[tptacek]

They're only fasting for a month out of the year.

[Nemant]

A lot of practicing Muslims also fast Mondays and Thursdays and the “3 white days” of the month[0]

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasting_in_Islam see “Days of voluntary fasting”

[tptacek]

TIL! Thank you!

[MattGaiser]

So do they have fewer early stages cancers diagnosed in the months after?

[mathattack]

The duration in the article is 4 months.

The real issue is small sample size. (14 people)

[hammeiam]

From the title: "Intermittent fasting from dawn to sunset for four consecutive weeks..."

[oh_sigh]

Also, not just 14 people, but 14 people with a metabolic disorder.

[jp0d]

That's a really small sample size. Are they allowed to publish a study like this for such a small sample? Does anyone know if there is a minimum threshold size?

[dr_dshiv]

Allowed to publish? First it's a pilot study. Second, it's actually not a small sample size if you reasonably anticipate big effects and have multiple measures for each of the people at multiple time points. It isn't an observational study, though believers might have wished for a matched control group - - the anticancer effects might have come from the Ramadan prayer vs fasting!

[Schiendelman]

That’s literally the fasting term in the study.