Fasting and Exercise

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:01 — 1.4MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Anchor lead: If you choose to fast, should you also
exercise? Elizabeth Tracey reports

If you’ve chosen a fasting regimen to improve your health,
should you also exercise? Mark Mattson, a neurosciences researcher at Johns
Hopkins and author of a recent paper on fasting, says the answer is a
resounding yes.

Mattson: If you work out in the fasting state you get an
additive effect of the beneficial effects of the fasting and the exercise,
insulin sensitivity, fat loss- makes a lot of sense, right? You’re already
using fats and then now you’re exercising when you don’t have any glucose in
your liver.  :18

Mattson says benefits begin on a cellular level.

Mattson: In response to the fasting and exercise the cells
upregulate mechanisms that clear out molecules that are damaged by free
radicals, and then when you eat and rest the cells can grow.   :11

Mattson notes that the benefits of fasting have been shown
in cancer, neurodegenerative and metabolic diseases. At Johns Hopkins, I’m
Elizabeth Tracey.