Dhru Purohit Show - The Mind-Blowing Science of Water-Only Fasting with Dr. Alan Goldhamer

Starting point is 00:00:00 The reason people are sick is because of the pleasure trap. So you have to learn to escape the pleasure trap. One of the most powerful ways to escape the pleasure trap is fasting. Welcome to the Drew Proet podcast. Each week we explore the inner workings of the brain and the body with one of the brightest minds in wellness, medicine, and mindset. This week's guest is Dr. Allen Goldhammer. Dr. Allen Goldhammer is one of the world's leading experts

Starting point is 00:00:23 on medically supervised water-only fasting. At his True North Center in Santa Rosa, California, which Allen founded in 1984, they've guided over 20,000 patients through medically supervised water-only fasting. Some patients at the True North Center have fasted for up to 40 days on only water. How crazy and amazing is that. However, typically most patients are going to be fasting for a shorter period of time when they're undergoing and being supervised by Allen's staff. Allen has been the principal author of two landmark studies that showed evidence on the benefits of water-only fasting, as well as numerous case reports published in peer-reviewed indexes and

Starting point is 00:01:06 journals evaluating the effects of water-only fasting in the treatment of a variety of conditions. Lastly, I'll share this. There's a healthy discussion and debate around longer fast, beyond the typical time-restricted eating or overnight fasting for women in their prime reproductive years. I care about this topic a lot, and it's something that I've investigated because I have an audience that's mostly amazing women, and we've done some past episodes on the pros and cons around longer fast for women. So if you're curious about that, please check out some of our past podcast episodes that cover the topic. Dave Asprey, the founder of the Bulletproof methodology, has talked about it, Alyssa Vitti, as well as Dr. Stephanie Estima.

Starting point is 00:01:54 Now, one more note about Alan, before we jump into today's episode. He's written two books, the Health Promoting Cookbook, and he's also the co-author of the pleasure trap, mastering the hidden forces that undermines health and happiness. I hope you enjoy today's episode. I want to talk to you about a groundbreaking flagship bacterial strain that's been linked in thousands of scientific publications from everything from weight loss and better blood sugar control to lowering overall levels of inflammation. So what's this strain called?

Starting point is 00:02:25 It's called Acrimansia and it's made by the company pendulum. So why the heck do we want Accomancy and what does it do for our overall gut health and microbiome? So Acromancea feeds on our intestinal mucosal layer and modulates its thickness. That's a good thing. In exchange for providing acrimancia with the house and food, it pays us back by producing short chain fatty acids like propyleneate and enabling other strains to produce butyrate, which is super important for healing a leaking gut, supporting the immune system, and maintaining overall health. I first heard about acrimancia for my business partner, Dr. Mark Hyman,

Starting point is 00:03:03 when he got really sick a few years ago and his gut help took a turn for the worse. He said that building up his acrimancia was critical for helping him heal and support his overall gut restoration and getting his health back on track. Because acrimancia can only survive in an oxygen-free environment like your gut, it has been difficult for scientists to formulate it into a probiotic until now. Pendulum is the first company to figure out how to harness the amazing benefits of acromansia in a probiotic capsule, which is why I've been taking the probiotic daily ever since I got introduced to the company.

Starting point is 00:03:42 Right now, if you're interested in acrimancia, this flagship bacterial strain, Pendulum is offering my community 20% off your first purchase of their pendulum acrimancia probiotic supplement. All you have to do is go to their website, pendulumlife.com. That's pendulum, P-E-L-U-L-U-M-L-U-M-L-I-F-E dot com, and use the code Drew 20, spelled D-H-R-U-20 for 20% off your first purchase. Dr. Goldhammer, welcome to the podcast. It's a pleasure to have you here. I want to jump right in. And I want to talk about the top misconceptions when it comes to long-term medically supervised water fasting. I mean, you've been doing this for many years, 20,000 plus people that have come through your center, True North Center. And yet still, we live in a world where there's a lot of misconceptions about many things. And one of those, things being water fasting. So what are some of the top misconceptions about what it is,

Starting point is 00:04:52 what isn't, and who it's for? Well, you know, the first problem with water fasting, people aren't maybe as familiar with it that maybe only heard about it from Bible stories, Moses, David, Elijah, Jesus fasting for up to 40 days and whatnot. A lot of people think that if you don't eat, you die, that a lot of people think if you get on a plane in New York and you flew all the way to California, you'd die somewhere over Colorado. And the only reason you didn't dies because you ate the peanuts or you had those pretzels on the plane and that they saved your life. The reality is that fasting is a biological adaptation. All humans have the ability to fast, which is essentially convert your brain, your main burn of glucose to burning beta hydroxybutyric acid

Starting point is 00:05:32 rather than sugar. And what that allows us to do is go prolonged periods of time during periods of deprivation or when spring comes late. Chimpanzees, for example, don't fast. They continue to burn glucose in their brain. And so they would go relatively few number of days before they'd get into deep trouble, which is why you'll never see chimps wandering away from the tropics. They need a constant source of fuel year-round. All the humans that wandered away from the tropics died if they didn't have the ability to fast.

Starting point is 00:06:02 If they couldn't convert their massive brain into burning fat instead of glucose, you could go around a week or so without food. But even a 70-kilogram male can fast around 70 days. or more because our brain changes to burning fat. And as a consequence, we're able to use our fat stores and go for a long period of time. So we start off with the idea that this fasting that we're using is a biological adaptation. And as a consequence, there's an inherent sound physiology that the body goes through in converting from eating to not eating.

Starting point is 00:06:39 It turns out that we've applied this ancient practice of fasting in a modern environment, which is very abnormal, and that's where people have exposure to dietary excess. And it's dietary excess that leads to obesity, and obesity that leads to metabolic syndrome, and metabolic syndrome that leads to vulnerability to dying from everything, from cancer and heart disease to autoimmune disease, and even acute infections like COVID-19. If you have metabolic syndrome, your risk factors of complications from all these problems are going to be significantly higher. And so it's not surprising that fasting turns out to have great utility in reversing the consequences of dietary excesses.

Starting point is 00:07:16 So we treat it successfully with high blood pressure, with type 2 diabetes, a variety of body immune diseases. And now recently we've been doing some work with lymphoma that's been very promising. So is it fair to say that water fasting is really creating the right conditions for your body to do its own repair and healing process? Well, you know, the body's always doing its own repair and healing process. Fasting creates an environment where it can do some of that healing more efficiently, more effectively. Now, what have you found, because you talk about a few different types of fasting, and we're going to break them down. So what have you found, before we get into the standard time-restricted eating or the intermittent

Starting point is 00:07:58 fasting that people are practicing, which is now the research around that has exploded in the last many years, you've been talking about it for quite some time, and that's a whole journey there, we'll get to that. But what have you found when it comes to medically supervised water fast? Who really would be a candidate for exploring undergoing that? And is the medically supervised part an essential part of undergoing it? Yeah, you know, that's a really important question. And you mentioned intermittent fasting. And it's true, we've been recommending everybody fast every day for the last 40 years that we've been in practice and recommended they do that for 12 to 16 hours every day depending on their goals and that a little bit of fasting is enough to induce changes

Starting point is 00:08:43 as is being demonstrated now in current times by Volta Longo and others to cumulatively have a tremendous potential benefit what we've done is taken that intermittent fasting idea that idea of not eating three to four hours before you go to sleep and giving yourself a period of time every day and extended it and we extend it up to 40 days. So we'll have patients in a controlled setting for up to 40 days consuming nothing but water. Now, the problem is not everybody's a candidate at any given time for fasting, and the way you find out if a person's a good candidate is through a medical history,

Starting point is 00:09:19 a physical examination, and based on laboratory testing. And by doing a proper evaluation, you can determine if a person would likely benefit from fasting or if it might be contraindicated. Not everyone would benefit from this extended fasting. Most everybody can do the intermittent fasting safely and effectively, but when you start extending it, that requires those parameters. So you certainly need to work with a doctor that can do a proper history, do a physical exam, collect laboratory studies.

