Intermittent Fasting Affect Blood Sugar Levels
Intermittent fasting, or IF is a way to plan your diet by limiting your eating time. IF helps people with diabetes by preventing obesity or being overweight. The National Library of Medicine (NLM) says that by 2030, more than 75% of people in the United States will be overweight or obese. These people will be at a very high risk of diabetes.
Intermittent fasting impacts blood sugar level and this impact relies on an individual diet, health issues, and the medicines they are taking. This blog will dive into the different types, benefits, and how does intermittent fasting affect blood sugar levels. In addition, the medicine named Januvia 50 mg tablet treats diabetes effectively.
Types of Intermittent Fasting
There are numerous ways to prepare your diet. Here are some of the most prevalent types of intermittent fasting:
16/8 Method
This is one of the most famous ways to lose weight while fasting. It limits the time of day when you can eat and drink things with calories to a set range of 8 hours. It means that you can’t eat for the other 16 hours during the day.
The method revolves around TRF, or time-restricted feeding plan, and is more flexible than other diets with strict rules. Some people skip breakfast and consume food from noon to 8 pm, whereas others don’t eat after 5 pm and from 9 am to 5 pm.
TRF (Time Restricted Feeding) is intermittent fasting in which all food is eaten during a short “feeding” span.
5/2 Method
The 5/2 diet is a simple plan for fasting every other day. You usually eat and don’t worry about calories five days a week. Then, on the other two days of the week, you eat only one-fourth of the calories you need daily. For example, if someone usually eats 2,000 calories daily, this would mean eating only 500 calories two days a week instead of their usual 2,000.
The NLM, or National Library of Medicines, says that the 5/2 plan is just as good as limiting calories daily for people with type 2 diabetes to lose body weight and keep blood sugar under control.
Eat Stop Eat
In this intermittent fasting plan, you choose between one and two non-consecutive days each week when you don’t eat or fast for 24 hours. You can eat as much as you want the rest of the week, but it’s best to eat a well-balanced meal and not overeat.
When you fast for up to 24 hours, your metabolism can change to make your body use fat for energy instead of glucose.
Alternate-Day Fasting
It is intermittent fasting with a framework that is easy to remember. On this plan, you fast every other day but can eat anything you want when you don’t fast. Some forms of this diet include “customized” fasting, meaning that you eat about 500 calories on fasting days. But in other versions, you don’t eat anything on fasting days.
When you combine fasting every other day with exercise, you lose twice as much weight as when you fast as per the NLM.
All these methods help you lose weight as long as you don’t make up for it by eating a lot more when you are allowed to eat. Always seek the help of your healthcare practitioner to know which way suits your body’s requirements.
Benefits of Intermittent Fasting
Intermittent fasting is good for the health of your heart, lowers inflammation, and speeds up the process of repairing cells. It also helps you lose weight.
Here are some of the benefits:
- Insulin Management: IF lowers the level of insulin hormone, which results in fat burning to meet energy requirements.
- Cell Repairing: It induces cell repair by removing waste material from the body.
- Weight Loss: It improves metabolism, which helps you burn more calories and reduce body weight. The ScienceDirect journal says intermittent fasting can help people lose 3–8% of their body weight in 3–24 weeks.
- Reduce insulin resistance: It reduces the insulin resistance of cells and lowers the risk of type 2 diabetes. Insulin resistance is a state in which the cells don’t respond to the insulin hormone and can’t use blood sugar properly.
- Prevent Heart Diseases: IF helps prevent heart disease by managing risk factors like cholesterol levels and high blood pressure. WHO says that heart diseases kill more people than any other disease. It is crucial to maintain a healthy blood pressure control in diabetes.
- Improve Brain Health: IF accelerates the formation of new nerve cells, which is advantageous for brain health. Additionally, fasting raises levels of the hormone BDNF produced by the brain.
BDNF, or brain-derived neurotrophic factor deficiency, results in depression and several other issues with the brain.
Impact of Intermittent Fasting on Blood Sugar Level
When your blood sugar is too high, your pancreas makes the hormone insulin. This hormone removes the glucose or sugar from your blood and lets the liver store it. If your glucose levels stay high, your pancreas won’t be able to make enough insulin to keep up. This leads to health problems like Type 2 diabetes.
Your body makes insulin to store and use glucose in your cells. If you have more glucose in your blood than your body needs, it gets stored as fat. The intermittent fasting effect on blood sugar works by lowering your insulin level. When the level of insulin is low, fat cells release some of the fat they hold on to to be used as energy. That makes you lose weight.
According to the US National Library of Medicine, people having type 2 diabetes who followed an intermittent fasting plan lost weight and regulated their blood sugar levels. Additionally, seeking healthcare guidance is crucial for prescribed medications to regulate blood sugar. These medicines are available at the best Canadian online pharmacy.
Conclusion
In conclusion, a diet strategy known as intermittent fasting (IF) involves limiting how often you eat to keep your body weight and blood sugar levels in check. It’s crucial to understand how does intermittent fasting affect blood sugar to prevent diabetes. There are many options for diet planning, like 16/2, 5/2, Eat-Stop-Eat, and alternate-day eating.
As long as you don’t compensate by consuming significantly more calories when you are allowed to eat, all of these techniques assist you in losing weight. Remember to take the assistance of a healthcare perfectionist to know which method is most suitable for you.
