Evaluation of a novel fasting approach using plant polysaccharides per meal in human symbionts

Abstract

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.

A biological hypothesis: is it possible that human symbiotic microbiota coding hunger genes for human beings?

“…Luckily and interestingly, we finally demonstrated that when using the plant polysaccharides and dietary fibers to feed the gut flora, together with significantly reducing food intake, then the body weight can physiologically and normally reduce. These clinical studies have been published recently to support this new hypothesis [34][35][36][37] . This is also an important evidence to support the interesting findings of Dr. Gordon and Liping Zhao that low calorie intake and polysaccharide and dietary fiber is beneficial for health, together with the elicitation of fasting studies by Dr. Longo [38][39][40][41][42][43] .…”

“…The candidates can then normally and healthily live for 7-14 days by only feeding the gut flora and drinking enough water everyday but without food for human body. The clinical evidences were obtained from several hospitals to provide direct support on the hypothesis that "hunger sensation comes from gut flora" and have been published in recent years [34][35][36][37][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53] . Only when based on these important facts, can we realize that the hunger genes of the human beings seemed to not be coded by human genomic DNA systems, but by the genes of the human symbiotic microbiota especially the symbiotic microbiota (gut flora).…”

The flexible fasting technology can improve hypertension: A pilot study in self-controlled designs

“…The identification of plant polysaccharide as a regulator of gut microbiota has received more and more approvals [40][41][42]. According to previous studies in our laboratory, the FF food mainly composed of plant polysaccharide that has beneficial evident effect on gut microbiota [43,44]. Therefore it is reasonable to conclude that when we use the FF technology to improve hypertension environmental factors to adjust and optimize the gastrointestinal flora, we can achieve indirectly the decrease in the level of blood pressure of hypertension patients.…”