(Un)Well (2020) s01e04 Episode Script
Fasting
1
Twenty-eight days, water only.
That sounds ominous,
but I plan to do it one day at a time.
Fasting may seem like
an extreme practice.
But if you go back into the past,
we didn't have constant access to food.
Every major religion
has a tradition about fasting,
from the Jews to the Jains,
the Hindus, the Muslims.
So it's not like we'd invented it.
For five days,
I drank nothing but water.
I went in for my scan,
and I was declared cancer-free.
Fasting is starvation. It has
short-term benefits like any diet does,
but in the long-term,
it may well be very harmful.
We can go for months without food.
But that doesn't mean that we should
go for months without food.
The body can heal
from virtually anything
if they fast long enough.
He was down to 92.5 pounds.
It hurts to know his death
could've been prevented.
Wellness
a global industry
worth trillions of dollars.
Does it bring health and healing?
Or are we falling victim
to false promises?
Are we really getting well?
When I heard
about the concept of fasting,
I literally thought that it was impossible
and that I would die
if I didn't eat for 24 hours,
but looking at the research and the data,
it looked pretty compelling.
And that got me thinking,
who invented breakfast, lunch, dinner?
Did God tell us to eat three meals a day?
I haven't seen that in any holy book.
My perspective is that
the default state of humanity
is not constantly consuming.
The default state of humans is not eating.
HVMN is a human performance
nutrition company.
We produce a number of supplements
to enhance different aspects
of human performance and metabolism.
When you look at engineering a rocket,
for example,
you care about performance outputs like
payload capacity, velocity,
the amount of thrust that
this rocket can produce.
We apply that systems engineering approach
of engineering rockets, cars, to humans.
In Silicon Valley,
you see this phenomenon
where the winners really win big.
If you have that one edge,
that might make you ten times
more wealthy and more successful
than the second-place player.
The leaders of Silicon Valley
have revolutionized the way we live.
Now, they may change the way we eat.
Intermittent fasting
is the latest craze in dieting,
and popular among biohackers.
Stanford grad turned tech CEO
Geoffrey Woo
implanted a glucose monitor in his arm,
wears an Oura Ring to track his sleep,
and fasts,
sometimes for seven days straight.
Intermittent fasting is a thoughtful
pause in the consumption of food.
It essentially means eating
all your calories, all your meals,
in a tighter time frame,
giving your body a period of time
where it's not digesting
and consuming food.
Typically, I have a 16-to 18-hour
fasting window,
which means that I compress
all of my meals
within a six-to eight-hour eating window.
And then I'll do 36-hour fasts
once or twice a week.
A lot of people that are focused
on fasting are using it for weight loss.
That was never my goal,
coming into this world.
My goal was, how do I become sharper?
How do I perform better
throughout my day?
Fasting makes me feel more
behind my eyeballs.
You're just a little bit more
plugged into the matrix.
When I do eat,
I focus on low-carbohydrate
types of foods
which makes it really
smooth sailing into my fasting period.
One thing I've been experimenting
with recently
is eating raw egg yolks
and then cooking the egg whites.
Am I doing that because I want
to be fancy with my food preparation?
No, it's pretty utility, actually,
in looking at the data
behind the optimal ways
to consume each of the components of eggs.
When I started fasting
four years ago,
people thought I was a troll,
people thought I was just crazy.
It was kind of hard to do it individually,
because you lack that social interaction.
And what really made it
fun and sustainable
was realizing you could create a community
and a culture around fasting.
It looks so good.
Avocado.
- Lots of avocado.
- Always.
One way that we make it
really easy for HVMN employees
is to actually cater in a meal
to break a fast together.
Cool, sit down, guys.
I think we, as a social species,
need that group support
to have something be sustainable.
- You want some meatloaf, too?
- Did you fast last night?
I did, yeah.
I fasted for about 18 hours.
Whether that's
There's an open-mindedness
in the spirit of Silicon Valley,
where we're ready to adopt new behaviors.
I think fasting will be ubiquitous.
More and more of us, all of us, really,
should be applying some fasting
to our daily lives.
I think there are always trends
that shape how we eat
and what we think is healthy.
For somebody who's been brought up
in a culture
that's so obsessed
with diet and body image,
it's kind of hard to not be susceptible.
My name is Tom Stackpole.
I'm a journalist.
I started pursuing wellness
when I got my first office job.
Hey, dog friend. Want some food?
It's not for you.
I finally found myself sitting
behind a computer
in an office for eight to ten hours a day,
and I started to gain weight.
I tried the keto diet, briefly.
I've eaten raw
pretty much I was eating kale,
apples, chia seeds.
I don't think I've ever been
so consistently hungry in my entire life.
I once got really into this bodybuilder
on YouTube,
who had this, like,
broccoli and turkey diet.
It has something to do with the hormones,
I don't understand it.
It made it kind of impossible
to eat with other people,
uh if I'm being totally honest.
At various points, I was doing
Ashtanga yoga six days a week,
and was incredibly flexible,
and fairly slim.
Hello.
I've tried gut biome vitamins,
weightlifting, barefoot shoes,
calorie tracking, microdosing,
mushroom coffee that's supposed to
boost your metabolism
why not?
It's not for you, cat friend.
At some point a friend of mine
sent me this article
about Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's
diet and wellness habits.
He does an extreme version
of intermittent fasting
where I think he eats one meal every day,
and then doesn't eat on the weekends.
My first reaction to this was,
man, I wish I could try all of this.
This is the next kick
that I want to get into.
So, I started intermittent fasting.
I was looking for a way to control
what I was consuming.
I basically limit my calorie intake
to about eight hours a day.
And I recently wrote
a New York Times op-ed
about biohacking and my own
relationship with fasting.
One of the things that I was thinking
about was whether
any of the quirky obsessions of mine
were something maybe more serious.
So, I decided to take a test through the
National Eating Disorders Association,
and see where these behaviors
put me on the spectrum.
And basically the survey said
there are some red flags here.
To me, recast how some of these
diet fads that I've been interested in
relate to disordered eating.
We perceive male eating habits
really differently
than we perceive female eating habits.
If Jack Dorsey was a woman,
we'd have a different conversation
about his eating habits,
"I wonder
if I should eat like Jack Dorsey?"
"Jack Dorsey obviously
has an eating disorder,
and why isn't anybody talking about it?"
Fasting is becoming like this
hyper-masculine, bro-tastic thing to do,
but it does walk a very fine line between:
"Is this disordered eating?"
"Is this you trying to optimize?"
What is the difference between
those two impulses,
if the end result looks very similar?
Some people do have
tremendous benefits
on really any diet you can think of.
But that doesn't mean that
it's going to be effective for everyone.
And in fact, fasting may well
be very harmful.
Fasting is one of the most
popular diets right now.
There's different fasts that are popular.
One of the most popular I see
is intermittent fasting,
which is intentionally not eating
for either certain periods of the day,
or certain days of the week.
I've done a deep dive
into this research,
because I started seeing a lot of clients
in my practice
who have tried fasting,
and have found that they're really not
having benefits.
As I'm getting older, I've gained weight.
I recognize I need to change up my habits.
I tend to think of feast or famine
where I get a lot of pleasure
when I'm gorging,
but I still feel guilty about it,
and then it swings back the other way,
where I'm like, now I need to fast
to reset and detox.
What I think is really helpful is
when starting to tune back
into your body's cues,
trying to notice what symptoms
or signs are going on in your body,
before you get to that ravenous place.
So, I practice intuitive eating.