Starting point is 00:09:47 And then we also monitor patients twice a day because as helpful and beneficial as fasting can be, it can also present some challenges for people, particularly for people with significant health issues that are on medications and even people that aren't on medications, electrolyte balance still needs to be monitored so you maintain hydration, you don't get into trouble, particularly with these long-term fasts. And then perhaps even more importantly is appropriate reallentation after fasting. Too rapid return to feeding or inappropriate feeding after fasting can lead to refeating syndrome and other problems that can be even potentially fatal.

Starting point is 00:10:19 So it's important that people fast properly and that they refeed properly. Another thing that's important during long-term water fasting is rest. It's true that if you are very active during water fasting, you would lose more weight, but that weight would not be more fat. It would be, in fact, protein from a process called gluconeogenesis where your body breaks down protein in order to get the extra sugar it would need from increased activity. And remember, your brain is your biggest burner of glucose. So that's even too much mental activity as well as too much physical activity can be

Starting point is 00:10:50 contributative when it comes to long-term fasting. You know, we did a study recently that looked at body composition changes in long-term. term fasting. So we looked at, used a Dexas scanner where you can get accurate assessment of body composition, not just fat, but for example, how much is adipose tissue, how much is visceral fat, etc. And we looked at it before fasting, after fasting, and then we've even done it on follow-up at six weeks and now we're looking at one year follow-ups to see what happens to the body composition when you do long-term fasting.

Starting point is 00:11:19 The old wives tales were, well, you lose weight and you just gain it right back. And so it's not an effective strategy for changing body composition. What we found in this study was fascinating. It's true. When you go on a fast, you lose weight about an average of about a pound a day. And some of that fat, some of that weight is fat, some of its protein, some of its fiber, glycogen, some of its water. When you regain weight after fasting, we know now that what that weight is is water, fiber,

Starting point is 00:11:47 glycogen, and protein, not fat. That fat loss actually continues, at least when you're applying a whole plant food, SOS-free diet, you know, as your recovery diet. And then we've looked at six weeks, and we found people's lean tissue mass was actually higher six weeks after fasting than it was before they started fasting. And that what they lost was primarily adipose tissue and in particular visceral fat. That visceral fat is preferentially mobilized during water-only fasting. The ratio of visceral fat to adipose tissue loss is actually almost 3.0 is higher than any other

Starting point is 00:12:23 weight loss strategy that we've seen in terms of specifically mobilizing visceral fat. And it makes sense because visceral fat shouldn't be there in excess quantity. It's a situation where the body had no place else to store this potentially valuable material. And so that's where it ends up. It's the first fat that's mobilized. It's the most important fat to mobilize. It's the fat that's associated with inflammation and disease. And so we know now that there is fasting can be an effective strategy at mobilizing fat and

Starting point is 00:12:50 visceral fat. However, you still have to eat healthy and live healthy in order to maintain the long-term result. So it's not a replacement for healthy eating or exercise or anything else, but it is a facilitated way of specifically mobilizing materials that may be compromising people's health. And so, for example, in that screening process when you're looking at individuals and running some lab results, you know, there's people of all different walks of lives and backgrounds and body compositions listening to this podcast. So what are your thoughts about? individuals who feel like, you know, body composition and weight is not a primary concern of theirs, so they don't feel like they are in an unhealthy category on that side, is fasting

Starting point is 00:13:32 and especially long-term medically supervised water fasting still something that could have a benefit to those individuals. Well, you know, it's interesting because I've made a claim for 40 years that I've been doing this work that as beneficial as fasting appears to be in sick people because you see, you know, their blood pressure normalized, their blood sugar. normalized insulin resistance resolved the inflammation of autoimmune disease goes down lymphoma tumors disappear so yeah sick people clearly get some benefit when they use fasting but i've always claimed that healthy people might actually get more benefit than sick people in terms of the

Starting point is 00:14:07 changes and we i'm really excited because we just got the first data back on a series of healthy people that underwent fasting prophylactically and the magnitude of biomarker changes in those patients in some cases is even greater than the changes we see in sick people. Looking at things like, for example, acute phase reactive proteins or markers of inflammation, lipid levels, glucose levels, insulin, insulin resistance, you know, a number of variables that you look at to kind of indicate health or measure health potential. And the magnitude of change in healthy people in some cases is actually even greater than those same changes that we see in sick people.

Starting point is 00:14:44 So we're going to be doing some detailed studies this year exploring this, you know, in detail. You know what the greatest challenge is? It's actually finding people that are truly healthy. Many people are not overweight and they may not have acute illnesses, but when you actually get in and evaluate their biomarkers and look at the things that we think we know about what indicates health, this is a relatively rare person. I mean, think about it. Two-thirds of people who are overweight or obese.

Starting point is 00:15:11 You can take two-thirds of the people right off the table in terms of optimized health. A lot of the people that are not overweight or obese, are not overweight or obese because they have catexic disease, or they have other challenges with digestion. You have a huge percentage of the population that are having an increasing percentage that are having problems with blood sugar levels and insulin levels. Acute phase director proteins are elevated and a significant number of people, even that may not yet be symptomatic.

Starting point is 00:15:37 And so actually getting truly healthy people to do this kind of study on is a bigger challenge where we found the most consistent source of healthy people was actually on our staff, people that live and eat all the time healthfully at the True North Health Center that exercise that have comparatively lower stress lives. There we're able to find people with good-looking biomarkers, but it's quite a challenge taking them off the street, so to speak. Yeah, and we've talked about a lot on the podcast, 88% of Americans being metabolically and healthy in some category or another.

Starting point is 00:16:08 Are there any age or gender considerations? For example, we often have practitioners who come on the podcast who are quite versed in different aspects of therapeutic benefits of fasting that might have some considerations that they would apply to women in their prime fertility years and just their awareness, not a discouragement about how longer term fast can be stressful for women specifically in their prime fertility years. What's been your experience with that category? Well, actually, we treat a lot of women that are in their prime utility years because they want to get pregnant and they're not able to because they have fibrous cystic breast disease and dysmenorrhea and menoration. They've got polycystic ovarian syndromes. They've got problems with, you know, gut microbiome imbalances that screw up their hormone balances. And these conditions respond dramatically and consistently to fasting. So if a person has a condition that's caused by dietary excess, regardless of their age, fasting may have potential utility.

Starting point is 00:17:10 Now, it is true that rapid weight loss of any kind, including fasting, can result in an ambulatory cycle or two. And so, I mean, if your goal is trying to get pregnant next month, that may not be the very best strategy in terms of, you know, making sure you're kicking eggs out and stuff. But if your goal is to improve your health so you're, you know, a person with good plumbing can induce pregnancy, we have a significant track record in helping people that, for whatever reason, we're having trouble getting pregnant, that get pregnant and close pregnant. proximity to the completion of their fasting cycle. So we know that fasting can have good utility there. Now, it used to be thought that, and it was difficult for us early on to get approval from human subjects committee to do long-term fasting, saying old people, people over, say, 65, which is considered apparently old.

Starting point is 00:17:57 And we completed a fasting safety study that's been published a couple of years ago. In the peer-review journals, it looks at five years of fasting patients in adverse events, using common criteria for adverse events from the American Cancer Society. We classified every symptom of every patient for five years. And we published this study and looked at the number of category one, two, three, four, and five events. Category five events are death, fortunately. Category four events, there was more significant metabolic rates. We had one, which was a hyponitremic issue, you know, was easily resolved with some fluids.

