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Comment by EGreg | Hacker News Reader

Obesity isn't the only thing though. Skipping dinner or breakfast is a form of intermittent fasting.

I think intermittent fasting improves lifespan. It is a form of calorie restriction. People I know even do water diets to repair bones - but that may be a bit extreme.

However, this is probably not good for children. Their bodies need to grow. What we really need is to feed them healthy food instead of the processed crap found now in many stores. The explosion of sugars and HFCS in everything probably contributes to the diabetes / weight problems for kids today.

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There some evidence supporting time restricted eating (clustering your meals close together).

https://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/well/2016/03/07/intermitten...

I tried this for 6 months with my doc. Didn't work for me at all. I actually came across the idea on the National Academy of Sciences web site.

What were you trying to accomplish? If it was increased lifespan, then thankfully the subject of the experiment is still alive.

I was looking at my blood work: cholesterol and fasting blood sugar. I had the worst numbers of my life.

How did it not work for you?

My fasting blood sugar rose as well as my cholesterol levels.

IIRC the only studies that show that calorie restriction improves lifespan are done in animals, so you can't really extend this to humans.

There was a study done at USC on humans that shows an effect on humans as well as mice. I don't think there enough evidence yet on lifespan, but there is starting to be a critical mass of compelling evidence of the benefit in regards to the immune system. I haven't read the full study, just the press release...

http://news.usc.edu/82959/diet-that-mimics-fasting-appears-t...

Humans are biologically so different from animals? Most such studies are done in animals first. Human trials take much longer.

Here is a much more recent study with monkeys:

http://news.wisc.edu/monkey-caloric-restriction-study-shows-...

so you can correlate success with trial animals to success with humans. eh ? i know its hackernews but i see a lot of people preaching about their favorite hacky fad food habits.How about asking people to live a normal healthy lifestyle. Few hours of exercise and normal food that your body can sustain.

"Normal" is a weasel word though -- who defines normal? Not to mention that being overweight is, now, quite "normal"

There was once a time in history where lead piping was normal and it was normal to have heavy metal poisoning.

how about defining normal as "what humanity ate when it was developing"?

Even just to say whole plants and animals, in about the proportions that they were naturally available about 40000 years ago.

There's no reason to expect this to give you increased longevity though, dying was adaptive to early humans.

Well unless you can tell me what makes humans so different from monkeys that you think it won't work.

Lots of interventions that work in animal models do not work in humans. Physiology is different as is adherence. Humans control their own diets, so a really difficult diet will simply result in no humans sticking with it.

Humans aren't even monkeys. So it's not surprising that "works in monkeys" is a mediocre proxy for "works in humans".

Well then here is human trials:

In a pilot human trial, three cycles of a similar diet given to 19 subjects once a month for five days decreased risk factors and biomarkers for aging, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer with no major adverse side effects, according to Longo.

BOOM.

Like many intermittent fasting proponents, you look at these studies that enforce days of significantly-reduced caloric intake and assume that a positive result there transfers to "skipping dinner or breakfast" just because both are referred to as "intermittent fasting". Even if 5 days of significant caloric restriction extends lifespan, that in no way indicates that 14-16 hour fasting does.

Also, I never said that intermittent fasting was ineffective in humans. I said that animal models do not always map well to humans. Scientists who use animal models understand their shortcomings. You should do some basic research before throwing up your arrogant "boom" as if you proved something.

Why don't you look at the actual article?

Which article, the one about eating after 8pm having no relation to obesity in children that has pretty much nothing to do with intermittent fasting? Yeah, I read that one.

Or the one you randomly quoted but didn't even bother to provide a link to? The one that did a pilot study in humans specifically because the researchers know that animal studies don't always map well to humans? The one that did a 5 day fast rather than just skipping breakfast? I read that one, too.

how about starting with basic physical anatomy and then move on the other differences. Also for starters bigger brains, faster metabolism,etc..

unless you consider the above don't have an impact on our food eating and fat storing mechanism.

That's meaningless advice. What is "normal"?

I know i didn't use the perfect word but I said "normal" because each person is different and i don't know a magic one food eating habit that suits every human being.

SO its up to the person and his doctor to figure out what is good for him/her or not and what keeps the individual healthy.

Humans might not gain much in terms of years lived from calorie restriction, but we almost certainly gain in terms of health-span, with much lower incidence of many inflammatory-linked conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, etc.

Not the same thing. The calorie restriction experiments had pretty severe restrictions. Done to people, those people would be underweight

But one could reasonably suppose there is a continuous transition between here and there? So going 1/10 of the way should still bring some benefits.

> So going 1/10 of the way should still bring some benefits.

Not according to any data I've seen. It's either "you barely have enough food to survive, so your metabolism is so slow that you live longer" or no benefit whatsoever.

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