Fasting-like Diet Reduces Multiple Sclerosis Symptoms
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Fasting-like Diet Reduces Multiple Sclerosis Symptoms
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Re: Fasting-like Diet Reduces Multiple Sclerosis Symptoms
#2Isn't this obvious to anyone who follows that diet autoimmune disease? Also adrenal hormones increase during fasting, as can be commonly seen with high cortisol levels in those who fast.
"All disease begins in the gut," as someone wise has said in the past.
Re: Fasting-like Diet Reduces Multiple Sclerosis Symptoms
#3What about ALS?
Re: Fasting-like Diet Reduces Multiple Sclerosis Symptoms
#4What is a "fasting-like" diet? It is presumably not absolute fasting otherwise no need for the "like" qualifier.
Re: Fasting-like Diet Reduces Multiple Sclerosis Symptoms
#5What about ALS?
That's only cured by watching people splash themselves with cold water.
Re: Fasting-like Diet Reduces Multiple Sclerosis Symptoms
#6Isn't this obvious to anyone who follows that diet autoimmune disease? Also adrenal hormones increase during fasting, as can be commonly seen with high cortisol levels in those who fast. "All disease begins in the gut," as someone wise has said in the past.
'Obvious' considered harmful, though.
Re: Fasting-like Diet Reduces Multiple Sclerosis Symptoms
#7This seems pretty likely to be placebo effect, at least in the human trials which are the only parts of the paper I read. The paper cited [0] pre-registered on clinicaltrials.gov [1] -- which is great and everyone in the field should do so. However, looking at what they pre-registered, we have:
- Two different diet treatment regimes: fasting-like for 3 months followed by Mediterranean diet (FMD), and ketogenic diet (KD).
- Control diet was simply telling people to eat the same way as usual. So there's no real accounting for how well a placebo would do here.
- Measurements included a 54-question survey, adverse event counts, and various lab measurements. These measurements were taken at start, 1-month, 3-month, and 6-month intervals.
The problem then is that what was report was:
- Results of the first half of the first treatment (fasting-like for 3 months) for a subset of the measurements. What if things only worked in the second half? Or if things worked only for KD? So many implicit comparisons here.
- Comparison against the control group at 3 months, with reported p-values. Even though one of the reported measurements was the overall survey results, all of the values reported are p-values without any mention, that I can find, of multiple hypothesis testing across all measurements. This comes despite the fact that for all of the mouse results, they explicitly state they used Bonferroni correction.
- Baseline performance which involved no placebo. How many people would have improved if simply given some bullshit diet? Or if they had simply been given a diet that was vegetarian, or something that gave them the impression it was a treatment? Especially in surveys, placebo effect is a huge thing to look out for. Their more hard metrics like lab results show a more mixed bag with WBC dropping for fasting subjects. Sure, it returns once the 3 months is over, but then the supposed quality of life scores drop; so you can't have it both ways, though their writing makes it sound that way.
I'm not saying it isn't a great result from a bio standpoint. I'm sure the Cell reviewers found the mouse model results compelling. I just don't see any way to conclude the broad sweeping title of the article from the actual content of the paper, and it's unethical to do so without strong evidence.
[0] http://www.cell.com/cell-reports/pdfExtended/S2211-1247(16)3...
[1] https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01538355?term=NCT0153...
Re: Fasting-like Diet Reduces Multiple Sclerosis Symptoms
#8Isn't this obvious to anyone who follows that diet autoimmune disease? Also adrenal hormones increase during fasting, as can be commonly seen with high cortisol levels in those who fast. "All disease begins in the gut," as someone wise has said in the past.
It's usually "obvious" to people who are not affected by autoimmune disease, but diet control is generally disappointingly ineffective in reality for most patients. The truth is autoimmune disease is incredibly complex and we still don't have satisfactory treatment, diet or otherwise.
Re: Fasting-like Diet Reduces Multiple Sclerosis Symptoms
#9Re: Fasting-like Diet Reduces Multiple Sclerosis Symptoms
#10Food is so yesterday!