How intermittent fasting can repair the heart: Even the risk of heart attack decreases, according to researchers
Created: 06/28/2022, 10:05 am
By: Juliane Gutmann
High blood pressure is one of the most common risk factors for heart attacks.
It is not just stress reduction that prevents this: periods of fasting should also strengthen the heart.
Are you using the time after the carnival holidays for a fasting cure?
This will not only melt a few pounds: the heart muscle can also regenerate through fasting periods.
As the German Heart Foundation further informs, studies have shown that intermittent fasting* has a positive effect on high-risk heart diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
"
Thus, intermittent fasting in heart attack patients can help to reduce the risk of another heart attack,
" says a press release from the foundation.
"
Intermittent fasting triggers changes in cell metabolism, which in turn show many similarities with the cell programs that promote healing of the heart muscle and restoration of blood flow and the pumping function of the heart,
" says Professor Daniel Sedding, Director of the University Clinic for Cardiology in Halle (Saale ).
As part of the study "Intermittent fasting after myocardial infarction", he and his team are investigating whether intermittent fasting can also support the regeneration of the heart after a heart attack in order to prevent heart failure (chronic heart failure).
Heart attack survey
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The approximately 50 study participants had all suffered a severe heart attack.
Divided into two groups, one half fasts according to the 16:8 method.
Nothing is eaten for 16 hours at a time and you can eat whatever you feel like for eight hours.
The second group did not change their eating habits.
After one, three and six months, the heart function of all subjects is measured and compared.
The aim is to determine whether intermittent fasting could represent a non-drug approach to healing the heart muscle after a heart attack with few side effects.
"
If our study is successful, that may mean that we encourage at least the majority of our patients to do that
", says Dr.
Jochen Dutzmann, Senior Physician at the Clinic for Internal Medicine III at the University Medicine Halle.
Feast for eight hours, eat nothing for 16 hours: This is how the most common form of fasting works.
© Sandra Roesch/Imago
Would you like to learn more about intermittent fasting?
In the guide "The Nutrition Docs - Healthy and slim through intermittent fasting: The 16:8 program with recipes and weekly plans" (advertising link) you can read how you can easily integrate intermittent fasting into your everyday life.
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But for some patients, fasting also poses risks, such as for diabetics, according to Dutzmann.
Cardiac patients in particular should not plan to go it alone, but should discuss every fasting method in advance with a heart specialist, quotes the German Heart Foundation as saying Professor Hans Hauner, Director of the Else Kröner-Fresenius Center for Nutritional Medicine (EKFZ) at the Technical University of Munich.
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