Intuitive eating is a practice
of relating to food and your body
in a really intrinsic, natural way.
So, eating when you're hungry,
knowing your hunger cues,
and honoring them.
This is my little handout on
how to recognize subtle signs of hunger,
like feeling irritable or annoyed,
difficulty concentrating
People who are intuitive eaters,
who are not dieters,
who are not deprived of food,
don't eat any more,
don't eat, you know, "overeat."
They eat enough to satisfy them,
they eat enough to sustain them,
then they're able to turn away
from food and do other things.
I think we all deserve to know
the truth about dieting
"you'll just lose
the weight and keep it off,"
or "just do this reset or this fast again,
and you'll get back to where you were."
But the problem is that
every time we cycle,
it actually puts our health
at greater risk,
and it also increases the chances
of higher weight regain,
and in fact up to 98% of people
who lose weight intentionally
end up regaining all of it back
within five years.
I would not say fasting is an effective
strategy for weight loss.
People doing experiments on themselves,
I think, are putting themselves
at great risk.
The scarier, more extreme fasts,
people will only drink water
for a long period of time.
Whether that's days, weeks,
even sometimes months.
A lot of people who attempt
water-only fasts
are people really struggling
with a really debilitating illness
that they're not finding
a lot of help for.
And so they're looking to fasting
for something that's gonna save them.
This is not something
to play fast and loose with.
Not eating anything for, you know,
weeks, months,
it's really dangerous,
and not something I would recommend.
Most of the people that we see
they're getting fat, sick, and miserable
from chronic dietary excess.
Most people
don't want to give up their bad habits.
They're not gonna quit smoking,
drinking, eating their animal foods,
highly processed convenience foods.
They'll continue to live lives
of short-term pleasure seeking,
self-indulgent behavior
and pay a price for it.
But there are people
that do want to make a change,
and it's those people
that we're trying to talk to.
Hi, this is Dr. Goldhamer
calling from the TrueNorth Health Center.
The TrueNorth Health Center
is a residential healthcare facility.
We're one of the few places
that people can safely do
medically supervised long-term
water-only fasting.
We fast patients
anywhere from five to 40 days
in an environment of complete rest.
And we're admitting
about 1500 patients a year now.
Looks to me like you're gonna be
a good candidate for what we do.
Absolutely.
We operate in a clinical manner,
so patients come in,
they're evaluated by attending physicians,
they're seen twice a day by staff doctors.
Make sure you prep properly, though.
No coffee, alcohol, animal foods,
or anything else you might want.
Right.
People think
if they get on a plane to New York,
and they were to fly to California,
they would starve to death
somewhere over Colorado.
They believe that the pretzels
save their life.
However, it is really remarkable
what an amazing job
the body can do at healing itself,
if you just get out of the way.
I am here to do
a 28-day water-only fast.
That sounds ominous,
but I am very hopeful
that I could do this.
Jesus fasted for 40 days.
I might not be able to do it 40 days,
but I'm certainly going to give it a try
to make it the 28 days.
- Hi, Wanda.
- Hi.
I'm Dr. Sheraze.
Nice to meet you.
Welcome to TrueNorth.
Let me go ahead
and start with taking your pulse.
I ate fried everything as a child.
We would have gumbo,
and all the kind of rich sauces,
and shrimp and grits,
chicken and dumplings,
cornbread and sweet iced tea
for every meal.
And I can't imagine, you know,
not having something fried.
Great. Pulse feels good.
I was diagnosed with diabetes
in around 2009,
because I couldn't stop eating
the things that I liked.
They said you need to watch it,
because you could lose your vision,
you could lose your limbs.
And that almost makes me wanna cry.
That just scared me.
So, I'm gonna have you
just take a deep breath,
in through the nose,
out through the mouth.
I also found out that
I have high blood pressure.
It didn't seem so bad,
and then all of a sudden,
it just was going higher and higher.
And I'm going to have you lie back for me,
and we'll check your heart
I have the BRCA gene.
So, I carry the gene in my family
for breast cancer.
Just take a deep breath in.
My mother got breast cancer,
and she passed away.
After that, I had an older sister
who got breast cancer, and she died.
And my oldest sister,
she had pancreatic cancer,
and she passed away.
And then my latest sister,
she had the bladder cancer, and she died.
I got diagnosed myself in 2015.
Mine was caught early.
I had to do surgery, a lumpectomy,
and radiation.
I did not have to do the chemo.
No pain here? No?
Any pain right in here?
- No.
- No?
Everything feels great, perfect.
I've had a few callbacks,
because they were concerned
that they saw something.
Every six months,
I get mammogram, MRI
That's just scared me.
All of that makes me
want to get this under control.
So, Wanda's going to be doing
a 28-day water fast.
People can survive on water alone
with no supplements for days
and even weeks.
When we deprive our body of food,
we switch over from burning glucose
as the primary source of fuel,
to burning fat,
in a process called ketosis.
A growing body of research suggests
that this is especially effective
in fighting diseases
that stem from dietary excess
like high blood pressure
and type 2 diabetes.
I am very hopeful that this fasting
is going to reset my system.
It's challenging, but I plan to do it
one day at a time.
And I truly believe that I can do this.
Water fasting is too dangerous.
There's too much at stake.
There's too much at risk.
I know this much too personally.
Up in the attic here,
I've got some of his things still,
I'm sure.
This was the picture
that I had in my cubicle at work.
Yeah, so this was our wedding in Morrison,
at Bear Creek, Lake Park.
When Jonathan spoke of doing
an extended water fast,
I wanted him to be somewhere safe.
I wanted him to be somewhere
where they would monitor him,
where they would know the signs
if something was going wrong.
He loved hiking. This was one of his
favorite pictures of himself,
with his dog Kokomo.
He had
problems with digestion.
What he had resembled what people
describe as leaky gut syndrome.
But he was living a normal life.
He was strong, he was healthy.
He just wanted to be even better.
He had read about doing
extended water fasts.
He thought that it would give
his whole digestive system
time to just rest, and reset, and heal.
Jonathan looked at a couple of places
where he could go to do
an extended water fast.
When he settled on Tanglewood,
and, you know,
we did a quick search on it,
there wasn't anything bad that came up.
Hi. I'm Loren Lockman.
I'm the director
of the Tanglewood Wellness Center,
and here at Tanglewood
over the last 14 years,
we've taken more than 2,000 people
through a water-only fast.
It cost a lot less
than some of the others.
This was 2011.
I told him that I would be supportive
if this is what he wanted to do.
So, these are some e-mails that Jonathan
sent me while he was at Tanglewood.
"I am feeling incredible
right now.
I don't recall ever feeling so good
in my life.
It's like I've discovered
a whole new person. I feel so alive."
So, he got through
all 32 days of his water fast.
He was down to 92.5 pounds.
Certainly I had concern
about how thin he was,
but he was starting the re-feeding
process, and everything was going well,
and I thought we were through
the difficult or the dangerous bit,
and now he's gonna be eating again,
and it's all gonna be okay.
And that's when things went wrong.
Re-feeding is definitely
one of the dangerous parts of fasting.
We know from the research that's been done
on re-feeding people after starvation,
that they really have to go slow.
There's something
called re-feeding syndrome.
Their electrolyte levels
basically get all out of whack
when they start eating food again,
and that can have detrimental effects.
People end up triggering depression,
triggering anxiety.
At extreme levels, it can cause
loss of consciousness.
Suddenly, people can go
into cardiac arrest.
People die.
