> Subjects had a significant reduction in body mass index, waist circumference, and improvement in blood pressure
Would really like to see this compared to another group with a similar level of calorie restriction but without the intermittent fasting. The question with intermittent fasting is really just "is it better than plain old calorie restriction". Seems like there's some evidence that points to "yes" and some evidence that points to "not really".
EDIT: To be clear, by "is it better" I meant aside from just adherence. I've used IF quite a bit myself and I find it much easier than eating frequent, small meals throughout the day if I want to be hypocaloric. There are a lot of claims around autophagy, a more favorable metabolic adaptation, better body composition, and in this case actual cancer treatment. That is what I would like to see evidence for.
I think intermittent fasting is easier to implement for the average person. It's much easier to tell someone that they can eat as much as they want, but only between 6-8pm (one meal a day). It's difficult to tell someone you can eat 3 meals but no more than 1500 calories in total. Once I start eating, I don't want to stop (until I'm full). But the point at which I'm full is way beyond my calorie limit if I am eating 3 meals a day.
Doing a 1-2 meal, 800 calorie/day diet for 8 weeks helped me to figure this out. The hard adjustment period was only for the first week. I then realized small and fewer meals was sufficient.
Not that the remainder was easy, but it was a different kind of struggle - and noticeably easier than the first week.
> 1200 calories at least to stop your body from using muscle for sustenance.
This is only true up to a point. A colleague put me onto a fasting method called “Buchinger’s Fasting”. I fasted for around a week and a half, muscle maintenance was not a concern. After 3 days, your body burns through the glucose reserves and you get brain fog. After that, indeed, your body tried to break down muscle mass for fuel. The trick is to do some moderate exercise to keep your muscles in good condition. After a few days, your body finally turns to your fat reserves, and rapidly starts burning away fat. After the first 3 or so days, you actually become numb to the hunger and go into a slightly “high”, hunter gatherer alert mode that enabled our ancestors to search for food when hungry. It really brings home that being hungry and not being fed constantly is a normal part of human existence, and the industrial era, shoving food down our gullets constantly is making us sick and prevents natural healing within our bodies.
I assume that is from Buchinger Clinic in Germany? I watched a documentary (can’t remember the name) about fasting that claims it is more commonplace in Europe than elsewhere. They also claimed the Soviets studied it for years with favorable results.
Yeah it's from Germany. I can personally attest to its effectiveness. Another colleague who is approaching retirement does it twice per year or so, and he's in great shape and looks great for his age. It was very eye-opening to see that and then to experience it.
This aligns exactly with my experience. The body is very reluctant to turn into fat reserves, as they the best source of energy and must be conserved. As you said, exercise helps, and another trick to eat some carbs every three or so days to convince your body to start burning fat.
Presumably by giving the signal that "food is available" and the system can break out of the hypocaloric energy preservation state. The problem is that the fat deposits are extremely valuable (in a non overweight person) and as one enters a hypocaloric state they become more valuable. I.e your body will rather throttle down metabolism and energy levels farther than start breaking down the fat for energy. Eating some carbs can healp to break this pattern.
I don't think the body works like that. After you eat carbs, your insulin level goes up and the cells get the glucose in them. If there's more than they can take, it is put into the adipose tissue as fat. Eating carbs once every 3 days is in no way telling the body that there is enough food, quite the contrary actually (all this is just my opinion).
This carb refeed reset "tricks" your leptide hormones to burning through energy reserves rather than putting the body through a catatonic (muscle burning) state. This is why the "Cheat" meal or day is an important step to sustaining body fat loss through elongated periods.
Also, it takes time for the chemical reactions in your body to tell you you are full, so if you eat a little bit, and stop for 15 min, you might very well find that you are full.
However, once the taste buds are firing, it’s pretty hard to stop eating mid meal. One way is to take a little bit of food away from all the other food, eat it, and then force yourself to sit there while your blood sugar catches up to tell you if you still need more.
> it takes time for the chemical reactions in your body to tell you you are full
This is why I suppose I don't enjoy eating when I am "starving" as we like to say when we haven't eaten in a while. I am so hungry that I can't even enjoy the meal because the hunger pangs I am feeling don't subdue until I am practically done with the meal, and sometimes, even afterwards.
>It's much easier to tell someone that they can eat as much as they want, but only between 6-8pm (one meal a day).
If eating is part of your social or work life as it is for most people then not really. Or you're going to sit there sipping water while your family or your colleagues eat or have drinks which is miserable
Though that's also a self-limiting belief. It might seem lame the first week of going out to lunch with coworkers and sticking to water, but in my experience you get over it quickly. The fun part is the conversation, not entirely that everyone is spooning food into their acid sacs at the exact same moment.
You can also adjust your fasting windows to include one meal with family (as the person your responded to suggested, but you didn't actually reply to). Or only fast every other day. If you're fasting for a reason like to lose weight, then you'll have to decide if the goal is worth it to you.
It just depends entirely on your mentality. Some folks are much better at moderating than abstaining, others are the opposite. If you tell me to drink 10% less, I virtually cannot do it. If you tell me to never touch a drop of alcohol again in my life, I just say "bummer!" and get on with it.
Plenty of recovered alcoholics can be around family that drinks (responsibly). Smokers who quit don't have to run away whenever someone lights up in front of them. I quit both (with longstanding addiction issues), and within a few weeks I was able to join family dinners where everyone else drinks and my brother smokes. NBD.
If people can endure that, then people can still be social at mealtimes and just get used to drinking some water or tea or whatever while they fast. Or coffee, mmmmm. They might feel a bit put out at first during lunch, but then again might enjoy the looks they get during dinner when they get to chow down with abandon. The big thing would be waiting until you're comfortable with the fasting so you're not making everyone around you uncomfortable with your body language (or worse, complaining or otherwise drawing attention to it).
Fasting is not easy. If you didn't restrict calories before and now want to lose weight quickly, you have to make some sacrifices.
If your social and/or work life heavily depends on eating together it might be part of the "problem" of why you need to lose weight in the first place.
> If your social and/or work life heavily depends on eating together it might be part of the "problem" of why you need to lose weight in the first place.
This! My last boss used to be a "bon-vivant" guy, meaning he would particularly enjoy a nice meal with the occasional wine to go with it (please note this is pretty common in France) [0].
Two years after joining his team, I had gained quite some weight. I figured I had to eat less somehow, but I never had the impression that I was overeating. I also didn't want to skip to those meals with him. So I tried a few things:
* Pace myself with the wine. We would usually split a bottle among us. I actually enjoy wine, but don't particularly enjoy being tipsy, especially when I have to work. So win-win-win (see below)
* If there was some fruit available have that instead of cake, or skip desert altogether. Drinking the wine slowly leaves me with "something to do" while the others have desert, so they don't feel any pressure to hurry up.
* Go for more "filling" meals, meaning I looked for dishes with a bunch of vegetables. This would keep me full longer and I'd be less hungry in the evening, so also eating less. Another bonus is that I'd feel /really/ full and actually not want desert.
What I've found is that even though in the beginning the others would comment on my not having desert, they actually stopped having it themselves after a little while. The wine never actually went away, but we would occasionally only have a glass instead of a whole bottle.
The point is that I think people may feel there's a certain expectation to have a lunch a certain way. And it may be true in the sense that "it's common, so people expect it". But if you don't fully conform to it there doesn't seem to be any issue, pretty much no one seems to care [1] (except maybe if you think that you have to adhere to the expectation).
All this being said, I do appreciate that for people who enjoy nice meals it can be difficult to choose those "restrictions", especially when they're right in front of you.
[0] There never was any pressure to go along, especially since he was the kind to actively avoid talking shop at lunch. But, as the team would go out with him, I would have missed out on getting to know them. I should note that I'm not particularly outgoing and rather focused on my job, so random chats during the day wasn't exactly something I'd spontaneously do.
Because everyone they know is doing it as well, that is exactly OPs point. Muslims living in non-Muslim countries have a much harder time with Ramadan, I know this from personal experience.
Most IF practitioners say drinks to mean any caloric drinks. Plain coffee is ok to some and not others. Most think diet drinks are not ok because they can cause similar responses on the body as ingesting calories.
I IF from post-dinner to lunch every day, and only drink water and plain coffee.
Just anecdotal, but I did 12-8 fasting for a few months and it was not at all effective. I was starving half the day and didn't lose any weight at all. Mornings were tough and I was achy and cranky by 11am. 3 months in and my body never adjusted. I switched back to a normal meal schedule and felt better and didn't change weight up or down.
I've come to think this really depends on the person. I realized that I naturally intermittent fast, because it seems to work the best for me. Normally I eat my last meal of the day ~ 8pm, and nothing but coffee, tea, or water until 11am or 12pm the next day. The only time I eat something in the mornings is if I'm doing a workout or something active early in the day. Occasionally I'll feel hungry and eat something, but otherwise, I normally feel sluggish and slow if I eat breakfast. For my other meals, I actually eat a ton of food, around 2,500 calories on average.
