It’s well know, that fasting, intermittent fasting and various regimes can induce biochemical changes.
First study:
Authors are 3 iranias, a professor a phd student and a m.sc biochemistry. Bias alert.
Inclusion is n=22, . Not really large population to generalize from. It’s ramadam, they eat from sundown, not water fasting as you’ve argued in Araysars thread.
The study has been cited by a staggering....two.... other studies.
The impact factor of the journal, neurology international, was 0.33 in 2016. It’s based in Italy. Lancet is around 40, Nature aroun 60. This journal is garbage, aka the peer review quality. On it’s webpage it has neuroscience as a focus. This study is nowhere to be found in psychiatry.
On to the authers conclusion, which is obvious to anyone used to reading scientific journals:
“
Conclusions
In conclusion, our findings suggest that plasma levels of serotonin, BDNF and NGF were significantly increased during fasting month of Ramadan. However, there is still much that needs to be investigated to better understand the underlying mechanisms.”
Nothing concluding what you think, nor can it with such a low power (e.g. n is very low). It seems to me you’re reasoning by induction.
The bottom line is, you found one study, amung thousands with fasting that said what you like. Not really how science works. Try the cochrane library, meta analasis on many studies, which shows trend over many studies, not just a single one. There are numerous of those on nutrition, cardiovascular, lung, whatnot organs. Not many on mental health, zero on cochrane. Linking to an editorial in nature is not really a study nor was it specifically for depression. I grow tired of your selective reasoning.
Here are a couple of thousands evidence based clinical studies on fasting therapy to look it, lumi - it’s not really new to the world of science.
abstracts.cochrane.org
Better yet, go make a scientific trial, get it published, get others to test it, and we may speak again.
Feel free to post some more. But please stop generalizing from a study of n=22 in the future, thanks.