Maternal intermittent fasting before/during pregnancy

[Bo Bolund]

Effect of Intermittent Fasting before Pregnancy upon Maternal Fasting as a Teratogen in Mice (MITSUYO TERADA)

ABSTRACT Modification of teratogenicity of maternal fasting during pregnancy by intermittent fasting before pregnancy as a pretreatment was studied. The intermittent fasts of 24 hours once a week were imposed on female Japanese dd strain mice during the period from 4 to 11 weeks of age. The controls were maintained without such pretreatment. Both groups were mated after the age of 12 weeks; fasting for 48 hours was imposed on about half the number of pregnant females from each group beginning on day 9 of gestation. Water was available ad libitum. The animals were killed on day 18. The fetuses were weighed, examined for intrauterine death and external deformities, and then examined for internal malformations or the state of ossification. The pretreated fasted group when compared with the nonpretreated fasted group showed decreased embryonic mortality, mitigated retardation of the ossification in certain parts of the fetuses, and a tendency toward decreased incidence of some internal deformities.

http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/reprint/100/7/767.pdf

[Garrett Smith]

Nice post!

[Jamila Bey]

Cute in mice...

But LIKE HOLY HELL am I not eating right now!

[Jordan Glasser]

Originally Posted by Heidi Anschultz

Fasting during pregnancy is a bad idea. For the mother and the unborn/DEVELOPING fetus.

Where do you get your ideas? The media.

And no offense, but in my opinion this is one study. You need several long-drawn out studies to base any type of conclusions on. Anything else is unscientific an not proven and tested to be safe. This article is unethical if what you are doing is trying to say it is recommended to subject a mother and developing fetus to starvation-type daily fasting.

Read the study, then comment.
There are zero recommendations.

For those that are familiar with mice and testing I do have a question. A 48 hour fast seems like a long time, even for humans. What would be an equivalent fast for us?

[Bo Bolund]

Originally Posted by Jordan Glasser

Read the study, then comment.
There are zero recommendations.

For those that are familiar with mice and testing I do have a question. A 48 hour fast seems like a long time, even for humans. What would be an equivalent fast for us?

In one way it's good scientists use different fasting windows in their models. That way maybe they will find an optimal fasting window. Since mice have higher metabolism it's more likely that mice don't tolerate longer fasting windows as well as humans. On the other hand mice might benifit more from fasting since their metabolism is higher. Correct me if I'm wrong.