There are some claims of health benefits and a LOT of anecdotal speak on the health benefits of 5:2 or 4:3 dieting. I for one am doing 5:2 for health reasons and if weight loss happens great. I’m more concerned with my health. I needed a new way of eating. This seems to be working for me and it’s easy enough and is adaptable to my life. We’ll see in 6 months or so where I’m at.

Dr. Walter Longo director at the USC Longevity Institute and he helped form the USC’s Biology of Aging has pretty much stated that to get the effects of health and longevity benefits of fasting that the fast be a minimum of 2-3 days and I’ve heard that he’s said 3-4 though I’ve not heard him say that or read a statement by him to that effect.

You can read a short interview with him on the net at http://naturalmedicinejournal.com/journal/2013-01/caloric-restriction-and-fasting-disease-prevention-and-treatment There are a LOT of people doing fasts of 3-10 days to help with cancer treatments and to gain cell recovery. I don’t understand that enough to talk about it.

His statement of ” Fasting protects normal cells by causing entry into a non-dividing stress resistance mode, which we have shown to be similar in organisms ranging from yeast to humans. By contrast fasting makes it worse for cancer cells by generating an extreme environment with low glucose and growth factors and high ketone bodies, which weakens cancer cells. ….” in that alone is kind of like a light bulb to me.

Dr, Longo is featured in theBBC2 Horizon documentary Eat, Fast & Live Longer by Michael Mosley which is the basis of the 5:2 diet. (how I wish it had never been called a diet as really it’s a way or format of eating) You can view the entire documentary on line if you haven’t seen it just Google or Bing it or your fav search engine.