How Intermittent Fasting Reduces Heart Attack Risk (Directly, Not Via Weight Control!)

We’ve written before about the benefits of intermittent fasting, such as:

• Intermittent Fasting: What’s The Truth?
• 16/8 Intermittent Fasting For Beginners
• Before You Eat Breakfast: 3 Surprising Facts About Intermittent Fasting

Intermittent fasting is mostly enjoyed for its metabolic benefits, such as How To Prevent And Reverse Type 2 Diabetes.

We also covered a very related topic, with intermittent fasting once again being on the suggestions list:

Improve Your Insulin Sensitivity! ← this is actually more important even that blood sugar control itself, important as that latter is!

So, how does it work to reduce heart attack risk?

While intermittent fasting can be used as a weight loss tool (it also doesn’t have to be—it depends on what you eat and what you’re doing in terms of exercise, amongst other factors), this isn’t about that.

Although it is also worth mentioning that intermittent fasting does reduce the risks associated with diabetes, hypercholesterolemia, cancer, Alzheimer’s, and more, as well as generally improving cardiovascular health by reducing blood pressure, cholesterol, and insulin resistance, amongst other metrics.

However, this is about platelet aggregation. Or in whole: platelet activation, aggregation, and thrombosis.

A team of scientists, Dr. Shimo Dai et al., investigated the effects of alternate-day intermittent fasting on platelets and thrombosis, in two quite different, but both important, demographics:

• Humans with coronary artery disease
• Mice with the ApoE gene (the Alzheimer’s risk gene)

Why the mice? Because they wanted to check the level of cerebral ischemia-reperfusion injury (the damage that occurs after a stroke), and no ethics board will let scientists slice up human participants brains at will.

In both cases, the intermittent fasting group enjoyed protective effects that the control group (ad libitum eating) did not.

Specifically, reduced platelet activation, as well as reduced platelet aggregation. Just to be clear:

• Platelet activation = platelets getting deployed
• Platelet aggregation = platelets sticking together

Both are required for thrombosis, which occurs when the platelets, having been activated and aggregated (which is their job, for example to stop bleeding in the case of an injury), block one or more blood vessels.

A healthy level of platelet activation and aggregation rests in the sweet spot wherefrom it can stop bleeding, without stopping blood circulation.

This was found to be associated with increased levels of indole-3-propionic acid (IPA), which is created by certain gut bacteria (C. sporogenes), who proliferate enthusiastically during intermittent fasting.

In few words:

• intermittent fasting triggers the C. sporogenes to proliferate,
• which increases IPA levels,
• which reduces platelet activation and aggregation,
• which reduces the risk of thrombosis,
• and thus reduces the risk of heart attack.

We may hypothesize that this may be a reason to not do intermittent fasting if you have a bleeding disorder, and consult your doctor if you’re on blood thinners.

For everyone else, this is one more thing that makes intermittent fasting a very healthful practice!

You can find the paper itself here:

Intermittent fasting inhibits platelet activation and thrombosis through the intestinal metabolite indole-3-propionate

And here’s a pop-science article that gets more technical than we have, if you’d like a middle-ground in terms of complexity:

Intermittent fasting cuts heart attack risk by preventing dangerous blood clots

Want to try intermittent fasting, but it sounds hard?

Check out this:

Hack Your Hunger

Enjoy!