Ramadan fasting linked to favorable metabolic changes and reduced chronic disease risk

 Introduction of Article : 

Metabolomics investigation to elucidate the impacts of Ramadan fasting on health and metabolism. Their study group comprised 72 participants who provided blood shortly before and after Ramadan fasting, based on which researchers generated metabolic scores. Study findings, obtained by comparing participants' metabolic scores against those maintained by the UK Biobank, reveal that Ramadan fasting significantly reduced the risks of lung, colorectal, and breast cancers.




Can depriving your body of food make you healthier?


Fasting, the intentional abstention from consuming food and sometimes liquids, is practiced for clinical, religious, political, and fitness reasons, the latter of which is rapidly growing in popularity. Reports reveal that globally, many health-conscious individuals are gravitating toward 'time-restricted fasting,' an approach that restricts daily eating to a predetermined period each day (usually six to eight hours). 


Popularized by the term' intermittent fasting,' this trend promises general health improvements, weight loss, and fitness benefits.
Popularized by the term' intermittent fasting,' this trend promises general health improvements, weight loss, and fitness benefits.

Popularized by the term' intermittent fasting,' this trend promises general health improvements, weight loss, and fitness benefits.



Unfortunately, apart from observational evidence for weight loss, comprehensive metabolic and cohort-based studies into the other benefits of time-restricted fasting remain lacking. Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, reflection, prayer, and community, shares every trait of time-restricted fasting except its intent (Ramadan is religious fasting). This provides a 'natural experiment' to quantify the positive or negative impacts of time-restricted fasting.




About the study :

Blood samples were processed to separate and isolate the plasma, which in turn was subjected to high-throughput Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy using the Nightingale platform. The Nightingale platform was chosen due to its ability to identify and quantify 169 lipids and metabolites. It was also selected because the United Kingdom's (UK) Biobank dataset includes Nightingale platform readings. The UK Biobank is a country-wide large-cohort prospective study comprising 500,000 English citizens representative of the nation.



Study findings :

Demographic analyses revealed that the mean age of the 72-strong study cohort was 45.7 years, 48.6% (n = 35) of whom were male. Body assessments during blood collection visits showed that, on average, participants lost 1.7 kg and 1.1% of their body fat in the two to three weeks between measurements. Nightingale platform analyses show that of the 169 measured metabolites, 14 were observed to change significantly when comparing blood collections.







Conclusions :

Ramadan fasting as a natural experiment to investigate the effects of time-restricted fasting on people's health and chronic illness risk. It used cutting-edge, high-throughput NRM spectroscopy via the Nightingale platform to compute chronic disease metabolite risk scores.

When applied to the 72 included study participants, the metabolic risk scores highlight the beneficial role of Ramadan fasting in reducing the risk of certain cancers such as lung (-9.6%), colorectal (-2.4%), and breast (-1.1%), while having no measurable effects on cardiovascular disease risk.













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