Stay hungry, stay healthy?

The suggested benefits of intermittent fasting are plenty: weight loss, improved heart and brain function, more energy and minimizing the effects of aging, to name a few. The basic approach is simple—eat only during an eight-hour window, fast during the rest of the day (a ratio known as 16:8). This can be achieved by skipping breakfast or eating your dinner really early so you can sleep through your hunger pangs. One of the major keys to the success of fasting is the regulation of insulin. The periods when you aren’t eating give the body time to lower insulin levels, which reverses the fat-storing process and leads to other benefits like low blood pressure. Two recent studies have found that fasting and eating low-calorie foods also may reduce the risk of chronic disease by keeping inflammatory immune cells at bay while supercharging other important infection-fighting ones. Is your stomach growling yet?