Starting point is 00:18:31 We had 310 category 3 events, most of which were. hypertensive crises because if your blood pressure ever is over 160, that's a reportable, you know, event in a study. And of course, come in with blood pressure starting at 220 and then go to 200, then 180, 170. But every one of those days would be an adverse event as far as a reportable event, even though clearly, and in fact, 95% of those incidences were people resolving their hypertensive. In fact, in our hypertensive study, our first one, we took 174 consecutive patients with hypertension and 174 people lowered their pressure enough to eliminate medication. We have the largest effects that have ever been shown in treating hypertension in humans

Starting point is 00:19:11 with an average effect size and stage tree hypertension of 60-point drop. So this is an incredibly effective tool at normalizing blood pressure. Now, granted, you still have to eat well and live right afterwards to maintain the results, but we recently completed a study with the Mayo Clinic, a partner at the Mayo Clinic, and we looked at the immediate response on blood pressure, and now we have one year follow-ups and we're able to show not only can people lower their blood pressure, but they're able to sustain that, at least for a year, with diet and lifestyle modification and without having to resort going back to blood pressure medications.

Starting point is 00:19:46 And blood pressure medications, as you know, don't really reduce the risk very much of death from cardiovascular complications in terms of heart attack. They slightly reduce to the risk of stroke, so there's some utility there. And the definition of hypertension originally was the level at which blood pressure medications reduce the risk of dying more than the blood pressure medications themselves. And that's why they don't give you blood pressure medications to your systolic blood pressures are relatively high because at a lower level death rate from complications and medication would exceed the benefit.

Starting point is 00:20:15 In the case of fasting, there is no negative secondary effect in terms of mortality. So you're normalizing blood pressure, you're reducing the insulin resistance, and then with a healthy diet and lifestyle, it's sustainable. And now we're able to show that it is, in fact, sustainable. at least in highly motivated people. That's beautiful. I want to talk a little bit about the age component. You've talked about this quite extensively.

Starting point is 00:20:39 Whenever people are thinking about fasting, especially as they start to enter into, you know, 50, 60, 70, and beyond from there, they're naturally thinking about in conjunction with muscle loss, sarcopenia, and they're thinking about how those two things balance. And you've chatted about this before, and I'd love you to chime in on this. Well, the fact is that, yes, there is a concern

Starting point is 00:21:00 about sarcopenia, that's why we recommend rest during fasting ironically rather than vigorous activity because vigorous activity will increase gluconeogenesis and breakdown of muscle protein. Whereas when you rest, you primarily burn fat and particularly visceral fat. And we've already shown in our safety study that muscle recovery is not only happens within six weeks, but the lean mass of the individuals in these studies was higher at six weeks recovery than it was before they even started fasting despite the fact that they'd lost all fat and adipose tissue. And in our safety study, one of the things we found that was significant was that the risk

Starting point is 00:21:33 of serious complication in older people, that is over 65, 75, et cetera, was no different than younger people. So there was no reason to prevent older people from fasting because they can do it safely as long as they follow the protocol that we lay out. And in fact, it's interesting Walter Longo in his book on fasting talks and warns about, you know, the potential dangers of long-term water fasting. But he does make one caveat, which is if you do it at the True North Health Center. So since I evaluate other people's other scientists' intelligence based on how much they agree with me, I consider him a genius.

Starting point is 00:22:11 What's actually taking place in the body? What mechanisms are being activated? What things are starting? What things are stopping when we start to go down the progression of entering into a long-term water fast? Well, you know, that's a really big subject, but we can cover some of the things we know that go up and some of the things we know go down. The first thing that happens in fasting is the body goes through a process of conversion to ketosis. So it's changing its fuel, which is kind of a cruelly cool trick, but it changes its fuel to where even the brain itself is driving by the end of the second week of fasting the majority of its energy from fat metabolism. And that has, you know, significant consequences.

Starting point is 00:22:57 Dr. Longo talks about differential stress activity, differential stress adaptation. And the idea that cancer cells, for example, don't function as well in a high fat environment as they do a higher sugar environment, their higher metabolic rate in their primary dependence on glucose makes them vulnerable to chemotherapy, for example, or the body's autophagy in a ketotic state. And so a lot of people are now trying to come up with fasting, mimicking. programs to get the benefit that happens in fasting without maybe having to actually go through the fasting process.

Starting point is 00:23:28 I know there are pharmaceutical companies interested in fasting, mimicking drugs. So they could get the benefits of fasting, but by, you know, selling you a pill or a potion that would do, you know, induce some of those same changes in the body. We don't do have to mimic it because we're actually doing it, you know, and so we're getting those profound biological changes. For example, things that we know that go down in fasting include glucose and insulin. glucose levels drop, insulin levels drop, and insulin resistance drops. We know that IGF-1 levels drop with fasting.

Starting point is 00:24:01 And also interestingly enough with exercise. It's interesting that many of the biomarkers that are known to improve with exercise also improve with fasting. And you might say, well, wait a second, why would that be? If fasting you're saying you have to be resting and exercise, you're vigorously active, Why would both of those seemingly different processes result in the same biochemical changes? And I believe it's because both exercise and fasting have one very important thing in common. They both reverse the consequences of dietary excess.

Starting point is 00:24:35 And it's a dietary excess that leads to obesity, metabolic syndrome, and vulnerability of dying. And so it's not shocking that exercise reduces those variables, and so does fasting. So even though you're approaching it metabolically very differently, the end result is that things like IGF1 go down. Leptin goes down and the lower your leptin level, the lower the inflammation. In inflammation it turns out, it's behind everything from heart disease and cancer to the chronic pain syndrome of immune disease. Blood pressure, as I already mentioned, profoundly affected by fasting. People come in, capped out on five medications, 220 over 120, end up with us 100 over 60 off medications. And that's routine, not the exception.

Starting point is 00:25:13 You see profound, consistent, predictable reduction and normalization of hypertension in patients that fast. MTOR goes down in fasting and the lower your mTOR, the higher your autophagy. And as Yoshinori Ashumi found by winning the Nonoel Prize in 2016 in medicine for his work on autophagy, autophagy is an important process. It's where your body eats up cancer cells

Starting point is 00:25:36 and gets rid of cellular debris and as part of that rejuvenous process. It's enhanced. Microwe load. is profoundly impacted by fasting. In fact, if you think about it, you have, what, five pounds of bacteria living in your gut right now? A trillion creatures swooning around inside your intestinal tract, eating and drinking and pooing inside you right now.

Starting point is 00:25:58 And what your microbes are putting you depends on what you feed them. We know, for example, that the type of microorganisms in people that are primarily plant-based are different than people that are, say, primarily living on just animal products. And so that difference may be important. And more importantly, the diversity. What I believe the literature suggests today is what's most important is that you have a wide diversity of organisms. So in a healthy individual, it looks like there's as many as 1,000 strains or more organisms living in that intestinal tract, whereas people are on different kinds of diets may have much narrower band and different ratios.

Starting point is 00:26:33 So how that determines is by what you feed them. So if you feed your body and your organisms soluble fibers, you're, you get that wide diversity of organisms that are thought to be healthy. If you feed them a dominated diet on animal products, for example, you're going to have much higher levels of different components that are thought to be associated with increased risks of colon cancer and some of the other variables. Inflammation in general, if you look at the inflammatory markers in fasting,

Starting point is 00:27:08 IL-6, 10-alpha, these are profoundly influenced during the fasting process. The process of inflammation oxidation is thought to be behind a lot of the disease process, not the least of which is Alzheimer's and dementia. People that exercise regularly, for example, or that fast periodically, have much higher levels of BDNF brain-derived neurotropic factor, brain-derived BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor. Higher BDNF levels protect, for example, I think Walter Longo talks about studies with rats. You have 30 rats genetically identical, fed exactly the same way. One set of rats is given a wheel so it can exercise.