From what I've pieced together,
he stood up in the middle of a meal
and started taking all his clothes off,
and trying to walk outside,
which was so aberrant for him.
He was such a modest person,
and didn't want to be
the center of attention.
But apparently he started
trying to leave the facility.
Loren convinced him that
that would be a bad idea,
and got Jonathan to compromise
and agree to go to a hotel
in the nearby village,
and stay there for the night.
I had no idea that he had just been left
at a hotel by himself.
They came back in the morning,
and um he was gone.
They had found him at the bottom
of an outdoor set of concrete stairs
with severe head trauma.
We got to the hospital
as quick as we could.
Saw him there just
on full life-support.
Just so thin from the fast.
Jonathan died 2011, February 1st.
I miss his amazing smile.
He was a joy to be around, for sure.
His death was negligence
on the part of the Tanglewood Center.
Most fasting centers,
"I've got stage four cancer,"
"sorry, we can't take you,"
because they don't want to have someone
dying on site.
But if my goal was to help people,
how could I turn down the people
who most need my help?
I truly believe
the body can heal from virtually anything,
if they fast long enough.
So, just to remind you guys,
that what you're doing here,
no matter how crazy it seemed
to you when you first got here,
no matter how crazy it seems
to people in your life
who think you're trying
to kill yourself,
you wanna remember that fasting
is nature's way
of allowing the organism
to cleanse and heal.
Okay?
The people
that come to Tanglewood have come
from about 115 countries.
They've ranged in age.
Our youngest client fast
was a two-year-old
who was born with a heart defect.
Fasted five days, was off medication
for the first time in his life.
I would never tell someone you can't heal.
We've had groups of blind people
fast with us.
Every one of whom saw
amazing improvements in their vision.
We see people healing from arthritis,
where they've been told there's nothing
that medicine can do for them.
We've seen 50-plus women
with breast cancer.
With 90% of these cases,
the tumors have disappeared, and the body
was able to do it all by itself.
Any questions about that?
Yeah?
What vital signs would indicate a person
would need to stop their fast?
Well, you have to be willing
to let your body complete the process.
And so,
it's okay if your blood pressure
is real low,
or if your pulse is real high,
you know, it's okay.
All we have to do, in most cases,
is simply watch and wait,
and it takes care of itself.
Here at Tanglewood,
fasts are not medically supervised.
We don't have a doctor on staff.
Hello, there. How are you?
I woke up feeling toxic.
Given that medicine is the third
officially the third-leading
cause of death,
it seems to me
that if people come to me and get well,
then I'm obviously
not practicing medicine.
Let's get a look at your tongue.
That's impressive.
Fasting with an MD
is often counterproductive,
in that doctors have to overcome
their medical training
to be able to understand
the fasting process.
It was easier for me, because I didn't
start out with that burden,
with that brainwashing,
if I can say that.
Your temperature is, what is that, a two?
Temperature's down.
It's not surprising.
It's much cooler today.
It should be 45, and it says 31,
which means it needs to go up 50%.
Are you doing okay with water?
I'm doing better today.
Good. Your hydration's gonna go up,
and this'll take care of itself.
Your temperature is down,
but your pulse is up a few points.
So, it's okay.
It's actually still really good.
I've fasted for 29 days.
Physically, I feel like
I really cleaned out.
I mean, Loren was always saying,
"You're doing a really good job."
And I feel it.
Let's take a look at your tongue. Yeah.
Okay.
It's a lovely tongue.
It's a lovely tongue?
I trusted him implicitly
the first moment I met him.
Amazing, huh?
I realized that this man
was going to be able to walk me,
not into just getting healthier,
but to really get clean.
- How are you?
- Good.
- You doing all right?
- Well, actually, no.
What's going on?
- When I stood up, I felt a bit more
- Wobbly?
- Yeah, a bit wobbly.
- Okay.
This is my second time fasting.
The last time, on day 18,
I actually fell. So, you see that scar?
So, I fell. It was in the nighttime
the last time I was here,
um and I split my head open a bit.
So, there are some
You've gotta be aware.
Blood pressure
always comes down with fasting.
And so the greatest potential danger
for people is that they pass out
and hurt themselves.
Fortunately, most people collapse.
They don't fall like a tree.
They just collapse, and don't usually
hurt themselves badly.
They knew
how Jonathan was acting all of that day.
Not only did they not do anything
they took him to a hotel
and left him there alone.
I don't know w what we could have done.
I mean
I didn't know his intentions.
I didn't know anything
except that he was he asked to go.
He had been acting a bit crazy,
but he still seemed sane enough to
I mean, I I didn't feel
I had the right to hold him.
I don't think Jonathan's story
has anything to do
with extended water fasting.
I don't think he died because he fasted.
I don't think he died
because of his re-feeding.
I don't I think he died
'cause he hit his head on the floor.
People can fall and hit their head
anytime, anywhere.
We've been accused
of being responsible for this.
I'm not really sure
how that's the case.
It hurts to know that there have been
other people suffering because of him.
When my clients leave here,
having fasted long enough,
they feel better than they ever have.
For me personally
I've now gone more than 32 years
without a single day sick.
So, do I feel strongly about this?
Yeah. If I get a call tomorrow from God,
and God says:
"Loren, you've got the wrong diet."
"Thanks for your opinion.
I'm good."
- Hi, good morning.
- Good morning.
How you doing? You surviving?
You know, I don't feel real hunger,
teeny bits, I mean
I hear the stomach growling,
but I just keep getting
my water bottle full.
Today is day one of my 28-day water fast.
It is a long time to be without food.
But I do feel desperate
to do what it takes.
I'm from Mississippi.
- So, it's food everywhere.
- Mississippi.
- Deep-fried ice cream.
- Yes.
Wanda's overweight,
suffers from diabetes,
high blood pressure,
and has a history of cancer.
You name it, she's got it.
If the only goal
were just to lose weight,
I would say diet and exercise
are the most effective and sustainable
approaches to doing it.
Although weight loss
is a side effect of fasting,
our goal is eliminate her diabetes,
normalize her blood pressure,
boost her natural immunity,
to help her prevent
the recurrence of cancer.
In your case, I think they've got
a realistic goal, but you never know,
because it depends on how you hold up.
But if you follow the protocols,
chances are better you'll last long enough
to normalize blood pressure
and blood sugar levels.
- Yay, okay.
- That's perfect.
Okay. I have a question for you.
When you're on the fast,
you have to not shower,
not stand up hot showers, I guess,
and don't stand up.
Can you explain why that is necessary?
It's not that you can't bathe
and wash yourself,
but because your blood pressure's
coming down,
you could faint,
and fall and hurt yourself.
If water-only fasting isn't done
in a medically supervised setting,
it absolutely could be dangerous.
You may see skin rashes,
or elimination from mucous membranes,
or other types of detoxifying symptoms.
It's really hard.
Then you may feel weak,
or have sleep disruption,
or vivid dreams, or nightmares,
or metallic taste, or who knows what.
This is my third day.
I feel like crap.
Headachy and nausea,
and just general
Too rapid a return to feeding
can actually result in serious
health consequences.
Part of the benefits of being
in a medically supervised setting
is we're able
to properly monitor patients.
Water fasting can be an intense
and sometimes miserable experience.
But once they get
the taste of being healthy,
sometimes you realize the price,
and it is a price that you pay,
is well worth it.
Exciting.
It'll be completely different for her.
If she's successful at, you know,
surviving through the process.
Hi, I'm reporting back
on day five of my water fast.
