My feeling is it gives off a certain "body hacking" vibe that HNers are attracted to.
Well, have you tried it? Unlike many fad diets there's nothing to buy, no long-term commitment, just one or a few days where you don't eat. You can do some reading to find tricks to make it easier, but all it really takes is willpower. Maybe it will do something for you, maybe not.
> a handful of flawed or limited studies
As much as we worship high quality, large-population, peer-reviewed studies, ultimately the only study that matters is the n=1, yourself - only you can find out what works for you.
I understand what you're trying to say but found it funny you tried to conflate real vetted science with "worship" and then said to throw all that out in favor of a personal opinion.
You just aren't allowed to take the n=1 experiment you just ran and claim it applies to everybody equally.
But if you want to know what works for you, and do not particularly care to publish a scientific paper, you can do experiments freely, and the results are as valid as your experimental methodology and the resulting statistical power justify.
You are also further entitled at that point to trust your n=1 experiment for yourself over any future n=50 experiment in the future, because it doesn't matter whether 35 of 50 people slept better when taking Vitamin C before bed or whatever; what you personally care about is whether you do, and no amount of reading that paper will tell you whether you're going to be in the 35 or the 15.
I've had to experiment on myself like crazy for various reasons. My results are (most likely) utterly inapplicable to you. And I don't care very much about that. You can do your own experiments on you. In the meantime, while I don't know exactly what the parallel universe looks like in which I didn't do these experiments, I am very confident (95%+) parallel Jerf is in pretty bad shape and almost certainly on some rather powerful and nasty meds that he does not in fact need to be on that are actually making things worse in the long term.
My experiments have been informed by various papers related to my condition, so it's not like that science is useless; far from it! But, again, no amount of reading papers about Celiac disease and how taking more Taurine helped 80% of people's hearts work better will tell me whether I'm in the 80% or the 20%.
Re my comment about science still being useful, there are certainly papers about taurine supplementation being useful for people suffering from atrial fibrellation. IIRC, I did not find any references on that for Celiac specifically, but since Celiac is basically "generalized failure to properly absorb nutrients" it's not much of a leap to assume it's related.
For heart purposes, it should be matched with 1/2-1/3rd (from the looks of it; it's about as well tested as most dosages, which if you dig into them, are often a lot more guess-and-check than you might like) as much L-Arginine by mass, i.e., I take about 3g Taurine and 1g L-Arginine about three times a day. (I'm a big guy, but the papers often tested twice that, too, so it shouldn't be a dosage issue.)
It was ultimately only a part of the nutrient cocktail I ultimately ended up needing, but it was/is a very important part of it. On those occasions I run out of it, I can tell less than 24 hours later.
There are worse things than Celiac; at least I can supplement my way out of the worst aspects of it, and that's not a thing you can say about all chronic conditions. But it still sorta blows; I'm constantly playing nutrient catch-up with my body.
For general gut health there's a bunch of interesting stuff about diet resistant starch as a probiotic -- not sure if that's on your radar.
How do you know one specific thing worked, and it wasn't something else? Or just mere coincidence? As someone who has Crohn's disease I have lost track of the times someone has said "oh, blah worked for this person" etc etc.... all anecdotes, with no way of deciding whether there are side-effects that need to be weighed-up. No thanks.
At the end of the day, it's just you doing what works for you. When you do find something that works for you, it's just another anecdote that won't work for everyone else, but it's hard to argue with what makes you happier.
Also, it's not like eating less is exotic or risky. It's one of the many things I'd try if I was suffering.
Keep a journal.
Try to have an established routine, then try one and only one new thing at a time.
Do a lot of reading to try to develop a mental model to fit it into.
I have absolutely no idea what you mean by this.
If you have never fasted before, you need to read up on fasting. If you want to make dietary changes, you read up on lots of dietary stuff. Etc.
If you have a specific diagnosis, you can read up on the latest research into that, plus related stuff. For example, I read stuff about genetics and the gut biome because that helps me put things into context.
You do a thing and something happens. You note it and try to figure out what the process is. Was it random? Was it coincidence? Was it causative? If so, how? You build from there.
This is the point, a sample n=1 is only valid for that one person. You can only make educated guesses on what to test on yourself, but probably you need something slightly different from everyone else.