Starting point is 00:27:47 Those rats don't get Alzheimer's disease. They don't get the cognitive decline from the oxidative damage from the diet. And they said, why? Well, they found out because they have much higher BDNF levels from the exercise. That's enough to make the difference. And if you take rats periodically fast them, you double their lifespan. So just so, and, you know, some people say you double the lifespan. I say what you do is by feeding them,

Starting point is 00:28:11 add lividum, you cut their life in half. It's because what you're really doing is killing them from dietary excess. And what fasting does or exercise does is help undo the consequences of that. And so depending on which angle you look at it, either fasting is doubling the lifespan or overfeeding is cutting it in half. But either way, the end result seems to be the same. Fasting increases some stuff, too. It doesn't just decrease everything.

Starting point is 00:28:33 For example, adenopectin and grelin increased the higher they are. that improves insulin sensitivity also associated with reduced inflammation. AMPK, which is activated protein kinase, that deregulates PGC1 alpha. Proxone proliferative activator receptor that increases mitochondrial biogenesis. So the actual energy produced cell thought to be enhanced during fasting. Maybe that's why we see clinical changes in chronic fatigue and some of this long COVID and some of the other things you see. You fast them and then there's often a profound relatively short-term change in how their

Starting point is 00:29:11 energetics work. We already talked about brain drive neurotrophic factor and being increased by BHAB, beta-hydroxybutyric acid. That's the main fuel that the brain converts to burning. So it's not shocking to find out that one of the end products BDNF is increased. Insulin sensitivity. You know, you produce insulin sensitivity, you allow blood sugar to go into. to the cells where it belongs.

Starting point is 00:29:38 What are the things we know that reduce insulin sensitivity? It's not drugs. You know, drugs don't reduce insulin sensitivity. They can force some glucose in. What are we... Well, exercise reduces insulin insulin and sodas fasting. And in fact, about 80% of our type 2 diabetics will achieve normal blood sugar without medication if they use fasting.

Starting point is 00:29:57 Now, again, they have to follow it with the diet and the exercise to sustain the results. But what we're showing now in some of our current studies is that people are capable of making those diet and lifestyle changes if they're appropriately motivated. Now, we know motivation comes both psychologically and physically. The best motivation in my experience is pain, ability, and fear of death. So when people are in enough pain, they're willing to do anything, even eat well and exercise

Starting point is 00:30:20 and go to bed on time. But it's also sometimes you get people motivated intellectually when they really understand how these processes work. Autophagy itself, as we talked about before, Nobel Prize 2016 by Yoshinori Ashumi. autophagy is how the body eats up the cancer cells and gets rid of the debris. It's enhanced often profoundly during fasting. And gut microbiome diversity and stimulation of B cell immunity also enhanced with fasting. So some stuff goes up, some stuff goes down.

Starting point is 00:30:49 It's really quite complicated. But the bottom line is sick people get well. And that's what we're documenting both of our case reports and our studies. And the people that tend to get well are those people that are sick because they put too much over the wrong stuff in their mouth. You know, you mentioned about motivation. And one of the things that you are also known for talking about is the pleasure trap that many of us find ourselves in. Can you chat a little bit more about fasting and its ability to help reset that dopamine dependency that many of us have when it comes to approaching our diet and really our larger life?

Starting point is 00:31:30 Sure. You know, the pleasure trap is the hidden force that undermines health and happiness. It's the reason people are fat, sick, and miserable. It's the reason why people are prematurely and needlessly. And it's a result of the artificial stimulation of a chemical in the brain called dopamine that is associated with the experience of pleasure. So the more dopamine, your brain squirts out, the more pleasure. And there's only two natural behaviors that are involved with concentrated dopamine production.

Starting point is 00:31:56 And those are the two behaviors most critically necessary for survival and reproduction. And that's food and sex. food and sex, food and sex, food and sex, unless you're male, of course, then it's, well, it's sex and food then. But anyway, whether it's food and sex or sex and food, those are the only natural stimulants of in order to live to reproduce and pass on your DNA. There's only two really things you have to do is you have to get enough to eat, avoid being eaten, and have enough sexual activity so that your DNA can get passed on. So it's not surprising that feeding and sexual behavior are heavily reinforced by dopamine. Can you imagine if feeding behavior wasn't heavily reinforced?

Starting point is 00:32:31 Do you think people would get enough to eat? No, they would forget to eat and, you know, be no positive feedback or negative feedback to drive their behavior. Species would have gone extinct a long time ago. And certainly with sexual behavior, I guarantee you, if there wasn't some kind of positive reward, there wouldn't be all that huffing and puffing and sweating going on sufficient to be able to ensure survival of the species. So dopamine secretion during orgasm, from feeding behavior, critically necessary, not just

Starting point is 00:32:58 for humans, but all the other animals we share of the planet. It's the same mechanism. It's just that humans are really, really clever. And we found out that there are ways to artificially stimulate dopamine production in our brain. And things like drugs work by stimulating dopamine production. People drink alcohol because they like the way it makes them feel and they like the way it makes it feel because it just so happens it will stimulate dopamine production. The problem is it's an artificial stimulation.

Starting point is 00:33:22 You keep doing that eventually you become addicted and now you have to drink not to feel good but to also avoid feeling really bad kind of the hallmark of addiction. And what I'm suggesting and what we're suggesting in the pleasure trap is it's not just drugs that you can be trapped by the pleasure that's induced from dopamine, but also chemicals added to our feed. Like if you add certain chemicals to the feet of rats or mice or birds, they will increase their weight 49% in 60 days. Now, the mice and the rats are not getting fat because of psychological reasons. It wasn't because mommy rat didn't love them enough or daddy mouse didn't, you know, love them too much, or they had stress from having to tie their shoes. or something, they're getting overweight because of the biological stimulation that happens from dopamine when they get exposed to highly concentrated chemicals that stimulate that response.

Starting point is 00:34:11 And those chemicals are SOS. SOS stands for the what? The international symbol of danger, right? And it stands for salt, oil, and sugar. So salt, oil, and sugar are not food. They are chemicals added to feed. They're hyper-concentrated byproducts of food that are added to the feed to stimulate dopamine in the brain that makes the food, quote, taste better. That's what tasting better means,

Starting point is 00:34:34 more dopamine secretion on exposure. And it leads to systematic overeating because you increase the chloric density. So now you eat beyond satiety and you become obese. There is no obesity without the pleasure trap. If you look at animals eating a natural diet, there is no obesity. Even whales that are thought to be kind of fat are actually 9% body weight. Their lean, mean machine, they just happen to wear their adipose externally for insulation. So the only way you get obesity is by fooling the brain of the animal or the human, and you do that with chemicals like salt, oil and sugar. You know, I think when people are thinking about all these benefits that you're so clearly

Starting point is 00:35:11 outlying in an incredibly articulate way, and we'll come back to food in a little bit because I have a lot of questions about that, one of the questions that comes up is like, amazing. Okay, like, how do I jump into this and start to get the benefits? Now, you have an entire center that walks people through this process and people can find them in the show notes and online and we can link to it and you know you guys take on patients all the time where you do these longer medically supervise a water fast. What is the safest amount of time that people can dabble into water fasting if they're going to be doing it on their own without that medical supervision?

Starting point is 00:35:49 Sure. So I suggest everybody fast on their own every day for between 12 and 16 hours, preferably 16 hours if weight loss is the goal, 12 hours if weight gain or stability is the goal. And that people can do safely and effectively because it doesn't require medication modification. They don't have to go through exam, history, lab monitoring controlled activity. If we're going to do extended fasting, whether you do it on your own or not, you still want to have a history exam and lab to make sure you're a good candidate for that. And if you're going to do it remotely, we have a service with our doctors on our telemedicine

Starting point is 00:36:24 practice that they'll help you do that, but they'll do it. in conjunction with your local physician who can do the history exam lab and monitoring, and we can provide the individual coaching and provide the doctors, you know, get them the information they need to be able to help them monitor it safely. Honestly, though, it's much more practical to do long-term fasting at a facility that's set up to do that. It just, it's so much easier. You got your access to lab, monitoring. Patients are seen twice a day by staff doctors.

