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Effects of short-term fasting on cancer treatment
- toomuchtodo 7y agoTLDR Nutrient restriction causes healthy cells to invest in maintenance and preservation operations (protecting against chemotherapy) while slowing tumor growth. Can any clinicians chime in if this is making its way into clinical protocols?
- pygy_ 7y agoYou should have read slightly further: Preliminary data show that STF [i.e. short term fasting] is safe, but challenging in cancer patients receiving chemotherapy. Ongoing clinical trials need to unravel if STF can also diminish toxicity and increase efficacy of chemotherapeutic regimes in daily practice.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoI do fasting myself, so I understand the challenges of doing it (although not while also having cancer and undergoing chemo). Have to have the physical and emotional fortitude to handle being hungry all the time.
- eloff 7y agoThis seems near trivial compared to the physical and emotional fortitude to handle having cancer and undergoing chemotherapy (taking low-dose poison in the hope it kills the cancer before you.)
- sowbug 7y agoMy experience was the nausea was far worse than any hunger. It didn't help that at the time I was encouraged to eat. I intentionally chose foods I didn't like so that I wouldn't associate favorite foods with nausea in the future. In retrospect I would have appreciated the option not to eat.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoI attempted a 24 hour fast a day ago based on this comment, and you’re right. It was very difficult to make it to the 24 hour mark without a substantial loss of energy (total fast, no food or water). I understand why it would be unreasonable to ask someone with cancer undergoing chemotherapy to attempt such a fast.
- lottin 7y agoFasting doesn't make you hungry all the time. After a short while the hunger just kind of goes away.
- gwd 7y agoFWIW I've done several extended fasts (5-6 days) and I experienced hunger the entire time. Lots of people apparently do experience what you describe; but not everyone. That said, people do who've never tried fasting seem to think that hunger will grow linearly; i.e, "If I feel this bad after 16 hours of not eating, how will I feel after 4 days?" Once my body switches to 'fasting' mode, the hunger remains, but stays at a manageable level.
- hanniabu 7y agoI'm assuming the parent was referring to something more similar to like when you need to go to the bathroom. Overall the urge is there, but on an hourly basis it comes and goes. If you don't go to the bathroom and hold it in, after an hour you'll probably forget about it, and then it'll come back a few hours after that. This has been my experience with fasting where I'll get really hunger, then my body will get over it, then a few hours later I'm hungry again. Seems like it's your body going through cycles of burning fat stores or something. Like oh you're not going to eat? Better start burning a bit of fat to tide us over, then that energy runs out and that's when hunger strikes again until your body goes through another breakdown cycle.
- openureye1s285 7y agoLOL are you really asking if a drug-free (also actually free money-wise), unpatentable treatment is making its way to mainstream treatment protocols?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- RobertRoberts 7y agoMay I suggest you not use LOL in your comments? I think you are getting downvotes by the tone/style of your comments, not the contents of your message.
- ainiriand 7y agoHi, feel free to review the comment guidelines if you haven't already: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html I think that it would be best to leave redditlike speak out of HN and do our best to bring something to the conversation.
- openureye1s285 7y agoI've debated fasting for many years here on HN in a civilized non-reddit manner. It doesn't matter. @dang has an unofficial agenda to suppress health benefits of treatments that are not pushed and funded by pharmaceutical companies.
- christophilus 7y agoThat’s a pretty cynical question. My doctor advises a vegan diet for her diabetic patients, since it is very effective against type 2 diabetes. Patients who follow her advice are generally off their meds pretty quickly, and pay far fewer visits to my doctor. It’s against her best interests (monetarily) to promote that diet, but she does it anyway. Totally anecdotal, but it’s a datapoint that shows there are doctors who adopt profitless treatments if they truly are in the best interest of the patients.
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- neves 7y agoShort Term Fasting helps the treatment of cancer, but what is the official definition of STF? 1 day? 2? Or is it in hours?
