This, however, seemed a big claim (yes I’m doing a thread, we’re all just figuring this out right??). And big claims require big evidence or at least for me to read the original paper (which very annoyingly news articles NEVER link to). Anyway I managed to track it down, it’s here if anyone else wants to read it. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/…

And...I mean congrats to the uni PR department for playing a blinder but I really do not think this paper says what the media reports indicate.

For a start, which the media reports do point out, the study was done in zebrafish. What they fail to point out however, is that the fasting was for TWO WEEKS. As in: they starved the fish of food for the entirety of that time. Which is not how any human intermittent fasting I’m aware of works. Certainly it’s not how the far more common time restricted eating - which is specifically flagged in the Times piece for comparison - works