Starting point is 00:36:49 They get the brainwashing or what they call education. I call it brainwashing where we encourage people to look at the diet, the lifestyle, all the exercise factors and all that kind of stuff. So I think long-term fasting is best done in a controlled setting. But if you're going to do fasting 16 hours every day, if you're going to do it longer than that, do it in conjunction with your own doctor. And if you need support,

Starting point is 00:37:09 you can go to our telemedicine doctors, which are great. These are doctors that aren't idiots that are experienced with people getting well. One of the problems with most conventional physicians as bright as many of them are, is they've never actually had the experience of seeing people get well. If you have high blood pressure and you go to a traditional doctor, They will promise you, you'll never get well.

Starting point is 00:37:28 They'll tell you right off the bat. You'll be on these meds the rest of your life. Because I promise you, if you do what I tell you, you'll never recover. You'll be sick forever. And they'll pay that with diabetes. They'll say it with autoimmune diseases. They'll say it with most conditions. Because they're not actually helping people get well.

Starting point is 00:37:46 They're trying to manage the consequences of their dietary excess. The reason people are sick is because of the pleasure trap. So you have to learn to escape the pleasure trap. one of the most powerful ways to escape the pleasure trap is fasting. We actually have done a study looking at the changes, for example, in taste. We have a taste adaptation study where we show that after fasting, your actual perception of sugar and salt changes. You're liking your hedonic response to sugar fatty foods changes.

Starting point is 00:38:12 So now good foods start to taste good and a high salt, high sugar foods have less appeal. It's helpful to get out of the addiction. You have to equate this with, for example, alcoholism. You can tell people, look at the alcohol. is why your life sucks, but they don't go, oh, it's the alcohol. I had no idea. Thank you. I'll just quit drinking. They tell you to mind your own business because they don't want to hear about it. And the same thing's true. If you tell people, it's in your fat, sick and miserable because of what you're putting in your mouth, you have to change your diet. They're not all happy to hear that.

Starting point is 00:38:41 They want to keep eating their greasy, fatty processed foods. They're not wanting to hear that. And so, you know, getting people to understand that what they're putting in here ends up causing the rest of it, that's kind of the first step. Getting them to go through a fasting process safely can facilitate that. But I have to tell you something. We book out quite a way, so it takes a while for somebody to get in. So many people are working with our doctors before they come in remotely. And many times, by the time they come in, they're already better.

Starting point is 00:39:10 Their blood pressure is already down. Their blood sugar is already down because they've been following these dietary principles, a whole plant food, SOS-free diet. They're getting them exercising. So you don't have to fast in order to get well. many people get well, whether they fast or they don't fast. Fasting is just a great facilitator, and it's a great tool to get people motivated to make the necessary dietary changes because now they feel, you know, you say exercise, they can't.

Starting point is 00:39:33 They're in so much pain from the rheumatoid arthritis. They can't even walk. You do a fast and you're out of pain. Oh, now you can start walking and building up your muscles and doing the activities. People will feel helpless and hopeless so they're clinically depressed and they're being fooled into taking cert genetic inhibitor medications, which deactivate the D2 receptors in the brain. And then when they try to stop the medications, they get depression and anxiety. And so then they're conned into thinking that they've got a brain deficiency, which they don't.

Starting point is 00:39:57 And it's a consequence they're trapped on these drugs for the rest of their life. If you're interested in that, it's an interesting book called Anatomy of an Epidemic. Great little book. And it's by a researcher that really looked into the research on these medications, and it's really startling because you realize, oh, my God, they know this. This isn't even controversial in terms of the challenge. They understand what the effect of these things. But it works. Great, because then people are on drugs the rest of their life.

Starting point is 00:40:23 So the more you get into this, the more shocking it is, that the answers are actually known and simple. You know, diet, sleep, exercise. That's the answer. But doing it's difficult because people are addicts. And so, you know, just as I was saying with alcoholics, some people, you tell them to quit and they quit and they're fine. Other people need a little bit of help. Some people need to do inpatient for a month. Some people need to do inpatient for three months.

Starting point is 00:40:47 some people it's you know it's too difficult for them to quit they're too wrapped into their addiction so if you can make the diet lifestyle changes on your own you may get well without ever coming to a place like true north health but if you're having trouble making those changes then maybe sometimes getting a little extra help may be useful and do individuals can they work with your physicians on staff for instance myself you know i do my blood work regularly i have a active lifestyle i get great sleep i've tried a lot of different dietary protocols of the year and kind of zoned in on my personalization with my own unique history that's there. And if I want to be doing, for instance, a 24-hour water fest, which I've done before, but it's been quite a long time. It's been many years. Do you feel like that's something that I can do on my own? Or is that something that I should consider engaging with a physician? Of course, you can't get medical advice or anything else like that.

Starting point is 00:41:43 What are your general thoughts? For a healthy person not on medications, they can basically do. reasonable thing they want to do without too much of a problem. But what I would say is that to determine, is there any reason not to do that, we would look at the history exam and lab. Now, one service we offer, which is really useful, I think, is if a patient or a listener wants to get some feedback, should they consider fasting, all they have to do is go on our website, complete the registration forms, which gets me their medical history, and I offer a no-cost phone conversation with me. They can call me, I'll talk to them, I'll look at their medical

Starting point is 00:42:14 history and say, look, you shouldn't be considering this because of this, this, this, this, this. Or, yeah, you would be a good candidate. And we can refer them to somebody maybe close to them that might be familiar with fasting. They can use our telemedicine doctors to advise them about duration. But you want to be clear. With intermittent fasting, there are some benefits to 16 hours, right? And then there's a little price that's paid metabolically between 16 and 48 hours. And at that point, you're still burning a higher ratio of protein.

Starting point is 00:42:44 you haven't gotten into the full fasting mode. So that 16-hour window may be kind of the sweet spot for at-home, safe, cumulative, you do it every day, and over time you get those results. That 16 to 48 hours may have a little bit of deficit, particularly if you're doing it regularly. You know, that may not be the sweet. It might be better to wait than occasionally do a longer fast. But again, our docs can help advise you about for you what the sweet spot might be,

Starting point is 00:43:10 depending on your unique situation. 16 hours, no problem. The shorter fast certainly can be done safely by most people, and you can certainly talk to your own doctor or talk to one of our doctors to make sure there's nothing about you. Where we get into trouble, and I get these calls every day, is people that well-intentioned people that didn't think their medication profile was that big of a problem, and they decided to go on a fast, now they're burning holes in their stomach from their drugs, or they didn't come off the fast properly. They get post-fasting ademia. They got all these complications that are completely unnecessary. You just need to follow the protocol. But people don't want to follow it because they don't want to rest very fast, so they'll go to work, and then they get dehydrated.

Starting point is 00:43:49 They end up in some emergency room getting hyperhydrated because the person wasn't used to what happens when people fast. And so then we get into complications. So I have a bias because I see so frequently problems, although I know those problems are rare, that in fasting itself, it's a biological adaptation. It's inherently safe if you do it with the right person and they're resting. You did a podcast a few, a couple years ago with one of my buddies, Lewis House. And in that podcast, you talked about how, you know, you maintain your lifestyle. You have your focus on your plant-first diet. You have your focus on your exercise, your sleep, your movement, all the great things that are there.

