 "Is intermittent fasting bad for your hair?")
Intermittent fasting is today one of the biggest trending diets in the world.
The time-restricted diet permits individuals to consume the daily calorie intake in eight to twelve hours, with the remainder of the day being spent fasting.
Benefits of such diets include weight loss, improved insulin sensitivity, and improved diabetes control, according to studies that followed individuals for brief periods of time.
Not every outcome of this diet has been favourable, though.
According to a new study, intermittent fasting among health freaks could also slow down hair regrowth.
Here’s all we know about it.
What does the study say?
According to the study published on Friday in the journal Cell, was led by stem cell biologist Bing Zhang from Westlake University in China.
The study titled Intermittent fasting triggers interorgan communication to suppress hair follicle regeneration is one of the earliest studies to provide evidence of a link between intermittent fasting and hair loss.
The study discovered that hair follicle stem cells (HFSCs), which are critical for hair regeneration, may be negatively impacted by restricted dietary patterns.
The majority of the study’s trials were conducted on mice, whose metabolisms are far faster than those of humans.
Hair regeneration was slowed in mice who followed strict eating regimens, such as eating within an eight-hour window or switching between feast and fast days.
Fasting mice took up to 96 days to exhibit partial regrowth, but normal mice regained the majority of their hair in 30 days.
What’s the link between intermittent fasting and slow hair regrowth?
The study concludes that the problem is with HFSCs’ ability to adjust to metabolic changes.
The body switches from burning glucose to burning fat as its main energy source when food intake is limited.
As a result, fatty acids are released into the bloodstream.
The inability of HFSCs to effectively metabolise these fatty acids, however, results in oxidative stress.
This stress causes the cells to self-destruct, which slows down the creation of new hair.
“During fasting, adipose tissue starts to release free fatty acids, and these fatty acids enter the HFSCs that were recently activated, but these stem cells don’t have the right machinery to use them,” Bing Zhang, senior author and stem cell biologist of Westlake University in Zhejiang, China, told Cell Press.
Even though the study was conducted on mice, researchers think that humans could potentially experience the effect, albeit perhaps to a smaller extent because of slower metabolism.
For a better understanding of the process, however, larger research are needed.
“The human population is very heterogeneous, so the effects might be different for different people,” Zhang said.
“I was shocked to hear these results,” says Ömer Yilmaz, a stem-cell biologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge who was not involved in the study.
“We’ve come to expect that fasting is going to be beneficial for most, if not all cell types and good for stem cells. This is the inverse of what we expected, and the finding seems to hold true in humans,” he said, according to Nature.
What can be done?
Increasing antioxidants may help counteract this effect, the researchers noted.
In their tests, the use of topical vitamin E or genetic improvements to increase antioxidant levels produced encouraging outcomes.
This implies that the effect of fasting on hair health may be lessened by striking a balance between it and adequate nutritional intake.
Zhang added that different people may react differently to intermittent fasting depending on their lifestyle, food, and genetic makeup.
Although intermittent fasting is still an effective way of weight loss, doctors advise being aware of any possible negative effects and making sure your diet is well-balanced to promote general health.
It is strongly advised that anyone thinking about intermittent fasting speak with a healthcare provider to create a customised plan.
Are there other side effects of intermittent fasting?
People who consumed all of their food in less than eight hours a day had a 91 per cent increased chance of death from cardiovascular disease, according to findings presented earlier this year at an American Heart Association conference.
These findings came from an analysis of over 20,000 US individuals from a database spanning eight to 17 years of age.
According to Medical News Today, some studies also link this type of fasting with gallstones and colon cancer.
According to other studies , intermittent fasting can cause a disturbance in sleep patterns, which can have negative effects of its own.
With inputs from agencies
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