6 ms·

For those who are curious, there's some anecdata online that extended fasting (days or weeks) can reverse this disease. I can't find much published research on

by alecst 1y ago

For those who are curious, there's some anecdata online that extended fasting (days or weeks) can reverse this disease. I can't find much published research on it to be fair, but I think the science in this field is lagging behind people's personal experiences. If there's evidence to the contrary let me know, I'm not trying to spread misinformation. It's just one of the things I consistently recall reading over the years. Edit since I'm being downvoted: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6893587/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6893587/ (prolonged fasting, ~8 days) > The improvement of FLI correlated with the number of fasting days (r = −0.20, p < 0.0001) https://eglj.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s43066-021-00128-1 https://eglj.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s43066-021-00... (ADF rat model) > MSRDF rats showed cure of grade-1 NAFLD and significantly decreased LW than other groups and normalized HOMA-IR, HbA1C TC, LDL-C, ALT, and CRP. https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(22)00538-1s43066-021-00128-1 https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(22)... (exercise + ADF, humans)

cmrx64 1y ago
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-45260-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-45260-9 this is the main thing I could find. https://prolonlife.com/ https://prolonlife.com/ sells a prepackaged fasting-mimicking diet. plenty of reviews online about the subjective effects on energy levels and soforth during the fast. I didn’t like it. day 2.5-3 will put me back into the headspace of food scarcity and even knowing that the next meal was sitting in the box and that this is temporary … it was a mental challenge for me. if you’ve never experienced food scarcity, it can be all-consuming and seriously warp your cognition and emotional baseline.
- ty6853 1y ago
  Even cutting back a couple hundred calories a day can leave you absolutely exhausted, in my experience. Even just increasing exercise by a couple hundred calories a day without eating more is also incredibly exhausting, after a few weeks it becomes thought dominating second-by-second. Hunger is truly a powerful driver.
  - cmrx64 1y ago
    and that’s when you’re doing it willingly :)
  - voidfunc 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - ty6853 1y ago
      Yes of course it's in your head. But I've always been a skinny person. Maybe it is less exhausting if you have lots of fat to run off of.
    - mikestew 1y ago
      Every time the New York Times publishes a health-related article, the comment section is filled with comments just like this: just self-congratulations without any useful takeaways for anyone else, and zero self-awareness that would enable them to realize, hey, not everyone is like me. Whenever one feels tempted to utter “it’s all in your head”, my advice is to take a step back and reflect on how little I know about the circumstances of others, and then, you know, maybe just keep it to myself.
      - sawmurai 1y ago
        Looking at the numbers posted I suppose it was just undeclared sarcasm :)
        mikestew 1y ago
        I'm willing to believe that, but Poe's law is almost as much a certainty as gravity. :-)
      - SalariedSlave 1y ago
        Behavioural patterns are heavily influenced by hormonal balance and as such, success-rates of different self-help strategies (diets, fasting, resistance and/or endurance training) are highly individual. This also extends to addictive behaviours. "Hormon-typical" individuals have an easier time shaping their behavior because they don't face imbalances that complicate adherence. For them, sticking to a program is trivial. Combine that with lack of reflection, and many of these individuals delude themselves into thinking their success of following simple programs (which are simple in design, and only difficult in adherence) is somehow an accomplishment worthy of note. Low-empathy individuals, in particular, often interpret this as evidence of their own superiority, while dismissing others as mediocre. So you see such comments a lot, because many people are "hormon-typical" and also low empathy. See any discussion about diet, fitness, Ozempic, etc.
- SlowTao 1y ago
  Personally it is a strange thing. Diffcult to do over 24 hours but easy over a few days. Once you get over the head space of "im hungry must eat!" It turns into "im hungry, oh well". But this is a sample size of 1 and results definetly vary wildly between folks.