Starting point is 00:44:28 And at the time, and I'd love to see if it's changed, and that's the question, you'd say that once a year you would do a water fast. And I believe if I heard correctly, you would do a week-long. water fast. Is that still the case? And if you could expand on that. Yeah. First of all, I hate fasting. It's awful because you have to rest. You can't do play basketball and do your normal things. That's the bad part of fasting. You're forced to rest. The good part is it's incredibly rejuvenate. And what we do is a general rule of thumb right now because there is no good literature on this is we fast for a week. If there's no symptoms

Starting point is 00:45:04 associated with healing crisis, that's it. We break it and go on recover and go back. back to normal activity. If, however, at the end of a week, there's active healing crisis going on, then we might extend the fast until those clear. For me, you know, I got started this when I was 16. I'm 63 now. I've never smoked, drank, eight animal products since I was 16 years old, etc. So I've been really fortunate because I've been living a healthy life. So when I fast, it's really boring. There's not much of it happens. And so I fast a week. If there's no, nothing comes up. that's the end of it, and I move on and grateful to do so, because I really don't like having to be doing that, although I find it's some of the most beneficial things I do in terms of

Starting point is 00:45:48 sustaining focus in energy and health. And now we have some data suggesting that that, in fact, may be the case, not just for us, but for everybody that's healthy. It's easier with sick people because we have a lot more known biomarkers that we can monitor and you can watch the symptoms improved. But healthy people, you know, they feel good before, they feel good afterwards, you know. So it's, it's not quite as obvious. But yes, I fast once a year, as difficult as I find it to take the time off. And I do believe it certainly for me, and I believe for others, it can be well-work-while experience. Most of the people we fast, though, are not healthy, are not functioning at their potential. They have diabetes, high blood pressure, they've got lymphoma, and they're heavily motivated because they're tired of being sick and

Starting point is 00:46:33 miserable and they don't want to die prematurely. And so, you know, that's the majority of the people that we see. Once we publish this date on the benefits of fasting and healthy people, I think we may start seeing more healthy people as well. When you think about your lifestyle and you think about how you live and how you eat, which, you know, you've been sure there's been small modifications, but generally, you know, you've been doing your approach for, as you mentioned since you was 16, you know the impact that your regular habits have on your health span.

Starting point is 00:47:01 do you think as the research continues to evolve, do you think that some of these longer fast that are happening for a week long, you know, you mention you hate fasting and you do it as that reset opportunity, do you think that there is an impact that's happening on the lifespan component? Well, we know in animal studies, which are easier to measure this, there is. Like I say, you can double rodents' lives just with periodic fasting. In humans, all I can tell you is I've been in practice for 39 years. And I'm getting now some 35 and 36 year follow-ups on patients. And what's interesting is it's not uncommon for them to tell how they're, now they've lived

Starting point is 00:47:41 longer than everybody they know they're all dead, all their friends are dead. And some of them are outliving their kids. And so I think whether it's the fasting or the diet, you know, it's hard to know which of the variables are because you have to do some pretty serious studies to determine if it's the fast or the diet. Because remember, these people are not just going on a fast. they're also often making radical diet and lifestyle changes. You know,

Starting point is 00:48:04 we're advocating a whole plant food, SOS-free diet. That's a pretty radical, you know, change. And that may be partly responsible for why we're seeing what appears to be enhancing longevity in these individuals. But more importantly, is debility. What they're not doing is having the stroke or the heart attack and finding,

Starting point is 00:48:19 spending the last 10 years of their lives, unable to talk or move lying in some nursing home bed waiting for people to change their diaper. They're living until they die. You know, many of them, they'll live in literally, in a very short window, you know, they go to sleep and don't wake up because they've reached their genetic potential. I know my mom was telling me when she turned 92, she said that all of her friends were dead. Everybody, all 50 plus people that she'd known all her life had all died, some

Starting point is 00:48:48 younger, some older. And she said, you know, it was really hard in her 90s to make new friends. You know, it was not an easy task because most of the people her age weren't really that functional. And they didn't want to do the stuff she wanted to do. And she said, Alan, you have to warn your patience that if you're going to do this type of diet and lifestyle, make younger friends. And she said, much younger, not just a little younger. They need to be much younger or have a few friends that are health conscious. So when you're called, be somebody left to play bridge with. Did your mom end up getting a new life partner, boyfriend, or anybody else to share that?

Starting point is 00:49:26 No, when she was 93, I remember she called me. one night and she said, Alan, I want you to put me on the hospice. I says, mom, why do you want to be on the hospital? She says, if you're on the hospice, you don't have to go to the hospital. And I'm not going to any hospital. Next morning, she passed away in her sleep. Wow. So she knew something was coming, I guess.

Starting point is 00:49:48 She felt fine. I wasn't complaining. I said, what's bothers? Nothing bothered me. I don't want to go to any. So that was it. And that's what you all right? I think, you know, the same thing.

Starting point is 00:49:59 I was fortunate in my father, a very short window and, you know, peaceful, good life, and then, you know, a quick demise and not a dragged out debilitating thing. And I think that's what we all hope for. You know, you can't change your genetics, which means how long people live is largely influenced by genetics and luck. But how well you live in the time you're alive, that is your healthy life expectancy, not necessarily your absolute life expectancy, profoundly affected by diet and lifestyle. So instead of spending 9.6 years debilitated in 17 years in poor health, which is the average,

Starting point is 00:50:32 you can spend your entire life, hopefully, fully functional and autonomous and independent, not having to have your kids changing your diapers when you get old. And that's, I think, more important to people than, you know, trying to pretend that you're going to live forever because you take some magic pillar potion. And hats off to your mom, because that's what we should all want to hope for, is that one day we just go to sleep and then we don't, we don't get out. Yeah, they can make up, yeah, short period of ability. I think that's a goal that many people would have.

Starting point is 00:50:57 I want to come back to the topic of food, as you've mentioned many times, the SOS diet and your recommendations that are out there. And, you know, one of the things that we were chit-chatting a little bit beforehand, and one of the things that we really tried to do in this podcast, especially because I've tried so many different things. I was raised vegetarian. I was a vegan, strict vegan for almost eight years. And in that period of time, I had even experimented with the raw food diet, if you can remember when that was really sort of popular way back in the day. and I did like pretty much close to 100% raw for almost about a three to four year period of time. And why I gave a little bit of that context here, my listeners of this podcast know, is that we really look at what are the themes that, you know,

Starting point is 00:51:40 we unplug from the Diet Wars and we really talk about what are the themes that are the underlining components that are there that our experts talk about that are part of really establishing a healthy life. Now, we have no problem talking about, you know, where people disagree. because we always want to have that education available to people so they can make their own decisions. So you mentioned one of the foods that was out there, which was oil. And I'd love you to expand on that a little bit more. And when you talk about oil being one of those components in the SOS, it's the O, what do you want people to know about it and what oils are you talking about? So I'm talking about all oils, including olive oil, because the fact we need fat in our diet, we need fat.

Starting point is 00:52:20 essential fatty acids, omega-3 fatty acids become decoso-hexonic acid and other critical issues. Without essential fatty acids, you'd be in just as much trouble as you would without essential amino acids. Or enough total calories or enough minerals or enough vitamins. These are essential nutrient components. But just like you get all the sugar you need from a whole natural diet, you don't need to add sugar to your diet, get enough sugar. You won't develop sugar deficiency. You get all the essential fats you need in a diverse plant-based diet. you don't need to add a highly fractionated processed food product like oil to the diet in order

Starting point is 00:52:53 to get enough fat. You get the fat. Some foods are very rich in fat, avocados, nuts, and seeds and other things, but all whole foods have some fat in them. And when you look at the breakdown that we want 15 to 80 percent of calories coming from fat. We want around 10 percent of calories coming from protein from our approach, the balance coming from complex carbohydrates. When you break the nutrient levels down, the only nutrient that is really questionable

Starting point is 00:53:15 in that approach is vitamin B12. there's not the bacterial contamination and not, you know, if you're careful about washing and avoiding bacterial contamination. So with the exception of B12, you get the fats that you need. You don't need to add oil. You get the sugar you need. You don't need to add sugar. You get your carbohydrates.

