Recently published on March 31, 2016 in JAMA Oncology, new evidence supports the idea that fasting at night reduces the risk of cancer recurrence.
Every night as we sleep we all enter a mini-fasting period before we *break-the-fast* with breakfast each morning.
Prolonging the amount of time spent fasting — skipping evening snacks all together and fasting for 13+ hours each night — reduced the risk of breast cancer according to a study that spanned thousands of patients followed for over a decade.
Simply taking care to eat an early dinner and not eating again until breakfast
(for example, fasting after a 6 PM dinner until a 7 AM breakfast)
was all it took to significantly modify the study participants rates of recurrent cancer.
The study:
- Researchers followed over 2,400 women with early stage breast cancer.
- Patients were all between the ages of 27 and 70 years old and had no prior history of diabetes.
- The patients were followed for over 11 years after treatment to determine rates of breast cancer recurrence.
- The patients reported nightly sleep patterns, eating patterns, and had C-reactive protein (CRP) and Hemaglobin A1C (HbA1C) levels tested.
The results:
- Patients who ate at night (fasting less than 13 hours a night) had a 36% *higher* rate of breast cancer recurrence.
- Researchers also found that eating at night was associated with higher HbA1C levels and will significantly less restorative sleep over all.
- Increasing the nightly fasting duration by even 2 hours statistically significantly lowered HbA1C levels and increased sleep length at night.
- Consuming food after 8:00 PM significantly elevated the blood inflammatory marker CRP as well as correlated with an elevated Body Mass Index.
I’ve already blogged about the medical studies that show a good night’s sleep does everything from improve ADHD symptoms to help with weight loss to decrease Alzheimer’s risk…
…so the impact of fasting on sleep and how that relates to cancer recurrence is an interesting avenue that definitely warrants further research.
More research is also needed to see if this translates into a simple, non-pharmacological way to reduce the risk of other cancers recurring — or even occurring in the first place!
The bottom line:
Fasting for 13+ hours each night is a drug free, simply, holistic, natural, healthy way to decrease cancer recurrence.
And there is another all natural way as well: simply walking!
Hop over here to read why walking is crucially connected to improved cancer recovery.
Now you have two free, easy, supportive tools to decrease your cancer risk that require no intervention from others to implement and no unwanted pharmacological side effects: Walk during the day, fast during the night.
Walk during the day… Fast during the night.
That’s your holistic, medically proven cancer recovery protocol and I hope you will share this information with any loved ones you know that might be facing a cancer diagnosis or are a cancer survivor.
xoxoxo, Laura