Just wanna touch base and say,
since yesterday, I felt a little hungry.
It's not ever too much,
but it makes me want to like,
"go have a snack" in my brain.
My brain says, "Let's have a snack."
Checking in on day nine.
I do have a little rash over
the tops of my fingers.
Today, I woke up,
lots of energy, not hungry.
I probably didn't even have
one little hunger pang today.
How can I feel this good?
Sixteen days with nothing but water.
But it is great.
I'm down 29 pounds today.
Nothing more to do,
just keep fasting nine more days.
Very excited about that.
I don't think the extended fasts
some people do are safe,
even under so-called
medical supervision,
because of the long-term consequences.
When people are in a state of deprivation,
like they are with fasting,
their body's metabolism tends to slow down
in order to conserve energy.
We see this in people
with severe anorexia.
Functions will go offline,
like their skin might get really dry,
their hair might start falling out.
So, cancer, for example.
We see that fasting actually has,
sort of, a double-edged sword effect.
It actually can exacerbate
existing tumors,
it can cause cancer
that was already developing to worsen.
Extreme situations when people
have been fasting for a long time,
they can end up actually catabolizing
or eating their own organs.
I would not recommend anyone
go on a water fast
or go anywhere near water fasting.
I think it's taking your life
into your hands.
There's no question in my mind,
fasting is a profound tool
to help people improve various elements
of their health and well-being.
I believe that fasting
is as powerful as many drugs
and so important for me being here today.
In my life, I was running hard.
I worked at many companies
in high-stress jobs.
My diet was poor.
You know, eating pizza with the team,
working late at night,
not sleeping well.
Let's do it.
I was diagnosed
with mantle cell lymphoma
which is on the rarer side
and more sinister side
of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Hank! Come on.
Good boy.
So, I got Hank about five years ago now.
I had this beacon, this drive,
once I got diagnosed with lymphoma
that I wanted to get a dog.
I'd always wanted to get a dog, and
it didn't fit into my lifestyle,
so I put it off.
You want it? Okay.
Go get it.
There you go, right there, yeah!
We went down to where they had
these beautiful Labrador retrievers,
and he just kind of came up to me,
and it was an instantaneous bond,
and, um he's been with me ever since.
So, it's an emotional thing to have
um such a lovely creature
enter your life
at such a difficult time.
All right, buddy. Are you cold?
Braver than I am. Come here.
Heading into treatment,
I begun to really dig in on
what I could be doing to
um stack the deck in my favor
for getting better, and not dying.
I went looking for something
outside of the conventional chemotherapy
that I could do.
Most of it was bullshit
until I came across
very obscure research about
fasting in combination with chemotherapy.
And it hit me like a ton of bricks.
So, for five days,
during every round of chemo,
I drank nothing but water.
And I was definitely feeling terrible
from the treatment.
I would get incredibly hungry.
When you're in the hospital,
they'll give you chicken fingers
and pizza and orange sherbet,
and they encourage you
to keep the weight on.
That's what they tell cancer patients.
It was a lot of just pure will.
I had been given a a protocol
of six rounds of chemo,
and after the second round
of chemotherapy, doing these 5-day fasts,
I went in for my scan,
and I was declared cancer-free
after two of six rounds.
All of my physicians thought
that was just an incredible result,
and I was blown away.
- Cucumber in quarters, I hope?
- Yes. Cucumber in quarters.
I made a lot of changes
in the way I eat.
I generally try to eat whole foods,
or low-carb diet with lots of vegetables,
but I think most importantly,
I pay attention to when I eat.
Every quarter, I try to do a five-day
water-only fast.
On top of that,
I pretty much do daily fasts
of 16 to 18 hours, every single day.
I'm usually fasting in the morning,
and a lot of science is out there
that says that coffee
will not break my fast,
and I choose to listen to that science.
So, I will come down,
and I'll make a pot of coffee.
I'll take it black most of the time.
I generally won't eat
until about lunchtime
Last time I used that juicer,
it got clogged up.
- I don't know if I was doing it wrong.
- There's a strategy to this.
which I've found to be
incredibly beneficial.
- Stop your timer.
- You're right.
- Fast is over.
- I will end my fast.
It's 19:38, so almost 20 hours.
Wow, that's really good.
And I feel great.
What a lot of people
don't understand,
once you've gotten through
the cancer treatment,
living in remission,
that cancer can come back.
And it can come back at any time.
I never say I beat cancer,
but I'm living every day to the fullest.
I believe fasting is not a fad.
What I wanna see is a world where
hundreds of millions of people
are using this
to improve their health.
So, we are on day 22.
Oh, my gosh, yes.
Have you been having
any abdominal pains?
Do you feel hunger?
No, I mean, it's it's
so wonderful.
Are you okay if I go through
your blood results with you?
Please do.
This is your creatinine and your GFR.
So, all of these are kidney markers.
What this is showing to me
is there's a little stress on the kidneys.
This is just one of the reasons why we do,
um discontinue a fast
earlier than planned.
So, you're not you're not there.
It's something that I just need
to be watching for now, yeah.
Glucose is a 94.
So, that's your fasting
blood glucose levels.
Really good to see that your
fasting blood sugars are going down,
which over time is gonna be indicative
of that reversal of the diabetes as well.
Her blood glucose levels
every day have slowly been dropping.
That is not a direct measurement
of whether or not her diabetes
has now reversed,
but everything is looking like
it's going in the right direction.
- And the blood pressure.
- And the blood pressure, absolutely.
Yeah, I mean, it's beautiful.
So, yeah.
Her blood pressure
has definitely normalized.
I think this morning was 105 over 61,
which is fantastic.
So, yeah, that's amazing.
You're doing phenomenal
during this fast.
Fasting is extremely powerful.
Our idea is that in the next ten years,
we feel that there should be
a fasting-based approach
in every doctor's office,
all over the world.
My laboratory has been
doing research on fasting for 30 years.
I always say, fasting, it's a word
similar to eating.
Of course we moved away
from just saying: "eating is good,"
"eating is bad."
Of course it depends what,
how much you eat.
And it's the same way with fasting.
These old ideas, uh
Bring lots of positives,
and lots of negatives at the same time.
We can see the difference
between controlled and starved.
I got into fasting
when I started starving bacteria
and and showed that they lived longer.
We've been able to show that with fasting,
we can cure mice with type 2 diabetes,
mice with type 1 diabetes,
mice with multiple sclerosis,
mice with cancer.
In fact, we discovered if we treated mice
with cancer with chemotherapy,
and some in combination with fasting,
100% of the animals
that were on a normal diet died,
and 100% of the animals
that were on the fasting diet survived.
And so the potential is great,
but these are mice.
They want phase two trials.
That can be long.
- I think up to five years.
- Five years. Yeah, five years.
We're very ambitious.
We have 45 clinical trials running,
or about to start, on human subjects.
If one out of three works,
that would be remarkable.
Could you hold the needle
with the other hand?
Of course.
Carla is a patient
who suffers from breast cancer.
Leave it.
She takes part
in this clinical study
to answer the question whether fasting
actually helps cancer patients
achieve better, uh
Control of their tumors.
Patients usually undertake fasting
at the same time of their chemotherapy.
But everything is still experimental,
and there's no guarantee
it will be effective.
I think it's very premature
to talk about fasting curing diseases.
Yes, fasting, of course,
it's got very powerful effects.
But, uh you have to keep in mind,
anything that powerful can work for you,
or against you,
uh.. depending on how
you use it or misuse it.
