Recent studies suggest that fasting may help in preventing health problems including obesity, inflammation, neurodegeneration, and autoimmune diseases. While generally defined as the voluntary abstinence from some or all foods, fasting comes in many forms such as intermittent fasting, alternate-day fasting, caloric restriction. The differing definitions for the many types of fasting have hampered efforts to compare the results of fasting studies.

An international panel of experimental and clinical experts issued a consensus statement defining 28 forms of fasting on July 25 in Cell Metabolism. The panel included specialists in nutrition, chronobiology, and aging, as well as experts on medically supervised fasting and different religious fasting traditions. The consensus statement’s standardized definitions should assist future studies into fasting’s potential benefits.

One of the statement’s co-authors is Martin Grajower, M.D., a clinical professor of medicine at Einstein and an endocrinologist at Montefiore.