  - tshanmu 1y ago
    I can concur - that shift in mindset to "i'm hungry, oh well" is crucial for your body I feel.
    - cmrx64 1y ago
      this is easier to do when you aren’t on the programmed diet that has you tantalizing your equanimity constantly.
  - watwut 1y ago
    > "im hungry, oh well" The real danger is if you dont swap back and just created yourself an eating disorder.
    - nradov 1y ago
      That's not an eating disorder. Just because you're cold doesn't mean you need to put on a sweater. Learning not to let minor discomforts bother you builds discipline and character.
      - GoToRO 1y ago
        Fasting is great because you live off of your muscles. Keep at it and you will loose so much muscle, you will develop an eating disorder. The stomach and intestines are muscles too. My understanding is that if you are healthy and you fast, it's great. If you are actually ill and fast it's still great but it only hides your illness and you are on a very bad path (eating disorder)
      - watwut 1y ago
        Anorectic are very dosciplined and proud of their ability to not eat. Hunger not being "well so what" is normal healthy biology. It is not just discomfort. It is biologcal mechanism to prevent very real harm. Yhe issue with anorexia is that it works as cycle - if ypu have genetic predisposition, starwing affects metabolism, your discomfort about food gets worst and you are in it.
SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
That feels like the incorrect framing, the burden of proof is on the initial claim. That'd be like saying "I've heard online that leprechauns live on the moon. I haven't found published research on it, but I think science in this field is lagging behind personal telescopic experience. If there's evidence to the contrary let me know, but I've read it online a lot." and treating that like it's proof of moon leprechauns.
- al_borland 1y ago
  It's not exactly the same, as there are studies, there just haven't been a lot yet, since a lot of the study around it is new, although fasting has been practiced for thousands of years. There is no money in fasting, so the number of organizations willing to fund the studies goes way down. To put some numbers to it: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10564080/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10564080/ > Only five out of the 1304 studies on NAFLD involved IF. Here is one that mentions there may be some efficacy to the idea and no harm. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8958240/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8958240/ > In conclusion, current evidence suggests that intermittent fasting in patients with NAFLD is a feasible, safe, and effective means for weight loss, with significant trends towards improvements in dyslipidemia and NAFLD as illustrated through non‐invasive testing (NIT). If someone has NAFLD, they can either sit around and eat cake for 20 years waiting for the science, or they can try doing some fasting, which is very low risk (assuming they don't have other issues going on), and find out very quickly if it works for them. Sure, it's an n of 1 in that case, but who cares, if they are the test subject it only matters if it works on them. I'd add to this that the carbs should be kept low and the diet having quality foods outside of the fasts. Eating aforementioned cake during a feeding window every day is going to leave a person miserable, burning muscle, and still leave the hormones all screwed up. Insulin needs to be controlled and lowered. Fasting does that quickly, but don't abuse it during your meals on a regular basis. From what I've read elsewhere, fasting can help in the early stages to reverse it, but once real damage occurs that sticks around.
  - nradov 1y ago
    There may be some medical benefits to periodic fasting, especially for people with excess adipose tissue. But in terms of "no harm" the Memel et al paper you linked doesn't seem to mention anything about loss of lean muscle tissue. This can cause serious harm for some patients — especially older patients with the "skinny fat" body type — by leading to sarcopenia (higher musculoskeletal injury risk) and endocrine dysfunction (muscle is a glucose sink). Loss of muscle can be limited to an extent by doing resistance training and maintaining high protein intake during non-fasting periods. But overall there are still a lot of unknowns in this field.
apwell23 1y ago
so live a life of gluttony and "reverse" it in few days of fasting. seems like a good deal.

