Researchers have found that women diagnosed with early stage of breast cancer fasting less than 13 hours per night have higher risks of breast cancer recurrence than those who have longer fasting periods, 13 hours or more.
Data from 2,400 women with early-stage breast cancer, between the ages of 27 and 70 at the moment of the diagnosis, were analyzed by researchers in the study published in JAMA Oncology.
They tracked the women’s data and found that after seven years from the diagnosis and the successful treatment, 390 of the survivors saw a recurrence of the cancer, as reported by Tech Times. Those were proven to have shorter fasting periods.
“Prolonging the length of the nightly fasting interval may be a simple, nonpharmacologic strategy for reducing the risk of breast cancer recurrence,” concluded the researchers team in the study led by Ruth E. Patterson, PhD, from the University of California.
However, shorter nightly fasting was not associated with higher probabilities of breast cancer mortality or with statistically significant higher risk of all-cause mortality, researchers added in their results.
What can be the cause?
Researchers did not confirm a cause-and-effect discovery, but Patterson, lead author, commented that there may be several reason for the study’s results like eating late at night, which can result in worse sleep quality and could affect the way sugar is regulated by the body.
Lower levels of sugar were linked to increased times of nightly fasting. Each two hours of fasting at night showed lower levels of hemoglobin A1c, hemoglobin with glucose attached, which is a measure of the amount of sugar in the blood, as reported by the Washington Post.
The results were described as “hard to ignore” by Gretchen Kimmick, an oncologist at the Duke Cancer Institute, who wasn’t involved in the study. She assured that the study just confirm common sense, sleeping longer and fasting longer at night is good for the health, Kimmick added.
Source: Washington Post