If You Have Breast Cancer, And Think You Must Fast, Don't Do It for Short Periods of Time

Here's another shocking thing I just came across.  Short overnight fasting in women with breast cancer may lead to recurrence.

 We've all seen the celebrities who swear by fasting, something I must confess I have never considered, but who claim it enriches everything from their skin to their brains. 

But in women with breast cancer, a short overnight fast of less than 13 hours was associated with a 36 percent higher risk of breast cancer recurrence and a 21 percent higher probability of death from the disease, compared to patients who fasted 13 or more hours per night, reports University of California, San Diego School of Medicine researchers.

Researchers also reported that fasting fewer hours per night was associated with significantly less sleep and higher levels of glycated hemoglobin, which is a measure of average blood sugar levels over a period of months. These findings are relevant to cancer prevention and control efforts because elevated levels of this hemoglobin and poor sleeping habits have been linked to an increased risk of breast cancer. In another study,  researchers demonstrated that shorter overnight fasts were associated with worse blood sugar control.

“Prolonging the overnight fasting interval may be a simple, non-pharmacological strategy for reducing a person’s risk of breast cancer recurrence and even other cancers,” newswise.com quotes Catherine Marinac, lead author and doctoral candidate at UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center. “Previous research has focused on what to eat for cancer prevention, but when we eat may also matter because it appears to affect metabolic health.”

Adds Ruth Patterson, PhD, senior author and leader of the cancer prevention program at Moores Cancer Center, "If future trials confirm that habitual prolonged nightly fasting improves metabolic health, this would be an important discovery in prevention that could reduce the risk of cancers, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease."

Who needs to fast anyway when M&Ms are almost always on sale?







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