Starting point is 00:53:30 And you get enough of your essential amino acids without having to add protein powders or other fractionated products. So we're just arguing against fractionated food products because of their consequence in the pleasure trap and diatriasis. And certainly oil is no exception. when you have somebody who has is regularly doing their blood work and you know we've recommended a lot of different services that are out there because it's tough for people to you know sometimes get it done directly with their doctor you have to convince them of why you want a fasting insulin and you're younger

Starting point is 00:53:58 or you know you're not pre-diabetic yeah you know you have to do all this finagling to try to convince them to run the lipids that run run run all the blood work that you want to get to run but if somebody is running their blood work regularly and is looking you know because this show is a lot of individuals from a lot of different backgrounds, but there's a decent amount of people who generally consider them healthy, maybe not as healthy as your staff, but more in that direction than not in that direction. The question then becomes is that if we have a lot of the basics that are there, exercise, tribe, social support, community, we have good sleep, you know, I even ask for myself, you know, I would have a lot of joy removed from my life. I would feel and anticipate if I

Starting point is 00:54:40 couldn't have a little bit of olive oil here and there on the meals. Well, that's exactly what all addicts think until they get free of it and then they realize they don't miss it at all. For example, you know, a lot of times people think they like, they'd have to have fried foods, but they found that they can steam fried foods and get the same joy and pleasure from the food without the excess fat and load. So I don't buy the idea that there's any reduction in quality of life as people make an adaption.

Starting point is 00:55:05 You know, alcoholics that quit drinking don't say, oh, their life was a lot better when they were drinking. They might say, yeah, I miss, you know, the things associated with alcohol, the disinhibition, the fact that I could then engage in social behaviors I wouldn't normally do because, you know, I've become disinhibited with alcohol so I can engage in promiscuous sexual activity or I can, you know, do other foolish things that people do under the influence of alcohol. But they might miss some of those things, but their overall life quality improves. I would bet that your enjoyment of food and your, especially when you see the consequences of the changes would probably be enhanced, not diminished, because you've got afraid of, you know,

Starting point is 00:55:42 using highly fractionate-processed foods like olive oil. I guess that's a question is that, I mean, there was a period of my time in my life where I was doing much more of what would be known as, there was this diet trend that was around that was called like an 80-10-10 diet. Oh, yeah, Doug Graham's stuff, sure. Yeah, yeah, and I like to experiment, you know, I'm not advocating that other people do that. And so I feel like I had, you know, I wouldn't say it was for a year, but it was. was definitely more than six months removing any sort of added fat that was there.

Starting point is 00:56:12 And, you know, I guess the question is, you know, is there a good enough? The alcohol analogy that you brought in is a great analogy that's there. Can we still benefit and see the changes in our health? Well, let's do an experiment. Let's get you on a whole plant food SOS free diet. Look at the biomarkers in you and see what happens over, say, a year or two. And then if after a year or two, you're not satisfied, you can go back to drinking olive oil or whatever you want to do. all I ask of our patients is that they, you know, give themselves a fair try to see what it feels like to really function at their best.

Starting point is 00:56:44 If they don't like it, then nobody, you know, they're not going to stop making olive oil because you stop eating it for a little while. I guess the only consideration with that is that a year or two is quite a long time when we're talking about all the amounts of items that we are talking about restricting. But if that's what you're saying, I just wanted to make sure I extract that from you so that I'm clear on that. So you really got to do it for a year to two. you are and the less problems you have, the harder it is to distinguish clearly all the changes. Like if you do a lot stuff wrong, if you smoke and you drink and eat greasy, fatty, slimy, processed food, it doesn't take very long before you see dramatic changes. But when you take a healthy person and all they're doing is adding 50 calories or 150 calories

Starting point is 00:57:24 of olive oil, yeah, it's not going to be as proportional a change as it is in a person that's sick where you can see the effect on their health. People can get away with a lot. Look, they smoke for decades before it kills them. In fact, it's interesting. Did you know that 80% of smokers will never get lung cancer? I knew it was high. I knew it was that high.

Starting point is 00:57:43 Well, think about it. Smoking must actually be protecting them from getting lung cancer. And it turns out it is because smoking damages the animal lining of the blood vessel so it leads to heart attack and stroke. So it kills people from heart attack and stroke before they live long enough to grow their tumors. So when you think about it, it's almost, if you could make smoking just a little bit more dangerous, So everybody had a heart attack, would they be able to advertise it as cancer safe? So I'm not going to argue that you have to be perfect in order to get a long life and be healthy.

Starting point is 00:58:17 People do all kinds of different diets, and many of them are functioning quite well, despite the fact it may not be what I might consider idealized. So there's not just, there's not only one way that's going to result in a generalized good outcome. But we can't agree, though. Let's talk about what we can agree on. dietary excess is a problem. Now, one of the problems with oil is that it makes it hard to not overeat. You know, so for people that don't have weight issues, maybe it's not as critical as people

Starting point is 00:58:41 that do. You're trying to lose weight and you're trying to eating oil, eating sugar, it's not going to happen. Recidivism is about 95% on weight loss programs. Most doctors know that they've given up. There's no hope. It's helpless and hopeless. No, it's not. The answer from our experience is get people on a whole plant food, SOS-free diet.

Starting point is 00:59:02 And then they lose the, I see it. I have the advantage as a physician. I'm living with my patients. I have 70 people there. Some of them there for a week or two. Some of them there for a month or two. Some of them there are for a year or two. I've got employees.

Starting point is 00:59:15 Some of the employees been with us for 30 years. We've got long term. We know that this is a nutritionally sound effective way to go. Doesn't mean there's not other ways that might also be effective. I'm not arguing that. This is a proven methodology that works for overcoming the diseases of diet excess, heart disease, diabetes, you show me the data where other approaches are as effective and all start advocating a different kind of program. I don't do this because of a preconceived

Starting point is 00:59:43 knowledge or idea that this is the way. This is what's working for us and it makes sense to me when you really think about it. You know, if you read our book The Pleasure Trap, we're kind of go into the whole rationale behind it. We didn't come up with it from nothing. We did it by looking at what the experience was and what the scientific literature, you know, said to us when we tried to put it together and did our best to come up with recommendations that made sense. Are they popular? Is it what people want to hear? Absolutely not.

Starting point is 01:00:08 This is probably the most difficult to administer dietary recommendation to people because they have to escape the pleasure trap. It's like, you tell alcoholics, just drink beer and wine and you won't be a drunk anymore. Well, we know that's not true because it doesn't work. But they would rather hear that, wouldn't they? If you're an alcoholic and he said, oh, you can have beer and wine. Okay, well, I like that problem with it.

Starting point is 01:00:28 You can't drink at all. You know, they don't want to hear that. And so people don't want to hear what we have to say, but those that implement it are not unhappy that they did it. And then they find that actually there's a change in their perception to food. We did a study, a taste adaptation study. I mentioned it. It changes how you see. You want to not crave oils and salts.

Starting point is 01:00:49 Go on a fast. And then try to eat a whole plant flu diet and see how you feel. You'll experience it yourself. So I know I've been playing with this diet, as I said, since I was 16. decided I'd do it for 50 years and then I'd reevaluated. And, you know, so I'm 44 years in. Right now, it looks like it's working pretty good. And I see it in a practical sense.

Starting point is 01:01:09 I play basketball. I'm 63 years old. All the old guys are gone. The guys I'm playing with now are between 25 and 40. They're already starting to complain about their aching joints and their fatigue issues and they're, you know, so it's interesting to watch as they age out. All I'm saying is if you eat a healthy diet, you age out, but you age out more slowly. You don't get that facilitated premature aging.