Multiple clinical trials
are gonna be needed
"yeah, this is gonna work,
uh and it's not gonna do any harm."
Here we go.
I just got my very first juice.
Take a look at this.
Isn't that yummy?
So, we're gonna have a taste.
Oh, my goodness, that is so good!
You did it!
- That's amazing!
- Yes.
It always seems like it is
the longest journey,
and then you get to the end,
and it just flies by.
You did amazing,
and you actually accomplished
a lot of your goals, right?
Overall, Wanda sailed through
her 28-day fast.
She has reversed her high blood pressure.
This is an amazing number,
this time.
Blood pressure is amazing!
You look good. Keep up the good work.
She is reversing obesity,
and she is reversing diabetes type 2.
I had a great fast, so I am on cloud nine.
This is what I needed to do.
I didn't think I could do it.
But I was glad that I was able
to make it through.
Day eight of re-feeding,
little by little of the food.
It's always more fun at mealtime.
It is.
This is the height of our day.
The re-feeding process
of fasting is really critical.
Part of the benefits of being
in a medically supervised setting
is we have a very specific protocol
that we follow.
Started out with raw vegetables
and raw fruits the first day.
Then the next day
they add a little steamed,
and the next day they add
a little more, maybe starch,
so they gradually increase.
So, now that
you've overcome the first steps,
the challenge is going home
to an environment
that may not be supportive.
And overcoming those roadblocks
may turn out to be
one of the most challenging
parts of this process
that you're gonna face.
When Wanda goes home,
she's got some serious work to do.
If you went back to eating greasy, fatty,
slimy, dead, decaying flesh,
you'll get your blood sugar levels
out of whack again.
But as long as you're willing to do
dangerous and radical things,
like eat good, exercise,
and go to bed on time,
there's a very good chance you'll be able
to sustain results.
You gotta make sure that the home is safe,
'cause the problem is,
in your moments of weakness,
that's where temptation comes up.
- That's Mississippi sweet tea.
- Sweet tea.
And I'm originally from Mississippi,
and I live in Texas.
Both of these places have
the worst kind of food that you can eat.
Going to social events where food is,
that would be hard to be around
the fudge and pizza.
But you don't want to slip, go back,
because I wanna keep front-and-center
why I did this.
I do believe this way of eating,
as well as the fast,
will help prevent the cancer
from coming back.
But I'm not going to ruin this
opportunity I have to be healthy.
I just feel
like I've done something for me
to help take care of myself
for the future.
Twenty-eight days, water only.
That sounds ominous,
but I plan to do it one day at a time.
Fasting may seem like
an extreme practice.
But if you go back into the past,
we didn't have constant access to food.
Every major religion
has a tradition about fasting,
from the Jews to the Jains,
the Hindus, the Muslims.
So it's not like we'd invented it.
For five days,
I drank nothing but water.
I went in for my scan,
and I was declared cancer-free.
Fasting is starvation. It has
short-term benefits like any diet does,
but in the long-term,
it may well be very harmful.
We can go for months without food.
But that doesn't mean that we should
go for months without food.
The body can heal
from virtually anything
if they fast long enough.
He was down to 92.5 pounds.
It hurts to know his death
could've been prevented.
Wellness
a global industry
worth trillions of dollars.
Does it bring health and healing?
Or are we falling victim
to false promises?
Are we really getting well?
When I heard
about the concept of fasting,
I literally thought that it was impossible
and that I would die
if I didn't eat for 24 hours,
but looking at the research and the data,
it looked pretty compelling.
And that got me thinking,
who invented breakfast, lunch, dinner?
Did God tell us to eat three meals a day?
I haven't seen that in any holy book.
My perspective is that
the default state of humanity
is not constantly consuming.
The default state of humans is not eating.
HVMN is a human performance
nutrition company.
We produce a number of supplements
to enhance different aspects
of human performance and metabolism.
When you look at engineering a rocket,
for example,
you care about performance outputs like
payload capacity, velocity,
the amount of thrust that
this rocket can produce.
We apply that systems engineering approach
of engineering rockets, cars, to humans.
In Silicon Valley,
you see this phenomenon
where the winners really win big.
If you have that one edge,
that might make you ten times
more wealthy and more successful
than the second-place player.
The leaders of Silicon Valley
have revolutionized the way we live.
Now, they may change the way we eat.
Intermittent fasting
is the latest craze in dieting,
and popular among biohackers.
Stanford grad turned tech CEO
Geoffrey Woo
implanted a glucose monitor in his arm,
wears an Oura Ring to track his sleep,
and fasts,
sometimes for seven days straight.
Intermittent fasting is a thoughtful
pause in the consumption of food.
It essentially means eating
all your calories, all your meals,
in a tighter time frame,
giving your body a period of time
where it's not digesting
and consuming food.
Typically, I have a 16-to 18-hour
fasting window,
which means that I compress
all of my meals
within a six-to eight-hour eating window.
And then I'll do 36-hour fasts
once or twice a week.
A lot of people that are focused
on fasting are using it for weight loss.
That was never my goal,
coming into this world.
My goal was, how do I become sharper?
How do I perform better
throughout my day?
Fasting makes me feel more
behind my eyeballs.
You're just a little bit more
plugged into the matrix.
When I do eat,
I focus on low-carbohydrate
types of foods
which makes it really
smooth sailing into my fasting period.
One thing I've been experimenting
with recently
is eating raw egg yolks
and then cooking the egg whites.
Am I doing that because I want
to be fancy with my food preparation?
No, it's pretty utility, actually,
in looking at the data
behind the optimal ways
to consume each of the components of eggs.
When I started fasting
four years ago,
people thought I was a troll,
people thought I was just crazy.
It was kind of hard to do it individually,
because you lack that social interaction.
And what really made it
fun and sustainable
was realizing you could create a community
and a culture around fasting.
It looks so good.
Avocado.
- Lots of avocado.
- Always.
One way that we make it
really easy for HVMN employees
is to actually cater in a meal
to break a fast together.
Cool, sit down, guys.
I think we, as a social species,
need that group support
to have something be sustainable.
- You want some meatloaf, too?
- Did you fast last night?
I did, yeah.
I fasted for about 18 hours.
Whether that's
There's an open-mindedness
in the spirit of Silicon Valley,
where we're ready to adopt new behaviors.
I think fasting will be ubiquitous.
More and more of us, all of us, really,
should be applying some fasting
to our daily lives.
I think there are always trends
that shape how we eat
and what we think is healthy.
For somebody who's been brought up
in a culture
that's so obsessed
with diet and body image,
it's kind of hard to not be susceptible.
My name is Tom Stackpole.
I'm a journalist.
I started pursuing wellness
when I got my first office job.
Hey, dog friend. Want some food?
It's not for you.
I finally found myself sitting
behind a computer
in an office for eight to ten hours a day,
and I started to gain weight.
I tried the keto diet, briefly.
I've eaten raw
pretty much I was eating kale,
apples, chia seeds.
I don't think I've ever been
so consistently hungry in my entire life.
I once got really into this bodybuilder
on YouTube,
who had this, like,
broccoli and turkey diet.
It has something to do with the hormones,
I don't understand it.
It made it kind of impossible
to eat with other people,
uh if I'm being totally honest.
At various points, I was doing
Ashtanga yoga six days a week,
and was incredibly flexible,
and fairly slim.
Hello.
I've tried gut biome vitamins,
weightlifting, barefoot shoes,
calorie tracking, microdosing,
mushroom coffee that's supposed to
boost your metabolism
why not?
