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Why is Fasting Linked to Temporary Lower Blood Pressure?

A woman has her blood pressure taken at a World Hypertension Day event in Amman, Jordan, May 14, 2010. Reuters
A woman has her blood pressure taken at a World Hypertension Day event in Amman, Jordan, May 14, 2010. Reuters
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Why is Fasting Linked to Temporary Lower Blood Pressure?

A woman has her blood pressure taken at a World Hypertension Day event in Amman, Jordan, May 14, 2010. Reuters
A woman has her blood pressure taken at a World Hypertension Day event in Amman, Jordan, May 14, 2010. Reuters

Among the many benefits that have been associated with fasting is a lower blood pressure, but experts are still confused about the reasons behind this effect.

Dr. Rami Al-Jafar, from Imperial College London, attributes this lower blood pressure to metabolic changes, while an Egyptian expert cited three other reasons.

Two years ago, Dr. Rami Al-Jafar led a study that was published in the American Heart Association journal (AHA), on how fasting helps achieving a temporary lower blood pressure but without highlighting the reasons.

During the study, researchers analyzed 85 people fasting during Ramadan between the ages of 29 and 61 from five mosques in London. Scientists measured their systolic (the top number) and diastolic (the bottom number) blood pressure before and after Ramadan.

Participants were also asked to keep food diaries for three days before and during Ramadan.

The study found an average reduction of 7.29 mm Hg in systolic blood pressure and 3.42 mm Hg in diastolic blood pressure in the days after Ramadan.

The results were correct among the healthy participants, and those suffering from high blood pressure and diabetes.

In an article published on the AHA website, Dr. Jafar speculated that “the reductions in blood pressure result from a metabolic change.”

“After eight to 12 hours of fasting, the body begins burning ketones rather than glycogen, which can help lower the blood pressure,” he explained. Ketones are a type of chemical that your liver produces as an alternative source of energy, while Glycogen is a branched polymer in which glucose is the main building block, and serves as an energy storage.

Many experts agree with Al-Jafar on the significant role of the metabolic change in lowering blood pressure, suggesting that other reasons might affect too.

Sameh Abdulalim, internal medicine expert at the Egyptian health ministry, said “limiting calories while fasting is associated with lower blood pressure. Fasting is often linked to consuming less calories, which could help explain some its effects.”

“Among the other suggested reasons are the relaxation of the digestive system due to fasting, unlike its always-active state on regular days,” he told Asharq Al-Awsat.

“Fasting also affects blood pressure through the gut microbiome, a set of bacteria that live in the digestive track, and affect digestion and the immune system,” he concluded.

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Scientists Release Plans for an Even Bigger Atom Smasher to Address the Mysteries of Physics

Mike Lamont, director for accelerators and technology, center left, and Fabiola Gianotti, center right, director general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), speak with members of the U.S. House of Representatives in the Large Magnet Facility during a visit to CERN facilities in Meyrin, near Geneva, Switzerland, Friday, March 21, 2025. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP)
Mike Lamont, director for accelerators and technology, center left, and Fabiola Gianotti, center right, director general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), speak with members of the U.S. House of Representatives in the Large Magnet Facility during a visit to CERN facilities in Meyrin, near Geneva, Switzerland, Friday, March 21, 2025. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP)
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Scientists Release Plans for an Even Bigger Atom Smasher to Address the Mysteries of Physics

Mike Lamont, director for accelerators and technology, center left, and Fabiola Gianotti, center right, director general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), speak with members of the U.S. House of Representatives in the Large Magnet Facility during a visit to CERN facilities in Meyrin, near Geneva, Switzerland, Friday, March 21, 2025. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP)
Mike Lamont, director for accelerators and technology, center left, and Fabiola Gianotti, center right, director general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), speak with members of the U.S. House of Representatives in the Large Magnet Facility during a visit to CERN facilities in Meyrin, near Geneva, Switzerland, Friday, March 21, 2025. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP)

Top minds at the world's largest atom smasher have released a blueprint for a much bigger successor that could vastly improve research into the remaining enigmas of physics.

The plans for the Future Circular Collider — a nearly 91-kilometer (56.5-mile) loop along the French-Swiss border and below Lake Geneva — published late Monday put the finishing details on a project roughly a decade in the making at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

The FCC would carry out high-precision experiments in the mid-2040s to study “known physics” in greater detail, then enter a second phase — planned for 2070 — that would conduct high-energy collisions of protons and heavy ions that would “open the door to the unknown,” said Giorgio Chiarelli, a research director at Italy’s National Institute of Nuclear Physics, The AP news reported.

“History of physics tells that when there is more data, the human ingenuity is able to extract more information than originally expected,” Chiarelli, who was not involved in the plans, said in an e-mail.

For roughly a decade, top minds at CERN have been making plans for a successor to the Large Hadron Collider, a network of magnets that accelerate particles through a 27-kilometer (17-mile) underground tunnel and slam them together at velocities approaching the speed of light.

“Ultimately what we would like to do is a collider which will come up with 10 times more energy than what we have today,” said Arnaud Marsollier, a CERN spokesman. “When you have more energy, then you can create particles that are heavier.”

The blueprint lays out the proposed path, environmental impact, scientific ambitions and project cost. Independent experts will take a look before CERN's two dozen member countries decide in 2028 whether to go forward, starting in the mid-2040s at a cost of some 14 billion Swiss francs (about $16 billion).

CERN officials tout the promise of scientific discoveries that could drive innovation in fields like cryogenics, superconducting magnets and vacuum technologies that could benefit humankind.

Outside experts point to the promise of learning more about the Higgs boson, the elusive particle that has been controversially dubbed “the God particle,” which helped explain how matter formed after the Big Bang.

Work at the particle collider confirmed in 2013 the existence of the Higgs boson — the central piece in a puzzle known as the standard model that helps explains some fundamental forces in the universe.

“This set of reports represents an important milestone in the process, but a full sense of the likelihood of it being brought to fruition will only be known through careful studies by scientists, engineers and others, including politicians who must make difficult decisions at time when uncertainty rules the day,” Dave Toback, a professor of physics and astronomy at Texas A&M University, said in an e-mail.

The new collider “provides an exciting opportunity for the particle physics community, and indeed all of physics, on the world stage,” said Toback, who was not affiliated with the plans, and who worked for years at the Fermilab Tevatron collider in the United States that was shut down in 2011.

CERN scientists, engineers and partners behind the plans considered at least 100 scenarios for the new collider before coming up with the proposed 91-kilometer circumference at an average depth of 200 meters (656 feet). The tunnel would be about 5 meters (16 feet) in diameter, CERN said.