On the flip side, I know multiple people who have tried the same and have your exact experience. Oddly enough, three of them had tried keto and had great results where I personally didn't. I know there's no real correlation there, just thought it was interesting. Try keto maybe?
If you start to restrict carbohydrate intake this helps with the low energy and irritability in my opinion. Been doing a 18-6 fasting since May (with some cheat days) and feel incredible.
Do you have to get up quite early in the morning? Only reason I ask is because half the day being the time until 12 is surprising -- after your midday meal, if you've constructed your meal properly, you should ideally not be hungry until dinner. I think IF needs to be paired with a mindfulness about what you're eating -- having toast with butter for lunch will not work.
Usually like 7:30. Had to get kids to school. I always eat pretty wholesome food with lots of whole grain and vegetable. When I was doing IF, I needed a big lunch to regain my senses and frequently didn't make it to 6PM without needing another dose of food. I suspect I was fitting my normal calorie intake in that window. If the goal was to somehow trick my metabolism into wanting fewer calories, I don't think it worked at all.
Well that depends on what you eat ofcourse! If you’re concious about what you put in yourself designing meals that you won’t be able to finish is easy! (think bodybuilders fish and broccoli as an example or a bit of meat and tonns of cabbage etc).
Fasting is ”easier” because you can get away with caring less about that stuff though.
My suspicion is that you would see similar improvement with things like waist circumference, BMI, blood pressure, at least initially, but that the difference with intermittent fasting is that it introduces enough of a "fasted state" that the body is able to perform repair and autophagy of senescent cells that would occur much less in a constantly fed state. (something about telomerase, but I probably shouldn't mention that because my memory about that is foggy)
If you increased the amount of fasting, I'd bet good money that people would lose more weight than on a calorie-equivalent diet. Intermittent fasting, in my experience, is helpful in sticking to a diet that is lower in calories because it allows you to eat satisfying meals.
I've never heard of that 18 hour rule. It's funny because I've read a lot about fasting, but this is news to me, and it seems like this is reported from multiple sources. But I can't seem to find any authoritative references.
The Japanese researcher that got a Nobel Prize for discovering the autophagy mechanisms has a course on edx. Doesn't get much more authoritative than that.
Autophagy is always active, the real question is how that activity changes during fasting. The number of 18 hours is fairly arbitrary, as even after a few hours of fasting autophagy increases.
Depends on what you're eating... if you're on a keto (fast mimicking) macro level intake, you'll reach autophagy a bit faster. Heavy exercise/resistance/lifting can also help speed this up, which can also lend to timing of exercise and food intake.
I think I heard it on the FoundMyFitness podcast which has excellent discussions about fasting science. I think it may have been the last interview with Valter Longo. I’ll see if I can dig it up, but their website would be a good starting point.
No idea why you're being downvoted. Even when videos/podcasts cite studies, it's difficult to verify that the study actually supports their claim since it's often difficult to find the study they mention.
The 18 hour claim may be supported by evidence, but there isn't any in this subthread so far.
Feel free to pore over thousands of scientific papers about the benefits of fasting on NCBI for us and let us know. Until then, I'll take NutritionFacts.org videos' word for it: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCddn8dUxYdgJz3Qr5mjADtA which cites scientific papers as it makes claims.
True. However, even if intermittent fasting is no more effective than calorie restriction, from a human behavior perspective, it seems to be an easier way for many people to achieve their calorie goals than just "eating less".
Yeah, this is why I prefer one mead a day (OMAD). It's a very large meal, 1600-2000 calories over a 2 hour period but I find it much easier to control my calorie intake this way.
The only thing I regret since the pandemic is drinking coffee. I try to limit the amount of sugar and almond milk I add, but I feel like it's impacting my diet some how.
I know you meant one meal a day, but I read this as one mead a day and it was so really fun confusion.
EDIT: parent edited for the typo, but it originally read one mead a day... one very large mead. But where do you get your protein? Is there protein mead? How does this all mead diet work.
As someone who absolutely needed sugar in coffee before I considered it drinkable, I can tell you that you can wean yourself off it. It took me several months before I stopped noticing its absence but nowadays I don’t miss it. I still use milk though!
I'm with you there, milk alone is almost too sweet for me because I rarely add sugar to anything. But I think I need it for the creaminess (fat?) to cut the bitterness (and adding oil/butter is probably worse).
You could try finding some different coffee, or brewing it differently. I never add anything to coffee, and find that the flavour differs markedly between blends / origins / brewing methods, for me covering the whole spectrum from "undrinkable" to "delicious".
I did read about a guy who cold brewed coffee, left the jug in the fridge, then just microwaved it every morning. That sounds tasty and convenient so I need to check it out.
You don't have to go quite that far to get better tasting coffee. You start with a good quality roast, pre-ground is fine, because average grind size is medium to coarse, which is a good general size (esp. if you don't wanna over-extract).
For a brew method, immersion brewing (like an aeropress) is uncomplicated, fast and can make larger batches at once. Brew at ~205F for 2 minutes, extract gently, and add water if it tastes too strong. You can use that method to make a large batch at once and keep it in a thermos, or make coldbrew and then warm it up to ~160F. No need for a scale or constantly grinding the coffee, and you don't end up with a single lukewarm cup of pour-over.
For "fancy" coffee you can do the same, except instead of adding water you can add frothed hot 2% milk. And if you really just want a "coffee ritual": clean everything of old coffee residue, filter the water, bloom the coffee before brewing, wet the filter before extraction, and get your coffee:water ratio, temperature, and extraction time to match the roast. All of that and no hardware besides an aeropress.
With regards to coffee, you can try cold brewing coffee, it's much smoother (less bitter and less acidic), which might allow you to drink it without sugar and milk. There are commercially available cold brew coffees that have no added sugar and milk as well, in case you want to try the taste before making it at home.
Black coffee all the way my friend! I know it's easier said than done. I resisted for a long time, but finally took the plunge ;-) when doing a fasting diet that allowed only water and black coffee outside the eating window. Now it's stuck.
In hindsight, I think one of the smartest decisions I made for myself was to first try coffee black. Since I didn't know any better, it was extremely easy to commit to it, and I am appreciative of it today. I wish I could influence more people to do it at their age, because I think a lot of people would appreciate it when they're older.
Drip coffee is horrible, so I understand wanting sugar. I moved to black by buying a mocha pot and aeropress. It's a whole different coffee experience, milk and sugar not necessary.
I have every coffee making gimmick from the chemex to the aeropress and I guarantee you would fail a blind test on which one is which, or if the cups of coffee are even different.
I mean, what exactly is the mechanical difference of putting hot water through coffee grounds and a filter that differs when you do it in an aeropress vs. a dripper? And you think you're tasting enough of a difference to say one is horrible and one is amazing? Because the hot water and the ground coffee interacted slightly differently(?) between contraptions?
I do this test for all of my friends and they all fail. Unless it's the moka pot or french press because the lack of filter has you picking soot from your teeth. Those cups always rank last.
Not to derail the thread. But I seriously think you should do a blind test with someone who knows what they're doing. Just for fun.
My theory is that it's 75% placebo of having a coffee gimmick that everyone else is missing out on, and 25% the fact that an aeropress or whatever finally got someone to measure coffee grounds and time it for once instead of dumping a random amount of grounds into a drip filter and then drinking it when it's been sitting on the burner for 3 hours.
> I guarantee you would fail a blind test on which one is which, or if the cups of coffee are even different.
Oddly enough, I've actually done a blind taste test on multiple coffee systems systems: drip, aeropress, chemex (pour over), italian percolator, french press, keurig, manual espresso machine, and real espresso machine. We controlled for water temperature and mass, steep time, coffee type, coffee grind (with exceptions for specialized filters), coffee mass, packing pressure (similar pressures for similar types of brew methods).
There were ten of us in the test. We each did three tastings of each brew, with a 10 minute break between each round of tasting. Each round we wrote down guesses at brew methods, how much we enjoyed the taste, how much we enjoyed the smell, and the coffee's were shuffled between each round.
Analyzing the results was interesting, and gave some insights into similarity categories between them. For example, everyone identified the espresso brews correctly, but some people misidentified the percolator brew as being an espresso brew during the first tasting, then correctly identified the espresso during their second or third. The aeropress was also misidentified as both the manual espresso and the percolator.
There were a few more interesting conclusions, but the total average accuracy was something like 70%.
Anecdotally, I've taste tested various types of coffee using different brewing techniques (regular pour over, Chemex, French press, and espresso), and I can definitely tell the difference. For some specific examples: espresso was by far the most acidic and concentrated (which makes sense if you know how it works); the French press brought out the most bitterness; Chemex produced the least bitter and most consistent coffee regardless of the types of beans (for me this was a downside as I could barely taste the difference between beans, and all of them tasted more bland); and pour over was a nice middle ground (my favorite).
