Abstract
Purpose
People may be unable to obtain anything edible for days under some circumstances, but they must maintain their calmness and cognition to navigate solutions. Our aim was to study changes in subjective sensations and cognition in healthy adults during a 10-day complete fasting experiment.
Methods
Thirteen healthy male volunteers voluntarily participated in the 22-day experiment comprising 4 phases: 3 days of baseline consumption, 10 days of complete fasting (only water ad libitum), 4 days of calorie restriction, and a 5-day recovery period. The volunteers’ subjective sensations, cognitive performance, and serum energy substances were measured at 6 time points.
Results
Across the 6 time points, the trajectories of subjective sensations in response to fasting were “U”- or “ ∩ ”-shaped curves instead of progressive discomfort or mood enhancement. A significant fasting time effect was found on depression-dejection (baseline: 16.85 ± 2.88; highest score on the third day of completing fasting: 17.69 ± 3.97, P = 0.04) and self-rated anxiety (baseline: 26.23 ± 4.75; highest score on the sixth day of completing fasting: 30.85 ± 5.58, P = 0.01), and the change curves were consistent with the inflection point of the energy substrates shifting from serum glucose to ketone. In addition, basic cognitive functions appeared to be unaffected during the 10-day fast.
Conclusions
Our study showed strong influences on the sensations from the third to sixth days of the prolonged fasting period but no significant effects on basic cognitive abilities associated with the energy substance switch. These findings could contribute to the development and understanding of survival strategies in food-shortage emergencies or of intermittent fasting programmes.
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Abbreviations
- TG:
-
Triglycerides
- CHOL:
-
Cholesterol
- LDL-C:
-
Low-density lipoprotein cholesterol
- HDL-C:
-
High-density lipoprotein cholesterol
- BL:
-
Baseline period
- FT:
-
Fasting period
- CR:
-
Calorie restriction period
- RE:
-
Recovery period
- PVT:
-
Psychomotor vigilance test
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Acknowledgements
We thank all 13 volunteers for their contribution to this work.
Funding
These findings were supported by the Advanced Space Medico-Engineering Research Project of China (18035020103), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 31470832 and 81801872), the State Key Laboratory of Space Medicine Fundamentals and Application, the China Astronaut Research and Training Center (SMFA17A02, SMFA17B04, SMFA17B06, SMFA18B02, and SMFA18B06), the Space Medical Experiment Project of China Manned Space Program (HYZHXM01002), and Shenzhen Science and Technology Program (CKFW2016082915204709).
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ZD, YL and RW designed the research; CY, QM, HZ, FW, MW, CjY, YC, JX, WL, and HW performed the research and collected the data; CY, QM, HZ, MW, and ZD analysed the data; and CY, QM, RW, HZ, and ZD wrote the manuscript. ZD, RW and YL had primary responsibility for the final content. All the authors conducted the research and read and approved the final manuscript.
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Yang, C., Ma, Q., Zhang, H. et al. Ten days of complete fasting affected subjective sensations but not cognitive abilities in healthy adults. Eur J Nutr 60, 2747–2758 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00394-020-02450-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00394-020-02450-7