Intermittent fasting can lengthen your lifespan and aid weight loss – but according to a new MIT study, there could be a dark side to the regenerative powers of fasting.
The researchers behind the study, published in Nature, discovered that eating again after fasting activates a pathway that’s crucial for boosting regeneration in stem cells – an important process for healing injuries. But they also found a downside: cancerous mutations caused by this regeneration were more likely to develop into early-stage tumours. “Having more stem cell activity is good for regeneration, but too much of a good thing over time can have less favourable consequences,” said Prof Ömer Yilmaz, senior author of the study.
Observing mice eating again after a 24-hour fast, the researchers discovered that stem cells proliferated most at the end of the ‘refeeding’ period (much more than in mice who hadn’t fasted at all). This intense regeneration is caused by nutrients becoming available again, which enables stem cells to divide and grow – and therefore build more specialised cells. But they discovered that the mice were much more likely to develop cancerous polyps during refeeding.