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Prebiotic inulin consumption provides health benefits to the host and has also been associated with a reduction in hunger cravings. We conducted a pilot crossover study to investigate the feasibility of a juice fasting intervention with and without inulin supplementation. We also examined trends of how the microbial community in the human gut adapts to juice fasting as well as to inulin intake during juice fasting. Six healthy volunteers were fasting for three consecutive days consuming a total of 300 kcal daily provided by vegetable juices, framed by two days with a total daily calorie intake of 800 kcal, respectively. During one fasting period, participants consumed additionally 24 g of inulin daily. Stool samples were collected for the analysis of the microbial composition using 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Although no significant uniform changes were observed on the microbiome, quantitative changes in the microbial composition suggest a stronger decrease in alpha-diversity after fasting compared to the fasting intervention with additional inulin intake. The intake of inulin did not affect compliance for the fasting intervention but appeared to increase relative abundance of Bifidobacteria in participants who tolerated it well. Further studies with a larger sample size to overcome inter-individual microbiota differences are warranted to verify our observations.

Temperature is a hypothesized determinant of early delivery, but seasonal and long term trends, delayed effects of temperature, and the influence of extreme cold temperatures have not yet been addressed. We aim to study the influence of apparent temperature on daily number of births, considering lag structures, seasonality and long term trends.We used daily number of births in conjunction with apparent outdoor temperatures between 1981 and 2010 in Montreal. We used Poisson regression combined with a distributed lag nonlinear model to consider non-linear relationships between temperature and daily number of births across specific lag periods.We found that apparent temperature was associated with the daily number of births in Montreal, with a 1-day delay. We found an increase in births on hot days, and decrease on cold days, both offset by a harvesting effect after 4 and 5 days.This study suggests that the number of births is affected by extreme temperatures. Obstetric and perinatal service providers should be prepared for spikes in the number of births caused by extreme temperatures.