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This 2019 study tested a variety of dietary interventions designed to elevate serum ketone levels on autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD). The study found time-restricted feeding, fasting, a ketogenic diet, and beta-hydroxybutyrate supplementation each slowed the progression of, and in some cases even reversed, ADPKD in rats.

On Dec. 4, 2019, Judge Janis L. Sammartino ordered terminating sanctions against the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) in the case of CrossFit, Inc. v. NSCA. With this ruling, the court ordered the NSCA to pay CrossFit $3,997,868.66 as a sanction and then terminated the case in CrossFit’s favor. CrossFit’s experience with the NSCA provides vital insight into the widespread damage that results from bad and outright corrupt science and, as in this case, efforts to conceal the corruption from the public and judicial system. CrossFit, Inc. has remained resolute in the fight to vindicate its affiliates and trainers in the face of the false charges leveled against them and the CrossFit methodology. This ruling marks a major victory in both this fight and CrossFit’s ongoing effort to pursue truth and expose deeply entrenched corruption in the fitness and health sciences.

Previous research has suggested intermittent fasting drives metabolic benefits independent of weight loss, including improvements in insulin sensitivity, lipid profile, liver fat, and markers of inflammation and oxidative stress. This 2018 trial assessed the metabolic benefits of a specific form of intermittent fasting: early time-restricted feeding, where all food intake was confined to a single six-hour window early in the day. Researchers found subjects who ate within that window improved insulin sensitivity and beta cell functionality as well as blood pressure and markers of oxidative stress.

"Hereditary and relatively common, polycystic kidney disease (PKD) has long been thought to be progressive and irreversible, condemning its sufferers to a long, slow and often painful decline as fluid filled cysts develop in the kidneys, grow and eventually rob the organs of their function. Progress toward finding a cure has been sluggish, with only one drug proven to slow — but not stop — the progression of PKD. But now, thanks to research conducted by a UC Santa Barbara team, a solution may be no farther than the end of your fork. Diet, they discovered, could hold the key to treating PKD. … Ketosis, the underlying metabolic state of popular diets such as the ketogenic diet, and, to a lesser extent, time-restricted feeding (a form of intermittent fasting), has been shown in the group’s studies to stall and even reverse PKD."

Dr. Malcolm Kendrick concludes his series on the response to injury hypothesis for cardiovascular disease (CVD) by observing that reducing risk relies on doing at least one of three things, and ideally all three: protecting the endothelium from damage, reducing blood coagulability, and improving the body’s healing processes. Kendrick highlights several specific ways to protect the endothelium, from quitting smoking to getting more sun to increasing potassium intake.

“The reaction [to the Annals of Internal Medicine publications debunking the advice to eat less meat] was swift and unsurprising. Proponents of the current guidelines were quick to attack the papers and the authors. The first thing that I noticed in the first media article I read was that the word “controversial” appeared in the first sentence. … A (essentially, if not entirely) non-conflicted panel published four systematic reviews of all the evidence available (which was vast for observational studies, if not RCTs) and concluded that any associations observed were very small and the certainty of evidence was low or very low. They cautioned that observational studies cannot establish causation; they don’t report absolute differences; and they are at high risk of confounding. My conclusion from this would have been to dismiss existing guidelines and advise that they be ignored. The panel’s recommendations to continue current consumption were cautious in this context, not controversial.”

In these contrasting pieces, two authors provide differing argumentation regarding whether the replication crisis, p-hacking, and similar well-documented issues indicate science is broken or working as intended in a self-correcting process.

This 2018 review describes the causes and benefits of “flipping the metabolic switch” — that is, using fasting to transition the body from a state of fat storage to one of fatty acid release and oxidation.

"A new report examining the first decade of study results being reported on ClinicalTrials.gov finds that there has been slow progress among drug companies and academic research centers in reporting the results of human studies, but the quality of the data may still present a larger problem. The lack of quality data is undermining efforts at transparency. … ClinicalTrials.gov is often the only place that any results from trials are shared. Of a sample of 380 trials, 58% didn’t publish their results in a journal by the end of a year’s follow-up. And there is reason to believe that sponsors may not be reporting the same data on the database as they do in publications: Among the 47 trials that reported patient deaths, for instance, the authors counted up 995 deaths. When these same trials were later published in journals, they had reported 964 deaths."

This 2017 review summarizes the potential of a ketogenic diet to enhance the effects of radiotherapy. Radiotherapy is constrained by the damage it causes to healthy cells. As a result, any simultaneous treatment that can either increase the damage radiotherapy does to cancer cells or protect healthy cells from damage may increase its effectiveness. Potential benefits of a ketogenic diet alongside radiotherapy include the reduction of cancer cells’ ability to repair DNA, the slowing of tumor growth and repopulation, and the protection of healthy cells against the harms of radiotherapy by shifting them from an anabolic/growth-centric state to a non-dividing state.

“American taxpayers spend $30 billion annually funding biomedical research. By some estimates, half of the results from these studies can’t be replicated elsewhere — the science is simply wrong. Often, research institutes and academia emphasize publishing results over getting the right answers, incentivizing poor experimental design, improper methods, and sloppy statistics. Bad science doesn’t just hold back medical progress, it can sign the equivalent of a death sentence. ... In Rigor Mortis, award-winning science journalist Richard F. Harris reveals these urgent issues with vivid anecdotes, personal stories, and interviews with the nation’s top biomedical researchers. We need to fix our dysfunctional biomedical system — now.”

Dr. Malcolm Kendrick analyzes the hypothesis that atherosclerotic plaque develops when the rate of damage to the endothelium exceeds the body’s rate of healing. This means factors that can cause plaques to develop and grow accelerate endothelial damage, create larger and more difficult-to-clear thrombi, and/or impair healing. Kendrick provides examples of these factors — examples as diverse as sickle cell disease, taking immunosuppressants, and smoking — and claims this hypothesis for the cause of cardiovascular disease links risk factors that may not seem to have anything in common.

“Science became a strange co-production between scientists and journal editors, with the former increasingly pursuing discoveries that would impress the latter. These days, given a choice of projects, a scientist will almost always reject both the prosaic work of confirming or disproving past studies, and the decades-long pursuit of a risky ‘moonshot’, in favour of a middle ground: a topic that is popular with editors and likely to yield regular publications. ‘Academics are incentivised to produce research that caters to these demands,’ said the biologist and Nobel laureate Sydney Brenner in a 2014 interview, calling the system ‘corrupt.’”