A diet that mimics fasting may be healthy for you, claims new study

Health freaks you may want to mimic a fast as a new study has suggested that it may be good for you.

According to the Detroit Free Press, many people have tried going on extremely low-calorie diets for years, hoping to stave off illness and delay the effects of ageing.

University of Southern California's Valter Longo said that it's an approach that is based on science showing that limiting proteins and sugars seems to impede processes in the body that lead to diabetes and even cancers, but it's also a tough road that can sap dieters' patience and strength.

He added that they wanted to know, what if people eat normally, but then once every few weeks they fool the system into thinking it was starving? The results showed that the fasting-mimicking plan did indeed work.

When Longo's team alternated between offering yeast a nutrient medium and fasting them, they lived longer. Middle-age mice that were fed a diet that mimicked fasting lived longer and had less fat, fewer cancers, less bone density loss and other positive effects.

The test subjects who ate the fasting-like diet experienced drops in their fasting blood glucose levels and in factors associated with cancer and cardiovascular risk. In mice, the researchers saw increased numbers of stem cells, suggesting that starvation-like conditions killed off old, weaker cells and allowed younger, refreshed cells to emerge.

The study is published in the journal Cell Metabolism.