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Diet and food › Intermittent Fasting and Weight › Studies

Randomized trial · measured other health measures

8-week trial, 40 older adults: more weight loss with 5:2 fasting, similar brain gains

Kapogiannis and colleagues · Cell metabolism · 2024

Original title: Brain responses to intermittent fasting and the healthy living diet in older adults.

Under review. A person has not yet checked this summary against the paper. It is written from the PubMed abstract. Until a person checks it, search engines are asked not to list this page.

What the study found

Mixed

Fasting led to more weight loss than the healthy living diet. Both diets gave similar gains in brain scans and blood markers. Main aim was brain health; no weight numbers in abstract.

The study at a glance

Type of study
Randomized trial
Who or what was studied
40 people · older adults with normal thinking and insulin resistance
What was tested
5:2 intermittent fasting vs a healthy living diet, for 8 weeks
What it measured
Several kinds of outcomes
How long
8 weeks
Trial registration
NCT02460783
Who has a stake
No stake declared
No competing interests declared.
Journal
Cell metabolism, 2024
Source
PubMed record 38901423. This page is based on the abstract only.

How much this study counts

  • ✓Randomized: people were put into groups by chance, so the groups start out alike.
  • –Small: 40 people. Small trials can miss real effects or find chance ones.
  • –Short: 8 weeks. Longer-term effects are unknown.
  • •Measured several kinds of outcomes.
  • ✓No competing interests declared.
  • •Summarized from the PubMed abstract only. The full paper may hold details the abstract leaves out.

✓ Strength– Limit• Note

These points come from fixed rules about the type of study, its size and length, what it measured, and who has a stake. Every study on Digestery gets the same rules.

Where this study sits

Each dot is one on-topic paper on this question. Steps near the top answer the question more directly.

↑ Stronger evidence

  1. Trials in people: weight loss

    9

    5 benefit, 2 mixed, 2 no difference

  2. Trials in people: other measures

    8

    4 benefit, 3 mixed, 1 no difference

    ↑ This study is the ringed dot

  3. Trials in people: lab tests or safety

    1

    1 benefit

  4. Population studies

    0

    None among the papers we read.

  5. Blood levels and genes

    0

    None among the papers we read.

↓ Weaker evidence

  • Points to benefit
  • Mixed
  • No difference
  • No direction
  • Points to harm

How it fits with the other research

The short answer to “Does intermittent fasting help with weight loss?”

Yes, but about like calorie cutting.

Confidence: moderate. Based on 26 on-topic papers.

Read the full answer

Of the other 7 papers on the same step: 4 benefit, 2 mixed, 1 no difference. This one found mixed. It differs from most of them.

  • Counted on the ladder, but not quoted in the page’s main findings.

Other papers on the same step

See all 26 studies on this question

How this page was made

Label

First read of the abstract
Claude Sonnet
Independent second read
Claude Haiku
Differences settled
The two reads agreed on every checked field. Claude Opus 5.5.
Headline
Claude Sonnet, from the checked study record. A script checked its numbers and wording.
Numbers
Checked against the abstract by a script
“How much this study counts”
Fixed rules, the same for every study
Source check by a person
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