- toomuchtodo 7y agoPaper says 24-60 hours.
- irrelative 7y agoAnd worth noting, it helps in conjunction with chemo
- paulcole 7y agoI found the answer by reading all the way to page 2 of the article: 24-60 hours.
- el_cujo 7y agoThe text says 24-60 hours, but then in the table where they talk about the other studies being considered, a lot of them did 48 hour minimum and as much as 96 hours for some. When I saw the headline I was excited because a 16-18 hour fast really isn't very hard for most people, but 48 hours sounds a little rough. I guess if it's just a one-off event while you're doing chemo it's not that bad, but I'm not about to fast 48 hours once a week for the rest of my life.
- coldtea 7y ago>but I'm not about to fast 48 hours once a week for the rest of my life Why not? I mean why reject it a priori? Who said it will be difficult after the first few months? And what if it has beneficial properties?
- randcraw 7y agoMost people have trouble even taking a pill regularly. And that's painless. Regularly self-inflicting pain like hunger for 40+ hours at a time has absolutely no hope of becoming a standard therapy in medicine. The percentage of patient compliance would be in the single digits.
- openureye1s285 7y agoOh how many times have I been banned and flagged from HN for telling the truth about fasting and its curative effect on many diseases including cancer... @dang hiding the truth from people.
- cjslep 7y agoThere is a huge world of difference between "curing cancer" and "reducing rate of growth of tumor cells and reducing uptake of chemotherapy toxins in healthy cells".
- RobertRoberts 7y agoTo be fair, there is no "cure" for any disease. Either you heal from it or you don't. So, any net gain could be considered a "cure" from a layman's perspective.
- cjslep 7y agoNo, it's not fair. I'm a layman, not a doctor. This needless critique of the meaning of the word "cure" doesn't really advance our discussion much except to allow a definition of the word that supposes "laymen" like me think the net gain from an iron lung "cures" polio.
- RobertRoberts 7y agoI would argue that "slowing growth of cancer" (to a few of my friends with cancer) is a cure. As long as the trend continues until the cancer is gone. There is no cure that makes cancer disappear instantly. (surgery isn't a cure) If you don't have anyone in your life fighting cancer, maybe you can't appreciate how "cure" and "slowing cancer" are synonymous to those in the middle of dealing with it.
- cjslep 7y agoThis got needlessly personal, really fast. "Slowing the growth" of cancer doesn't shrink the cancer, the cancer is still growing. Slower. It buys time. But it's not a cure. Maybe I can appreciate it, because it took my grandmother away from me. The one my parents named me after. I am very sorry for your friends and others going through it.
- Phylter 7y agoFrom what I understand cancer grows based on what it feeds on. It can eat sugar, hormones, and maybe other stuff. Some types of cancer can be killed by simply removing it's source of food. I've had a lot of friends/relatives with cancer lately. Most recently I had a friend diagnosed with breast cancer and the treatment was simply to reduce the amount of estrogen in her system. She's doing well. They've done some preventative radiation but other than that not much of anything else.
- SN76477 7y agoA lot of psuedo medicine talks about eliminating sugar to kill cancer. I always felt that they were on the right track somehow. Thanks for the tidbit
- dankai 7y agoYou might want to check out this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warburg_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warburg_hypothesis
- agumonkey 7y agoA med student on reddit was part of a research team on various strategies around WH. He said something in the lines of "cancer has a few layered tricks in its bag to stay alive even when starved, and these tricks make cancerous cells the last to die if you starve a population of healthy/sick cells" Made me realize how odd cancer was.. how oddly efficient it is in its chaos.
- bob_theslob646 7y agoMay you please provide the link to the thread?
- agumonkey 7y agoI may try to dig but it was a few years ago and I have no precise recollection of which sub nor which user answered me. Unless you know a quick tool to fetch my comment history so I can grep it.