I admit that my test was not blind or scientific by any means, but I didn't know much about the brewing methods back then, so at least I wasn't swayed by any preconceived ideas of how they should taste. Also, it's entirely possible that most people would fail this test, but IME most people also don't particularly care how their coffee tastes. This is evidenced by the popularity of Starbucks, which trades flavor for consistency by over-roasting their coffee.
Alternating between pour-over, drip, french press (rarely) and a moka pot gives me a different coffee experience for each. The former two are similar in flavor, probably exactly the same aside from amount of grounds used per cup of joe. French press is a bit stronger flavor, usually slightly more bitter as well. It can be slightly chalky, but if you're picking grounds from your teeth you might be doing it wrong.
The moka pot is miles ahead of all the rest in terms of flavor and texture. It isn't quite as creamy and rich as a good shot of espresso, but it's pretty darn close for what it is. It's certainly better than a mediocre espresso, like you might get at a drive-through coffee shack (could be my beans more than anything, hard to know for sure). There is a pressure buildup and a rapid extraction time with the moka pot that certainly changes the interaction between hot water and ground coffee. If you are picking grounds from your teeth with a moka pot you are 100% doing it wrong and probably ruining the coffee in the process.
I don't bother with the chemex (isn't this just a retro style of pour over?) and aeropress because I'm not really into gimmicks :)
Are you really arguing that the length of time the hot water is in contact with the coffee makes no difference? Or the pressure under which that contact occurs? It seems fairly intuitive that both things would make a difference.
You're doing it wrong if there are grounds in your cup. Yes there's a huge difference between letting the coffee soak for minutes and then applying pressure versus quickly dripping water through the beans.
The uncontrolled variable you don't mention in all this is the coffee beans themselves.
If you start out with mediocre beans, they'll tend to taste more or less the same as other mediocre beans, no matter how they're ground and brewed.
If you take good beans, grind them within a few days of roasting, and brew them within a few hours of grinding, you will start to notice a very significant difference in taste, regardless of brewing method.
Not to mention selecting the proper grind for each method and your personal preferences (ideally using a bur grinder for all but drip). Over or under extraction (or both, with bladed grinders) is almost a certainty if the grind is at a drastically wrong coarseness for the method.
I can definitely taste the difference brewing the same coffee via a french press versus my old fashioned percolator on the stove, and not on account of loose coffee grounds. This may be an extreme comparison as a percolator is possibly the worst way to brew coffee. Convenient, though. It makes little difference to me, I usually drink it black over ice.
With all other things equal, the coffee maker you use seems to make a big difference for drip coffee. Variables I can think of would include flow rate (both on the grounds and into the jug), temperature of water when it drops on the grounds, and temperature of the hot plate under the jug.
The best coffee maker I had was 20€ no-brand from grocery store corner shelf. One of the worst offenders IMHO is the popular design icon Moccamaster.
give a try to butter coffee aka Bulletproof coffee (TM), basically just coffee, butter and coconut oil, some people say it can easily replace breakfast
"Would really like to see this compared to another group with a similar level of calorie restriction but without the intermittent fasting."
I think the answer to your question is total time inflamed (for lack of a better term).
Eating and digesting appear to be an interrupt for many other processes, for obvious reasons. You divert a lot of resources and produce a lot of inflammation and depress a lot of immunity.
Do you want to be in that state for 14 hours per day or for 6 hours per day ?
My bro-science intuition tells me that, all else being equal, consuming the same number of calories in a tighter window is much less expensive.
A single, giant meal is not going to be associated with the problematic blood sugar spikes and rapid insulin responses as long as it is a balanced meal that includes a good amount of fats, proteins and vegetables. All of these slow digestion, so the pancreas will be doling out insulin at a relatively steady, slow rate over the course of hours and then getting a nice long rest.
Eating 3 balanced meals throughout the day might be marginally better or worse for the pancreas, but neither of these dietary choices trigger the panic-level insulin responses (which ultimately lead to insulin resistance and diabetes) that snacking on large amounts of refined carbs and refined sugars are notorious for.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2121099/ This study found that although there was higher blood glucose and reduced glucose tolerance in the morning for the group eating 1 meal a day, surprisingly they had less insulin resistance than the group eating 3. Other indicators of dietary/hormonal health were the same between groups. Same caloric intake of glucose between groups, and the 1 meal a day group shared the same evening window just like OMAD. This was a pilot study with small sample size (irritatingly the actual number isn't listed from what I can see) as well as a high withdrawal rate, unsurprisingly.
Ideally you want no spikes, because you are eating a balanced diet and avoiding meals and snacks consisting largely of refined carbs and refined sugars. A proper meal shouldn't really create a blood sugar (and resulting insulin) spike as much as a gradual elevation and fall back to baseline, because protein, fat, and fiber all slow digestion, and complex carbs (and even sugars within fiber/nutrient matrixes ie whole fruits) don't tend to spike blood sugar too badly in the first place.
How so? Wouldn't most pathogens be food or water borne if you're not in a crowded city in close proximity to other humans or livestock?
Either way I don't see how what you say is true. If I stop eating or drinking how does that make me catch the flu or something the immune response helps against?
It seems having it active when I eat would be the most useful, which is why I wondered why it worked how it does.
I don't really see how that relates, when I say "getting sick" I don't think most people from here would include starvation or dehydration in that bucket, but maybe that's a regional difference. I meant things you catch (virus, bacteria, parasites) because we're talking about immune response.
I tried that app a very long time ago, and then in an update they forced users to create an online account with no local use option. I promptly removed it since I’m averse to creating online accounts when I see no good reason to do it.
You can log in with Apple ID, never share your email and remove the app from your account whenever you please. If that's too intrusive for you, I'm surprised that you've managed to sign up to HN so you can write a comment.
I didn’t sign up to HN just to write this comment. Also, HN doesn’t require providing an email address to create an account, unlike this app. I like my local-only preferences.
From a pure scientific underlying root method - I agree with you.
The problem I see is if this question is the only one, the immediate second question becomes - does Intermittent Fasting produce the same results? requiring an additional study.
From a practical implementation, this research is better suited to everyday life. Intermittent Fasting as a system is way easier to implement at scale than calorie counting.
I don't have any studies handy but here's what I remember from looking into this. IF does not lead to more weight loss than other diets when you match calories. At least some forms of IF also have lower adherence than simple caloric restriction.
My own anecdata suggests that I have better adherence to IF than regular caloric restriction. YMMV. The diet that helps you lose the most weight will be the one you follow closest.
Can only speak anecdotally.. but I find it relatively easy to stick to one or two meals a day over trying to do smaller/frequent meals. Same goes for avoiding carbs (keto macros). When I eat more frequently or start adding starchy foods, I'm ravenous the next couple days.
It would be better in that the body activates ketosis after 12 straight hours. Interrupting that cycle with calories will switch the body back to fed mode.
I don’t think you should be looking at studies when it comes to how you eat, you should be focusing on how you feel, observing your own body and possibly talking to a doctor. I had a really big problem with acid reflux a while back after I stopped drinking alcohol. I visited many gastrologists and most of them offered little to no help, most only prescribed me drugs which was in my opinion not a solution. I finally meet with a gastrologist that did an endoscopy and basically sat me down and said that if I wanted to get over my acid reflux I needed to eat really light over the next four months, no fruits, no tomatoes, no pork or beef only poultry, no fried food, no greasy food, and the list went on. I did the diet, had a few cheat days because it was hard, and my stomach recovered. After the four months I reintroduced certain foods and started learning about how my body reacted to them. I also realized that I feel a lot better with a full stomach than with an empty one. My point is we all have slight different bodies and that while studies are great, sometimes it just good to study yourself and how you feel. On a side note, if you’re one of those people fasting to be healthy yet haven’t cut out drugs, alcohol and tabaco out of your life then do that first, it is the first step to good health.
The problem with this, for too many people, is that they've never felt "good". They don't have a point of reference they could use to guide them to a better lifestyle
They only know the right-now and that's good enough for them.
This is something I've seen with my friends and family who have never been in good shape. They don't know that it's possible to go up 3 flights of stairs 2-3 steps at a time at a brisk pace and NOT be panting with exhaustion afterwards. They don't know that it's not normal to fart 24/7 and have constant heartburn, because that's all they've ever known.
Bravo! And because this is HN let me add: I love seeing light hearted responses like this that elicit a smile, on HN. Where the overall tone is normally very serious :)
I disagree. I regularly downvote comments whose purpose is largely for humour. Not because they aren't funny/witty/clever, but because this is Hacker News, not Reddit. Let's keep it that way.
Humor on the internet has a weird way of spreading and just destroying any conversation. So often I go to the comments on reddit hoping for further insight or a different point of view, only to find the top three threads are memes and puns.
However, I did enjoy this limited foray into humor, and appreciate that we can seemingly keep it limited to a couple funny comments, and still have intelligent conversation.
