Editorial policy
How the 208 guides, 8 topic pages and the 22 tools in The Lab are researched, written, sourced and corrected — and the limits of what any of it can tell you.
Read this first
Everything on this site is general information, not medical or nutritional advice. It is not a substitute for professional care and it knows nothing about your health history. Our content is not medically reviewed — there is no clinician on staff — so instead we cite the sources behind health claims and link them so you can read the original.
Fasting changes blood sugar, blood pressure, hydration and how medication behaves. Talk to a doctor before you fast if you take any prescription medication, have diabetes, are pregnant or breastfeeding, are under 18, or have any history of an eating disorder.
Who writes this
One person: Ziggy, the founder of Fasted, who built the app and writes the articles and the tool methodology on this site. Guides carry the byline "By Ziggy · Founder of Fasted".
Ziggy is not a doctor, dietitian or nutritionist. The experience behind these pages is in building the tracker — fasting windows, metabolic phases, streaks — which meant reading the fasting literature and the public-health guidance closely. We say that plainly rather than dressing the site up with credentials that do not exist.
Drafts are written with AI assistance and edited by the founder before they publish. Nothing goes up unread. Every factual claim is checked against the source named on the page, and anything that cannot be sourced is softened or cut rather than dressed up as evidence.
How content is produced
- 1. Start from the question a real person asks. Topics come from what people actually search and from what Fasted users ask — "does cream break my fast", "why do I get a headache at hour 16".
- 2. Research against primary sources. Health claims are checked against public-health bodies, drug labels and peer-reviewed literature, not against other blogs. Claims about another app come from that app's own store listing and published pricing.
- 3. Write it plainly, keep the numbers honest. Where the evidence gives a range, we give the range. Where a study is small, or in animals, or self-reported, we say so instead of turning it into a law. Autophagy timing is the clearest example: nobody can measure it outside a lab, and our pages say that.
- 4. List the sources on the page. A sourced guide ends with a numbered Sources section naming each publication and linking it, so you can verify anything you doubt. If a claim has no source we can check, it does not run.
- 5. Say who a page is not for. Fasting is not safe for everyone. Pages about medication, pregnancy, breastfeeding, diabetes and extended fasts say who should not be doing this and when to stop, near the top, not buried at the bottom.
The sources we rely on
In rough order of how often they are used:
- Peer-reviewed literature via PubMed Central and PubMed — fasting trials, metabolic switching, autophagy, insulin.
- FDA-approved prescribing information for anything about a drug — doses, half-lives, warnings and side-effect rates come from the label, never from a summary of it.
- The US National Institutes of Health, including NIDDK and MedlinePlus — plain-language clinical information, weight management, blood sugar.
- NICE, the World Health Organization and the American Diabetes Association — guidelines, risk thresholds and standards of care.
- USDA FoodData Central — every calorie and macro number behind the food tools.
- Another app's own store listing — when we describe a competitor's features or price, the source is their published listing, linked, not our memory of it.
Every source URL on this site was checked to resolve before it was published. If a link rots, tell us and we will repoint or remove it.
Where we are with citations
This site grew fast and its citations did not keep up. Until August 2026 not one article on it carried a source list, and 147 of them carried a "medically reviewed" line with no reviewer, no credential and no date behind it. That badge was false and it has been removed everywhere. We are not going to pretend it was a formatting problem.
On 5 August 2026 we started paying it back with the pages where being wrong does the most damage: fasting with diabetes, cancer, thyroid disease and high blood pressure; fasting while breastfeeding or trying to conceive; fasting on metformin, Ozempic, Wegovy, semaglutide and the GLP-1 class; and the side-effects guide. Every factual claim on those pages was checked against a primary source. Claims that could not be sourced were cut.
28 of 208 articles carry a checked source list today. The rest is standing debt, and we would rather show you the number than hide it. Every article published from August 2026 onward ships with its sources, and the remaining pages are being worked through in the same order of risk. A page with no Sources section at the bottom has not been through that pass yet — treat it accordingly.
What this site does not do
- It is not medically reviewed. No doctor or clinician reviews these pages before publication. Nothing here should be read as a clinician's opinion, and you will never see a "medically reviewed" badge on this site again.
- It does not diagnose. Our quizzes and calculators are prompts for thinking, not assessments. Only a qualified professional who can examine you can tell you whether fasting is safe for you.
- It does not tell you to change your medication. Never adjust insulin, a GLP-1 dose or any other prescription because of something you read here. That conversation belongs with the person who prescribed it.
- It does not push longer fasts. Longer is not better, it is just longer. No tool here will plan a fast beyond 72 hours, and pages about extended fasting lead with who should not be doing it.
- It does not invent evidence. No made-up statistics, no studies we have not read, no "studies show" with nothing behind it.
Updates and corrections
Every guide shows the date it was published at the top, and an "Updated" date beside it once it has been revised. The published date never moves. The updated date moves when the content changes — not on a schedule, and never just to look fresh to a search engine.
We revisit a guide when a cited source publishes a substantive revision, when a drug label changes, or when a reader points out an error. Factual corrections are made as soon as we can verify them.
Found something wrong, outdated or badly explained? Tell us — include the page and, if you have one, the source. Corrections that change meaning get a fresh update date.
Money and independence
This site is published by Fasted and exists partly to introduce people to the Fasted app, which is free to use with an optional paid tier. We say so openly, and every tool on this site stays free and works without the app or an account.
We run no display ads, and no guide, comparison or tool here is sponsored, paid for, or influenced by a third party. Comparison articles that name other fasting apps are not affiliate placements — we make nothing if you pick one of them, and we are not going to pretend they have no good features.
Trademarks
Fasted is an independent app and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to any other app, program or drug manufacturer named on this site. Zero, Simple, BodyFast, Fastic and the rest are trademarks of their owners; Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro are trademarks of theirs.
Where our guides name another product, they do it to describe it accurately and to link to that product's own published information. No page here should be read as that company's word.
Questions about this policy
Write to us via the contact page. See also our privacy policy and terms of service.