New Delhi: Although intermittent fasting has been proven to be a successful method of weight loss, some have expressed concern that it may harm women’s reproductive hormones. Recently, a group of researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago published a study on obesity that adds new information to the debate.
Under the direction of researchers led by Krista Vardi, professor of nutrition at UIC, eight weeks were spent monitoring a group of pre- and post-menopausal obese women using the “warrior diet” technique of intermittent fasting. Were.
The Warrior Diet calls for a four-hour window each day, during which dieters are allowed to eat without counting calories before beginning a water fast until the next day.
They measured the difference in hormone levels between groups of dieters who followed feeding windows of four and six hours and a control group that did not impose any dietary restrictions using data from blood samples.
Vardi and his team found that after eight weeks of dieting, the dieters’ levels of sex-binding globulin hormone, a protein that transports reproductive hormones throughout the body, remained unchanged. Both testosterone and androstenedione, a steroid hormone that the body uses to make both testosterone and estrogen, exhibit the same behavior.
Dehydroepiandrosterone, or DHEA, is a hormone that fertility clinics recommend to enhance ovarian function and egg quality, but at the conclusion of the trial, it was significantly lower, with a drop of about 14% in pre- and post-menopausal women. The decline in DHEA levels was the study’s most important finding, in both pre- and post-menopausal women, DHEA levels remained within the normal range by the end of the eight-week period.
“This suggests that in pre-menopausal women, the slight drop in DHEA levels needs to be weighed against the proven reproductive benefits of lower body mass,” Varadi said. “The decline in DHEA levels in post-menopausal women may be related because menopause already causes a dramatic drop in estrogen, and DHEA is a primary component of estrogen. However, a survey of participants found low estrogen post-menopausal. No negative side effects were reported associated with -menopause, such as sexual dysfunction or skin changes.”
In addition, Vardi notes that since high DHEA has been linked to breast cancer risk in pre- and post-menopausal women, a slight drop in levels may be beneficial in reducing that risk.
The study also measured estradiol, estrone and progesterone levels, but only during the menstrual cycle of pre-menopausal women due to the fluctuations of these hormones in post-menopausal women. All these hormones are necessary for pregnancy. At the end of eight weeks, these hormones had not changed in post-menopausal women.
Compared to the control group, which lost almost no weight, women in the four-hour and six-hour diet groups lost between 3% and 4% of their starting weight during the study. Additionally, the dieters saw a decrease in oxidative stress biomarkers and insulin resistance.
Women in their 40s who are perimenopausal were not included in the study.
Still, Vardi said, “I think it’s a great first step. We’ve seen thousands of pre- and post-menopausal women go through different alternative fasting and time-restricted eating strategies. To eat less. By shortening that eating window, you’re naturally cutting calories. Most of the negative information on intermittent fasting that has been reported has come from studies on rats or mice. We need intermittent fasting on humans. More studies are needed to look at the effects of