Want to decrease your risk of diabetes, cancer and heart disease??

According to a new study, reducing your calorie intake by half for five days in row every month can decrease your risk of getting cancer, diabetes and heart disease, Daily Mail reported.

Many studies had shown that fasting - drinking only water without eating anything else - quickly contributes to overall health, but it is not an easy bite for everyone, especially the sick and the elderly. So the scientists wanted to know if eating less for a couple of days at a time, periodically, would have the same health benefits.

The researchers altered the subjects' diet and cut the amount of calories ranging from 34 to 54 percent for five consecutive days, without endangering the adequate vitamin and mineral intake, which is usually associated with fasting, Daily Mail reported.

Subjects followed the restricted diet for five days every month for three months in a row and they went back to their normal regular eating habits in between without changing anything else. However the results were still impressive and some health benefits of fasting were still observed such as a 10 percent drop in blood glucose, aka blood sugar, on the days they were fasting and six percent of drop on the days in between.

Researchers also noted that IGF1, a chemical, which is known to be responsible fot diseases of aging was lowered by almost a quarter - 24 percent - the Daily Mail said.

The lead researcher of the study, Valter Longo reportedly said: "Strict fasting is hard for people to stick to, and it can also be dangerous, so we developed a complex diet that triggers the same effects in the body." He also noted that he tried both methods of fasting and he found the fasting mimicking diet much easier and safer than a typical fasting regime.

There were 19 human subjects observed in the study but similar studies done on mice had the same results, in which the researchers observed that following a restricted diet helped mice to regenerate cells, which is key against aging. The mice also had longer lived, less cancers, less bone loss and diseases, along with better preserved cognitive abilities such as learning and memory.