Sarah Regan, a Spirituality & Relationships Editor and registered yoga instructor, reports on a new area of study for intermittent fasting. Researchers from the University of Arizona are exploring whether an intermittent fasting regimen could benefit addiction treatment, specifically related to opioids.
The research began with the curiosity of student David Duron. The team studied mice, putting them on a six-hour daily fasting window while they received opioid injections for one week. The corresponding author, John Streicher, Ph.D., noted this was the first study of its kind.
At the end of the week, pain relief was better and lasted longer in the fasting mice. This included a model for post-surgical pain. A key finding was that the increased effectiveness did not come with worse side effects.
Streicher explained that opioids activate the brain’s reward circuit, which leads to addiction. Control mice, which ate freely, showed the expected reward response to morphine. The fasting mice, however, showed no evidence of that reward or of learning to associate the drug with a euphoric effect.
The findings suggest intermittent fasting could both improve opioid treatment and help reduce the chance of addiction, if results translate to humans. Other side effects were also less severe. Tolerance for the opioids increased by 100% in the control group, but only by about 40% in the fasting group, meaning a lower need to increase dosage.
The study also found the fasting mice experienced less constipation and recovered from the drugs faster. Streicher stated that, together, the results show opioid side effects are reduced while efficacy is improved.
The team aims to conduct more studies and clinical trials to understand the brain mechanisms affecting opioid receptors and side effects. Streicher points out that testing a dietary change like this can be done much faster than developing a new drug. They are already working to set up a clinical trial based on these findings to see how intermittent fasting affects patients undergoing opioid pain therapy.
The broader context of this research touches on the ongoing search for ways to improve pain management while mitigating the well-documented risks of opioid prescriptions. The opioid crisis has made the discovery of methods to enhance treatment safety a major public health priority. Scientists across various fields are increasingly examining how lifestyle factors, including diet and metabolic health, can influence brain chemistry and response to medication. This study adds to a growing body of preliminary research investigating non-pharmacological adjuncts to traditional medical treatments.
