Nutritionist and author Gabriela Peacock shares why being overweight can lead to internal inflammation but how intermittent fasting provides a solution.
BING OVERWEIGHT CAN REDUCE life expectancy by several years. That’s a pretty startling thought. Having too much unnecessary fat may lead to insulin resistance, heart problems, cognitive conditions and chronic inflammation, as well as metabolic and hormonal disruption. And that’s before we’ve even got to how it influences the ageing process. Here’s the long and short of it: maintaining a healthy weight throughout your life is one of the most significant investments you can make for yourself now and as you continue to age over the years.
Gaining weight triggers inflammation, but, curiously, as a kind of innate immune response. It seems excess levels of fat cells are perceived as an injury or infection, so the body responds by sending along proinflammatory cytokines and immune cells to where excess fat has collected. If the problem were actually an injury or infection, this emergency response would be temporary. Unfortunately, excess adipose tissue that is not dealt with continues to over-stimulate the immune system. This is when inflammation can become chronic, disrupting the balance of the body’s metabolism.
This results in adipose tissue itself becoming very inflammatory, spreading more inflammation to its neighbouring organs and tissue like a wildfire, which in turn contributes to systemic inflammation within the body as a whole; this is a classic hallmark of ageing. Think of the longest lines of dominoes possible, but on fire.
Weight gain is a vicious circle. The more inflammation you have, the more prone you become to gaining weight. That’s why being overweight can be described as a form of “low-grade chronic inflammation” with the potential to lead to insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes, making it harder to lose weight, but easier to keep gaining it!
But every change you implement, no matter how small, is a step in the right direction to restoring balance and changing the future of your health.
INTERMITTENT FASTING
Long-term calorie restriction leads to an initial drop in weight but will ultimately result in what is known as metabolic adaptation. This is when the body starts to panic about when its next refuel will happen and, as a result, stores energy in fat cells as an emergency back-up. This slowing down of the metabolism when calorie restriction is enforced over long periods of time means that the body is adapting to what is happening and any positive effects will radically slow down. Without entering a proper fasting state, the beneficial side effects reduce – ketone production will be lower because the body is still receiving glucose and autophagy isn’t triggered t