Starting point is 01:01:30 And so, you know, for me, that's important because I want to still be able to play basketball because I find a lot of other factors that are kind of boring. I like that mock warfare that we engage in. You know, to me, it's very, very important. I spend 10 hours a week doing that. I spend more time doing that than working just about anything. So I don't want to lose the ability to do that because you get DJD in the joints or you get respiratory issues.

Starting point is 01:01:54 You have all the problems that people typically think are inevitable with aging. So I want to delay that get as many. years in as I can. And so that's the motivation for me, give up the meat, fish, fowl, eggs, dairy products, salt, and sugar. And instead eat fruit, salad, steamed vegetables, potatoes, rice, and beans. I have a diet that's somewhere between 15 and 18 percent of calories, fat, 10 percent of calories protein. The balance is complex carbohydrates. It's nutrient sufficient. It's supplemented with B12. And I'm, you know, we'll see long term wise what the ultimate answers are. But we won't know those results for probably a few more decades.

Starting point is 01:02:27 when people are at your center how long after they break a fast are can they be approved to go play basketball with you and the game so it takes half the length of the fast to on average to recover so a 40 day fast takes about 20 days of controlled refeating a 20 day fast takes about 10 days you know a short fast like a week only takes two or three days or for people to cycles it depends how long they fast depends on how well they are and there's a healthy person at the end of fasting recovers very quickly. But some people have fasted as long as they have the reserves for, but they're not yet well. It might be two or three fasts over time before they fully recover.

Starting point is 01:03:06 They get off all their meds. They reduce the inflammation. They overcome their tumors, whatever it is. So it's not always a quick fix thing. It can be a long-term strategy. And one of the challenges we have is we have to maintain good, healthy diet and lifestyle between fast in order to maximize the outcome. And so, you know, figuring out how to encourage and intimidate people into doing that is, you know,

Starting point is 01:03:26 is a great challenge. because we live in a world designed to make us fat sick and miserable. And everywhere we go, people try to give us what we want, not what we need. And money is made telling people what they want to hear, not what they need to know. And so there's a lot of forces of evil that try to prevent people from adopting health-promoting diet and lifestyle. And then there's a lot of economic interests. People have an agenda where they're trying to pitch this, that, or the other, that may not even be based on facts, but based on their own economic needs.

Starting point is 01:03:51 You know, right now our whole society is being manipulated pharmaceutically in others. otherwise, and it's not all based on science. Some of it's based strictly on economics, in my opinion. And as a consequence, you know, it's hard to know what to believe. So you have to kind of, you know, look at the different options. This is why I like your show, because you're presenting different views and different arguments and different thoughts. And so it gives people a chance to intelligently make the decision for themselves.

Starting point is 01:04:15 And you can experiment. You can try this, see what works. Try that, see what works. And maybe what works for one, people may not be exactly the same as it works for another person. But one of the advantages of working with doctors that have some experience with this is they've, you know, they've seen what works consistently over a range of patients so they can give you valuable feedback, maybe save some time rather than having to, you know, figure it all out from scratch. Dr. Allen Goldhammer, this has been fantastic. You've walked us through and really taking the time to educate us about so many of the foundations that are there and what takes place in the body for us, our body to enter into that natural.

Starting point is 01:04:53 repair and healing process. And I love the fact you've also touched on, you know, again, you strongly believe and you've been practicing it since you were at 16, this lifestyle that is crucial to maintain the benefits that we get from fasting afterwards. If anybody's listening today here, again, for that category of people who think of themselves as healthy, right, and aren't even practicing one of the basics that you recommend, which is the intermittent and fasting, you know, the time period that's there, that's 16 to 12 hour windows. What are a couple things that you can recommend to them that might have them, that might be signals that if they're dealing with this, suffering from this, looking at this,

Starting point is 01:05:37 that that's a good indication that at least this baseline fasting that we want to integrate into our lifestyle on a daily basis could be beneficial for them, Doug. Well, remember, health is the result of healthful living. And healthful living involves diet, sleep, and exercise. So what I would say is number one, you do a 16-hour fast every day. Try that. And the basic key there is don't eat three to four hours before you go to sleep. So whatever time, hopefully early, you're going to bed.

Starting point is 01:06:04 You try to plan it so you haven't eaten three to four hours before you go to sleep. You'll sleep more soundly. You'll get a chance to burn the calories you are eating during the day rather than storm is fat. When you get up in the morning, maybe you can do a little bit of exercise before you have breakfast or some evidence that exercising after 16-hour fast preferentially burns fat. So, you know, that may be a good thing, if fat burning, you know, is a goal, if that's part of your target. And then eat your three meals, healthy fruits, vegetables, grains, legumes, nuts,ies, whatever diet you're doing, try to minimize the salt, oil, sugar, and the stuff you all, everybody agrees.

Starting point is 01:06:36 You know, just let that go. Stay hydrated, so drink water, but stay away from all the calorie intense beverages and all the caffeinated beverages and all the other stuff that people want to scarf down. And just give yourself even six weeks just to see how you feel. And what you'll notice, most people, if they're overweight, they're going to lose between two and three pounds a week. Males will lose about 50% faster than females because of our higher testosterone counts. And, you know, give yourself a chance to really see what that experience is like. If you don't like it, you can go back to greasy, fatty processed foods and, you know, get out of shape again and all that stuff. But that's not what happens.

Starting point is 01:07:12 The healthier people get, the more motivated they get. And they start getting a taste of what it's going to feel like. To have good clarity of thought, good energy, the ability, not to be in pain all the time. A lot of stuff starts healing itself. And, you know, I think that's the only thing that's going to drive people is that the promise of the reward that they experience versus the fear of the, you know, downside that they don't want to face.

Starting point is 01:07:34 I don't think it happens, except when people are properly motivated. Thank you so much for explaining all that, breaking it all down, and coming on the podcast. As you mentioned, you guys are pretty far booked out. But if people are interested, they can visit the website of your clinic. We have the link inside of the show notes. And you have all those ancillary services, those additional services, you know, and you made the gracious offering to say that people can also contact the clinic and see if they're a good fit for... Yeah, I'm happy to talk to anybody that wants to do that.

Starting point is 01:08:05 All they have to do is fill out their form so I can review their history and I'll give them my best, you know, best advice. And if they do want to get hooked up with a doctor, we can recommend somebody or refer them maybe somebody that's closer to them. There are doctors that are out there that are doing fasting supervision, for example, that we've trained that are running in Ohio, in Florida, in Southern California. So there's other places, too, besides just True North. So if we're booked out a little too far, we can certainly send you to someplace maybe that we'd have an opening a little quicker. Are you active on social media?

Starting point is 01:08:33 Do you have a newsletter? Anywhere else where our audience can follow and keep in touch with you? Yeah, if they go to, we have two websites. One is the foundation, our research website, which is Fasting.org. And so if they want to learn about fasting, you know, that's a great site. Everything's freely available. Our main website at true northhealth.com is really information intense. We've got all of our articles, all of the video, we've got live streaming.

Starting point is 01:08:56 They can view some of the educational classes we do every day at the True North Health Center for the patients. They're staying there. We live stream those. So if they want to participate, they're certainly welcome to do that. There's no cost to anything. So, you know, that website really useful in terms of just content-rich material. And as I said, I'm happy to talk to them if they have. a question or something, I'm happy to try to do my best to answer them.

Starting point is 01:09:19 Fantastic. Well, we'll have all those links in the show notes and more. Dr. Goldhammer, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. My pleasure. I really appreciate it.

Dhru Purohit Show - The Mind-Blowing Science of Water-Only Fasting with Dr. Alan Goldhamer

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