Fasting and engineered diets as powerful tool in the medical practice: an old approach in the new era

Fasting and dietary restriction have been practiced for millennia for different purposes spanning from religious, philosophical to medical. Only in recent times it has been scientifically demonstrated that dietary restriction is associated with major health benefits such as: amelioration of cardiovascular diseases, immune disorders, slowing of the aging processes, diabetes, insulin resistance and reduced risk of cancer (1). Moreover, cutting-edge studies, taking advantage of in vivo and in vitro models, unveiled a potential link between short-term starvation and improved efficacy of chemotherapy for some types of cancer (2,3) accompanied by a decrease of side effects of chemotherapy in patients (4).