Intermittent fasting, and fasting in general, has been a popular fad health gimmick, but the science isn't on its side. Instead, proponents believe mice are little people so if mice weaned on starvation diets lived longer, people would also.
It's not only lacking in evidence, fasting is instead linked to accumulated chronic diseases and rather than increasing longevity the association is strongest among the elderly. Data were drawn from the Swedish National Study on Aging and Care in Kungsholmen (SNAC-K), which includes 2,981 people in Stockholm who were aged 60 years or older at the start of the study. The duration of intervals between meals was estimated from participants’ self-reported information about when they typically ate during a 24-hour period. Association over 15 years. People whose longest interval between meals during a typical day was 14 hours or more accumulated chronic diseases more rapidly than those whose longest interval was 6 to 11.5 hours. The association was observed for the total number of chronic diseases, as well as for cardiovascular and neuropsychiatric diseases.
Predicted trajectories of total chronic disease accumulation over a 15-year follow-up across habitual fasting duration categories, stratified by age (<78 years = 1619, ≥78 years = 1362.
Like all results based on surveys, computer simulations, or animal models, these results are only EXPLORATORY, there is no scientific link despite what lawyers and activist groups try to suggest. Correlation is never causation and it could be that people eat a lot less because they have more diseases.
That there was no increased risk of musculoskeletal diseases is a confounder.
Citation: Luis Kalmbach, David Abbad-Gomez, Giorgi Beridze, Fernando Rodríguez-Artalejo, Davide Liborio Vetrano, Amaia Calderón-Larrañaga, Adrián Carballo-Casla, 'Habitual fasting duration and accelerated multimorbidity in older adults', Journal of Internal Medicine, August 20, 2026, doi: 10.1111/joim.70150
