Research
Hormonal
Alternate-day fasting improves cardiovascular risk markers by reducing total cholesterol, triglycerides, and LDL cholesterol, and increasing LDL particle size, though effects on HDL are inconsistent.
If you have high cholesterol or triglycerides, alternate-day fasting may help improve your numbers by lowering bad cholesterol and increasing the size of LDL particles, which is less atherogenic. Note that HDL improvements are not guaranteed.
ModerateSupportsMEDIUM confidence
Reduction of total cholesterol, triglycerides, and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol have been observed... Several alternate-day fasting studies have shown increased LDL particle size in subjects who followed the fasting protocol.
Why this rating
Based on a review of multiple studies with varying results on HDL.
Source
Effects of intermittent fasting on body composition and clinical health markers in humans
Grant M. Tinsley et al. · Nutrition Reviews · 2015
DOI 10.1093/nutrit/nuv041
narrative_reviewCited 375×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Alternate-day fasting (ADF) and whole-day fasting protocols effectively reduce body weight, body fat, total cholesterol, and triglycerides in normal-weight, overweight, and obese adults over short-term periods (3-24 weeks).Moderate
- Time-restricted feeding (TRF) shows promise for health but current evidence is insufficient to draw clear conclusions regarding its efficacy compared to other fasting methods.Limited
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