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Comment by mb_72 | Hacker News Reader

I have Crohn's disease, have therefore been exposed to numerous doubtful stories about 'boosting the immune' system. With my illness, a 'boost' would actually make me sicker, whereas I find that fasting for a couple of days results in improvement of symptoms for me. Why? Obviously because my digestive system becomes empty, and there is less irritation of damaged intestinal lining. Going by this study, an increased production of white blood cells should make me sicker. My anecdotal evidence does not support their findings.

Long story short - if their claims are true they will be able to be reproduced by other researchers. Until then, colour me sceptical.

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If your overactive immune system results in worsening Crohn's symptoms, then fasting would improve your symptoms (by reducing the immune system temporarily + the benefit of no irritants in the digestive system). When the immune system returns to a "normal" (or normal-for-you) state afterwards, you also have irritants back in your digestive system, making it impossible to separate.

The question is: do your Crohn's symptoms improve concurrently with the duration of the fast, extend beyond it, or track as expected with the presence of food in your digestive system?

I guess where I'm going is that there may be two variables at play that can't be easily separated in the case of Crohn's.

Boosted or unboosted is way too simplistic and one dimensional to explain something as complex as autoimmune dysfunction.

I think boost is the pop journalism lingo. Not what the study was measuring. The study mentions its positive effect on eczema, another autoimmune condition like Crohn's. My personal anecdotal evidence has to do with adult acne and hives. Something I suffer with on a daily basis. Flair ups for both stop when I go on calorie restricted diets or fast.

For your Crohn's, fasting would be similar to total bowel rest, wouldn't it? i.e. it would help the bowel heal.

Yes, I believe that is what happens. On the other hand, my symptoms often seem to improve if I eat pizza for each meal for 24hrs (order one night, consume left overs for the next day). :)

Crohn's is one illness that attracts more than it's fair share of woo and 'special diets' and so on. As a result I've become fairly sceptical of any one-off scientific papers that make certain claims, whether they are related to auto-immune diseases or not.

Your skepticism is probably good, but fasting (and its semi-related brother, caloric restriction) has been the subject of scientific investigation for a long time, so 'one-off' hardly captures the essence of it.

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