There are many Italians who skip the first meal of the day every day. Many do it, trivially, for the limited time available, others because they are convinced that skipping breakfast is an effective way to drastically reduce the overall caloric intake of the day and therefore a way like any other to stay on the line. But there are health risks, and the confirmation comes from science. A team of researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, has in fact discovered that carrying out what is called “chronic fasting” heavily affects the body, exposing the person to serious cardiac risks.
Breakfast: the main mistakes. The deepening
With heart risk diet, but not only
“Fasting – explain the scientists – can be harmful for fighting infections and could lead to an increased risk of heart disease”. The research, focused on mouse models, is among the first to show that skipping meals — and the scientists focused on breakfast this time — triggers a response in the brain that negatively affects immune cells. The results of the study have been published in the pages of the journal Immunity, and could lead to a better understanding of how chronic fasting can affect the body even in the long term.
But there are also positive aspects
“There is a growing awareness that fasting is good for the body,” said Professor Filip Swirski, lead author of the study and director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute at Icahn Mount Sinai, “and there is indeed abundant evidence of the benefits. of fasting. Our study provides a word of caution as it suggests there may also be a cost to fasting that carries a health risk.” According to what has emerged, in fact, chronic fasting affects the communication between the nervous and immune systems.
Diet alters monocytes
With their work, the scientists aimed to understand how fasting (for short periods but also longer than 24 hours) affects the immune system. To do this, they examined two groups of mice. The first ate breakfast immediately after waking up, with a large meal, while the second systematically skipped breakfast. Blood samples were then taken from all subjects immediately after waking up, after 4 hours and after 8 hours. The analyzes showed a clear difference between the two groups. The mice that skipped breakfast had a difference in the number of monocytes. The finding has scientists concerned, not least because white blood cells play many critical roles, from fighting infection to heart disease to even controlling major diseases, such as cancer.
Monocyte count plummets by more than 90 percent
At baseline, all mice had the same amount of monocytes. But after four hours the monocytes in the mice in the fasting group were dramatically affected. The researchers found that 90 percent of these cells disappeared from the bloodstream, and the number decreased further after eight hours: The monocytes returned to the bone marrow where they literally went dormant. At the same time, the production of new cells in the bone marrow is decreased. Monocytes in the bone marrow, which are typically short-lived, have changed significantly. They survived longer because they stayed in the bone marrow and aged differently than the monocytes that stayed in the blood. Stopping the diet didn’t make things better. Although the monocytes returned to work immediately, their functioning was altered: instead of protecting against infections, they caused inflammation, making the body overall more fragile.
In parallel, the mice that were lucky enough to eat breakfast showed normal levels of monocytes in their blood.
This study appears to be among the first to establish the existence of a connection between the brain and immune cells. Scientists believe that this “impaired communication” is at the root of some people’s morning irritability.
Diet is serious business, more research is needed
“Research shows, on the one hand, that fasting reduces the number of circulating monocytes, which one might think is a good thing, as these cells are important components of inflammation. On the other hand, the reintroduction of food creates a surge of monocytes returning to the bloodstream, which can be problematic. “Fasting, therefore, regulates this pool in ways that are not always beneficial to the body’s ability to respond to a challenge such as an infection,” Dr. Swirski concludes. Because these cells are so important to other diseases like heart disease or cancer, understanding how their function is controlled is critical.”
Source
EurekAlert