Is intermittent fasting good for you?
Inside Health
BBC
4.4 • 575 Ratings
🗓️ 9 April 2024
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Have you ever tried intermittent fasting? As the month of Ramadan comes to an end, many Muslims are concluding several weeks of time-restricted eating. But outside of religion, many of us are now choosing to eat this way for health reasons – even UK PM Rishi Sunak does a weekly fast. Claimed benefits of intermittent fasting range from weight loss to improved immune function to maybe even living longer, but do these stack up?
James Gallagher gives one of these popular diets a go whilst trying to answer if restricting when we eat our food is good for us. He chats to Colin Selman from the University of Glasgow about the animal studies which inspired these claims, Claudia Langenberg from Queen Mary University on what happens in our bodies when fasting, and Lucy Serpell from UCL on the potential dangers these types of diets can pose. Plus, we visit AFC Wimbledon for an Iftar event to hear if people fasting during Ramadan experience any changes to their health.
Presenter: James Gallagher Producer: Julia Ravey Editor: Holly Squire Studio Manager: Giles Aspen
Transcript
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| 0:38.3 | Hello there and welcome to Inside Health. |
| 0:41.1 | Now, when was the last time you had something to eat? |
| 0:43.9 | Because this week we're going to be looking at fasting. |
| 0:47.4 | Now, for some people, it's not a choice about when to skip meals. |
| 0:51.3 | But people are looking at it increasingly for the potential health benefits |
| 0:56.0 | that might come from fasting, even our Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, fasts for 36 hours. |
| 1:01.0 | So we're going to look at the science of it. I'm even going to try my own little fast as well. |
| 1:06.0 | But first of all, we're going to meet people who've been doing it for a lot longer than I have. |
| 1:10.0 | So we're recording this program during Ramadan, and we're going to meet people who've been doing it for a lot longer than I have. So we're recording this program during Ramadan, |
| 1:13.5 | and we're going to meet people who've been fasting all day |
| 1:15.9 | and are about to break their fast with an evening meal |
| 1:18.5 | once the sunsets here in South London. |
| 1:20.9 | Allah, Allah, Allah, Allah. |
| 1:26.9 | I shahra al-Nah, Allah. fasting to be honest, we've got an hour less on each side, so it's a lot easier this year, because of the clock change. |
| 1:39.5 | So we've got an hour less on each side, so it's a lot calmer. |
| 1:44.7 | You just get this energy from somewhere which honestly keeps you going on and on. |
| 1:49.2 | And when you're doing so with a community, it makes it easier. |
| 1:53.4 | It's a way of attaining closeness to God. |
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