I think both you guys are saying similar things but from a different angle, and your beliefs are not as different as it comes across.

We all know studies can be very helpful and conductive to progress, and you've both also acknowledged that any studies can have hidden agendas, be dangerous and also a means to demonstrate said agendas (dollar dollar bill, y'all). Fasting, and herbs for that matter, have not been researched to anywhere near the same extent as pharmaceuticals and the like simply because its industry driven and you can't patent water or various natural plants and substances.

Whilst it interests me, I dont follow and fully know the intricacies on the workings on things health/fitness/optimization on an academic level like you guys. But I can add my two cents on fasting having visited a facility and undergone a two week medically supervised water fast and re-feed. The benefit of 'resting your digestion' from how I understand it is that your body uses up a mass of its energy (I think over 60%) on the digestion of food, and this energy is then used on the detox/healing process... on cell repair rather than simply building new cells that is prioritised in our 'normal' state.

I can tell you that when I was deep into the fast, whilst understandably not being able to physically do a great deal of moving around etc. I felt a mental alertness, sharpness and clarity that I haven't experienced before or since. I was also waking up on maybe 4 hours sleep being totally refreshed and alert, almost like aside from not being able to exert myself physically I was operating on a more tuned level. I can also say that during my time at the facility I spoke with a person who had actually reversed full blown type 2 diabetes and people who were recovering from similar and it was astounding. I can also say that after my re-feed and I was back up and running 'in normality' I was certainly operating on a different level to what I had pre-fast... It was remarkable how resilient I felt, my display pic on here is only a couple of months post fast (during which I hit 140lbs).

I can appreciate there can be certain negative impacts to undertaking something as taxing as a water fast, but for me the pro's outweighed the cons and I saw some incredible improvements in other peoples health through my experience too, although the most amazing and stark improvements were from people 'coming back from the brink' rather than striving towards peak performance.

I can't justify the intricacies of why/how things work as I dont have the knowledge to the extent of you guys... but it seems whilst you do have some opposing views (which is healthy, its what constructive discussion is all about), you both aren't all that far apart minutae aside.