- mogadsheu 7y agoI really like practical, simple solutions like this. Older generations/civilizations have practiced fasting for general health. Based on modern advances in science, I would love to see more research done on the applications efficacy of old cultural practices to modern problems. Who know, maybe we’ll start flash mobs to dance for rain in 10 years.
- openureye1s285 7y agoIn 10 years they will finally "discover" that (dry) fasting reverses (quite paradoxically) cachexia.
- tomp 7y agoThis blog post describes some incredibly complex old cultural practices, including making corn and manioc edible/non-poisonous ("nixtamalization" is the name of the corn-specific process), and describes the hypothesis that divination might have been used as a random number generator in order to avoid human biases. https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/04/book-review-the-secret-of-our-success/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/04/book-review-the-secret...
- agumonkey 7y agoThe conclusion of the modern era will be to avoid modern era ideas.
- GistNoesis 7y ago>Who know, maybe we’ll start flash mobs to dance for rain in 10 years. I don't know the feasibility of it, but if we could predict with enough accuracy some local weather patterns, it would be a total awesome app. Get a notification to gather round to summon a tornado. Or chanting together for an unusual fall of evening tropical rain.
- waffle_ss 7y agoI didn’t see it mentioned in the study but it’s interesting that from what I know, the current clinical approach is the exact opposite - many patients on chemo are given appetite-inducing drugs and Ensure shakes as the oncologists are very concerned that the patient not lose any weight
- ec109685 7y agoThey talk about that here: > However, patients with severe weight loss, sarcopenia, cachexia or malnutrition are probably not good candidates for a STF intervention [27, 28]. Recent guidelines recommend to increase protein and fat consumption in patients with cachexia [29, 30]. Thus, STF may be particularly useful for relatively fit patients treated with (neo)adjuvant chemotherapy.
- johnpowell 7y agoI just finished chemo eight months ago. I lost 35 pounds. I'm 6' and went from 140 pounds to 105. So yeah, my nutritionist gave me shit for putting water in my feeding tube because it doesn't have any calories. Ensure, juice, gatorade, anything was better than water. I had neck/mouth cancer and for about month I wasn't able to swallow anything (including water). I was doing about 3K calories of formula a day and still dropping weight. Everything hurt. My joints were a wreck and getting out of bed was a chore. I started doing 8oz of formula (TwoCal HN) and mixing that with 8oz of vitamin D milk. In a few days my joint pain went away. But yes, infusion rooms have little cafeterias and are stocked with soda, ice cream, juice, candy, and so on. Anything to get calories in people.
- waffle_ss 7y agoThanks for sharing your personal experience and best of luck with your continued recovery. Hopefully I didn't come across as being critical of the doctors in my comment - clearly there are reasons to cram calories as your personal experience attests - I just find it an interesting juxtaposition.
- edwhitesell 7y agoI'm not sure abput appetite-inducing drugs, but depending on the type of chemo you're on you may get high doses of anti-nausea meds. I did. I still didn't want to eat, but I wasn't vomiting all the time. I did 4 rounds of chemo, one round is a week (5 days) on, 2 weeks off. During the third round the nausea was so bad that I ate a piece of toast and drank some water. That week. They try to get you to eat anything and everything so you have some strength. It's also a factor to flush the chemo drugs out of your body. Food and fluids help that too.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- specialist 7y agoThe progress in nutrition is very encouraging. 30 years ago, when I brought up concerns about nutrition, my doctors dismissed such questions out of hand. Like I was advocating homeopathy or something. Much has changed since then. FHCRC (& SCCA) now includes diet and nutrition as part of their LTFU care plans. Calorie restriction and eliminating HFCS seem now seem like slam dunks to me, even if we don't yet have the science to substantiate these strategies. Even if fructose isn't linked to cancer, I feel better without it. (Sadly, anything touching on diet still triggers some people.) My latest self experimentation is soluble fiber. (Beans, lentils, wild rices, oatmeal, seeds. It all goes into the Instapot.) Definitely has improved my gut (which has been touchy since the chemo). We'll see in a few months if it helps lower my high LDL. Edit: Oops. Pre coffee. Changed glucose (good) to fructose (bad). Also, witness insta downvote. Someone out there is personally offended by my rejection of HFCS.
