Wondering if fasting is worth the pain?

Carbohydrate restriction regulates the adaptive response to fasting
S. Klein and R. R. Wolfe 
Department of Internal Medicine, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston.
The importance of either carbohydrate or energy restriction in initiating the metabolic response to fasting was studied in five normal volunteers.

The subjects participated in two study protocols in a randomized crossover fashion. In one study the subjects fasted for 84 h (control study), and in the other a lipid emulsion was infused daily to meet resting energy requirements during the 84-h oral fast (lipid study).

Glycerol and palmitic acid rates of appearance in plasma were determined by infusing [2H5]glycerol and [1-13C]palmitic acid, respectively, after 12 and 84 h of oral fasting.

Changes in plasma glucose, free fatty acids, ketone bodies, insulin, and epinephrine concentrations during fasting were the same in both the control and lipid studies.

Glycerol and palmitic acid rates of appearance increased by 1.63 +/- 0.42 and 1.41 +/- 0.46 mumol.kg-1.min-1, respectively, during fasting in the control study and by 1.35 +/- 0.41 and 1.43 +/- 0.44 mumol.kg-1.min-1, respectively, in the lipid study.

These results demonstrate that restriction of dietary carbohydrate, not the general absence of energy intake itself, is responsible for initiating the metabolic response to short-term fasting.

2 thoughts on “Wondering if fasting is worth the pain?”

  1. I do not do a lot of carb restrictions per sey. I i work had at proper diet and of course I never go out of my way to have carbs. I a not a fasting sort of guy. Different strokes of course.

    Like

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.