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 Women in the study were more likely to have their breast cancer come
back if they fasted overnight for less than 13 hours, researchers
found.
While prolonged fasting is likely harmless, the study's lead author
cautions that more research is needed before women start fasting to
prevent their cancer from coming back.
"In science we have a pretty good rule, we don’t go from one study
to a public health recommendation," said Ruth Patterson, of the
University of California, San Diego Moores Cancer Center in La
Jolla.
Patterson and her colleagues write in JAMA Oncology that while a
healthy diet is thought to improve breast cancer outcomes,
researchers have mostly focused on what people eat instead of when
they eat.
In mice who are fed high-fat diets, long overnight fasting - about
16 hours - has been found to protect against blood sugar problems,
inflammation and weight gain. All those conditions are tied to poor
cancer outcomes, the authors note.
To see if the length of overnight fasting is linked with breast
cancer recurrence or death, the researchers tracked 2,413
participants in the Women's Health Eating and Living study.
None of the women had diabetes, but they had all been diagnosed with
breast cancer between ages 24 and 70.
During roughly seven years of follow-up, 390 of the women developed
a recurrence of their breast cancer.
Overall, 818 women reported fasting overnight for at least 13 hours.
The other 1,595 fasted for shorter periods at night - and this group
had a 36 percent greater risk of breast cancer recurrence, compared
to women who held off on eating for at least 13 hours a night.
There was also some evidence that women who fasted for shorter
periods at night were more likely to die from breast cancer or any
cause, but those findings may have been due to chance.
The new study can't say why overnight fasts might influence breast
cancer risk, but the researchers found that with every additional
two hours of fasting, women's average blood sugar went down and
their hours of sleep were increased.
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"Maybe sleep and insulin levels may be affecting downstream risks
including breast cancer," Patterson told Reuters Health.
There is great appeal in finding something people can change about
their diets that would ultimately impact their cancer risk, said Dr.
Jeffrey Peppercorn, a breast cancer expert at Massachusetts General
Hospital in Boston.
However, "I don’t think this study alone should change how we
council women tomorrow," said Peppercorn, who was not involved in
the new study.
For example, he noted, the new study is limited by the use of food
questionnaires that were only collected at three points in time, and
the participants' diets may not have been consistent throughout the
study.
"There is no harm in this that I know of, but before you make a
public health recommendation, you want to know it's valid and that
thing you’re suggesting they do is actually causing the benefits you
see," he told Reuters Health.
Patterson agreed that more evidence is needed.
"I would say there is no harm in trying it in terms of seeing if you
sleep better and feel better in terms of metabolic health, but I
don’t think I’d say it will help with your breast cancer recurrence
risk," she said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1Y241jz JAMA Oncology, online March 31, 2016.
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