- RobertRoberts 7y agoI actually find the progress in nutrition surprising. The benefits of fasting have been known for a very long time. But I perceive because fasting can't be sold that the current medical industry has not valued sharing it's true benefits. My personal experience with friends/family in the medical field is that is quackery if it's not taught at in medical school.
- gnode 7y agoThe article explains that fasting is often prohibited by malnutrition and low body weight. Obviously fasting cannot be undertaken long-term, as it results in starvation. I wonder whether there is any benefit to caloric restriction / fasting, versus maintenance calorie intake with a ketogenic diet. The crucial thing seems to be the elimination of insulin promoting carbohydrate, and depletion of glycogen which forces metabolism into ketogenesis, reduces growth factors, and promotes catabolism and autophagy.
- AstralStorm 7y agoDepends on what the goal is. If the goal is maximum speed weight loss, like say preparing for a competition, lower calorie easily wins. It has to be done carefully to not get dehydrated or remove micronutrients. And it's hard to get started for most as hunger is strong early on if you don't put additional protein in. Keto on the other hand is easier to get in with but relatively hard to maintain due to social factors. The diet is extremely different from any typical one in any country. On the other hand if you just have to limit calorie intake, things get easier to mix and match. But this one is sort of automatically playing on satiety which helps. Health results are somewhat of a tossup. Source: done the Kwaśniewski version of keto, and ad-lib vegan too (ineffective). Currently low calorie controlled, data driven, successfully so far at 0,75 kg/wk.
- shadykiller 7y agoThere sure is according to Dr. Thomas Seyfried and Dominic D'Agostino - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28250801 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28250801
- AstralStorm 7y agoYes, you can do both. Very carefully.
- abecedarius 7y agoPersonal note: when a family member was recently diagnosed with cancer, the ketogenic diet was the one promising idea I found to supplement her standard treatment. It's... depressing... how my suggestion just to talk to her doctor about it probably wasn't followed even that far. Can anyone suggest a source to point to for non-nerds, such as a talk by a prestigious doctor? Considering the fate of my suggestion above, a paper or a book are not going to fly.
- chimen 7y agoI know there are certain countries/religions (Turkey comes to mind) where fasting is practiced...sometimes to the extreme. Did anyone thought of doing a research for cancer numbers in those countries vs others?
- ghostbrainalpha 7y agoThis study follows your line of thinking. (Ramadan Fasting and Patients with Cancer: State-of-the-Art and Future Prospects) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4748028/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4748028/ Unfortunately this is in the abstract. "Our main findings are that (1) very few studies have been carried out, addressing this issue, (2) evidence concerning quality of life and compliance to treatment is contrasting and scarce, and (3) generally speaking, few patients ask their physicians whether they can safely fast or not. For these reasons, further research should be performed, given the relevance and importance of this topic."
