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Comment by aviv | Hacker News Reader

It is slowly trickling in.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/03/12/fasting-for-th...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4684131/

I personally know multiple people that did listen to me and others who told them about the healing powers of a water fast, and cured their illnesses by doing it. There's really no downside. You are not "starving" yourself. That is such an insane myth.

I myself did too - got rid of a bad arthritis in the knee that I've suffered from for years - just 20 days into a fast (this was 6 years ago, no inflammation of any kind since).

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So, no studies linked, just a quote collection and an interview?

I am not aware of any study (that has been made public, remember they always have that option at the end) by a pharmaceutical company or university that was set out to test whether water fasting for 5+ days is beneficial in treating or curing disease.

Several reasons:

1. They conducted one, but didn't like the results.

2. "Don't ask what you don't want to know the answer to" applies here - there is ZERO benefit in discovering that water fasting indeed reverses diseases to which these entities have vested interest in keeping their symptoms a lifelong struggle to patients. Nothing good would come out of it for them. The entire modern medical business model would collapse.

Tin foil hat? Sure, label me that. All I can do is drop tidbits that may be helpful to someone now or in the future. I already know that I've helped a couple dozen people personally in the last few years, myself included.

Those people would still be in a very bad shape if they waited for government or pharma company to endorse what has already been proven to be used successfully for hundreds of years as a primary healing treatment.

Sorry for being so dismissive, but with so much noise out there, it feels like a waste of everyone's time when such a claim is made without the science to back it up.

For sure, there are seemingly endless possibilities that are not being thoroughly explored by the many scientific bodies, but I can understand why that is.

Thanks for taking the time to reply with more information/research.

Here some more links for you to dismiss:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1934590914...

https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1741-...

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1550413115...

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