6 ways to safeguard your heart while intermittent fasting

Intermittent fasting is fast gaining popularity among fitness enthusiasts with no specific restrictions on the type of food or portions, and its ability to enhance rapid fat burning.

However, a recent study has pointed out the eating pattern can be detrimental to your heart health and people who eat within the 8-hour framework are at 91 per cent greater chance of dying from cardiovascular disease than those who ate over a 12-16 hour time frame. ( Intermittent fasting linked to 91% increase in risk of death from heart disease: Study)

How intermittent fasting works

According to John Hopkins Medicine, intermittent fasting works by prolonging the period when your body has burned through the calories consumed during your last meal and begins burning fat. This offers several advantages as per experts be it diabetes prevention, weight loss to reducing inflammation in the body. However, in the light of this new research, it’s important to understand how potential heart issues can be avoided with this diet pattern.

“It is trendy now-a-days to follow IF as if it is a discovery but the centuries-old tradition of fasting for a day every week is a form of IF. It is perceived that weight loss can be swift and significantly higher with IF regimens based on animal experiments.

In addition, physiologically a fed state promotes cell growth whereas fasting state promotes cell breakdown and repair and certain small human studies showed IF could help in recovering from diabetes, weight loss, cancer, thyroid problems etc,” says Dr. C. Raghu, Clinical Director & Senior Interventional Cardiologist, Yashoda Hospitals Hyderabad.