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jlesnick t1_iu95p32 wrote

Reply to comment by CrazyCatLushie in Newly discovered species of bacteria in the microbiome may be a culprit behind rheumatoid arthritis by geoxol

I don’t know that’s it’s pseudoscience. They’ve been using fasting as treatment for a long time in parts of western and Eastern Europe. Doctors prescribe it and the national insurances cover it. The reason it’s not caught steam here in the US is partially because of how our healthcare system works. There’s no incentive for anyone to produce work and trials showing that fasting works or helps multiple conditions, and therefore insurance won’t cover it.

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purple_baron t1_iua8hjp wrote

It's essential that we separate the pseudoscience from actual science, but "national insurance covers it" is not sufficient evidence. After all, the UK covered homeopathic treatments up until recently (and may still, I remember an item in the news that that status may have changed, but couldn't find it quickly).

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jlesnick t1_iui50gb wrote

I agree with you that pseudoscience needs to be separated from actual science, but there's a lot of science behind fasting. There was a good documentary I saw about it on Amazon. If I remember they were mentioning that the USSR had done tons of studies on it but most of those studies never got translated to English which seems like a tragedy. The USSR was serious about science and imagine how much knowledge we are missing out on.

Anyways, if you do a google search you will see lots of studies on longterm fasting and it's heath benefits.

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