People who underwent less than a week of a heavily restricted diet showed fewer signs of ageing, diabetes, heart disease and cancer compared to a group who did not fast.
Furthermore, the good effects lasted despite returning to their normal diet – however healthy that was to begin with.
University of Southern California researchers created a ‘fasting mimicking diet’, where the beneficial effects of fasting were replicated, but ensured vital vitamins and minerals were included ‘to minimise the burden of fasting’.
The medically-supervised diet cut the number of calories eaten by between 34 to 54%.
On the first day, the subjects ate just 1,090 calories while the diet was restricted to 725 calories on the second to fifth days.
At the end, remarkable results were recorded.