Or maybe allow some diversity in the mood of the conversation? There is always a time and a place for humor and non-serious conversation. I get that you don't want this forum to devolve, but it also devolves if you are dead set on a single mode of operation.
This is an excellent comment, and anecdata aside, is very similar to my own experiences. Started a ketogenic diet ~3 years ago - was very close to FODMAP and immediately saw stomach/gut/sweat/sleep/general well being improvements across the board. Been super interesting (since) to see what has an effect on me and after how much.
In particular, I cut alcohol in a big way (mostly casual beer) and was fairly stunned to realise how much I'd lived with "booze blues" every day. It's now very, very obvious the effect alcohol has on my body afterwards (elevated heart rate, booze blues, etc etc). But at the time was like a fog being lifted for the first time in almost 20 years.
We're all different, what works for me might not for you, etc - but personally was hugely enlightening to just reset and play around with what does what.
But when you are young and healthy, you can basically eat everything you want and don't feel bad at the moment. The problem is that all the side effects will come later.
Unfortunately food intolerancies could appear at very early childhood causing several gut & non-gut related problems. So in that case a child can't know what is healthy or good because the baseline is so bad.
This is great and much needed advice. My parents didn’t realize my stomach problems early on despite having a decent diet, and it affected me more later in life.
yeah, this is weird for me. lately I started recognizing that people are leaning towards extreme options or treat decision as "either this or that" while not looking at something in the middle or combining couple of tools to single use.
Do you mean mainly in the scientific/engineering context? Because, in general in the world of public discourse, that’s arguably the dominant theme of the past 20 years, if not the last 2000.
This seems like an uncharitable take: OP seems to be arguing you should focus on what you can measure (even if it’s personal experience), and seek guidance when you need help.
The concrete advice at the end seems pretty supported by science. Drinking and smoking are definitively bad for you.
smoking - yes, it's incontrovertible.
drinking - less clear; mortality rates for teetotallers (total abstinence) are higher than for even moderate to heavy drinkers, and there are health benefits from eg 1-2 servings of red wine. IMHO the issue is the degree to which people slip from a drink or maybe 2, to 3 or maybe 4.
I agree that ultimately your own subjective experience is the best measure of how your diet is working for you, surely studies like this are good information about what diet protocol might be interesting to try, especially since it can take a couple weeks to really feel the effects of a new diet.
Not true. Many types of cancer can be spotted early on, if you pay attention to your body and know where to look at.
And go to a medical check, if there are warning signs.
Checkung nevus. Early on means, if you notice them changing size and color - have them checked and maybe removed. No spreading skin cancer as a result
Breast cancer: feeling knots, etc. are warning signs.
Lung cancer: pain
Brain cancer:
certain types of headaches can be ignored with pills, or checked
etc. etc.
I am not aware of any cancer, which has no warning signs. But yes, most if not all signs are not a guaranteed test result. And in fact, it probably does not helping many people freaking out, when they notice warning signs, caused by harmles other causes. But doing so in a rational manner definitely increases your chances of early spotting.
This is good advice, I had similar issues with acid reflux. Though I didn't have the patience to cut so much out of my diet. I ended up starting a diet journal and tracking closer attention to what food & drink triggered my acid reflux. Coffee turned out to be the worst culprit, and cutting out coffee eliminated 80% of my acid reflux incidents.
It's probably best to go the full diet change route & slowly introduce new foods again, but if you read the OP's recommendations and think "I can't do that" there are other ways.
Just because we have slightly different bodies doesn’t mean we can’t do science. We need controls etc, but it’s doable even if it’s very hard with complex biological systems.
BTW: what did you eat during the time? It seems like you couldn’t eat a lot of you leave out fruits and most meat
Well, ethanol reacts with hydrochloric acid producing chloroethane gas, so theoretically it can reduce acidity of stomach content by converting liquid acid into non-acidic and slightly anesthetic burps.
Focusing on how you feel is also a great way to die prematurely. Hypertension, Heart Disease and Cancer all don't care one iota about how you feel. This has literally nothing to do with what you're talking about other than being about eating habits.
Do you happen still have the list of things your gastrologist said you could eat? I'm having a bit of reflux issue myself, and I would love to solve it purely with diet, but I don't know where to start.
People who never experimented themselves with nutrition do not understand the limitations of these studies. They only look for one effect for a relative short period of time. So not only they might miss other side effects but also they conclude based on the shock effect major changes have on your body. But once these changes become normal the body adapts and the effects might go completely away.
From my personal experience: very high protein with calorie deficit can allow you to build muscle while losing fat but also causes impotence, anxiety, poop so hard you scrape your insides till you fill the toilet with blood. Are the studies right? Yes. Do you want to follow their advice? Not really.
I have a similar experience. I feel better all around when my stomach is full than when it's not. But that's not a feasible way to stay at a healthy weight so I deal.
Acid reflux burns your throat and sometimes even the stomach lining. Imagine taking a lit candle. You can wave your finger through the flame without issue. But now if you burn that finger, any heat, no matter how small is going to burn and cause an upset. Eating bland foods allows the stomach an easier time digesting, preventing reflux into the throat and allowing the burns to heal so that in the future when you get the occasional bit of reflux like most people, it won’t burn and you’ll carry on your day like normal. If I get particularly stressed and eat badly for example and don’t notice I’m burning up inside, I need to take 3 months of just bland foods, boring diet, Gaviscon and Nizatidine and then I’m back to normal again. It’s a fun ride!
I've been doing a 16-20 hour fast since the lockdown and WFH, and to be honest I saw a significant decrease in my overall anxiety as a result. Anxiety I often offset with significant amounts of CBD (a $100/month expense).
And while there are drawbacks, I can't bench press 215lbs anymore, the overall benefits have been pretty significant that I will keep doing it.
My weight was pretty erratic, given the high stress load and super active lifestyle I could fluctuate 8lbs in a day. Now my weight has stabilized and my head is clearer.
I studied biology with an understanding of autophagy and I only ate once a day for nearly a decade now (2011), but I used to eat 3000+ calories in one sitting, but now I've decided to limit my overall caloric intake (1500-2000) and reduced it to a 8-4 hour window and saw even better results.
Also, as a former chef, I now savor my food way more and take the time to enjoy it more than when I tasted and ate all day and suffered from a sort of palate fatigue and made my gravitate to salty, greasy food late at night when I actually had an appetite.
Liquorice is an adaptogen that helps balance cortisol levels and balance the adrenals. The other are merely anti inflammatory.
Another effective herb for anxiety would be holy basil or tulsi. Easy to grow everywhere. Leaving a few leaves of holy basil in a copper container overnight and having a few sips in the morning on an empty stomach is my old grandmother’s remedy/morning ritual. Later when I started growing holy basil at the farm, one of the herbalist who bought from me said that the copper vessel has something to do with enhancing bio availability of chromium and other trace minerals in holy basil.
Other stress reducing adaptogen herbs that are a tad uncommon(and need herbalist guidance), ashwagandha and rhodiola. I can grow the former but not the latter in CA. Maca too is said to have a balancing effect on adrenals and thereby reducing stress and related anxiety.
Holy basil is also used as an anti inflammatory consumable. It’s anti anxiety property has as much proof as its anti inflammatory property [1], which is to say like most herbal supplements the jury is out.
If you want to go the herbal route I think commonly used herbs with more of a medical precedent could be useful like:
- Garlic
- Ginseng
- Green Tea
- Aloe Vera
- Ginger
- Chamomile
[1] Singh, S., Majumdar, D. K., and Rehan, H. M. Evaluation of anti-inflammatory potential of fixed oil of Ocimum sanctum (Holybasil) and its possible mechanism of action. J Ethnopharmacol. 1996;54(1):19-26
I cant say holy basil is the best anti inflammatory. Maybe. It is mostly used as an adaptogen to balance adrenals and bring down cortisol levels. It can be used as an all around herbal support because it will always ‘balance’ hormones and naturally occurring steroids(like cortisol). So as an adaptogen, gentle and no side effects.
Rosemary has good anti inflammation properties and it’s proven. However turmeric is superior to rosemary and CBD even better. But rosemary and turmeric* can be easily incorporated in food. Garlic is also good.
One must be careful with rosemary(don’t ingest ‘Rosemary tea’ etc..high in volatiles. you will likely end up with a headache or throw up)..but because it has mild to moderate vasodilation properties, it is excellent for circulation issues tho’ especially when applied topically. I want to say that rosemary’s efficiency is more due to it being a rubefacient rather than a powerful anti inflammatory. Example: you are better off using rosemary infused oil for massaging your scalp than ingesting a cup of even mild rosemary tea. The former application will greatly improve circulation to head as the oil topically works better and has less side effects.
Ditto with arnica..arnica gel is better than arnica tincture or herb for internal use. They are useful for hematomas and bruising. But will cause internal bruising and bleeding/inhibit clotting factor when taken internally or applied over an open wound or cut or used subcutaneously. Topical application? It’s golden!
