How scientists discovered the 16:8 cycle
Status: 5:14 p.m
intermittent fasting” /> Intermittent fasting often involves a 16-hour break from eating. But why actually?
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Intermittent fasting is becoming increasingly popular. But where does the frequently used 16:8 method come from? A well-known fasting researcher now gives the curious reason why science came up with the common time division.
IIn recent years, fasting has established itself as a popular method to get rid of annoying fat deposits. However, not the classic therapeutic fasting, in which you starve for several days at a time, but interval fasting. This means eating periods and fasting periods alternate within a week or within a single day. 16:8 fasting is particularly popular. You can eat within a time window of only eight hours. Then fast for 16 hours.
But why should it be exactly 16 hours? Why not 15 or 14? There is a surprisingly simple explanation for this, as renowned researcher Dr. Satchin Panda now said in an interview with the fitness platform “Fitbook”.
The chronobiologist at the Salk Institute in California was involved in a 2012 study investigating the health benefits of time-restricted feeding in mice. The mice were only fed in a time window of eight hours and then had to fast for 16 hours.
Private reasons played a role
“The one with the 16-hour fasting window originally comes from our laboratory,” Panda explains to “Fitbook”. The reason for the eight-hour meal window “had no empirical basis.” Rather, the private life of the German doctoral student Christopher Vollmers involved in the study was the cause. “Christopher had a new girlfriend. And this friend had made it a condition that he was not allowed to spend more than nine hours in the lab.”
Vollmers, now an associate professor at UC Santa Cruz, said: “I can confirm that Satchin thinks that’s the truth. Satchin is a very demanding boss. It was much easier to tell him that my then girlfriend and now wife, Dr. Apple made that condition to Cortez Vollmers when to tell him the truth: I’d much rather spend time with her than with lab mice.”
Juice cleanses and therapeutic fasting have been popular for many years. However, many scientists now recommend fasting during a day through targeted eating breaks
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Since the mice were examined after they were fasting or feeding, and thus during the researchers’ working hours, the eating window was limited to eight hours. Although the initiative to research 16-hour fasting was non-scientific, it did enable the researchers to demonstrate many healthy aspects of intermittent fasting—at least in mice.
Incidentally, the positive effects already appear during a twelve-hour fast, but increase the shorter the eating window per day. Beginners can try to fast between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m., for example. After you get used to it, you can gradually extend the fasting window to up to 16 hours.
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