Purpose: Considering the fact that not only the human body itself need food to maintain the growth but also the gut flora need their own food for proliferation, we developed the Flexible Fasting (abbreviated as FF) technology, which the normal diet was replaced by polysaccharide composition per meal. Methods:There are two phases in this study: FF for the first week followed with normal diet for next week. We recruited 65 volunteers to evaluate the safety of oneweek FF in weight loss, as well as the changes of the gut flora. Results:No obvious subjective adverse effects were observed. As expected, the one-week FF approach significantly reduced body weight, waist circumference, total body fat, and caused blood pressure, glucose, total cholesterol, IL-6, C-reactive protein, white blood cell decrease in normal physiological ranges. Meanwhile, there was no negative changes in electrolytes and trace elements, blood routine examination, liver and kidney function indexes, myocardial enzymes. By the way, almost all of the volunteers self-reported slight hunger feeling during the one-week FF. We further examine the changes of gut flora. Interestingly, the 16S rRNA sequencing analysis showed increase of the bacterial complexity after one-week FF operation. The abundances at different levels were clearly observed, for example 19 genuses showed different abundances, including increased Bifidobacterium (p=0.056), Akkermansia (p=0.016) and decreased Clostridium (p=0.001), Bacteroides (p=0.016), Sutterella (p=0.048) and Prevotella (p<0.001). When resuming normal diet for 7d after one-week FF approach, changes in abundances at different levels almost resumed except Bacteroides (p=0.024), Sutterella (p=0.027). Conclusions:Thus, the one-week FF approach with Plant Polysaccharides seemed to be a feasible, safe, and effective way for weight loss.
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