*anecdote: when I was growing up, one of the home herbal lores I heard was how every mother needs three things: turmeric, holy basil and neem. So every home has neem in the front of the house, a basil shrine at the back(hence ‘holy’. It’s similar to elderberry. If something is ‘holy’, one never over harvests it and will keep propagating the plant species). The turmeric used to hang around the woman’s neck or the dried rhizomes given as gifts. Similarly on the kitchen, for food: Ginger, black pepper and long pepper.
I used to work as a chef and trained classical French. I gave a couple of classes to non indian chefs about loading up spice boxes. A typical spice box(South Indian. It differs regionally) will have seven compartments. cumin, coriander seeds, dried red chilies, turmeric, fenugreek seeds, fennel and cardamom. They are all medicinal. This is all you need in small quantities every day. It’s more effective in food everyday with a pinch here and there 2-3x/day. not as much when taken as capsules or a high medicinal dose sporadically. Herbs and spices don’t act like pharmaceutical doses. You have to think of them as preventative therapies rather than curative ones. Asafoetida goes separately in another shelf and clad in multiple layers of metal as does saffron because they are volatile and delicate+expensive respectively. There is another set of tempering seeds but my system was to use one box for flavoring spices and another for tempering.
But if you're considering eating licorice, don't go nuts with it. A guy recently died from eating too much [1].
From the FDA [2]:
"If you’re 40 or older, eating 2 ounces of black licorice a day for at least two weeks could land you in the hospital with an irregular heart rhythm or arrhythmia."
>I've been doing a 16-20 hour fast since the lockdown and WFH, and to be honest I saw a significant decrease in my overall anxiety as a result. Anxiety I often offset with significant amounts of CBD (a $100/month expense).
Ironic, because what I've noticed is my anxiety goes absolutely haywire after a long period without food. I can go with OMAD, but I have to be careful to have some nuts or something on hand if I need them
This is really interesting... I recently discovered my anxiety 100% vanished if I had a protein shake for breakfast, instead of fasting all day. For me I think it was a neurotransmitter deficiency from not having sufficient precursor amino acids.
Is it really fasting though? That's having big lunch and just skipping dinner. Many people do this often unintentionally without calling it fasting at all. You should move at least to 36-40 hours, although even that I don't find particularly special.
"In a physiological context, [...] a person is assumed to be fasting once 8–12 hours have elapsed since the last meal. Metabolic changes of the fasting state begin after absorption of a meal (typically 3–5 hours after eating)."[0]
So yes, it really is fasting.
> 36-40 hours, although even that I don't find particularly special
Don't make such claims without sources. And for what it's worth: most people don't fast in hope of others finding it special anyway.
TIL my father is pioneer of fasting eating for years just late lunch as single meal per day
actually most of the population is fasting by this logic, if you sleep at least 6-8 hours and don't eat right before sleeping and immediately after waking up
so sorry for considering this pretty stupid definition of fasting when 80-90% of population is fasting during sleep
They are referring to intermittent fasting, not regular fasting. A lot of the intermittent fasting talks about the windows of fasting but they still eat everyday.
> Anxiety I often offset with significant amounts of CBD (a $100/month expense).
While I wouldn’t dare to comment on someone else’s mental health situation, I’d note for anyone else reading and considering this that traditional SSRIs are very effective for some people, cheap, and you won’t have trouble taking them across borders or getting them prescribed in an emergency from a random doctor if you lose your stash
With immense amount of side-effects, I'd advise people to use CBD to see if it alleviates the symptoms before any SSRI.
In addition to the anxiety, I needed it for inflammation and pain relief which is a massive component to many ailments that have compounding effects. I worked 70+ hours a week in the peak season(s), so sleeping became a rare commodity which high loads of CBD with some CBG/CBN/THC made it happen nearly on demand.
This idea kept me from trying them for years, and I have not found this to be true at all for me. Again, I'm not trying to speak to _your_ situation -- for some people they're ineffective and laden with side-effects -- but there's a lot of scare-mongering for a treatment that works absolute wonders for a lot of people. I'd encourage people with anxiety to absolutely try them before deciding they're not for them.
It’s nuts how we are regulating CBD when alcohol and nicotine do far greater damage. CBD is legit therapeutic. The more I learn about it, I can’t wrap my head around this.
One day..a hundred or so years from now when the world is saner, our children will read about it in their textbooks and stare at each other w/disbelief.
Going to agree with the sibling reply. I've been on SSRI's, and I have friends who've been put on SSRI's, and there hasn't been any awful side effects. Definitely not "immense".
You sounds like living within extremes in quite a few aspects of life. Feels like some underlying (mental?) condition from description that manifests as anxiety. Ever thought about getting deeper instead of trying to fix the effects of such a behavior?
I have followed IF with a 1100 calorie deficit per day by only eating 1200 calories at dinner for 3 months. This translated to more than 1kg weight loss per week, pretty reliably. Overall I lost 17kg. I adjusted the TDEE and calorie values as needed to maintain the weight loss speed.
The weight loss was extremely fast, but so was the rate at which I lost lean mass. This makes sense, as I didn't exercise much, aside from occasional long walks / 1 mile run. According to this study [0], exercising should maintain lean muscle mass.
My personal observations are in line with the studies I have read about IF.
Some other observations I have made:
* The rate at which I gained 75% of the weight back was stunning to me. It was as fast as I lost it.
* My partner does not feel well when fasting, so IF doesn't work for everyone. I think it worked well for me. I did supplement with vitamins to account for the decreased amount of food intake.
* I noticed that whenever I had alcohol, while still adhering to the daily calorie limit, my weight would not go down until about 3 days have passed. I had assumed alcohol would only contribute its caloric energy, but, sure enough, every time I had a beer, I could see in the weight graph a bump that lasted for about 3 days, then the weight would suddenly jump down to where I was expecting it to be, based on the weight loss slope.
1100 calorie deficit is a bit extreme. Shoot for 500, or maybe 750 if you are pretty heavy.
How much protein did you eat? You'll maintain more muscle if you eat more protein.. consider 50% of calories from protein. Lifting weights also helps with maintaining lean muscle mass.
Alcohol can mess a lot with fluid retention. A good strategy for that when measuring progress is to weigh yourself each day but only look at the average weight over two weeks to see if you are progressing in the right direction.
Good advice, thanks. There is another aspect here, which is mostly about applying discipline and force of will. Seeing good progress feeds the reward system, and though discipline should be distinct from that, it helps me stay on track if every week I see 1kg lost, as opposed to 0.5kg, which could just be usual weight fluctuations.
1100 calorie deficit per day is too harsh and its no wonder your weight came back quickly. That large calorie deficit to your metabolim was equal to a famine, so as soon as you upped your calories again your metabolism put your surivial first and stored as much fat as it could.
Yeah, fasting is one of those ""health fads"" that really does seem to work miraculously... for some people. For some, it's just nothing; for some, it's miserable. Kind of bizarre how different our metabolisms can be.
I would argue it's definitely not a fad (at least in the sense it's something that's been happening only very recently); people have been fasting for literally thousands of years, though mostly for religious reasons.
It has an aura of being a fad nowadays since some modern research has indicated it actually does have health benefits, which I think some people have been a bit too quick to pounce on.
They do, but my colleagues tell me that the food they eat when they break their fast is often heavier than usual, and they might eat more as well. More than one is gaining weight during Ramadan :)
A very important difference is that you can't drink water during a Ramadan fast. Regardless of what you're doing with your food, deliberately dehydrating yourself is pretty much never justified.
The body produces water as a byproduct of ATP (energy) metabolism. During a fast, fat and other tissues are broken down by catabolic reactions to accomplish this. Knowing this, I am willing to entertain the idea that abstaining from water for a period of time can be beneficial, or perhaps I should say at least not harmful, because there are mechanisms in the body that synthesize water. Obviously, a sufficiently long period of time without water would be harmful.
I haven't done the math to figure out how much water this is, and so I do not know how sufficient it is to keep minimally hydrated during a water-fast. I'm just saying that the thought of abstaining from water during a fast isn't necessarily as dangerous as it sounds, because your body can and does produce it's own water as a by-product of energy metabolism.
Yes, because they selected subjects who were observing Ramadan and that makes their study easier to carry out. My point is that the dehydration is counterproductive.
Exactly. Maybe I wasn't clear in my comment above. My point is that most resources on intermittent fasting allow (and actually encourage) drinking a lot of water, and rightfully so. At the same time a lot of the research is done on subjects who observe Ramadan fasting and do not drink water. This difference has to influence the results in some way.
I think the logical interpretation of GP is that it's never justified from the perspective of physical health. Whether religious obligations outweigh ones health is a completely personal decision that no outsider gets any say in.
1. Some folks cheat.
2. Some, who you would think are otherwise healthy, cannot fast (I have a friend that found out he cannot fast. He was instead hospitalized).
