DIETING or hitting the treadmill no fun? You might be able to enjoy one of their lesser-known health benefits without the hassle.
Exercising hard or not eating for a while can alter the immune system鈥檚 behaviour, suppressing some types of inflammatory response. That, in turn, seems to protect against , and autoimmune conditions. But what triggers the change in the immune response has been unclear.
When starved of glucose, its usual energy source, the body can use chemicals called ketones instead. To find out if one of these suppresses inflammation, from the Yale School of Medicine doused human immune cells with various ketones. When he upped the dose of a ketone called BHB to the level seen after two days of fasting, the inflammatory response fell away.
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Injecting BHB into mice genetically engineered to have autoimmune disease reduced their symptoms compared with control mice (). Dixit says this takes us a step closer to devising a pill that offers some of the benefits of dieting and exercise.
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淒ieting鈥檚 benefits, minus the starving鈥