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Comment by kimi | Hacker News Reader

I'd say this - while interesting - does not show a thing. It happens that a billion or so people do this every year, so any actual public health effect should be quite noticeable. Instead, "the highest percentage change in age-standardized BMI related deaths and disability-adjusted life-years occurred in Bangladesh" (that is mostly a Sunni country) - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5866840/#Sec3ti...

Or see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3263199/ - "The recorded high prevalence of the MS and its key cardiovascular risk factors (15-60%) among Middle East population mandates the need for a national and international prevention programs to combat obesity, diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, smoking and related comorbidities."

So I'm not sold.

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If you're referring to Ramadan, I don't believe that's the same thing, because it is two meals a day, spaced apart significantly, and only lasts a month.

I also question religious devotees adherence to their religion. There are no stats on it and it is impossible to measure... Perhaps a significant number of them secretly cheat.

Isn;t it from down till sunset?

Yes, so they eat before dawn and after sunset.

This study is exactly Ramadan, by design (but it does not say so in the title).

In fact one of the recruiting rules was "2) Subjects who plan to fast during the religious month of Ramadan" and therefore "All subjects fasted for more than 14 h daily for 29 days beginning from May 06, 2019, until June 03, 2019".

See full text https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73767-w

That raised my suspicion. In an era of politic-driven pseudo-scientific paper, I was wondering :

1. Why ramadan is not explicitely told in the title. 2. Why using "dawn to sunset" which is not helpful at all to make generalisation (scientists usually have a clock). 3. Why the diet during the night is not explicited (at least in the abstract). 4. Why this would have different results if the diet is during the night or during the day.

All of this makes me suspicious that this is a kind of retro-science propaganda to make Ramadan looks healthy and justify the religion.

I maybe wrong but the abstract raises too many flags to not care about this hypothesis.

I dropped the same argument in a previous "fasting" post here and nobody reacted. Over a billion people fast "religiously" during Ramadan so why do we need so many studies when we should be able to draw conclusions from these arab countries vs the rest of the world pretty easily.

There is a significant impact, In Morocco, endocrinologists don’t want you to do bloodwork, after Ramadan. They ask you to wait at least 3 weeks after Ramadan to do testing.

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