In a recent research it has been found that the people who skipped meals once a month were about 40
percent less likely to be diagnosed with clogged arteries than those who did not regularly fast.
People did not have to "get religion" to benefit who regularly took breaks from food also were less likely to have clogged arteries, scientists found.
Researchers got the idea to
study fasting after analyzing medical records of patients who had X-ray exams to check for blocked
heart arteries between 1994 and 2002 in the Intermountain Health Collaborative Study, a health registry. Of these patients, 4,629 could be diagnosed as clearly having or lacking heart
disease - an artery at least 70 percent clogged.
A study in Utah, where the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is based, found a typical pattern: only 61 percent of Mormons who observed monthly fast had heart disease compared to 66 percent of non-Mormons. They thought tobacco use probably accounted for the difference. But after taking smoking into account, they still saw a lower rate of heart disease among Mormons and designed a survey to explore why.
Researchers speculated that when people take a break from food, it forces the body to dip into fat reserves to burn calories. It also keeps the body from being constantly exposed to sugar and having to make insulin to metabolize it. When people develop diabetes, insulin-producing cells become less sensitive to cues from eating, so fasting may provide brief rests that resensitize these cells and make them work better. But it is believed that it could be dangerous for the diabetic people as fasting causes dangerous swings in blood sugar.
But do people really get benefit from fasting? India is the land of religion and fasting but unfortunately
Asian Indians are at the highest risk of heart disease in world , now researchers have determined that those of Indian and Pakistani descent have the highest
rates of heart disease in the world, despite coming from a culture that shuns smoking, encourages a vegetarian diet and lacks many of the other classic risk factors for the disease.
About 25 percent of all heart attacks among men of Indian descent occur while they are younger than 40, unheard of in any other population, according to researchers. Death rates from the disease are up to three times higher among Indians than those of European or East-Asian origin.
"Most physicians trained in the U.S. are not aware their Asian-Indian patients are at risk," said Dr. Susan Ivey, an assistant researcher at the University of California-Berkeley Center for Family and Community Health, which spearheaded the new study. As lifestyles change in India, heart disease is hitting epidemic proportions there - and also among Indo-Americans - with more than 10 percent of urban Indians now suffering from the disease. Over the past three decades, coronary artery disease rates have declined by half in many developed countries, but have more than doubled in India, according to the Coronary Artery Disease among Asian Indians Research Foundation. Rates are significantly higher in urban regions of India than in rural ones.
Asians-Indians eat heavier food cooked in ghee, or clarified butter. Doctors recommend that foods be cooked in olive oil instead. "A lot of people, they just feel they look healthy, they feel healthy," and so they don’t get tested for heart disease, By the time some of them find out they have it, they’re either in an ambulance or a hospital bed.
Sources:
Heart association: http://www.heart.org
Heart meeting: http://www.scientificsessions.org
More abstracts about the Monthly fasting is good for the heart….