3. The severity of the fast depends on the time of year the fast falls and where in the world you are. Right now, it is certainly worse in Norway (where the days very long in June) than it is in the southern hemisphere, where the days have their winter lengths.
The last two can be somewhat accounted for (and already are: Folks that can't fast are exempt and special rules for places that get midnight sun). We can't really control for the first one, especially with real cultural taboo against breaking the fast during the day.
That ambiguity irked me, too. The full text[1] mentions collecting serum samples from participants "after at least 8 h of fasting," and that the study was conducted from early May to early June at Baylor in Houston, which would make for a ~14 hour fast each day.
The islamic 40 day fasting is exactly like that and it’s fun to entertain the idea of fasting close to the poles. The fasting dates are determined by the moon calendar so it moves between extremely easy and extremely hard.
Do you know if the muslims are actually going through it on hardcore level or have some kind of rationalisation for not doing it or a cheating method like sleeping all day?
According to traditional scholars from the four schools of thought, Muslims who live near the poles and either have the sun all day or darkness all day follow the timings for both the five daily prayers, and the times to open and close the fast as well as the dates of when fasting starts and finishes of their nearest neighbouring country which has sunset and sunrise.
Looks very imprecise considering the precision timing of the usual prayers(The prayers start at very exact astronomical time, in a large city like Istanbul you can hear a mosque from a far , then closer and closer ones start the broadcast, then the mosque next to you, then the ones far from you. You can literally observe earths rotation from mosque timings). There's no such thing like national prayer time, muslims use apps or leaflets with the timings calculated for each city.
That said, I don't know much about religion practices. Maybe the precision timing is a Turkish thing.
The timings for prayers and months have to be precise that is correct but for example, what happens when the moon for Ramadan hasn't been sighted (it starts when the first crescent of the new moon is sighted). In that instance you would follow your neighbouring country.
It is true that there are slight variations in the prayer timings between cities so hence when looking at the neighbouring country you would obviously choose the nearest city.
This is the view and ruling of all 4 schools of jurisprudence within the Sunni sect.
Bit of background on schools of thought and sects.
Islam is split between Sunni Muslims and Shias.
Sunnis make up the majority and within Sunni Muslims there are 4 schools of thought. The rulings between the schools differ based on interpretations of the Quran, Ahaadith (Prophetic sayings), consensus of the Prophet Muhammad's companions and deductive analogy.
The 4 schools of thoughts are not sects, i.e. they consider each other to be Muslims, unlike Sunni Muslims who consider (most) Shia sects, Ahamdis et al to not be Muslim.
An example of a difference in interpretation is the Quran instructs people to wash their faces, arms to the elbows, head and feet to ankles. Now does they include the ankles or not? Does the word "to" define a limit? Then different scholars from the schools of thoughts give their opinion, some say that it does based on certain linguistic evidences, eyewitness accounts of the Prophet Muhammed (p.b.u.h) actions or his sayings and hence that's how the rulings differ.
Source - I am studying, alongside my professional career, Islamic sciences such as theology, jurisprudence, classical Arabic, Hadith and Quran exodus etc and hopefully graduate as an Islamic scholar soon!
I do this every year as a part of Ramadhan. Though I am not very religious - fasting and taking a break from the usual each year is uplifting, deeply spiritual and of course has health benefits..
A slightly different perspective from another religion. I am trying to follow the Hindu Lunar calender. But it’s a 2 week schedule based on full moon and new moon.
Basically on the 11th day after full moon and new moon, one fasts from sunrise to sunset. That’s twice a month. It’s called Ekadasi Fast.
But the real trick is preparing to fast 6-8 hours before and after the day of the fast.
Also the day after the fast, the food has to be grain/gluten free(rice seems to be ok) and has certain ingredients like greens, herbs and spices. It’s very light.
Full moon and new moon days are always food for milk and fruit fasts. And there is a whole bunch of other religious day fasts. Example: no salt on 6th day after full/new moon..a lot of ingredient restrictive fasts etc. I don’t know a lot about that but I have seen my mother observe it. I must find out more.
There seems to be a whole method to the madness and when scheduled properly, one can do staggered and scheduled partial fasts 6-7 days for a lunar fortnight. The calorie restriction mostly comes from the rules against certain ingredients.
Even in the pared down format I follow, I feel like I connect more with my food and am more mindful when I cook. Most of all, I don’t waste as much food because it’s so much work preparing the food! Of course, it’s seasonal. Having said that, I guess annual menu and schedule format has to be reversed for those in the Southern Hemisphere.
Asking you question since you may know the answer. I want to learn more about the lunar calendar and what need to done on which day. I need to perform shardham for my deceased parents and it will be great help to know lunar cycles. I am trying to practice my religion. I grew up mostly without paying much attention to anything so learning these things would be useful to me. tia. I am not sure if there a way in hn to dm someone.
Hi..I wrote a reply and deleted it because I suppose the practice differs from region to region. And I am not that well learned about the subject. There is a phone app called Panchang that I use to track lunar tithis.
Your best bet is to connect with someone in your community or local temple and ask them.
It could say nothing since we don't know about potential negative trials.
How many research groups tried this with a similar N=14 size group but got statistically insignificant results and thus were not able to publish results?
> How many research groups tried this with a similar N=14 size group but got statistically insignificant results [..]
Thanks to p-hacking, I would expect most small studies to get statistically significant results. Though that doesn't settle the more important question of whether they manage to get published.
Since I believe this is religious fasting, the subjects probably didnt smoke during the day. Question is of course how many smokers are there in the group.
I agree, this is very very preliminary. Out of curiosity I also thought I'd check who made the study, the main doctor is from Istanbul Turkey, and the other main author seems to be Muslim as well.
Now, that justifies why they were interested in studying this, since it's very similar to Ramadan, but it also could show a bit of a bias in hoping to find positive results.
I'd like to see further evidence before I change my IF routine to be from dawn to sunset and also limit drinking intake personally.
Generally it's good to be skeptical but this- "We found a significant fold increase in the levels of several tumor suppressor and DNA repair gene protein products (GP)s at the end of 4th week during 4-week intermittent fasting (CALU, INTS6, KIT, CROCC, PIGR), and 1 week after 4-week intermittent fasting (CALU, CALR, IGFBP4, SEMA4B) compared with the levels before 4-week intermittent fasting."
But why would this suddenly happen?
There's some physiology here to be uncovered. That hardly is 'nothing'.
Is it calories? Is it fasting? Is it nutrient timing?
You can't find out which from "no control", but there's definitely a physiological effect being seen, correct?
Is it climate change? Is it because the stock market went up 10%? Because Saturn's orbit crossed it's periphelion?
Or more seriously, could it just be the Hawtorne effect?
As you pointed out, without a control group, you cannot claim that any change in your measurements are due to anything. The fact that the researchers do attribute it to fasting is just bad science and makes me doubt the rest of their findings.
If any of those happened, wouldn't the entire world see those physiological effects?
Being a bit more realistic is the hawthorne effect, which can be easy to test with follow up experiments.
My biggest takeaway isn't to do IF or cut calories, but rather it seems some phenomena was found. If you asked me if diet, fasting, etc... Would cute cancer, I'd have said NO! but this study has changed that answer to "I don't know".
Well, could be a different thing altogether. This was probably done in Ramadan (the no-drinking thing, and the researches from Turkey as I saw in a different comment). So there would also be no smoking allowed for 14h per day. Maybe this has an effect.
I'd say this - while interesting - does not show a thing. It happens that a billion or so people do this every year, so any actual public health effect should be quite noticeable. Instead, "the highest percentage change in age-standardized BMI related deaths and disability-adjusted life-years occurred in Bangladesh" (that is mostly a Sunni country) - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5866840/#Sec3ti...
Or see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3263199/ - "The recorded high prevalence of the MS and its key cardiovascular risk factors (15-60%) among Middle East population mandates the need for a national and international prevention programs to combat obesity, diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, smoking and related comorbidities."
If you're referring to Ramadan, I don't believe that's the same thing, because it is two meals a day, spaced apart significantly, and only lasts a month.
I also question religious devotees adherence to their religion. There are no stats on it and it is impossible to measure... Perhaps a significant number of them secretly cheat.
This study is exactly Ramadan, by design (but it does not say so in the title).
In fact one of the recruiting rules was "2) Subjects who plan to fast during the religious month of Ramadan" and therefore "All subjects fasted for more than 14 h daily for 29 days beginning from May 06, 2019, until June 03, 2019".
That raised my suspicion. In an era of politic-driven pseudo-scientific paper, I was wondering :
1. Why ramadan is not explicitely told in the title.
2. Why using "dawn to sunset" which is not helpful at all to make generalisation (scientists usually have a clock).
3. Why the diet during the night is not explicited (at least in the abstract).
4. Why this would have different results if the diet is during the night or during the day.
All of this makes me suspicious that this is a kind of retro-science propaganda to make Ramadan looks healthy and justify the religion.
