Brain scans show fasting literally rewires your brain:
Brain scans of participants in a recent study showed changes in brain areas that regulate appetite and addiction, including the inferior frontal orbital gyrus. At the same time, tests of stool samples and blood showed changes in the gut bacteria, especially with types called Coprococcus comes and Eubacterium hallii.
The research was published in Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology.
The team emphasizes that, not only did the participants lose weight, averaging 7.6 kilograms (16.8 pounds), but there were also noticeable changes in the composition of their gut bacteria, and additional changes in brain regions.
These changes were linked to less activity in a part of the brain called the left inferior frontal orbital gyrus, which helps control food intake. During intermittent fasting, certain beneficial gut bacteria may become more prevalent, producing compounds that influence brain activity related to food intake and impulse control.
This suggests a complex, bidirectional communication between the gut and the brain, where altering the gut environment through fasting can lead to changes in brain function, potentially affecting eating behaviors and decision-making processes related to diet. Intermittent fasting offers multiple benefits, including weight loss, improved metabolic health, enhanced brain function, and potential longevity, by altering eating patterns to incorporate regular periods of fasting.
Researchers from China monitored 25 obese patients losing weight during and after intermittent energy restriction (IER) for changes in their gut bacteria and in brain regions for appetite and addiction. They showed that changes in both these compartments of the brain-gut-microbiome axis are tightly coupled in time. These results suggest that these changes could be linked by an as yet unknown mechanism: either changes in the gut microbiome drive changes in the brain or vice versa.
Worldwide, more than one billion people are obese. Obesity is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and some cancers. But permanently losing weight isn’t easy: complex interactions between body systems such as gut physiology, hormones, and the brain are known to work against it. One method for weight loss is intermittent energy restriction (IER), where days of relative fasting alternate with days of eating normally.
“Here we show that an IER diet changes the human brain-gut-microbiome axis. The observed changes in the gut microbiome and in the activity in addiction-related brain regions during and after weight loss are highly dynamic and coupled over time,” said last author Dr Qiang Zeng, a researcher at the Health Management Institute of the PLA General Hospital in Beijing. The results are published in Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology.
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