intermittent fasting may seem like the most easiest way to lose weight without exerting too much but have you ever thought how fasting impacts your overall health in the long run well fasting diets have gained popularity in recent years however little is known about the longterm impact of these diets particularly for future generations heres all you need to know about the after effects of fasting read onthe studyas per a new study from the university of east anglia uea has found that fasting diets could impact the health of future generations the findings of the study were published in the journal proceedings of the royal society bfasting diets have risen in popularity in recent years however little is known about the longterm impact of these diets particularly for future generationsthis research revealed that reduced food intake in roundworms caenorhabditis elegans has a detrimental effect on three generations of offspring particularly when those descendants have access to unlimited foodlead researcher dr edward ivimeycook from ueas school of biological sciences said we know that reduced food intake increases the lifespan in many animals and can potentially improve health in humans however little is known about the longterm effects of reduced food intake including timelimited fasting on distant descendantswe wanted to find out more about the potential longterm impact of fasting diets dr ivimeycook addedthe findingsthe team investigated the effect of timelimited fasting on lifespan and reproduction in roundworms and across three generations of their descendantsthey studied more than 2500 worms split across four generations the first generation of worms was placed in one of four environments including being able to eat as much as they liked and being on a fasting dietfour generations of offspring from these parents were then placed onto either fullfeeding or fasting dietsthe analysisthe team then assessed the effects of different scenarios on the reproduction and longevity of future generations these included what happens when great grandparents fast but future generations are able to eat as much as they like and cumulative fasting for four generationsdr ivimeycook said we looked at what happens in roundworms unlike us theyre transparent about 1mm long and live in the soilthey dont have bones a heart or a circulatory system but theyre a classic model organism for studying the ageing process in biology because they do share many genes and molecular pathways that control development with humans dr ivimeycook further statedthey are also really useful because they have a short life cycle of only two weeks so we can study their development and that of generations of their offspring in a short amount of time doing a similar study across humans could take a century or more dr ivimeycook noteddr ivimeycook added we found that fasting did indeed increase their lifespan and it also improved offspring performance in terms of reproduction when offspring themselves were fasting however we were surprised to find that fasting reduced offspring performance when the offspring had access to unlimited food and this detrimental effect