- icu 7y agoI had a wake-up call when my Doctor said my Body Mass Index (BMI) was 29.7 (obese is 30). So I made a total lifestyle change to a 16/8 intermittent fast (16 hours water only, 8-hour feeding window), and a plant-based diet (basically vegan plus a fish once a week for Omegas). It was life-changing. I lost 22kg in two months, with no exercise. I am now back to a healthy BMI, but I no longer use BMI as a measure, I use the Relative Fat Mass Index (RFM) because my research indicates that this is a more accurate measure for tall people (I'm 6'3"). Besides looking great after shedding all that weight, I never expected the mental benefits to be so pronounced. Indeed it is fair to say it has had a nootropic effect. I no longer 'need' coffee, and the persistent brain fog has lifted and my default state is calm mental clarity. Of course, I can only speak from my own personal experience here... I haven't done extensive blood tests pre and post this lifestyle change, but the change has been so shocking that friends and family cannot believe it. You might think going 16 hours with no food is going to be hard but if you get the timings right, it's easy (and you get used to it). I start my fast at 8 pm, and I break the fast at noon. This way I can have business lunches and early-ish business dinners (as long as I finish eating by 8 pm). Most restaurants cater for vegans or at least have a vegetarian option. If not, I go for a fish option. When I break the fast I do it with an avocado/cucumber/kale/spinach smoothie which blasts my body with super nutrients. I avoid all processed carbs (no bread or pasta), I avoid all processed sugar (no cola or any refined sugar products), I avoid all dairy, and of course, avoid meat. Also, there is no calorie reduction... I eat as much as I like in my 8-hour feeding window (which controls Ghrelin and therefore doesn't mess up my metabolism). Always consult a medical professional before you do any drastic changes like what I've done, and do your own research on this stuff so you have the confidence that it's the right choice for you, and that you'll stick with it.
- throwme49205 7y agoVery glad to hear your positive experience. > Also, there is no calorie reduction Sure there is, that's why you lost so much weight. You just did it indirectly through this lifestyle change. > Most restaurants cater for vegans or at least have a vegetarian option...I avoid all processed carbs (no bread or pasta), I avoid all processed sugar. This can be a hard combo. Often the lone veg option is a sandwich (often breaded) or pasta in my experience. Obviously you can prioritize your needs and glad you do, just expressing how annoying the heavily constrained problem can be (I used to eat vegetarian).
- Spearchucker 7y agoReading through these comments is scary. And I'm lucky. I've never put on weight in my life but always been active. 50 now and still snowboard, scuba dive and martial arts three times a week. Only ever ate two meals a day (lunch and dinner) and have never paid attention to sugar. Drink fewer sodas than I used to but still average about one a day. I eat a lot of meat but also a lot of vegetables and bananas. Maybe 50/50 meat/veg. Guessing metabolism has a lot to do with it. Nobody in my family ever got obese either. The upshot is that what works for Peter may not work for Paul. And somehow I fell into a healthy lifestyle...
- pitaj 7y agoHow many snacks do you keep around the house? I find that if I buy them, I'll eat them. So I just don't buy them, instead buying vegetables instead.
- dcolkitt 7y agoMost people don't realize just how small a lifestyle change it takes to affect weight into middle age. When habits are amplified by the fulcrum of consistency over decades it makes a huge difference. Just consider that all it takes to become 100 lbs overweight by age 50 is an extra 38 calories a day starting at age 25. The difference between morbid obesity and healthy weight can literally come down to one donut a week or walking an extra quarter mile a day.
- toasterlovin 7y agoIt's way more complicated that that. The body is not a stupid mechanical device where you make a change in one place and then the rest of the system reacts in a straightforward and predictable way. There is a brain in the middle of everything. And that brain affects motivation. Good luck doing something when you're not feeling motivated.
- javierbyte 7y ago> Just consider that all it takes to become 100 lbs overweight by age 50 is an extra 38 calories a day starting at age 25. Source? Sounds very hard to believe, when you starting getting weight from that 38 calories you also start to require more energy to do the same thing, just because you weight more. And there are a ton more factors to add, the human body is not as simple as that.
- joshgel 7y agoCan I just throw a big dose of caution here? This is a review study, looking at the available literature of this technique on cancer. They found a total of FIVE studies with 88 total human participants across all 5 studies. We, the medical community, still has no idea whether this is effective or not. The only thing we can say is that initial trials don't show it to be particularly harmful. That could change with more data. They review a lot of mice studies and theory, which is great. But all this adds together to indicate that we should study this more before drawing any conclusions. With limited funding for cancer research, its not even clear to me from this what priority it should take
- epmaybe 7y agoWhat do you mean limited funding? Seems like there's a TON of funding for cancer research right now, given the moonshot campaign (extra $1.8B over 7 years). It's hard to study something like this, because you have to find a large enough population for the statistics to work out, but also keep the study going long enough without massive attrition (would have to do intent-to-treat) to have results worth publishing.
