From reducing inflammation to increasing longevity, we begin to wonder what the intermittent fasting And, according to research from the University of Arizona in the United States, another area that the strategy can help is in addiction treatment .

One of the research leaders, David Duron, was curious about the effects that intermittent fasting might have on opioid treatment and addiction, so the team went ahead with the study using rats as subjects, not sure what they would find.

As a result, the analysis suggested that intermittent fasting could have a significant effect on opioid treatment, improving treatment benefits and limiting negative side effects, especially addiction.

Testing intermittent fasting during addiction treatment

This was the first time that the impact of intermittent fasting on opioids had been studied. To do this research, the team put rats on a six-hour fasting regimen, which means they could only eat during a six-hour window each day - while being treated with opioid injections for a week. Soon, when the week was over, they found that the pain relief hadimproved significantly and lasted longer in the fasting group, including in a post-surgical pain model.

But despite the increased effectiveness, side effects have not increased, which points out that it could have important implications for addiction.

According to the researchers, opioids activate the reward circuitry, and this is the basis of addictions. Thus, the control mice - those that ate as much food as they wanted all the time - showed the usual reward expected in response to morphine. However, surprisingly, the fasting mice showed no evidence of reward. However, they did not seem to have this effecteuphoric effect of the drug, or at least they have not learned to associate a euphoric effect with it.

Read also: Intermittent Fasting: What it is, how to do it, and what the benefits are

Improving treatment and limiting side effects

Although this research is still in its early stages, the findings suggest that people in opioid treatment may try intermittent fasting to improve treatment and help reduce or eliminate the chance of addiction. Should similar results translate to humans.

In addition, other side effects also improved. Opioid tolerance, for example, increased by up to 100% in the control group that was not intermittently fasting. However, the fasting group only saw a 40% increase in tolerance, meaning that they did not need to increase their dose as much.

Another problem faced by patients on opioid regimens is constipation. The team found that fasting rats had less constipation and recovered more quickly from the drugs. So, given what we know about the effects of intermittent fasting on gut health, these findings make sense.

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