The FastDay Forum

I was discussing 5:2 with someone today and they were saying that 5:2 is very helpful in preventing bowel cancer due to 2 "repair days" every weeks.

Thoughts on this?.

I know that some forum member know or are related to people who have died due to this terrible disease and I apologise if i bring up awful memories.

[carorees]

There is a theoretical basis for hoping that intermittent fasting will help reduce cancer risk as explained here https://www.fastday.com/fasting/how-can ... of-cancer/
But it will be many years before we know whether it does or even which kind of fasting is effective for lowering risk. Whether there is any particular benefit with respect to bowel cancer apart from that of losing weight Is not known.

I have to agree with carorees, I'd like the current state of knowledge to be otherwise but it isn't as yet (my mother died young with cancer of the sigmoid colon). We do the best we can, working with the best knowledge available to us at the time and apply it in ways that make sense within our lives. But the relatively young state of nutrition research means that a lot of this is post-dissemination field testing of ideas and the results might not be apparent for decades - and be full of confounders even then.

That said, of course I hope it's true and in the interim, I'm following a fasting WOL on the grounds that I'm playing the numbers and can not see how it might do me any physical harm in my current circumstances.