Research
Energy balance
Alternate day fasting does not significantly alter skeletal muscle genes involved in fatty acid transport/oxidation or mitochondrial biogenesis in nonobese humans.
Three weeks of alternate day fasting does not significantly change the expression of genes responsible for fat burning or mitochondrial growth in nonobese people. Your muscle's capacity to oxidize fat may not have increased measurably at the gene level.
ModerateRefutesMEDIUM confidence
There were no significant changes in the expression of genes involved in mitochondrial biogenesis or fatty acid transport/oxidation
Why this rating
Small sample size for biopsy (n=11) may have lacked power to detect trends (e.g., CPT1 p=0.08).
Source
Glucose Tolerance and Skeletal Muscle Gene Expression in Response to Alternate Day Fasting
Leonie K. Heilbronn et al. · Obesity Research · 2005
DOI 10.1038/oby.2005.61
crossover · n=16Cited 174×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
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