Intermittent Fasting Reduces Chronic Pain and Improves Cognition in Rat Study

Intermittent fasting (IF) that limits eating times was found to reduce chronic pain and improve cognition that had declined due to pain in animal experiments. The researchers identified a new pathway in which alterations of the gut microbiota affect brain inflammatory responses. The study was conducted jointly by the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University in China and Chiba University in Japan. Rats with experimentally induced chronic pain were subjected to IF consisting of 24 hours without food followed by 24 hours of free feeding, repeated for 38 days. After the 38‑day regimen, the investigators observed reductions in pain behaviors and improvements in cognitive performance, suggesting that IF may modulate pain‑related brain inflammation via gut microbiota changes.