by alecst 1y ago

cmrx64 1y ago

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-45260-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-45260-9 this is the main thing I could find. https://prolonlife.com/ https://prolonlife.com/ sells a prepackaged fasting-mimicking diet. plenty of reviews online about the subjective effects on energy levels and soforth during the fast. I didn’t like it. day 2.5-3 will put me back into the headspace of food scarcity and even knowing that the next meal was sitting in the box and that this is temporary … it was a mental challenge for me. if you’ve never experienced food scarcity, it can be all-consuming and seriously warp your cognition and emotional baseline.

ty6853 1y ago
Even cutting back a couple hundred calories a day can leave you absolutely exhausted, in my experience. Even just increasing exercise by a couple hundred calories a day without eating more is also incredibly exhausting, after a few weeks it becomes thought dominating second-by-second. Hunger is truly a powerful driver.
- cmrx64 1y ago
  and that’s when you’re doing it willingly :)
- voidfunc 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - ty6853 1y ago
    Yes of course it's in your head. But I've always been a skinny person. Maybe it is less exhausting if you have lots of fat to run off of.
  - mikestew 1y ago
    Every time the New York Times publishes a health-related article, the comment section is filled with comments just like this: just self-congratulations without any useful takeaways for anyone else, and zero self-awareness that would enable them to realize, hey, not everyone is like me. Whenever one feels tempted to utter “it’s all in your head”, my advice is to take a step back and reflect on how little I know about the circumstances of others, and then, you know, maybe just keep it to myself.
    - sawmurai 1y ago
      Looking at the numbers posted I suppose it was just undeclared sarcasm :)
      - mikestew 1y ago
        I'm willing to believe that, but Poe's law is almost as much a certainty as gravity. :-)
    - SalariedSlave 1y ago
      Behavioural patterns are heavily influenced by hormonal balance and as such, success-rates of different self-help strategies (diets, fasting, resistance and/or endurance training) are highly individual. This also extends to addictive behaviours. "Hormon-typical" individuals have an easier time shaping their behavior because they don't face imbalances that complicate adherence. For them, sticking to a program is trivial. Combine that with lack of reflection, and many of these individuals delude themselves into thinking their success of following simple programs (which are simple in design, and only difficult in adherence) is somehow an accomplishment worthy of note. Low-empathy individuals, in particular, often interpret this as evidence of their own superiority, while dismissing others as mediocre. So you see such comments a lot, because many people are "hormon-typical" and also low empathy. See any discussion about diet, fitness, Ozempic, etc.
SlowTao 1y ago
Personally it is a strange thing. Diffcult to do over 24 hours but easy over a few days. Once you get over the head space of "im hungry must eat!" It turns into "im hungry, oh well". But this is a sample size of 1 and results definetly vary wildly between folks.
- tshanmu 1y ago
  I can concur - that shift in mindset to "i'm hungry, oh well" is crucial for your body I feel.
  - cmrx64 1y ago
    this is easier to do when you aren’t on the programmed diet that has you tantalizing your equanimity constantly.
- watwut 1y ago
  > "im hungry, oh well" The real danger is if you dont swap back and just created yourself an eating disorder.
  - nradov 1y ago
    That's not an eating disorder. Just because you're cold doesn't mean you need to put on a sweater. Learning not to let minor discomforts bother you builds discipline and character.
    - GoToRO 1y ago
      Fasting is great because you live off of your muscles. Keep at it and you will loose so much muscle, you will develop an eating disorder. The stomach and intestines are muscles too. My understanding is that if you are healthy and you fast, it's great. If you are actually ill and fast it's still great but it only hides your illness and you are on a very bad path (eating disorder)
    - watwut 1y ago
      Anorectic are very dosciplined and proud of their ability to not eat. Hunger not being "well so what" is normal healthy biology. It is not just discomfort. It is biologcal mechanism to prevent very real harm. Yhe issue with anorexia is that it works as cycle - if ypu have genetic predisposition, starwing affects metabolism, your discomfort about food gets worst and you are in it.

SketchySeaBeast 1y ago

That feels like the incorrect framing, the burden of proof is on the initial claim. That'd be like saying "I've heard online that leprechauns live on the moon. I haven't found published research on it, but I think science in this field is lagging behind personal telescopic experience. If there's evidence to the contrary let me know, but I've read it online a lot." and treating that like it's proof of moon leprechauns.

al_borland 1y ago
It's not exactly the same, as there are studies, there just haven't been a lot yet, since a lot of the study around it is new, although fasting has been practiced for thousands of years. There is no money in fasting, so the number of organizations willing to fund the studies goes way down. To put some numbers to it: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10564080/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10564080/ > Only five out of the 1304 studies on NAFLD involved IF. Here is one that mentions there may be some efficacy to the idea and no harm. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8958240/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8958240/ > In conclusion, current evidence suggests that intermittent fasting in patients with NAFLD is a feasible, safe, and effective means for weight loss, with significant trends towards improvements in dyslipidemia and NAFLD as illustrated through non‐invasive testing (NIT). If someone has NAFLD, they can either sit around and eat cake for 20 years waiting for the science, or they can try doing some fasting, which is very low risk (assuming they don't have other issues going on), and find out very quickly if it works for them. Sure, it's an n of 1 in that case, but who cares, if they are the test subject it only matters if it works on them. I'd add to this that the carbs should be kept low and the diet having quality foods outside of the fasts. Eating aforementioned cake during a feeding window every day is going to leave a person miserable, burning muscle, and still leave the hormones all screwed up. Insulin needs to be controlled and lowered. Fasting does that quickly, but don't abuse it during your meals on a regular basis. From what I've read elsewhere, fasting can help in the early stages to reverse it, but once real damage occurs that sticks around.
- nradov 1y ago
  There may be some medical benefits to periodic fasting, especially for people with excess adipose tissue. But in terms of "no harm" the Memel et al paper you linked doesn't seem to mention anything about loss of lean muscle tissue. This can cause serious harm for some patients — especially older patients with the "skinny fat" body type — by leading to sarcopenia (higher musculoskeletal injury risk) and endocrine dysfunction (muscle is a glucose sink). Loss of muscle can be limited to an extent by doing resistance training and maintaining high protein intake during non-fasting periods. But overall there are still a lot of unknowns in this field.

apwell23 1y ago

so live a life of gluttony and "reverse" it in few days of fasting. seems like a good deal.