• Guest - w'd love to know what you think about the forum! Take the 2025 Survey »

Fasting diets may raise risk of diabetes, researchers warn

Interesting. Looked up the Society for endocrinology and the European one too and the International society, and the only event any of them scheduled for May 2018 does not mention this study at all.
https://www.ese-hormones.org/

So I am not sure where that newspaper report came from. Nothing in Dr Google connecting fasting with increased risk of diabetes, but there is one report involving free radicals with cancer. Fake News?

Cannot find anything for Sao Paulo Uni either in relation to fasting or diabetes apart from this one, which is nothing to do with fasting
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3124998/

Still Fake News?

Edit to add: since posting this, a link to the study report has been found and shared in a following post.
 
Last edited:
Perhaps they should stop fasting the rats and feed them on The Guardian? Just a thought...
 
Oldvatr said:
Interesting. Looked up the Society for endocrinology and the European one too and the International society, and the only event any of them scheduled for May 2018 does not mention this study at all.
https://www.ese-hormones.org/

So I am not sure where that newspaper report came from. Nothing in Dr Google connecting fasting with increased risk of diabetes, but there is one report involving free radicals with cancer. Fake News?

Cannot find anything for Sao Paulo Uni either in relation to fasting or diabetes apart from this one, which is nothing to do with fasting
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3124998/

Still Fake News?
Click to expand...
It was defo on the ESE website this morning cos I checked after speeding through the Guardian website.

Edited to add link.........
https://www.ese-hormones.org/public...mittent-fasting-diets-increase-diabetes-risk/
 
Last edited:
The plot thickens!
 
urbanracer said:
It was defo on the ESE website this morning cos I checked after speeding through the Guardian website.

Edited to add link.........
https://www.ese-hormones.org/public...mittent-fasting-diets-increase-diabetes-risk/
Click to expand...
Thank you for this link. the PDF download is interesting reading. Firstly, apart from body weight and food intake, there appears to have been no other baseline measurements taken in vivo. The rats were killed and their organs then examined, and lo and behold they were found to have changed at the post mortem stage, i.e as an invitro exercise. How did they measure the stomach pre treatment when the rat was still alive to then make the statements that IF made their stomachs larger? That methodology is clearly missing a link or two. How is insulin resistance measured in a very dead rat in a petri dish? again, this is an important part of their analysis that is missing important details.

I have to conclude that there was a set of control rats that are being compared to, but we have no details of how they were fed and watered and treated so again could there be a systemic error creeping in? I am reminded of other rat stidies that have been used to justify certain treatments or therapies, where it was later shown that the very food they were given skewed the results, or that the methodology used normal rats as control, but specially bred rats for the sample population, and these were shown to have genetic defects that also made the studies meaningless. I remain skeptikal.

NB. We do not seem to see humans following the same patterns as these rats. There is no reports so far that I am aware of that human stomachs increase in size following IF, or that adipose tissue grows either, in fact the anecdotal evidence is the opposite to this study. However, that said, we do see stomachs becoming bloated when there is famine or starvation, but that is a significantly different state to IF. Did they starve the rats?
 
Maybe we should call for the Nanny State to ban the religious practice of fasting. It seems to be a step towards meeting our maker earlier than planned and that practice must be stopped forthwith.
 
I admit to not having read the study, but I am always suspicious of any testing on Norway Rats. Their metabolism is different, they cannot vomit and they have no spleen.

They are very social creatures, will raise and feed each others litters, and in the wild will also bring food to sick or elderly members of the group who cannot feed themselves.

Unlike humans, rats are opportunistic scavengers, happily consuming carrion, old bones (their back teeth grind everything into a powder before swallowing) and will happily and regularly eat their own dead as naturally as they would eat dandelions or hunt insects.

Edited to add that pregnant rats under stress will reabsorb their litters. Low resources means no more babies and/or younger low ranking animals are evicted from the community. If you see a sleek rat in the daytime, it's been excommunicated and undertaking very risky behaviour to eat.

I really don't believe that fasting is in any way a natural state for rats. The study can only show what happened to severely stressed animals (one can only surmise they were kept in solitary confinement to stop fighting, injuring and eating one another) in an unnatural environment testing something their metabolisms were never meant to cope with in the first place.

Better idea: let's study this in humans. It would never be as clinically excellent as any study on captive animals, and would certainly prove far more difficult to fund but it would at least be relevant to our own species.
 
Last edited:
I think that there could be some issue, if your “after fast meal” is high carb. The insulin shock each 12 h can be devastating and can lead to insulin resistence in long term - but it is only my theory :-)
 
bulkbiker said:
I had the "pleasure" of meeting Dr Moseley at the PHC conf on Saturday. I must admit I was quite surprised to see him there and did ask if he was going to do a low carb program.... he evaded..
Click to expand...
Not surprising that since he had his own agenda - the 8 week diet which is based on the Mediterranean diet (not considered to be an LC diet) for which he is another Guru. (or advocate if you prefer) It is like asking Jeremy Corben if he will be voting Tory at the next election.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top