Intermittent fasting and reduced inflammation
A recent post on the Primal Wisdom blog led me to do go back to some of the research on an approach to dieting that I tried myself, with some positive results. The approach is known as intermittent fasting (IF). I also found an excellent blog post by Dr. Michael Eades on IF (see here ). Typically IF involves fasting every other day. On the non-fasting days, food and water consumption is not restricted in any way. On fasting days, only water is consumed. Variations of this approach usually involve replacing water with juice, and having an eating window of only a few hours within longer periods – e.g., fasting 19 hours and then eating during a window of 5 hours, for each period of 24 hours. IF is different from calorie restriction (CR), in that in the latter total daily calorie intake is restricted to a somewhat fixed amount, below one’s basal metabolic rate (the number of calories needed to maintain one’s current weight). In CR the calorie restriction is not normally ach...