Dieting or hitting the treadmill no fun? You might be able to enjoy one of the health benefits without the hassle.
Exercising hard or not eating for a while can alter the immune system's behaviour, suppressing some types of inflammatory response. That, in turn, seems to protect against Alzheimer's disease, diabetes and autoimmune conditions. But what triggers the change in the immune response has not been clear.
When starved of glucose, its usual energy source, the body can make an alternative in the shape of chemicals called ketones. To find out if one of these suppresses inflammation, Vishwa Deep Dixit from the Yale School of Medicine doused human immune cells with various ketones. When he upped the dose of a ketone called BHB to the level you'd expect after two days of fasting, the inflammatory response fell away.
Other ketones produced during fasting had no effect, suggesting that BHB is responsible for lowering inflammation.
What's more, BHB seemed to have a very specific effect, only dampening certain undesirable inflammatory reactions, leaving other useful ones alone.
Next, Dixit tested the chemical on mice. Injecting BHB into mice genetically engineered to have an autoimmune disease reduced their symptoms compared with control animals.
Dixit says the work bring us closer to the day when we can get some of the benefits of diet and exercise, without all the hard work.
The group is now studying the mechanism in more detail to see how it can help people with diseases as diverse as type 1 diabetes, heart disease and multiple sclerosis. "The goal is to get other scientists interested so that they can also study BHB in specific diseases."
Journal reference: Nature Medicine, DOI: 10.1038/nm.3804
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