- wavepruner 7y agoI really don't get the excessive warnings of caution for fasting. It's not hard to try. It's not very dangerous (unless doing prolonged fasts). In the case of prolonged fasts, if the patient is monitored by qualified people then there is little risk as well. I'm battling a crippling illness. Fortunately I've found the cure and the recovery is nothing short of miraculous. But it's a huge HUGE uphill battle because the medical community works incredibly hard to throw road blocks in my way. Why does the medical community work so hard to throw up as many road blocks as possible to experimental treatments that are low risk? Why do you insist on being the only group of people who can say what is and isn't tried? Why do doctors and public health officials ignore the work of biochemists? Why do you ignore millions of people battling crippling illness that say your treatments are ineffective, and that other approaches are more effective? Seriously. I don't get it. I don't believe you're a bad person, but the only explanations I can come up with are arrogance, ego, cowardice, or greed.
- chvid 7y agoI am not a doctor so I don't have the skills to evaluate this paper. But it strikes me that this area must be very hard to scientifically evaluate. There are number of 'big' ideas out there on health and each person seem to have their own preference. Cold showers, hot baths, meditation, that food should be vegetarian, organic, mostly meat and high on protein, vitamin c, extreme exercise and so on. These are very cultural and some times even religious. This "culturalness" affects the authors too. We want certain things to be true because it agrees with our values. For example that organic farmed food is healthier than non-organic. This is a meta study that cites a lot of other studies. Some of them have very small sample size; in particular the ones dealing with humans. And I wonder how was the control done? People cannot help noticing that they do not get food. What was the effect size? Were subjects excluded from the experiment because they were too weak not to eat (or just didn't want to)? Would the study be published had it not shown an effect? And so on ... Just because you sum up accross multiple studies; it does not necessary give better a signal because the noise may not be random.
- randcraw 7y agoAgreed. I think the purpose of papers like this is not to advocate for the therapy today, but to encourage scientists and research funding figures to more seriously investigate the phenomenon. As others here have noted, the past studies have been quite small, and because the treated study participants experience hunger, adding a blinded control group is difficult. These faults will have to be addressed before results are actionable clinically. But if they appear promising, there may be creative ways to address them, if the researchers do get sufficient motivation and funding.
- pknerd 7y agoWish some health magazine or something re-write this article for the non-technical people so that I could share with others.
- sabujp 7y agofast for 24-60 hours when i get cancer, got it
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- bagong 7y agoHy geng aim. From indonesia. Ai skides for yuo geng. Ar you choming for miey. Cemmen likdinsen hend
- ijidak 7y agoHaving recently lost an aunt to cancer, statements like this in medical literature, disappoint: "However, chronic caloric restriction is not a feasible clinical intervention. Evident difficulties, such as the long period required to be effective, and unacceptable weight loss [10, 11], hamper clinical application in cancer patients." Doctors will fail to offer fasting as a partial solution because it's assumed that patients will reject this option. It would be great for fasting to be presented to the patient as a partial solution. Many would absolutely fast to help survival chances. Generally the lay advice to one who is sick is: "eat, so you can maintain your strength". When in fact, the rule of thumb, "eat to maintain your strength" isn't always true. Sometimes, NOT eating is better for certain diseases, such as cancer. But few doctors will ever explain this because statements like the above cause doctors to conclude, "telling the patient to fast is not practical.."
- wtallis 7y agoI think you're inaccurately conflating "chronic caloric restriction" with any and all forms of fasting, when it refers only to rather severe long-term fasting/starvation of the sort that has been tested in mice but is borderline unethical to test on humans even if they aren't being ravaged by cancer and chemotherapy. That's why short-term fasting is worth investigating.