I do not know much about your disease, but for a diet is it pretty harmless to experiment if you are not doing anything extreme and keep yourself informed on current science
We should be (and there are people who do) encouraging people to learn how their diets, their behaviors affect them emotionally, physiologically and psychologically. Scientific studies really aren't as applicable to the general population as one would like to believe. So the only way to learn is to experiment on themselves.
Isn't this flawed reasoning? You can try a diet, feel good but still be unhealthy in a way that will kill you earlier that your life expectancy.
Pragmatically speaking, would you prefer a shorter life where you feel great, or a longer one where you just feel "OK"? What if we're talking one month? One year?
A problem would be if you do too many experiments too often, but this you also need to control in n=50.
There is a huge difference between subjectivity and n=1
Those who do are rare, as they would need to last at least a few decades. IIRC to publish actual research on diet effect on lifespan you need 80 years.
What you do is develop metrics useful to predict lifespan and quality of life and then see the impact of a diet of those metrics. There is nothing you cannot do privately here (using some laboratory for analysis obviously)
I am not saying it is easy and for sure it is error prone, but so is science itself.
You are not a good observer of yourself. You have biases and subjectivity when "measuring" yourself, so that makes your own "measurements" of yourself unreliable. Furthermore, there are certain observations you cannot even make. For obvious reasons, you cannot even do something so simple as estimating the effect on life expectancy :).
As do the nurse who draws your blood, the tech who tests it, and the doctor who interprets the results. By all means recruit them to assist in your study, but don't do it in blind faith.
> that makes your own "measurements" of yourself unreliable
Perhaps in some ways and for some metrics, but conversely you are the best at knowing where you experience pain, how you "feel," and how today differs from yesterday.
> you cannot even do something so simple as estimating the effect on life expectancy :)
Well, no more than anyone else can :)
A buddy of mine was wondering when flagellation will be touted as a self-improvement technique in Silicon Valley circles, and it looks like that day is coming sooner rather than later.
Here enters the remark about being commonly predicted in the millennia is weakly relevant as it might suggest that we somehow evolved to accommodate this type of diet (obviously this is not a sound argument in general eg anti-vaxxers), self flagellation does not match this criteria as it was not that common and only for very little time.
For example maybe the skin repairing process produce proteins that also lower stress.
Then, most important phase, you should check whether it can be dangerous.
I would guess that there are 0 scientific papers affirming positive effects of self flagellation.
I've had luck reading primary research and doing my own self-experiments. For what it's worth, fasting gives me substantially more energy and clarity of mind. Maybe it does for you too? Or maybe not. Probably worth the experiment.
True. I tried, got spectacularly confused and gave up. So now I just eat lots of fruit, vegetables and some meat.
I don't eat candy, crisps, fat food of any sort, and nothing processed. No alcohol.
I eat when I'm hungry, and I drink when I'm thirsty (couple coffees in the morning, then only water).
Nobody has been able to convince me there's a better way to eat and drink.
Dr. Jason Fung - 'Therapeutic Fasting - Solving the Two-Compartment Problem' - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIuj-oMN-Fk
Dr. Georgia Ede - 'Our Descent into Madness: Modern Diets and the Global Mental Health Crisis' - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXlVfwJ6RQU
I do hope that you will try it. It costs nothing, takes a negative amount of time since you gain at least a meal of free time out of it, and further, many people (like myself) find that it enhances athletic output.
I have never been on a "diet" in my life and have no affinity toward them (or that line of thinking at all).
You'll note that "diets" all focus on new and interesting things to eat ... fasting is the opposite of that (IMO, flawed) line of thinking.
I would hardly call fasting a fad. It has been around through the ages.
Here's some legitimate information on a fast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6PyyatqJSE
We know enough about some of the mechanisms involved and how it can promote healing the body by offering it a "reset" so-to-speak via autophagy.
The research on caloric restriction and fasting is wide and deep. I'm curious where you got the impression the research was only a handful of flawed or limited studies?
"caloric restriction" 8089 studies https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=%22caloric+restric...
fast mimicking diet 80 studies https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=fasting+mimicking+...
Compared to the studies which have been done to support the current eating guidelines the studies on fasting have been wide and deep. Most current eating guidelines are based on a mix of "we though it sounds good", "everyone knows that fat is bad", "my friend from coca-cola told me that and he knows things" or "someone paid me to do the study and made it pretty clear that my future funding depends on the results".
On the other hand, fasting has been practiced for at least 1000 years (Ramadan) so at least it's not harmful...
It is removing something whereas most of the other diets simply want to replace something.