Hi NickyB,

I shouldn’t worry about typos. If mental acuity were measured on the basis of typing skills I would be classified as having severe learning difficulties. You have my maximum respect as a class player of a game I can’t even begin to understand.

Although I was already a term into a two-year part-time MA History of Art when I started doing 5:2 at the beginning of Feb 2013, since that time I’ve been getting very good marks for all my assignments, despite predictions from one or two people – not at the uni, may I add – that I was likely to make a complete idiot of myself studying at this level at my age. Prior to starting the post-grad course I had come through with flying colours a one-year conversion course for people with degrees in other disciplines.

Whether it’s to do with 5:2 – I’d like to think it may be – I’ve found the whole post-grad study thing more enjoyable and a tad easier than I had imagined, still hard, sometimes a bit frightening, but do-able. I wouldn’t say my progress is measurable, but it’s certain observable.

I should add that apart from uni I still work full time as a freelance linguist. All this at an age (I’ll never see 70 again) when there are those who would prefer to see me stuck in front of daytime telly or toddling down to the day centre for a nice game of bingo and a singalong to some 1950s crooner.

Hi all, what I have found after years of “normal lifestyles” eg, “excessive alcoholic drinking”, “pigging out on food” and general “excessive living” is that the 5:2 lifestyle actually helps enhance both my “mental” and “physical” well being. I understand that as an individual there is no way this can be quantified as a person.But over all, more days than not I feel better. Nicky, you have raised an interesting point that deserves more research. Rocky, for most of us it is just a matter of that “internal well being” feeling that gives us all an indication that things are improving. Onwards and upwards as we say.

I’ve had a 50% improvement in short term memory since starting 5:2 as measured by a university research program I am part of, which uses computer games.

No proof improvement is due to 5:2 but the timing (to me) implies it is. 🙂

Hi Lotus,

Thanks for you kind comment from a year or so back. Thought you would like to know I completed the MA last September and passed with Merit.

I won’t be going on to a PhD but will be keeping the brain in gear by following my lovely supervisor’s advice and reworking my independent research project report – which narrowly missed a Distinction – into a book for a general readership. It’s about a flat in a Glasgow tenement that became a museum and my research revealed a whole load of fascinating “human interest” stories.

My mind-bending job as a freelance translator specialising in arts and media also keeps the grey matter firing on all cylinders and I get the feeling (and colleagues tell me)I’ve got even better at it post-MA.

One thing hasn’t improved, though. I’m still absolute rubbish at numbers and getting worse. And I’ve never been much use at so-called IQ tests.