Intermittent Fasting - improves survival after heart attacks

Well it seems to help rats.

Intermittent fasting is found to be:

• pro-angiogenic - promoting the growth of blood vessels
  
• anti-apoptotic - apoptosis is programmed cell death. Not always a problem, but can contribute to hypotrophy (wasting away) in ichemic damage
  
• anti-remodeling - stops the changes in size, shape, and function of the heart after injury to the left ventricle.
  

(I hope you are not getting bored by all the IF posts, but these things keep getting published! As ever if you want to learn more you might want to check out Brad Pilon - interviewed here.)

Here is the abstract (edited a bit because blogger was playing up....but you can click on the link to get the whole thing):

Chronic intermittent fasting improves the survival following large myocardial ischemia by activation of BDNF/VEGF/PI3K signaling pathway

Received 3 September 2008; received in revised form 22 October 2008; accepted 24 October 2008. published online 14 November 2008.

• Chronic heart failure (CHF) is the major cause of death in the developed countries. Calorie restriction is known to improve the recovery in these patients; however, the exact mechanism behind this protective effect is unknown.
• Chronic MI was induced in rats by occlusion of the left coronary artery.
• Two weeks later, the rats were randomly assigned to a normal feeding group (MI-NF) and an alternate-day feeding group (MI-IF).
• After 6 weeks of observation, we evaluated the effect of intermittent fasting on cellular and ventricular remodeling and long-term survival after CHF.
• Compared with the normally fed group, intermittent fasting markedly improved the survival of rats with CHF
• The heart weight body weight ratio was significantly less in the MI-IF group compared to the MI-NF group
• Isolated heart perfusion studies exhibited well preserved cardiac functions in the MI-IF group compared to the MI-NF group
• Molecular studies revealed the upregulation of angiogenic factors in the fasted hearts.
• Immunohistochemical studies confirmed increased capillary density .
• Moreover fasting also upregulated the expression of other anti-apoptotic factors
• Chronic intermittent fasting markedly improves the long-term survival after CHF by activation through its pro-angiogenic, anti-apoptotic and anti-remodeling effects.

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