Fasting at times helps patients with heart problems

The concept, known as a interrupted fast, includes people who remain without food or drink for most of the day if not all day long.

Researchers found that patients who had a card attached to their hearts to handle a cardiovascular condition and practiced interrupted fasts lived longer than patients who did not fast.

The team, from the Intermountain Health Care Heart Institute in Salt Lake City, Utah, also found that hospital patients with interrupted fasting were less likely to be diagnosed with heart failure.

The team conducted previous research on diabetes patients and found that the levels of coronary heart disease were lower on those practicing interrupted fasting.

The results suggest that the effects of chronic illness, which develop over the decades, are softened by fasting.

“We have done a long-term fasting research using a similar approach” told Mail Online, chief researcher Dr Benjamin Horne, director of cardiovascular and genetic epidemiology at the Intermountain Heart Institute of Health.

“We've wanted to see if, perhaps, fasting was specific characteristics responsible for lower mortality rates. ”

For the study, researchers interviewed more than 2,000 patients who went through heart failure between 2013 and 2015.

Cardiac Cateterization is a procedure in which a katheter tube, thin, is inserted into an artery or vein into the hips, neck, or arm.

The tube is then started through blood vessels in the heart, after which doctors can perform diagnostic tests or provide heart care.

Researchers asked patients whether they practiced fasting regularly and then followed them 4.5 years later.