I maybe wrong but the abstract raises too many flags to not care about this hypothesis.
I dropped the same argument in a previous "fasting" post here and nobody reacted. Over a billion people fast "religiously" during Ramadan so why do we need so many studies when we should be able to draw conclusions from these arab countries vs the rest of the world pretty easily.
There is a significant impact, In Morocco, endocrinologists don’t want you to do bloodwork, after Ramadan. They ask you to wait at least 3 weeks after Ramadan to do testing.
Scientific Reports is the dreg journal of Nature, and this clickbait title of "become a muslim and don't get cancer" with its extremely low sample size and no control group doesn't help to improve that journal's standing.
I thought that's exactly the point of Scientific Reports: to publish "reports" (i.e., not proper "papers") without caring about their impact or importance, as long as the science (however little of it there is) is done properly. i.e., you literally send them stuff that isn't good enough to be published in a proper journal. It's meant to be a dreg journal with low reputation; it's a feature, not a bug. The idea is to allow people to publish their work (e.g. to finish their PhD), but everyone knows that further investigation is needed before stuff should be called a proper finding. I think of it as the "workshop" version of a journal.
I'm a bit surprised by the recommendation to eat in the evening: I can't find it now, but I clearly remember reading an article that the liver was expanding during the day to adapt to the incoming food intakes.
And my own experience confirms it: on one meal a day I will loose much more weight if I eat at noon than if I eat the evening.
I was surprised as well. I always thought, the whole idea of intermittent fasting is to have no sugar floating in the body when you go to sleep. And that would be accomplished by a last meal at 4pm or 5pm and then no intake (except water, sugar-free tea/coffee) for 16 hours.
The gut is home to 70 to 80 percent of the immune cells in the body. It seems to me when you give it a break from a constant influx of food, that potentially frees up immune cells to do other things for a bit.
I do believe that makes sense and is part of the common "wisdom" of the diet. However more sizeable research studies need to be done in order to add strength to the hypothesis. These are far to small other than as pointers of what might be possible
I sort of think of it like "maintenance downtime." It was my son that first suggested to me it helps by freeing up immune cells and letting them concentrate on other things for a bit and I think that makes a lot of sense.
I also suspect that dropping your blood sugar levels low enough, long enough helps starve some invaders. We are bigger than the bacteria in our system. We can survive for a bit without those resources. Maybe some of them can't.
This is not just pertinent to Ramadan. Every 2 days in the month , there is this Hindu thing of Ekadasi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekadashi). Each of these depending on the month have a presiding deity!
The rules are simple , the day before should be a light meal , on Ekadasi dawn to next day dawn (about 36 hours in all) fasting. On Dwadasi , break this fast by first having water , meditation and then a light meal (usually milk+milk products) and community feeding if possible . Other rules include not sleeping during day and so on. My parents do it still , very few follow this regimen though these days.
I think very similar eating/fasting habits are pertinent during the lent as well.
When i was younger , during Ramadan we used to go to break the fast post dusk. In my homestate in India , there is usually a gruel that is prepared with sooji (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombay_rava) and lot of fruits. As a veggie , i would go there and eat :) . Sadly it has become a hog show now ,eating as much during dawn and dusk to keep the day full
When I was in Nepal I talked to a guy who said he was not eating that day "to balance the body". The way he spoke about it made it seem like it must be a normal practice there which everyone understood and was aware of.
> A fifth of the world's population is Muslim, and most Muslims live in areas where the prevalence of smoking is high and often increasing. But even among the many Muslims living in Europe, smoking prevalence (particularly among men) remains high. For example, in England in 2004 the overall prevalence of smoking was 40% in Bangladeshi men and 29% in Pakistani men compared with 24% among the male general population.
As a Muslim and live in a country with 90% Muslim, I can tell, most of the people are Muslim, because they have a Muslim parent. Rape, corruption, addiction, sexual harassments, hate speech are common things here. No Muslim can do these.
5 times prayers (Salah) in a day is absolutely mandatory, absolutely no excuse for Muslim. But most people don't even care, including me :)
As far as it goes for Muslims in Pakistan, laws/rules given by religion are mostly take literally instead of what they might mean. Drinking is forbidden, that's agreed upon, as far as other drugs go its up if the person is following teachings of any religious scholar.
Smoking is therefore not considered forbidden (haram) in the same sense as alcohol. I am a little too sensitive to drugs and smoke and betel leaves ('paan') make my head go south just as much.
So it correctly is issue of education I would say.
Smoking, like alcohol and other vices are prohibited.
It is in fact an unfortunate reality that is a matter of miseducation for those who are not victim to the statistical conflation of nationality as an indicator of belief.
Islam tends to prohibit things that "affect" your mind, or are addictive, as well as things that might harm the body since the body is apparently "on-loan" from god. That's why I thought Smoking would fall under that. \
After doing some searching, it does seem that Smoking is mostly considered to be prohibited in Islamic Law, now people likely don't follow that but that's a different story.
I don't see any predominantly Muslim country listed high up here- https://www.wcrf.org/dietandcancer/cancer-trends/data-cancer... . Which is kinda surprising to me. My father never smoked and still got cancer. I am from a Muslim-majority country and I know of a bunch of other friends/family who suffered or perished from cancer.
Alcohol would also be a factor in play as that would increase the risk of some cancers, so the lack of you would of thought also be a factor with that lifestyle.
That's a really small sample size. Are they allowed to publish a study like this for such a small sample? Does anyone know if there is a minimum threshold size?
Allowed to publish? First it's a pilot study. Second, it's actually not a small sample size if you reasonably anticipate big effects and have multiple measures for each of the people at multiple time points. It isn't an observational study, though believers might have wished for a matched control group - - the anticancer effects might have come from the Ramadan prayer vs fasting!
Funny how a lot of old religions have some components of fasting in their teaching.
For myself i go 5 days without food every season of the year, seem to be enough to keep my weight quiet stable.
Without anything socially going on i have a daily 90 min eating window.
And i allow myself some guilty pleasures on Fridays and Saturdays.
Like going out and drinking beers with friends
I believe he's humorously referring to how Muslims already do this by praying five times a day. The routine requires prostrating multiple times, therefore stretching your back :)
tbh I think the practice of giving away flat-rate 2.5% of their wealth each year instead of 40-50% brackets would encourage more wealthy people to actually donate and not dodge taxes.
Many very wealthy people already donate to charity as a form of tax avoidance, by showing that they are benefitting others therefore they should be allowed to dodge tax.
The main problems with the argument that if wealthy people didn't get taxed then they would donate to charity more are 1) it's not proven to be true 2) where the money goes gets decided by the donor.
For some people letting the donor decide where their money goes sounds like a good idea, as it's there money. However donors do not take a holistic view of the needs of a society and are very influenced by what visible to them, their opinions & prejudices, etc... For example rich people donate billions to Harvard University, which already has an endowment of over $40 billion, which benefits almost nobody. That's arguably not a great use of charity donations where there are other more pressing needs, also in education, which would be much more efficient uses of that money.
The wealthy also often think that they are best placed to solve problems that they have zero experience with, based on being successful in a completely different field. Typically this leads to failure or inefficient and suboptimal results.
Governments are not perfect, nowhere close, but in terms of taking a holistic view of the needs of society and applying funds where needed, they are generally much better than assigning that function to a financial elite, especially if that government is a social democracy.
"The Switch", by James Clement, is a great roundup of fasting and other longevity-related behaviors. It's a synthesis of hundreds of research papers, with an emphasis of the 2016 discovery of the mTor switch that triggers autophagy in cells. The findings in the NIH paper seem pretty consistent with the overview of the research. More specifically, mortality from obesity and cancer drastically fall when: a) insulin and iGF-1 are suppressed, and b) mTor pathway (and autophagy) is triggered somewhat regularly.
The Fasting Mimicking Diet is a well studied diet that mimics the effects of fasting while eating 800-1200 calories per day and abstaining from protein (<15g/day). Check out this spreadsheet for a DIY guide to measure how fasting impacts your own biomarkers. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_f-UhsloOxvLbNLgyAou...
Dave Feldman's (engineer turned citizen scientist) independent research into the impact of low-carb, high-fat diets is also inspirational to learn first-hand how a diet can effect your body. He's replicated experiments of how several dietary approaches, including fasting, affect the lab measurement of cholesterol levels. He's been able to reproduce findings on his own body, with small sample sizes of other dieters. He's even proposed a Lipid Energy Model to describe how fats distribute energy to cells in a way that matches the data he's collected. https://cholesterolcode.com/model/
Reading enough of this research, I start to think about context-dependent metabolic pathways that can be triggered with inputs as simple as varied macronutrients. It feels like a very meaningful frame to interpret research about diet and longevity.
