Periodic fasting may reduce cholesterol levels in prediabetic people, according to a recent study.

Prediabetes means the amount of glucose, also called sugar, in the blood is higher than normal but not high enough to be called diabetes.

Researchers at the Intermountain Heart Institute at Intermountain Medical Center in Utah found that after 10 to 12 hours of time fasting, the body starts scavenging for other sources of energy throughout the body to sustain itself. While doing this, the body pulls LDL (bad) cholesterol from the fat cells and uses it as energy.

"Fasting has the potential to become an important diabetes intervention," Benjamin Horne, lead researcher of the study and director of cardiovascular and genetic epidemiology at the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute, said in a statement. "Though we've studied fasting and it's health benefits for years, we didn't know why fasting could provide the health benefits we observed related to the risk of diabetes."

For the study, researchers recruited prediabetic men and women between the ages of 30 and 69 with a least three metabolic risk factors such as a large waistline, a high triglyceride level, a low HDL (good) cholesterol level, high blood pressure and high fasting blood sugar.

"During actual fasting days, cholesterol went up slightly in this study, as it did in our prior study of healthy people, but we did notice that over a six-week period cholesterol levels decreased by about 12 percent in addition to the weight loss," Horne said. "Because we expect that the cholesterol was used for energy during the fasting episodes and likely came from fat cells, this leads us to believe fasting may be an effective diabetes intervention."

Researchers said the process of extracting LDL cholesterol from the fat cells for energy should help negate insulin resistance. In insulin resistance, the pancreas produces more and more insulin until it can no longer produce sufficient insulin for the body's demands, then blood sugar rises.

"The fat cells themselves are a major contributor to insulin resistance, which can lead to diabetes," Horne said. "Because fasting may help to eliminate and break down fat cells, insulin resistance may be frustrated by fasting."

He added that more in-depth research is needed.

"Although fasting may protect against diabetes," Horne said. "It's important to keep in mind that these results were not instantaneous in the studies that we performed. It takes time. How long and how often people should fast for health benefits are additional questions we're just beginning to examine."