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Comment by aviv | Hacker News Reader

This will one day be as obvious as cigarettes cause cancer is.

Prolonged fasting (consuming only water for 10 to 40 days) is a highly effective treatment for many diseases, including Crohn's, most other IBS related, diabetes, MS, and many more. At some point in the future we will consider pharma companies, government agencies and other entities hiding this fact to be criminal.

Edit: my personal hope is that water fasting becomes mainstream and cures many people before my HN karma reaches 0.

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Do you partake in any sort of sports? As someone who is avidly into strength training, I can't imagine the damage that does to gaining and maintaining muscle mass, and sabotaging your ability to push hard and perform well in the gym.

A -lot- of bodybuilders do intermittent fasting (between 16-23 hours per day of not eating and do fine. I see that all the time.

But the ones who are doing the 10-40 day fasts are usually fighting some kind of disease from what I've seen. Sometimes it's a weight loss thing but I don't see that nearly as often. From what I've read/watched I doubt any of them are doing much working out.

Crazy enough the longest ever recorded fast was 382 days long. The patient was 456lb at start, ending at 180lb. They gave him yeast and vitamins during some parts but overall they reported no ill effects afterwards. I don't say this as a "jump in and go nuts", this person was under medical supervision, but it's really crazy what the human body can do.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2495396/pdf/pos...

Yeah you would definitely need to take a break from strength training to do an extended fast. Not everyone's goals however are to get huge muscles and for many health goals there is a lot of research showing that fasting has great benefits. It's probably one of the best ways to lower your risk of cancer.

> Not everyone's goals however are to get huge muscles

I should point out that strength training != bodybuilding

While I disagree with your assertions, if you are the type of person who prefers to live the rest of your life with, say, Crohn's, and be able to still push hard and perform well at the gym, by all means do that. If you're willing to set a side of period of a couple months to heal your body, research more.

It's actually interesting how many people I meet at the gym that from the outside appear very fit and healthy, only to find out they're actually pretty ill, from IBS and other gut issues, thyroid problems, etc. The gym is actually masking many diseases for people because physically they appear healthy.

>It's actually interesting how many people I meet at the gym that from the outside appear very fit and healthy, only to find out they're actually pretty ill, from IBS and other gut issues, thyroid problems, etc. The gym is actually masking many diseases for people because physically they appear healthy.

Any idea how that compares to the average population? I'll bet you'll find that the gym population is pretty much the same as the regular population, with the exception of possibly greater cardiovascular health.

I just take exception to treating a 40 day fast as some sort of panacea, it seems like it's going to do more harm than good to a lot of people. There's no way the rest of your life won't suffer after a couple of weeks of starvation.

As with so many things in health and nutrition, there is a lot of contradictory advice out there. I can't tell you which one is right, but I have heard many people say never skip protein, because you need it every 2 hours, and others say:

https://www.bodybuilding.com/content/intermittent-fasting-ev...

Intermittent fasting is certainly a whole different ballgame than the multiple-day water fasts described in the comment above

I do 2-5 day water fasts, and it has very clear health benefits. There urgently needs to be more research into it, especially for autoimmune diseases (like the ones you mentioned), but I don't think it will cure those diseases by itself.

I've also done a lot of calorie restriction and ADF. It probably isn't for body builders, but my BMI is now normal and muscle tone is good.

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