Hm... I think the title is misleading. The 14 individuals they studied had metabolic syndrome, not cancer, so there's no telling how a real cancer patient would react to a fasting diet. I recently had a friend starve to death during her cancer treatment. I really think she would have recovered if we had fed her more. We had 3 doctors agree, their reasoning being that cancer wastes a lot of energy that normally would be used by non-cancerous body parts, so a cancer patient should try to eat more food than they normally would have before developing cancer, on top of whatever other treatments they may be doing.
I have been fasting weekly once from morning to evening. I eat only dinner on Tuesday. I have been doing it since past 6 years.. it makes a difference. It improved digestion and overall I feel good at end of fasting day.
Anecdotally, my dad tried to lose weight with moderate exercise and light diet, and struggled to keep off 5 pounds; intermittent fasting (2 days a week of 1200 calories) dropped him something like 15 lbs in 40 days?
that's the key to this whole things, is that you have to stick with it for at least 4 weeks. i know quite a few people who have tried IF and rarely do they make it through the first week without cheating (including myself when i first started). IF is one of _the_ best ways to lost weight in my opinion (second only to hot yoga), but the key is that you have to very regime with it and follow it precisely in order to get the benefits. you cannot have _any_ calories what so ever in order to trigger the fast response of the body. even taking vitamins or protein powders breaks the fast. also most non-calorie drinks do contain calories just not in a single serving (which is VERY deceptive), so the best things to drink is just plain cold water through out the day.
Honestly why not go for proper fasting, 24 hours is absolutely nothing without any preparation and so it's basically 36 hours, you start Monday after dinner, then just don't eat through Tuesday (I have crisis usually around next dinner) and then just go sleep and when you wake up it's 36 hours. By my experience by then the body is used to ist and you can easily push it to 40 hours, didn't really try 48 hours, but I guess with some preparation also not that big deal.
It's pity can't really do it anymore, since I cook for whole family and need my brain working at full capacity, which is not big deal during first day of fasting, but on the 2nd one it would take its toll already, maybe doable during weekend.
I've tried various IF protocols, particularly a four hour feeding window, and have mostly struggled with it. I've just gotten hungry early or late, and after a few weeks succumbed. Or I find myself going to bed way early to evade my hunger. IF hasn't been impossible for me, but difficult.
And then suddenly, it's easy, natural. Now I eat just once or twice a day without intending to. It would be an effort to eat more. The difference for me is a carnivore diet, mostly beef. It's just far more satiating than anything else I've tried and I've done most things from raw veganism to this.
I do believe that when I eat matters, but what I eat makes a big difference to when.
By “no drinking”, do they really mean no drinking plain water? 14 hr stretches are doable but it’s interesting to find your body improving while becoming dehydrated.
“Dry fasting” is a thing, but it seems most people recommend against it. Not sure what the added advantage is for avoiding zero calorie water consumption.
I mean, there's the religious "high". But I think the goal behind it is to allow one to feel how those who are much more unfortunate than us feel on a hot summer's day and so on.
I'm not sure how things used to be, but having lived in a Muslim country a decade ago, my experience was during Ramadan daily life carried on as usual with people going to work and school. Instances of car accidents (often fatal) during this time were much higher than other times of the year.
I wonder how this is related to the so called "mediterranian diet"? I mean, the advantages for the mediterranian diet could perhaps at least in part be attributed to the times at which people eat rather than the exact food they eat?
My experience with Spain et al is that they are hot during the day and locals tend to eat a lot late at night and very little during the day.
I don't know if its related, but more than a decade ago there is research conducted in Utah that identified intermittent fasting as reducing blood pressure and lowering cholesterol. The Mormons there fast one day a month but eat the same foods and live the same as non-Mormons in the area.
I am not surprised, our bodies's core mechanisms have not changed since our hunter gatherer days when what's is being called fasting was just any other day occasionally punctuated by large feasts after a successful hunt.
Hindus have been fasting for millennia, it was recommended as part of Ayurveda. You can't work 365 days in a year and neither should your stomach, it needs a rest. Then many other cultures took this one in different forms.
I don't understand how this is considered fasting. Aren't a lot people unknowingly fasting then? I eat breakfast at 8 and dinner at 18 so I have a natural 14 hour window.
From dawn to sunset. Suppose sunrise is 5:30 and sunset is 6 pm. Does that mean you get up at 5 am, eat quickly, then eat again from 6pm until bedtime?
I was trying to lose weight with calorie restriction, keto, intermittent fasting, etc. but it had never really fully worked. I wish I had known earlier that even a 7 day prolonged water-only fast can almost completely get me rid of any excess weight, and make me much healthier overall. For more info, check either Loren Lockman (Tanglewood Wellness Center, Costa Rica) or Alan Goldhammer (TrueNorth Health Center, California) - they both have a nice YouTube presence.
It makes sense to fast temporarily in order to "jolt" the body into action (reduced external input activates internal compensation processes) as our genetics have ancient embedded protocols developed to push through resource restrictions.
If not for your listed reasons - do it to knock the rust off of safely stored emergency equipment.
I've noticed that once you get past the first "hump" of hunger pangs, famish subsides into the background, and I'd imagine it is at this point where the metaphorical "adrenaline" dosage is injected by nature to make available the bodies reserve
energy to get through inevitable temporary nutrient deficiency back in our hunter-gatherer days.
> I've noticed that once you get past the first "hump" of hunger pangs, famish subsides into the background, and I'd imagine it is at this point where the metaphorical "adrenaline" dosage is injected by nature to make available the bodies reserve energy to get through inevitable temporary nutrient deficiency back in our hunter-gatherer days.
I haven't personally fasted as such in this manner but was always quite fascinated and am quite fascinated by how various Muslim colleagues and friends are able to do it during the summer with 45 degree heat and so on. All of them say that the first two days are the toughest while the rest of the month of Ramadan seems basically the same as the rest of their lives. It does put into perspective as to how much of our "hunger" is psychological than resource needs.
I've not intentionally fasted over sustained periods - my reference comes from being inconvenienced by hunger in the middle of necessary activity and persisting anyways. I should try to discipline myself for a few days and see what happens to my psyche.
I've wondered if high function brain pharmaceutical intervention (depression pill) succeeds because of a similar effect - the side effects themselves are the "cure" because the body is purposely affected at the base of Maslow's pyramid. This distracts the user from existential angst or threats out of the realm of control of the individual because this is a self inflicted "problem" that can be solved (guaranteed) by patience and temporary suffering.
>[...] we conducted a pilot study in 14 subjects with metabolic syndrome who fasted (no eating or drinking) from dawn to sunset for more than 14 h daily for four consecutive weeks. [...] Further studies are needed to test the intermittent fasting from dawn to sunset in the prevention and treatment of metabolic syndrome-induced cancers.
By coincidence, I am doing it now. I always drink water first thing in the morning in order to restore fluids after sleep. I am also drinking coffee with milk, but no sugar. Lastly, I am drinking some psyllium husk powder that I blend into a couple of mugs of water.
I take the psyllium husk at about 10am. Then I have another coffee or two, but no meals until dinner time, about 6pm.
I started doing this just this week because my father had an angiogram which lead to the discovery that some of his coronary arteries where quite block with plaque. This is disturbing for me as he has looked after himself pretty well for his whole life. He's not a smoker or heavy drinker, eats well, doesn't snack, isn't a sweet tooth. And he has exercised consistently for his whole life. And yet, his arteries are in shit state.
So I have to wonder if it's genetic. So I figure I'll try to increase the soluble and insoluble fibre intake as it is said to inhibit the absorption of cholesterol. I also want to drop a couple of kilos I've put on during lockdown.
The "research" is politically motivated, it is thus garbage. Especially considering that it would be dangerous to publish the result if it were to show the other way, not that they would want to publish it.
Besides, not having even a drop of water for longer than 12 hours during summer is dangerous, not only to fasting people themselves but to the society as a whole since they drive cars and they have higher rate of fainting during that. But doing those for the name of religion is somehow acceptable in our society..
This is published in Nature, which does not traffic in garbage. This is an observational (not experimental) study which means that the subjects already planned to fast in observance of Ramadan, and the paper discussed what was observed wrt to health and cancer indicators. It's not a polemic.
> Besides, not having even a drop of water for longer than 12 hours during summer is dangerous, not only to fasting people themselves but to the society as a whole since they drive cars and they have higher rate of fainting during that.
It's clear that many in the world do exactly that. It might be interesting to see a study similar to above as to whether accident rates increase during Ramadan.
Would really like to see this compared to another group with a similar level of calorie restriction but without the intermittent fasting. The question with intermittent fasting is really just "is it better than plain old calorie restriction". Seems like there's some evidence that points to "yes" and some evidence that points to "not really".
EDIT: To be clear, by "is it better" I meant aside from just adherence. I've used IF quite a bit myself and I find it much easier than eating frequent, small meals throughout the day if I want to be hypocaloric. There are a lot of claims around autophagy, a more favorable metabolic adaptation, better body composition, and in this case actual cancer treatment. That is what I would like to see evidence for.