Efficacy of a fasting-mimicking diet in functional therapy for depression: A randomised controlled pilot trial
A 20-patient pilot trial in people already receiving psychotherapy for depression.
J Clin Psychol, 2020. Maniaci G, et al.
Funding and competing interests: see the published paper.
- Study type
- Human clinical trial (randomized pilot, n=20)
- Journal
- J Clin Psychol
- Published
- 2020
- Authors
- Maniaci G, et al.
- DOI
- 10.1002/jclp.22971
- PubMed ID
- 32394438
Summary
Twenty patients with depression were randomly assigned to 20 sessions of a structured psychotherapy protocol alone, or to the same psychotherapy combined with a Fasting Mimicking Diet (FMD), in this small pilot trial.
The authors reported that both groups improved on measures of depression, self-esteem and quality of life, with the group that also followed the FMD showing additional improvement in self-esteem and psychological quality of life, along with a reduction in mean body mass index, compared with the therapy-only group.
The authors describe this as 'initial evidence' from a small pilot (20 patients) that tested the FMD only as an addition to psychotherapy, not on its own, and only in people already diagnosed with and in treatment for depression. The additional improvements reported for the FMD group were in self-esteem, psychological quality of life and body mass index; the abstract does not report a difference between the groups in depression itself.
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