Comment by criticaltinker | Hacker News Reader

Comment by criticaltinker | Hacker News Reader

I strongly believe that fasting is one of the best ways to combat obesity, diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure, and more. The scientific literature is certainly accumulating tremendous evidence supporting this hypothesis [1].

Here is one of my favorite videos on the subject [2], a talk by Dr Pradip Jamnadas who is one of the top cardiologists in Florida.

There is no industry that profits on you being healthier through fasting. Consequently it doesn't get the attention or consideration that it should given the supporting evidence. However it has an advantage over every other solution suggested here - everyone can start reaping the benefits immediately. No legislation, no taxation, etc.

Eating healthy and natural foods is still a critical part of the solution. Perhaps most importantly, we need to properly educate the youth and show them the benefits and consequences of their choices when it comes to diet and exercise.

[1] Fasting: Molecular Mechanisms and Clinical Applications https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S155041311...

[2] Fasting For Survival Lecture by Dr Pradip Jamnadas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuOvn4UqznU

I have never been more miserable than when I was doing fasting. It was truly one of the most horrible times of my life.

I tried for months. My sleep as disrupted, I felt awful, and I had no energy. But more to the point, _nothing happened at all_ in terms of weight loss. Just thinking about it makes me angry!

I have no idea what the hell is going on with my metabolism and why I am the pure opposite case. I'm genuinely curious.

Right now, I lift heavy 3x a week and do moderate cardio 3x a week (run, bike, swim, etc). I feel great! And I get to eat like an insane teenager. My blood chemistry is perfect and my resting heart rate is in the high 40s.

It's more than a little frustrating at times that I have to do all that _work_ when I personally know people who dropped a bunch of weight with almost no effort via fasting. I feel great, though, and at this point I'm used to the program.

fasting is only useful as a hunger management tool. it doesnt really do anything incredible to your metabolism that would result in huge weight loss irrespective of calorie intake.

all diets are just hunger management tools.

> fasting is only useful as a hunger management tool. it doesnt really do anything incredible to your metabolism

This is a pretty dismissive comment, here are some excerpts from the abstract of my previous citation [1]:

> In lower eukaryotes, chronic fasting extends longevity, in part, by reprogramming metabolic and stress resistance pathways.

> In rodents intermittent or periodic fasting protects against diabetes, cancers, heart disease, and neurodegeneration, while in humans it helps reduce obesity, hypertension, asthma, and rheumatoid arthritis.

> Thus, fasting has the potential to delay aging and help prevent and treat diseases while minimizing the side effects caused by chronic dietary interventions.

If you're already healthy then don't worry about it? For the metabolically sick people the idea of "losing weight to get healthy" is sort of wrong. One must get healthy first and when health is regained through proper lifestyle and nutrition the weight will also come off. Getting healthy can take months so visible changes in terms of starting to lose visible fat can take months as well.

For me it was a combination of fasting and cutting out as much added sugar as possible (I still do natural sugars in fruits, etc). I'm down 20 pounds since June, and it's mostly been all fat. My exercise level did go up a bit (from ~5 miles a day to 6+) simply because I'm a teacher and didn't have school all day, but in general I'm just all around healthier from really focusing on fasting (was doing it before, but more stringently now) and cutting out sugar. It's been great.

I took up IF a while back, and I wish my adherance was better but I have noticed once you get into the groove fasting days are fantastic, I do feel "lighter" and I have also realized that most of what I thought was "hunger" is "boredom" and most of my cravings are quite easily handled.

Really we should start teaching people the value of IF.

I think we know less about a lot of metabolic processes than we need to.

It’s obvious that obesity is correlated, especially since losing weight often makes symptoms disappear. I think we need to better understand precisely what the metabolic pathway is. Losing weight obviously is the best intervention, but the statistics I’ve seen indicate that for people needing to lose in excess of 30 lbs the success rate of keeping the weight off is <10%. So while it’s the best intervention, it’s not a particularly effective one.

An interesting note, bariatric procedures have had mixed results in this arena, laparoscopic banding has basically been abandoned as ineffective over the long term, in favor of vertical sleeve gastrectomy (restrictive) and gastric bypass (restrictive and malabsorptive). Paired feeding research indicates that the greater weight loss from bypass vs. sleeve does not just come from malabsorption, but from an as yet unknown metabolic change.

Also Dr Lustig and Dr Benjamin Bikman and Dr Jason Fung have great content on this topic.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com