulin or on diabetic medications. Insulin and anti-diabetic drugs neutralize blood sugar and if eating much and less; then this can lead to a sudden drop in blood sugar levels too low.
Drop-in blood sugar levels are called hyp0glycemia which is more dangerous than hyperglycemia. Intermittent fasting insulin patterns can be identified with daily monitoring of insulin doses and blood sugar levels.
Listed symptoms of Hypoglycemia can be observed during intermittent fasting:
- Nausea
- Confusion
- Sweating
- Blurred vision
- Dizziness and low energy
- Fast heartbeat
- Sleepiness and irritability
- Breathless like symptoms
If any symptoms of hypoglycemia with intermittent fasting arise; you need to take corrective actions immediately. The best way to correct the hypoglycemia is to eat sugar or sugar candies without the wait for help.
Another potential danger of intermittent fasting with diabetes can be high blood sugar which is called hyperglycemia.
When you eat more after a period of defined intermittent fasting typically more than you do. This can lead to high blood sugar levels.
High blood sugar is always a risk to life and other complications such as:
- Neuropathy – Nerve damage
- Retinopathy – Damage to the nerve supplying the retina and causes eye conditions and blindness
- Nephropathy – Kidney diseases, albuminuria (Protein in urine)
- Heart Diseases – Silent heart attack is a more common type of heart attack in diabetic patients
- Brain stroke – Sudden loss of blood supply to a part of the brain
- Hypertension – High blood pressure
- Increase frequency of urination and increase thrust
It is advised to consult with your endocrinologist, dietician, or primary physician first before starting any diet, intermittent fasting, or weight loss program. If you are a known diabetic and taking insulin or anti-diabetic medications.
Can intermittent fasting prevent diabetes mellitus?
There is a strong possibility to put diabetic medication and insulin into remission for some people with the help of intermittent fasting insulin control methods.
A study was done on a few known diabetic patients. These patients were taking anti-diabetic medications and insulin regularly for a long. They fasted at least three times a week for a month. Surprisingly the insulin dose was reduced and after a period of time, they no longer needed to use insulin.
They also reduced their body weight and show improvement in body index mass (BMI), waist circumferences, and HBA1C levels. Intermittent fasting helps in significant weight loss in obese patients.
Intermittent fasting, insulin, and diabetes
Fasting can help in cutting down the calories and depletion of extra fat deposits. It helps people in reducing weight and reducing the insulin requirement of diabetic patients.
So weight loss directly acts on diabetic people by controlling their blood sugar and minimizing insulin dependency. Other weight loss programs and remedies may also help reverse diabetes and blood sugar.
However, the outcome may differ from one person to other. It depends on other factors also. The results of intermittent fasting can vary from person to person.
Key intermittent fasting diets for diabetics
Diets are of various types and verities if we talk about intermittent fasting. We cannot say which one is the best for people with diabetes mellitus. Following are the few common intermittent fasting diets:
Early time-restricted feeding:
This type of intermittent fasting allows your mealtimes to be the early morning and early afternoon. After that, you are not allowed to eat the rest of the day and night. You are allowed to eat the next meal next early morning. You may continue this for a minimum of 4 weeks time to see good results.
Alternate Day fasting:
In this type of intermittent fasting people do not eat anything for the full 24 hours or only eat a small amount once in between, followed by 24 hours of eating as you do normally.
2:5 Intermittent Fasting:
This type of intermittent fasting is done when you have 2 days of fasting and eat only fewer calories up to 500 calories per day. Then you eat your regular meals for 5 days as you do.
8:16 Intermittent Fasting:
This type is fasting is done by Muslims every year for a month. They do eat all meals within a 7-8-hours window generally after sunset and around 2 before sunrise. Then followed by 15-16 hours of fasting.
What are the key benefits of intermittent fasting for diabetics?
When intermittent fasting is done safely, may provide many benefits for obese and diabetic patients; even healthy individuals to prevent diabetes and weight loss.
You may be able to reduce your weight, the doses of medications you take, and your insulin dependency.
More research is needed to define if intermittent fasting can help further. This can be a future to stop using insulin and anti-diabetic medication. Your weight, calories, and blood sugar can be managed through intermittent fasting.
Key possible benefits of intermittent fasting are:
- It improves insulin sensitivity
- Help in lowering blood pressure
- Reduced weight and risk of heart attack and strokes
- Reduced appetite and help in improving dietary habits
- Help in reducing oxidative stress
- Increases fat oxidation
- Promote phagocytosis and improves body cells functions
Precautions Before starting intermittent fasting:
- Consult with your doctor, dietician, or endocrinologist about adjusting medicates or insulin.
- Regularly monitor your blood sugar levels to check the trends of your glucose levels
- Balance your carbohydrate in your diet
- Balance Fat in your diet
- Maintain hydration while intermittent fasting
Conclusion:
This is the fact that intermittent fasting can be one of the best ways to reduce weight. It also helps in lowering your blood sugar levels. Intermittent fasting is safe but you need to be very careful if you are a Diabetic patient.
Although intermittent fasting is safe; diabetic people with high blood sugar may be at risk of diabetes complications. The major risk of fasting may be Hypoglycemia or hyperglycemia.
Hypoglycemia is defined as low blood sugar levels. The high Blood sugar level in the blood is called Hyperglycemia.
The reason for hypoglycemia or hyperglycemia can be due to fluctuations in blood sugar levels. Blood sugar levels generally fluctuate during intermittent fasting and after not eating hours.
So you need to monitor your blood sugar levels and work with your doctor or endocrinologist before starting any weight loss program or intermittent fasting.
