Intermittent fasting -- defined as restricting food and drink to 500 calories a day, twice a week -- was safe and successful in a small randomized trial of patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (MS).
Key Takeaways
Intermittent calorie restriction lowered leptin levels in a small trial of relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (MS).
Leptin may have a pathogenic role in MS.
Intermittent calorie restriction also showed cognitive benefits in an exploratory analysis.
I do the intermittent fasting at least 5 times a week when I'm not on holiday 😅 my MS is still "aggressive", as they said, back in 2021. Still only RRMS apparently though 🤔
I suspect you're getting mixed up with what are actually called time-restricted eating patterns. The 5/2 intermittent fasting that is the subject of the article on the link BettysMom has posted is reduced calorie intake on only 2 days a week - it's the restricted eating pattern that was devised/ formulated by the late Dr Michael Mosley and which attracted quite a lot of attention when he first came up with it some years ago. It requires restricted food intake for two days a week, and restricts the types of foods that can be eaten on those days.
Time-restricted eating patterns are when food intake is restricted to one block of time during the day, with a fairly long period (e.g. 12/ 14/ 16 hours) when only clear fluids are consumed. It tends to get called "fasting" as most people don't really understand the terminology and the distinctions - and in fact the 5/2 pattern is not true fasting but is actually a calorie restriction eating pattern done a couple of days a week.
If you were restricting your intake to 500 calories "at least 5 times a week" you would become malnourished in a relatively short time. That level of calorie restriction does have some uses but should only be done under medical supervision, and is used by some doctors to instigate very rapid weight loss, usually to help with trying to control diabetes.
Some do, but the lengths of time involved in time-restricted eating patterns are generally not really all that long - 16 hours without food is not really a fast, it's just a very long hungry day if you're used to breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with many snacks thrown in for good measure........
A daily pattern of restricting food intake is just a daily pattern, whereas two days a week is intermittent becasue it's not done every day.
Leaving aside any issues about quality (or a lack thereof) of food eaten, most people in western societies eat way more calories than necessary. When you do factor the density of calories in the diets of far too many people, it's no wonder that there is a problem with obesity and related health issues. People like to carry on about Big Pharma making profits, but many of the food companies are even worse offenders.
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