- jcims 7y agoMy experience with a family member being treated for cancer is that the medical community basically ignores diet unless it's creating acute mechanical problems like a bowel obstruction. I don't think most of the providers we are working with have received any relevant training. It's pretty frustrating.
- nightchalk16 7y agoHave a look at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEE-oU8_NSU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEE-oU8_NSU
- chrisbennet 7y agohttps://www.healthline.com/nutrition/6-reasons-why-a-calorie-is-not-a-calorie https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/6-reasons-why-a-calorie... It just isn’t true “that a calorie is just a calorie”. A simple search show ample evidence.
- dharma1 7y agoFasting was extensively researched in Soviet Russia as a potential cure for many ailments, from auto-immune diseases to mental illness. Tens of thousands of people were treated with 14-40 day water fasts (under constant supervision and testing), roughly 2/3rds reported various levels of success. I don't think much of the studies have ever been translated into English.
- beagle3 7y agoDo you maybe have a link to original russian sources?
- dharma1 7y agoThere's an excellent documentary, "Science of Fasting", which covers some of the Russian studies about midway through - https://youtu.be/t1b08X-GvRs https://youtu.be/t1b08X-GvRs
- mehrdadn 7y agoWatched 25 minutes of it so far and it's absolutely fascinating, thanks so much for sharing. One key point so far for anyone who hasn't watched yet: the fasts involved here are long (multiple weeks) and treatment that you do under medical supervision, and it needs to happen properly, meaning along with it you need proper exercise, getting your blood tested, and various other things, in some cases even including classical medication (possibly even larger doses)... so in general it's not merely "just don't eat for N days and you'll get cured".
- pazimzadeh 7y agoIt is fascinating, but around 18 mins 45 seconds "cancer" is noted as a contraindication for fasting! Unfortunately there was no mention of what the cancer type, metastatic status, etc..
- PeCaN 7y agoFasting had a particularly high success rate in Ukraine, curing millions of people of all types of ailments.
- chiefalchemist 7y agoI keep seeing these studies on the value of fasting. Fascinating and intriguing. I haven't eaten all day. That said, I'd be interested in knowing the role of diet. That is, how much of the benefit is from fasting, and how much is from the relief the body (and gut) gets not ingesting additives, chemical reside, etc.?
- mickel 7y agoI'd like to share my findings from a sample size of one... I've been fasting for about 2 years now. I've done a couple of 5-days water fasts, and a few 7-days water fasts. The past 250 days I've been consistently following 16:8 and adding in a few 23:1's in there for good measure. I was healthy before I started, but have since then felt even better. My stomach feels calm, I sleep better, I feel stronger (even though I exercise less) and my overall focus has improved. This results in a better mental state, somehow calming my mind. I've been a practitioner of meditation before, but have not felt the need for it the past year. My body is calm and well-rested => my mind is mindful. But the number 1 benefit of fasting (and all other non-conventional habits, such as cold showers in the morning), is mental resilience. Every time you realize that you perform well, if not even better, without food, you get a confidence boost. This effect compounds with time. I've found out that this in turn makes it easier to take on other habits as well, because your habit muscles are stronger now than before. Eating 5 meals a day is easy... eating 1 is hard => you grow a little if you manage to do it.
- mongol 7y agoWhat does 16:8 and 23:1 mean?
- DoreenMichele 7y agoA few thoughts: 1. Fasting may be a problem if you are so sick that you have insufficient fat reserves. 2. If you are seriously underfat, dropping to about 20% of your usual consumption gets a similar reaction from the body while being easier to take. 3. About 75-80% of your immune cells can be found in the gut. Hypothesis: One thing fasting may do is free up immune cells from coping with food so they can be redirected elsewhere.
- Surgly 7y agoInteresting research. Also important to remember that many cancer patients may also be surgical candidates. If preparing for most surgical procedures you would want to ensure excellent protein intake, adequate Vit D and possible immunonutrition (in drink or other form) and fast minimally. A really complex disease with so many stages