A new, albeit very small, study suggests that a short period of fasting prior to chemotherapy may protect healthy cells and reduce the side effects associated with chemotherapy.

Valter Longo and his colleagues at the University of Southern California published these findings in a case series report in December in the journal Aging. They studied 10 patients, six of whom reported fewer side effects when they received chemotherapy while fasting.

In a paper published recently in Cancer Research, Longo’s team followed the human findings with a study of mice with cancer. When given chemotherapy, none of the normal-diet control group survived, while 60 percent of fasting mice lived.

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