[alecst]

For those who are curious, there's some anecdata online that extended fasting (days or weeks) can reverse this disease.

I can't find much published research on it to be fair, but I think the science in this field is lagging behind people's personal experiences.

If there's evidence to the contrary let me know, I'm not trying to spread misinformation. It's just one of the things I consistently recall reading over the years.

Edit since I'm being downvoted:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6893587/ (prolonged fasting, ~8 days)

> The improvement of FLI correlated with the number of fasting days (r = −0.20, p < 0.0001)

https://eglj.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s43066-021-00... (ADF rat model)

> MSRDF rats showed cure of grade-1 NAFLD and significantly decreased LW than other groups and normalized HOMA-IR, HbA1C TC, LDL-C, ALT, and CRP.

https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(22)... (exercise + ADF, humans)

[cmrx64]

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-45260-9

this is the main thing I could find.

https://prolonlife.com/ sells a prepackaged fasting-mimicking diet. plenty of reviews online about the subjective effects on energy levels and soforth during the fast.

I didn’t like it. day 2.5-3 will put me back into the headspace of food scarcity and even knowing that the next meal was sitting in the box and that this is temporary … it was a mental challenge for me. if you’ve never experienced food scarcity, it can be all-consuming and seriously warp your cognition and emotional baseline.

[SlowTao]

Personally it is a strange thing. Diffcult to do over 24 hours but easy over a few days. Once you get over the head space of "im hungry must eat!" It turns into "im hungry, oh well".

But this is a sample size of 1 and results definetly vary wildly between folks.

[ty6853]

Even cutting back a couple hundred calories a day can leave you absolutely exhausted, in my experience. Even just increasing exercise by a couple hundred calories a day without eating more is also incredibly exhausting, after a few weeks it becomes thought dominating second-by-second.

Hunger is truly a powerful driver.

[SketchySeaBeast]

That feels like the incorrect framing, the burden of proof is on the initial claim. That'd be like saying "I've heard online that leprechauns live on the moon. I haven't found published research on it, but I think science in this field is lagging behind personal telescopic experience. If there's evidence to the contrary let me know, but I've read it online a lot." and treating that like it's proof of moon leprechauns.

[al_borland]

It's not exactly the same, as there are studies, there just haven't been a lot yet, since a lot of the study around it is new, although fasting has been practiced for thousands of years. There is no money in fasting, so the number of organizations willing to fund the studies goes way down.

To put some numbers to it:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10564080/

> Only five out of the 1304 studies on NAFLD involved IF.

Here is one that mentions there may be some efficacy to the idea and no harm.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8958240/

> In conclusion, current evidence suggests that intermittent fasting in patients with NAFLD is a feasible, safe, and effective means for weight loss, with significant trends towards improvements in dyslipidemia and NAFLD as illustrated through non‐invasive testing (NIT).

If someone has NAFLD, they can either sit around and eat cake for 20 years waiting for the science, or they can try doing some fasting, which is very low risk (assuming they don't have other issues going on), and find out very quickly if it works for them. Sure, it's an n of 1 in that case, but who cares, if they are the test subject it only matters if it works on them.

I'd add to this that the carbs should be kept low and the diet having quality foods outside of the fasts. Eating aforementioned cake during a feeding window every day is going to leave a person miserable, burning muscle, and still leave the hormones all screwed up. Insulin needs to be controlled and lowered. Fasting does that quickly, but don't abuse it during your meals on a regular basis.

From what I've read elsewhere, fasting can help in the early stages to reverse it, but once real damage occurs that sticks around.

[apwell23]

so live a life of gluttony and "reverse" it in few days of fasting. seems like a good deal.