It's not for you, cat friend.
At some point a friend of mine
sent me this article
about Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's
diet and wellness habits.
He does an extreme version
of intermittent fasting
where I think he eats one meal every day,
and then doesn't eat on the weekends.
My first reaction to this was,
man, I wish I could try all of this.
This is the next kick
that I want to get into.
So, I started intermittent fasting.
I was looking for a way to control
what I was consuming.
I basically limit my calorie intake
to about eight hours a day.
And I recently wrote
a New York Times op-ed
about biohacking and my own
relationship with fasting.
One of the things that I was thinking
about was whether
any of the quirky obsessions of mine
were something maybe more serious.
So, I decided to take a test through the
National Eating Disorders Association,
and see where these behaviors
put me on the spectrum.
And basically the survey said
there are some red flags here.
To me, recast how some of these
diet fads that I've been interested in
relate to disordered eating.
We perceive male eating habits
really differently
than we perceive female eating habits.
If Jack Dorsey was a woman,
we'd have a different conversation
about his eating habits,
"I wonder
if I should eat like Jack Dorsey?"
"Jack Dorsey obviously
has an eating disorder,
and why isn't anybody talking about it?"
Fasting is becoming like this
hyper-masculine, bro-tastic thing to do,
but it does walk a very fine line between:
"Is this disordered eating?"
"Is this you trying to optimize?"
What is the difference between
those two impulses,
if the end result looks very similar?
Some people do have
tremendous benefits
on really any diet you can think of.
But that doesn't mean that
it's going to be effective for everyone.
And in fact, fasting may well
be very harmful.
Fasting is one of the most
popular diets right now.
There's different fasts that are popular.
One of the most popular I see
is intermittent fasting,
which is intentionally not eating
for either certain periods of the day,
or certain days of the week.
I've done a deep dive
into this research,
because I started seeing a lot of clients
in my practice
who have tried fasting,
and have found that they're really not
having benefits.
As I'm getting older, I've gained weight.
I recognize I need to change up my habits.
I tend to think of feast or famine
where I get a lot of pleasure
when I'm gorging,
but I still feel guilty about it,
and then it swings back the other way,
where I'm like, now I need to fast
to reset and detox.
What I think is really helpful is
when starting to tune back
into your body's cues,
trying to notice what symptoms
or signs are going on in your body,
before you get to that ravenous place.
So, I practice intuitive eating.
Intuitive eating is a practice
of relating to food and your body
in a really intrinsic, natural way.
So, eating when you're hungry,
knowing your hunger cues,
and honoring them.
This is my little handout on
how to recognize subtle signs of hunger,
like feeling irritable or annoyed,
difficulty concentrating
People who are intuitive eaters,
who are not dieters,
who are not deprived of food,
don't eat any more,
don't eat, you know, "overeat."
They eat enough to satisfy them,
they eat enough to sustain them,
then they're able to turn away
from food and do other things.
I think we all deserve to know
the truth about dieting
"you'll just lose
the weight and keep it off,"
or "just do this reset or this fast again,
and you'll get back to where you were."
But the problem is that
every time we cycle,
it actually puts our health
at greater risk,
and it also increases the chances
of higher weight regain,
and in fact up to 98% of people
who lose weight intentionally
end up regaining all of it back
within five years.
I would not say fasting is an effective
strategy for weight loss.
People doing experiments on themselves,
I think, are putting themselves
at great risk.
The scarier, more extreme fasts,
people will only drink water
for a long period of time.
Whether that's days, weeks,
even sometimes months.
A lot of people who attempt
water-only fasts
are people really struggling
with a really debilitating illness
that they're not finding
a lot of help for.
And so they're looking to fasting
for something that's gonna save them.
This is not something
to play fast and loose with.
Not eating anything for, you know,
weeks, months,
it's really dangerous,
and not something I would recommend.
Most of the people that we see
they're getting fat, sick, and miserable
from chronic dietary excess.
Most people
don't want to give up their bad habits.
They're not gonna quit smoking,
drinking, eating their animal foods,
highly processed convenience foods.
They'll continue to live lives
of short-term pleasure seeking,
self-indulgent behavior
and pay a price for it.
But there are people
that do want to make a change,
and it's those people
that we're trying to talk to.
Hi, this is Dr. Goldhamer
calling from the TrueNorth Health Center.
The TrueNorth Health Center
is a residential healthcare facility.
We're one of the few places
that people can safely do
medically supervised long-term
water-only fasting.
We fast patients
anywhere from five to 40 days
in an environment of complete rest.
And we're admitting
about 1500 patients a year now.
Looks to me like you're gonna be
a good candidate for what we do.
Absolutely.
We operate in a clinical manner,
so patients come in,
they're evaluated by attending physicians,
they're seen twice a day by staff doctors.
Make sure you prep properly, though.
No coffee, alcohol, animal foods,
or anything else you might want.
Right.
People think
if they get on a plane to New York,
and they were to fly to California,
they would starve to death
somewhere over Colorado.
They believe that the pretzels
save their life.
However, it is really remarkable
what an amazing job
the body can do at healing itself,
if you just get out of the way.
I am here to do
a 28-day water-only fast.
That sounds ominous,
but I am very hopeful
that I could do this.
Jesus fasted for 40 days.
I might not be able to do it 40 days,
but I'm certainly going to give it a try
to make it the 28 days.
- Hi, Wanda.
- Hi.
I'm Dr. Sheraze.
Nice to meet you.
Welcome to TrueNorth.
Let me go ahead
and start with taking your pulse.
I ate fried everything as a child.
We would have gumbo,
and all the kind of rich sauces,
and shrimp and grits,
chicken and dumplings,
cornbread and sweet iced tea
for every meal.
And I can't imagine, you know,
not having something fried.
Great. Pulse feels good.
I was diagnosed with diabetes
in around 2009,
because I couldn't stop eating
the things that I liked.
They said you need to watch it,
because you could lose your vision,
you could lose your limbs.
And that almost makes me wanna cry.
That just scared me.
So, I'm gonna have you
just take a deep breath,
in through the nose,
out through the mouth.
I also found out that
I have high blood pressure.
It didn't seem so bad,
and then all of a sudden,
it just was going higher and higher.
And I'm going to have you lie back for me,
and we'll check your heart
I have the BRCA gene.
So, I carry the gene in my family
for breast cancer.
Just take a deep breath in.
My mother got breast cancer,
and she passed away.
After that, I had an older sister
who got breast cancer, and she died.
And my oldest sister,
she had pancreatic cancer,
and she passed away.
And then my latest sister,
she had the bladder cancer, and she died.
I got diagnosed myself in 2015.
Mine was caught early.
I had to do surgery, a lumpectomy,
and radiation.
I did not have to do the chemo.
No pain here? No?
Any pain right in here?
- No.
- No?
Everything feels great, perfect.
I've had a few callbacks,
because they were concerned
that they saw something.
Every six months,
I get mammogram, MRI
That's just scared me.
All of that makes me
want to get this under control.
So, Wanda's going to be doing
a 28-day water fast.
People can survive on water alone
with no supplements for days
and even weeks.
When we deprive our body of food,
we switch over from burning glucose
as the primary source of fuel,
to burning fat,
in a process called ketosis.
A growing body of research suggests
that this is especially effective
in fighting diseases
that stem from dietary excess
like high blood pressure
and type 2 diabetes.
I am very hopeful that this fasting
is going to reset my system.
It's challenging, but I plan to do it
one day at a time.
