[vjancik]

It's like the author heard about this practice briefly and jumped straight to "Wait, this doesn't make any sense!" and spun his lack of understanding in the most extreme way.

Instead of asking what's driving people to this practice and whether the practice produced noticeable mental health benefits in the participants.

"It can't work how I understand it", doesn't mean it actually can't work, only that you've failed to understand.

[mattkrause]

"Work" has two overloaded meanings here.

It might `work` in the sense that it causes the practitioners feel better, without the biochemistry `working` as hypothesized. Indeed, the author points out that many of the practices are pretty close to more traditional mindfulness/sleep hygiene recommendations anyway.

[xdavidliu]

I think the author took the phrase "dopamine fast" literally and spent a good deal of his article trying to show that dopamine fasts don't reduce dopamine, which is sort of missing the point.