
A Fasting Diet Could Reverse Diabetes And Repair The Pancreas, Says New Research
Researchers have been able to reverse symptoms of diabetes and restore pancreas functions in mice by putting them on a version of the fasting-mimicking diet.
The diet tricks the body into a fasting mode for a few days a month, even while carefully selected foods are still being eaten, and it could be enough to reboot the organ's key functions and restore insulin production, scientists say.
Diabetes occurs when the pancreas cannot make insulin (type I) or is damaged by insulin resistance (type II), and the team from the University of Southern California says the diet reversed symptoms of both types of diabetes in mice.
"By pushing the mice into an extreme state and then bringing them back... the cells in the pancreas are triggered to use some kind of developmental reprogramming," says the head of the research team, Valter Longo.
In humans, the fasting-mimicking diet has been credited with helping people lose weight more effectively, and previous studies have also linked it to reducing risk factors for diseases like heart disease and cancer.
The diet has also been credited with reducing the symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis, so it's earning quite a reputation amongst scientists. In each case starving the body seems to reset the production of healthy cells.
In the latest study, mice were put into the artificial fasting mode for four days a week over a period of several months.
Scientists found this was enough to regenerate beta cells in the pancreas, responsible for storing and releasing insulin. Damaged cells were replaced by working ones.
The team also experimented on pancreati
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