Prolonged Overnight Fast, Energy Metabolism and Skeletal Muscle Anabolic Sensitivity

Plain-language summary

Recent research shows that timing of nutritional intake and daily periods of fasting may have important health effects. In humans, limiting daily food intake to a narrow window (typically \~8 hours) can bring about some beneficial changes in blood concentrations of fats, sugar and the hormone insulin. It is thought that many of these changes are due to the prolonged daily fasting periods and humans will have regularly experienced prolonged fasting periods throughout evolution. In the modern era, food access is widely available and it is not uncommon for the time between breakfast and a late night snack to exceed 14 hours. We have recently shown that extending habitual daily periods of fasting to 16 hours per day also improves the ability of skeletal muscle to take up amino acids, the building blocks of protein. We are interested in studying whether a single episode of prolonged overnight fast (\~16 hours), when compared to a normal overnight fast of 10 hours, is sufficient to stimulate skeletal muscle protein synthesis in response to dietary protein ingestion in healthy humans.

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