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>For healthy, non-obese adults, ADF is safe to practice for several months They might just be saying this because they didn't test any further, but does anyone know any reasons why it might stop being safe after several months?
...drink water though
I was heading to the gym near the Twitter HQ in SF yesterday and saw Jack Dorsey walk past. He looked extremely thin and borderline sick to me. I think he does more extended fasts over the weekend but it’s a bit unnerving when someone in a position to influence behavior like he is seems to be taking fasting to an extreme.
You don't know anything about the guy's health. He may actually be sick, wholly unrelated to his diet. He could be dealing with an eating disorder (which may be related to his diet, but millions of people have fasted regularly without having an eating disorder...there are lots of ways people cover for eating disorders). And, maybe he's in great health and your beliefs about what "healthy" looks like are wrong ("put some meat on your bones" is not great health advice for most people, but it's a common refrain).
I don't really know anything about what he's said about diet or fasting. But, I know that bringing his appearance and health into it are not shedding light on the subject, they're just conflating appearance with health and well-being in ways that aren't useful.
This fasting caused a 37.4% reduction in caloric intake. It raises the question of whether it was the fasting itself or merely the overall caloric reduction that made the real difference.
That said, fasting as pro-health tool keeps coming up and the gist time and again seems to say it yields a positive.
This fasting caused a 37.4% reduction in caloric intake. It raises the question of whether it was the fasting itself or merely the overall caloric reduction that made the real difference.
> Of all the anti-aging and longevity-promoting interventions tested so far, calorie restriction (CR) seems to be the most conserved among species and robust. However, humans struggle to constantly achieve a certain level of CR. Here, we show in a clinical trial that a related intervention, alternate day fasting (ADF), also leads to striking reduction in overall calorie intake over the course of the study but is more easily tolerated than continuous CR and provokes similar beneficial changes on the cardiovascular system and on body composition while being safe for a period of >6 months.
>For healthy, non-obese adults, ADF is safe to practice for several months They might just be saying this because they didn't test any further, but does anyone know any reasons why it might stop being safe after several months?
IMO it’s not unsafe. The longest supervised fast was a whole year long. The person was obese and only supplemented vitamins if I remember correctly. Fasting is how we evolved to eat. We didn’t have Costco and fridges 10k years ago.
Note, however, he died relatively young although he did live a few decades after the fast https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Barbieri%27s_fast
- Fasting > 24 hrs paradoxically gives you an extreme boost of energy and mental focus. I especially love how my olfactory sense is extremely heightened. It's pretty cool and even after all these years doesn't get old.
- Fasting is not a panacea. Depriving yourself of nutrients or eating garbage is still a bad idea even if you fast or do IF. Unfortunately, eating healthy is hard and kinda' sucks. Egg whites and chicken + broccoli gets old pretty fast.
- Fasting >7 days is a bad idea unless you know what you're doing. This is when your muscles and vital organs start contributing as an energy source (e.g. they also start breaking down).
- Your body is clever, so extended fasts will start putting you into "starvation mode" and you'll lose some of the benefits.
- There have been NO STUDIES on long-term fasting (e.g. over the course of an adult lifetime). This is a big warning sign to just be careful and not overdo it. Different people have different tolerances. Talk to your doctor.
- Even on fast days, make sure you take vitamins (I take Fish Oil, Zinc, a Multivitamin and Magnesium)
>For healthy, non-obese adults, ADF is safe to practice for several months They might just be saying this because they didn't test any further, but does anyone know any reasons why it might stop being safe after several months?
This fasting caused a 37.4% reduction in caloric intake. It raises the question of whether it was the fasting itself or merely the overall caloric reduction that made the real difference.