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Comment by reasonattlm | Hacker News Reader

There is much more background info on Longo and his work on intermittent fasting if you go digging. More interesting than this particular piece, which is very short on context and science relating to the study of intermittent fasting, calorie restriction as adjuvant cancer therapy, immune regeneration via fasting, etc.

http://gero.usc.edu/faculty/longo/

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-06/uosc-fts06021...

http://michelsonmedical.org/2014/12/26/igf-1-fasting-discuss...

http://news.usc.edu/58074/wanted-a-recipe-for-longevity/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25498742

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25498743

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25549805

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Also note that he's the founder of a company that produces the diet under test: http://www.l-nutra.com/index.php/about/team

And he's applied for patents on the technique, e.g. http://patents.justia.com/patent/20150004280

I also recommend looking elsewhere since the OP is an example of terrible science. Due to the proprietary nature of the diet this study is impossible for an unbiased researcher to replicate.

Why is the diet proprietary? Is he publishing without revealing sufficient detail for it to be replicated? Or is this some secret business oriented research that's going on?

I think it wouldn't really be science relevant without revealing the diet so we can look at the nutrients and compare that to the research.

I can't read the article itself, but elsewhere you can find that "the FMD lasted five days every month for three months and provided between 34 percent and 54 percent of the normal caloric intake with a composition of 11 percent to 14 percent proteins, 42 percent to 43 percent carbohydrates, and 44 percent to 46 percent fat."

I agree with you that it doesn't sound especially "proprietary".

Can you tl;dr , please.

Does adjuvant therapy in the form of fasting affect survival in clinical trials in cancer patients?

Is this proven and accepted?

Sure. It's a thing. See this:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2815756/

"Proven" is of course a continuum rather than a binary state. There's plenty of evidence to suggest that calorie restriction and fasting are beneficial across the board, and in cancer, and specifically as adjuvants. Getting that past the FDA as an official approved treatment is still ongoing, I believe. Most likely because "eating less" is not attached to "we can make a huge amount of money charging for this" so who is going to pay for all the studies and data that the FDA wants? One of Longo's innovations is to have found a way to make that happen within the system, I think.

https://www.google.com/webhp?#q=cancer%20%22dietary%20restri...

The evidence is weak.

In those patients whose cancer progression could be assessed, fasting did not prevent the chemotherapy-induced reduction of tumor volume or tumor markers. Although the 10 cases presented here suggest that fasting in combination with chemotherapy is feasible, safe, and has the potential to ameliorate side effects caused by chemotherapies, they are not meant to establish practice guidelines for patients undergoing chemotherapy. Only controlled-randomized clinical trials will determine the effect of fasting on clinical outcomes including quality of life and therapeutic index.

There was a paper published last year by this group where they did a study of Cancer patients (and a bigger study in mice) receiving a particular kind of Chemo, and their immune systems post therapy were basically 'rebooted'. The protocol in that work was a periodic 2 day water fast in 6 cycles timed with the Chemotherapy adminstration. They then did a very small pilot study and saw the reversal of immunosenescence in people who did the cyclic fasting without Chemotherapy. It was a reasonable effect, but the human studies were smallish and probably could use more reproduction.

Do any of these reveal the diet basics? I wonder if a Soylent-like product could deliver?

The Soylent Clone "Jake" https://jakeshake.eu/ has a "Jake Light" version that is just 1500 kcal per day:

https://jakeshake.eu/product/jake-light/

There are a few ketogenic soylents -- check out the sidebar at http://www.reddit.com/r/soylent/

I go for Ambronite - it's real food and 500 kcal makes is perfect for fasting days. Ordered here http://ambronite.com/

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