The FastDay Forum

http://news.yahoo.com/does-intermittent ... 53757.html

[carieoates]

Read it... Love it.....do it.....

[carorees]

This is a link to the abstract of the paper quoted in the article: http://www.pnas.org/content/111/47/16647.abstract
Sadly it is paywalled so I can't see the full paper but it is by all our favourite researchers who appeared in the Horizon program: Mark Mattson, Luigi Fontana, Michelle Harvie, Valter Longo, Krista Varady and Michael Mosley himself. Interesting that they have come together to promote intermittent fasting in such a prestigious journal and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA.

This is a link to the abstract of the paper quoted in the article: http://www.pnas.org/content/111/47/16647.abstract
Sadly it is paywalled so I can't see the full paper b ....

Sure you can @carorees. Here it is:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_f0Qx ... view?pli=1

I've found that by copying the full title of a study (inside double quotes) into Google and prefixing the words "full text" (without the quotes) you can occasionally get access through alternative sites. Just avoid the first few results links from Google that are inevitably sourced to the originating site.

[carorees]

Thanks so much @ADFnFuel!

I was interested to see that a lot of the mainstream media had picked up on this paper but decided to go with the anti-cancer headline (it appears to be the Daily Fail's mission to categorise everything in this life into things that cause cancer and things that cure/prevent cancer). The NHS responded to these articles by pointing out that the paper in the Nat Acad Sci USA journal was only a review and not a systematic one at that and that there is no proof that the 5:2 diet prevents cancer, which is of course true. http://www.nhs.uk/news/2014/11November/ ... ancer.aspx It is a shame that the media decided to pick up on that aspect as there is far more evidence that it works for weight loss which in itself is a good enough reason to follow it (as I'm sure we all agree here!) and might have meant that the NHS would not have been compelled to publish a counter argument.

Interesting, I saw an article here in France linking back to the same study this morning, it was the first time I have really seen any mention of intermittent fasting in the French media. Unfortunately there were loads of comments about people who missed one meal and felt faint (LOL) but at least it is getting talked about!

PNAS occasionally borders on vanity publishing which is a shame but it's useful for expert opinion pieces like this.

Behind the Headlines usually does a fine job of analysing the original papers on which so many news reports depend without ever linking to them. I rather liked their analysis of this piece:

a flowing, evidence-informed description of the state of knowledge around the timing and frequency of eating and its potential influence on health.

The Behind the Headlines Special Report on IF 2013 was quite fair-minded, I thought. Mentioning there's a lack of evidence is accurate for the current state of play and it will continue to be so for some time.
http://www.nhs.uk/news/2013/01January/P ... -work.aspx

That said, it's ironic that these reports are coming up with promotional side bars stating the importance of mid-life Health MOTs when there's no evidence to support that claim.

Unfortunately there were loads of comments about people who missed one meal and felt faint (LOL) but at least it is getting talked about!

I don't doubt that that is true for some people. When I was little, it constantly seemed like we were fasting for one Holy Day of Obligation, religious season or other. I remember some of my classmates fainting on days when there was a School Mass and the timing of it mean that we couldn't eat before Communion and that meant (for some children) that they hadn't eaten for 24hrs by the time we returned to school from the church and were allowed to eat our packed breakfasts (usually cold toast).

I've just deleted too long a memoir on my memories of people fasting during Lent and Advent.

As for why people feel faint now - I wonder if a lot of it is that they're conditioned to eat at comparatively short intervals - and behavioural conditioning is very powerful. Plus, I wonder how much of the general population has some degree of perturbation in their blood sugar management.

Interesting report indeed. The suggestion of eating to a light pattern is one I've been toying with, made harder by shorter winter days but indicating eating in less time through the possibly more sedentary season.
Hmmm ...
Food for thought :0)

Nice enough discussion of the PNAS paper in a general media sort of way on NPR: Feeling Like A Holiday Glutton? It May Be Time To Try A Fast
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/1 ... try-a-fast

It's interesting that these people have gotten together to write a review. I think it's important because, unlike a lot of diets out there, this one actually does have scientific evidence to back it up. The evidence isn't perfect, but it's clearly not just a fad diet. Also, I'm happy to see Varady and Mosley as authors together on a publication. Perhaps they've buried the hatchet?

[carorees]

Here's another mainstream media article promoting fasting:
Late night food 'breeds weight gain' http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-30297497

The scientific studies that support the article are unfortunately based on mouse studies which have the major flaw that not eating for 12 hours for a mouse is like us not eating for 2 to 4 days in terms of what proportion of body weight is lost during the fast. Also mice are nocturnal. The article doesn’t say if they were fasted during their normal sleep time. So whether the effects of the fasting were due mainly to the length of the fast or the timing of the fasting with respect to circadian rhythm is not known. Nonetheless, I'm sure that if people read the article and act to stop eating late at night it would be a good thing!

I liked the website facebook it comes from .. LiveScience https://www.facebook.com/livescience

i have a lot of these sciency types of sites clogging up my timeline on facebook. some worry me as they are just weird. ill see how this one goes.

ive unliked quite a few facebook sites over the months.