And I truly believe that I can do this.
Water fasting is too dangerous.
There's too much at stake.
There's too much at risk.
I know this much too personally.
Up in the attic here,
I've got some of his things still,
I'm sure.
This was the picture
that I had in my cubicle at work.
Yeah, so this was our wedding in Morrison,
at Bear Creek, Lake Park.
When Jonathan spoke of doing
an extended water fast,
I wanted him to be somewhere safe.
I wanted him to be somewhere
where they would monitor him,
where they would know the signs
if something was going wrong.
He loved hiking. This was one of his
favorite pictures of himself,
with his dog Kokomo.
He had
problems with digestion.
What he had resembled what people
describe as leaky gut syndrome.
But he was living a normal life.
He was strong, he was healthy.
He just wanted to be even better.
He had read about doing
extended water fasts.
He thought that it would give
his whole digestive system
time to just rest, and reset, and heal.
Jonathan looked at a couple of places
where he could go to do
an extended water fast.
When he settled on Tanglewood,
and, you know,
we did a quick search on it,
there wasn't anything bad that came up.
Hi. I'm Loren Lockman.
I'm the director
of the Tanglewood Wellness Center,
and here at Tanglewood
over the last 14 years,
we've taken more than 2,000 people
through a water-only fast.
It cost a lot less
than some of the others.
This was 2011.
I told him that I would be supportive
if this is what he wanted to do.
So, these are some e-mails that Jonathan
sent me while he was at Tanglewood.
"I am feeling incredible
right now.
I don't recall ever feeling so good
in my life.
It's like I've discovered
a whole new person. I feel so alive."
So, he got through
all 32 days of his water fast.
He was down to 92.5 pounds.
Certainly I had concern
about how thin he was,
but he was starting the re-feeding
process, and everything was going well,
and I thought we were through
the difficult or the dangerous bit,
and now he's gonna be eating again,
and it's all gonna be okay.
And that's when things went wrong.
Re-feeding is definitely
one of the dangerous parts of fasting.
We know from the research that's been done
on re-feeding people after starvation,
that they really have to go slow.
There's something
called re-feeding syndrome.
Their electrolyte levels
basically get all out of whack
when they start eating food again,
and that can have detrimental effects.
People end up triggering depression,
triggering anxiety.
At extreme levels, it can cause
loss of consciousness.
Suddenly, people can go
into cardiac arrest.
People die.
From what I've pieced together,
he stood up in the middle of a meal
and started taking all his clothes off,
and trying to walk outside,
which was so aberrant for him.
He was such a modest person,
and didn't want to be
the center of attention.
But apparently he started
trying to leave the facility.
Loren convinced him that
that would be a bad idea,
and got Jonathan to compromise
and agree to go to a hotel
in the nearby village,
and stay there for the night.
I had no idea that he had just been left
at a hotel by himself.
They came back in the morning,
and um he was gone.
They had found him at the bottom
of an outdoor set of concrete stairs
with severe head trauma.
We got to the hospital
as quick as we could.
Saw him there just
on full life-support.
Just so thin from the fast.
Jonathan died 2011, February 1st.
I miss his amazing smile.
He was a joy to be around, for sure.
His death was negligence
on the part of the Tanglewood Center.
Most fasting centers,
"I've got stage four cancer,"
"sorry, we can't take you,"
because they don't want to have someone
dying on site.
But if my goal was to help people,
how could I turn down the people
who most need my help?
I truly believe
the body can heal from virtually anything,
if they fast long enough.
So, just to remind you guys,
that what you're doing here,
no matter how crazy it seemed
to you when you first got here,
no matter how crazy it seems
to people in your life
who think you're trying
to kill yourself,
you wanna remember that fasting
is nature's way
of allowing the organism
to cleanse and heal.
Okay?
The people
that come to Tanglewood have come
from about 115 countries.
They've ranged in age.
Our youngest client fast
was a two-year-old
who was born with a heart defect.
Fasted five days, was off medication
for the first time in his life.
I would never tell someone you can't heal.
We've had groups of blind people
fast with us.
Every one of whom saw
amazing improvements in their vision.
We see people healing from arthritis,
where they've been told there's nothing
that medicine can do for them.
We've seen 50-plus women
with breast cancer.
With 90% of these cases,
the tumors have disappeared, and the body
was able to do it all by itself.
Any questions about that?
Yeah?
What vital signs would indicate a person
would need to stop their fast?
Well, you have to be willing
to let your body complete the process.
And so,
it's okay if your blood pressure
is real low,
or if your pulse is real high,
you know, it's okay.
All we have to do, in most cases,
is simply watch and wait,
and it takes care of itself.
Here at Tanglewood,
fasts are not medically supervised.
We don't have a doctor on staff.
Hello, there. How are you?
I woke up feeling toxic.
Given that medicine is the third
officially the third-leading
cause of death,
it seems to me
that if people come to me and get well,
then I'm obviously
not practicing medicine.
Let's get a look at your tongue.
That's impressive.
Fasting with an MD
is often counterproductive,
in that doctors have to overcome
their medical training
to be able to understand
the fasting process.
It was easier for me, because I didn't
start out with that burden,
with that brainwashing,
if I can say that.
Your temperature is, what is that, a two?
Temperature's down.
It's not surprising.
It's much cooler today.
It should be 45, and it says 31,
which means it needs to go up 50%.
Are you doing okay with water?
I'm doing better today.
Good. Your hydration's gonna go up,
and this'll take care of itself.
Your temperature is down,
but your pulse is up a few points.
So, it's okay.
It's actually still really good.
I've fasted for 29 days.
Physically, I feel like
I really cleaned out.
I mean, Loren was always saying,
"You're doing a really good job."
And I feel it.
Let's take a look at your tongue. Yeah.
Okay.
It's a lovely tongue.
It's a lovely tongue?
I trusted him implicitly
the first moment I met him.
Amazing, huh?
I realized that this man
was going to be able to walk me,
not into just getting healthier,
but to really get clean.
- How are you?
- Good.
- You doing all right?
- Well, actually, no.
What's going on?
- When I stood up, I felt a bit more
- Wobbly?
- Yeah, a bit wobbly.
- Okay.
This is my second time fasting.
The last time, on day 18,
I actually fell. So, you see that scar?
So, I fell. It was in the nighttime
the last time I was here,
um and I split my head open a bit.
So, there are some
You've gotta be aware.
Blood pressure
always comes down with fasting.
And so the greatest potential danger
for people is that they pass out
and hurt themselves.
Fortunately, most people collapse.
They don't fall like a tree.
They just collapse, and don't usually
hurt themselves badly.
They knew
how Jonathan was acting all of that day.
Not only did they not do anything
they took him to a hotel
and left him there alone.
I don't know w what we could have done.
I mean
I didn't know his intentions.
I didn't know anything
except that he was he asked to go.
He had been acting a bit crazy,
but he still seemed sane enough to
I mean, I I didn't feel
I had the right to hold him.
I don't think Jonathan's story
has anything to do
with extended water fasting.
I don't think he died because he fasted.
I don't think he died
because of his re-feeding.
I don't I think he died
'cause he hit his head on the floor.
People can fall and hit their head
anytime, anywhere.
We've been accused
of being responsible for this.
I'm not really sure
how that's the case.
It hurts to know that there have been
other people suffering because of him.
When my clients leave here,
having fasted long enough,
they feel better than they ever have.
For me personally
I've now gone more than 32 years
without a single day sick.
So, do I feel strongly about this?
