Intermittent Fasting for your Brain!? Yes Yes Yes!

(read time: 2.5 min)

I'm really into inflammation research and how it relates to depression and anxiety. This is how I stumbled upon data showing that fasting not only helps with weight loss and metabolic syndrome, but also helps fight the proinflammatory state associated with many mental health disorders.

YOUR BOOST

Dip your toe into intermittent fasting for a month. (Disclaimer… I am not a medical doctor, and this boost is for educational purposes only, in addition fasting is not for children under the age of 18, for people with existing eating disorders, or women who are pregnant or nursing, before starting any health regime it is important to first consult your doctor).

Ok, now that I’m not going to get sued, let’s dive in!

First choose a fasting style, here are the two most common (see link for a full guide).

• Time Restricted Eating: you only eat for a limited number of hours each day, say noon-6, every day.

• Short Term Fasting: you eat dinner on day 1, then fast until dinner on day 2 (24hr fast) or breakfast on day 3 (36hr fast). Do this once or twice a week (I fast on Mondays and sometime also Thursdays for 24hrs each.)

Be kind to yourself here, and choose the style that best fits your life, so that you can actually stick with it to see if it helps your symptoms of stress, anxiety and/or depression.

THE SCIENCE

Old news but important: Metabolic syndrome, a cluster of conditions that increase your risk of heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes, are related to a proinflammatory state. Intermittent fasting has shown to be a promising tool for decreasing the markers of inflammation in adults and thereby decreasing the risk of metabolic syndrome.

New news! What is new and exciting to me, yes, your friendly scientist next door and resident super nerd, is the role of inflammation in behavioral health and mental health symptoms. So ideally, if we can use fasting to decrease the level of inflammation in our brains and bodies, it might do wonders to decrease the frequency and intensity of symptoms of anxiety attacks and depressive episodes.

TAKE HOME

Intermittent fasting, pending more research, might be a very important tool in your behavioral neuroscience toolbox. If you are thinking this might be something you want to try out, talk to your doc and see if it makes sense for you.

No shame, no guilt, just more good days,

Nicole