#fasting--fmd

#fasting--fmd

The AI analysis found enormous variation in the health of the thymus between individual people. In some people, it stayed very active until a very old age. And other people, it actually declined very rapidly at a younger age. Importantly, thymus health correlated with a person's overall health. People who had a healthy thymus tended to live longer, have less cancer, and less cardiovascular disease.

It's not simply the accrual of excess fat that leads to disease. It's a change in the actual function and the capacity of the energy center within the cell to work properly. The circadian rhythm is the body's own internal 24-hour clock that regulates the sleep-wake cycle, hormone levels and metabolism, among other systems throughout the body.

By following more than 100,000 people in the U.K. for years, researchers found that people whose food choices scored high in any one of five diet categories tended to live longer than people who scored the lowest. Specifically, the team found that even after adjusting for confounding factorssuch as whether people smoked, how much exercise they took and what their education and ethnicity wasstudy participants who tended to eat according to any one of the five diets were 18 to 24 percent less likely to die of any cause. For women, that roughly translated into an extra 1.5 to 2.3 years of life. And for men, it added about 1.9 to three years.

Most of the carbohydrates in these foods - as well as most of the calories - come from starch, of which there are two types: hard-to-digest amylose and easily digested amylopectin. The latter is processed quickly and spikes blood sugar. The former is processed slowly and moderates blood sugar.

Rather than simply extending the fasting window or cutting more calories, the intervention group was simply asked to finish eating at least three hours before their usual bedtime. That meant no snacking while watching TV after dinner and no "just one more bite" at 10 p.m. (my personal downfall). This relatively simple intervention ensured that the overnight fast overlapped with the body's natural sleep-wake rhythm.

We compared how participants fared while eating their habitual diets with how they responded to the two diets that were low in ultraprocessed foods. During the periods when participants ate fewer ultraprocessed foods, they naturally consumed fewer calories and lost weight, including total and abdominal body fat. Beyond weight loss, they also showed meaningful improvements in insulin sensitivity, healthier cholesterol levels, fewer signs of inflammation, and favorable changes in hormones that help regulate appetite and metabolism.

You spent the year committed to regular workouts and cutting back on ultra-processed foods. Then came the holidays: a time of sedentary indulgence. "You're eating out of your comfort zone, and you're probably out of your fitness routine," Maddie Pasquariello, a registered dietitian in New York, told Business Insider. "Those things combined make people spiral."

"As we get older, the immune system is shifting away from good inflammation," which is the body's short-term, acute response to fend off injury or infection and promote healing, explains Dr. Thomas Marron, one of the researchers leading the new study. Marron directs early phase clinical trials at The Tisch Cancer Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

January might be coming to a close, but the focus on wellness doesn't have to die with it. If anything, it's a good time to check in with those 2026 goals and see what you want to prioritise for the rest of the year. To that end, we've gathered some of the best deals we've seen in the past few weeks that will help you tick off every good intention you set this month.

Dr Ian K Smith believes that we need to revolutionise our approach to ageing, adapting our health and dietary practices to suit where we are now

Intermittent fasting within an eight-hour window can significantly reduce symptoms of Crohn's disease, a new study has found. Crohn's disease, according to the NHS, is a long-term condition where part of the gut becomes inflamed. It cannot currently be cured and the common symptoms include: diarrhoea, blood or mucus in your poo and stomach pain. Researchers at the University of Calgary found that time-restricted feeding can reduce disease activity by 40 per cent and halve abdominal discomfort in over 12 weeks in people living with Crohn's disease.

When we say we want to lose weight, we typically mean shedding fat but not muscle. Muscle helps us to look "toned" and supports our metabolism. To lose fat without losing muscle, eat enough protein and strength train regularly, two top trainers said. If you want to lose fat without losing muscle, there are three things you need to know.