Yeah. If I get a call tomorrow from God,
and God says:
"Loren, you've got the wrong diet."
"Thanks for your opinion.
I'm good."
- Hi, good morning.
- Good morning.
How you doing? You surviving?
You know, I don't feel real hunger,
teeny bits, I mean
I hear the stomach growling,
but I just keep getting
my water bottle full.
Today is day one of my 28-day water fast.
It is a long time to be without food.
But I do feel desperate
to do what it takes.
I'm from Mississippi.
- So, it's food everywhere.
- Mississippi.
- Deep-fried ice cream.
- Yes.
Wanda's overweight,
suffers from diabetes,
high blood pressure,
and has a history of cancer.
You name it, she's got it.
If the only goal
were just to lose weight,
I would say diet and exercise
are the most effective and sustainable
approaches to doing it.
Although weight loss
is a side effect of fasting,
our goal is eliminate her diabetes,
normalize her blood pressure,
boost her natural immunity,
to help her prevent
the recurrence of cancer.
In your case, I think they've got
a realistic goal, but you never know,
because it depends on how you hold up.
But if you follow the protocols,
chances are better you'll last long enough
to normalize blood pressure
and blood sugar levels.
- Yay, okay.
- That's perfect.
Okay. I have a question for you.
When you're on the fast,
you have to not shower,
not stand up hot showers, I guess,
and don't stand up.
Can you explain why that is necessary?
It's not that you can't bathe
and wash yourself,
but because your blood pressure's
coming down,
you could faint,
and fall and hurt yourself.
If water-only fasting isn't done
in a medically supervised setting,
it absolutely could be dangerous.
You may see skin rashes,
or elimination from mucous membranes,
or other types of detoxifying symptoms.
It's really hard.
Then you may feel weak,
or have sleep disruption,
or vivid dreams, or nightmares,
or metallic taste, or who knows what.
This is my third day.
I feel like crap.
Headachy and nausea,
and just general
Too rapid a return to feeding
can actually result in serious
health consequences.
Part of the benefits of being
in a medically supervised setting
is we're able
to properly monitor patients.
Water fasting can be an intense
and sometimes miserable experience.
But once they get
the taste of being healthy,
sometimes you realize the price,
and it is a price that you pay,
is well worth it.
Exciting.
It'll be completely different for her.
If she's successful at, you know,
surviving through the process.
Hi, I'm reporting back
on day five of my water fast.
Just wanna touch base and say,
since yesterday, I felt a little hungry.
It's not ever too much,
but it makes me want to like,
"go have a snack" in my brain.
My brain says, "Let's have a snack."
Checking in on day nine.
I do have a little rash over
the tops of my fingers.
Today, I woke up,
lots of energy, not hungry.
I probably didn't even have
one little hunger pang today.
How can I feel this good?
Sixteen days with nothing but water.
But it is great.
I'm down 29 pounds today.
Nothing more to do,
just keep fasting nine more days.
Very excited about that.
I don't think the extended fasts
some people do are safe,
even under so-called
medical supervision,
because of the long-term consequences.
When people are in a state of deprivation,
like they are with fasting,
their body's metabolism tends to slow down
in order to conserve energy.
We see this in people
with severe anorexia.
Functions will go offline,
like their skin might get really dry,
their hair might start falling out.
So, cancer, for example.
We see that fasting actually has,
sort of, a double-edged sword effect.
It actually can exacerbate
existing tumors,
it can cause cancer
that was already developing to worsen.
Extreme situations when people
have been fasting for a long time,
they can end up actually catabolizing
or eating their own organs.
I would not recommend anyone
go on a water fast
or go anywhere near water fasting.
I think it's taking your life
into your hands.
There's no question in my mind,
fasting is a profound tool
to help people improve various elements
of their health and well-being.
I believe that fasting
is as powerful as many drugs
and so important for me being here today.
In my life, I was running hard.
I worked at many companies
in high-stress jobs.
My diet was poor.
You know, eating pizza with the team,
working late at night,
not sleeping well.
Let's do it.
I was diagnosed
with mantle cell lymphoma
which is on the rarer side
and more sinister side
of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Hank! Come on.
Good boy.
So, I got Hank about five years ago now.
I had this beacon, this drive,
once I got diagnosed with lymphoma
that I wanted to get a dog.
I'd always wanted to get a dog, and
it didn't fit into my lifestyle,
so I put it off.
You want it? Okay.
Go get it.
There you go, right there, yeah!
We went down to where they had
these beautiful Labrador retrievers,
and he just kind of came up to me,
and it was an instantaneous bond,
and, um he's been with me ever since.
So, it's an emotional thing to have
um such a lovely creature
enter your life
at such a difficult time.
All right, buddy. Are you cold?
Braver than I am. Come here.
Heading into treatment,
I begun to really dig in on
what I could be doing to
um stack the deck in my favor
for getting better, and not dying.
I went looking for something
outside of the conventional chemotherapy
that I could do.
Most of it was bullshit
until I came across
very obscure research about
fasting in combination with chemotherapy.
And it hit me like a ton of bricks.
So, for five days,
during every round of chemo,
I drank nothing but water.
And I was definitely feeling terrible
from the treatment.
I would get incredibly hungry.
When you're in the hospital,
they'll give you chicken fingers
and pizza and orange sherbet,
and they encourage you
to keep the weight on.
That's what they tell cancer patients.
It was a lot of just pure will.
I had been given a a protocol
of six rounds of chemo,
and after the second round
of chemotherapy, doing these 5-day fasts,
I went in for my scan,
and I was declared cancer-free
after two of six rounds.
All of my physicians thought
that was just an incredible result,
and I was blown away.
- Cucumber in quarters, I hope?
- Yes. Cucumber in quarters.
I made a lot of changes
in the way I eat.
I generally try to eat whole foods,
or low-carb diet with lots of vegetables,
but I think most importantly,
I pay attention to when I eat.
Every quarter, I try to do a five-day
water-only fast.
On top of that,
I pretty much do daily fasts
of 16 to 18 hours, every single day.
I'm usually fasting in the morning,
and a lot of science is out there
that says that coffee
will not break my fast,
and I choose to listen to that science.
So, I will come down,
and I'll make a pot of coffee.
I'll take it black most of the time.
I generally won't eat
until about lunchtime
Last time I used that juicer,
it got clogged up.
- I don't know if I was doing it wrong.
- There's a strategy to this.
which I've found to be
incredibly beneficial.
- Stop your timer.
- You're right.
- Fast is over.
- I will end my fast.
It's 19:38, so almost 20 hours.
Wow, that's really good.
And I feel great.
What a lot of people
don't understand,
once you've gotten through
the cancer treatment,
living in remission,
that cancer can come back.
And it can come back at any time.
I never say I beat cancer,
but I'm living every day to the fullest.
I believe fasting is not a fad.
What I wanna see is a world where
hundreds of millions of people
are using this
to improve their health.
So, we are on day 22.
Oh, my gosh, yes.
Have you been having
any abdominal pains?
Do you feel hunger?
No, I mean, it's it's
so wonderful.
Are you okay if I go through
your blood results with you?
Please do.
This is your creatinine and your GFR.
So, all of these are kidney markers.
What this is showing to me
is there's a little stress on the kidneys.
This is just one of the reasons why we do,
um discontinue a fast
earlier than planned.
So, you're not you're not there.
It's something that I just need
to be watching for now, yeah.
Glucose is a 94.
So, that's your fasting
blood glucose levels.
Really good to see that your
fasting blood sugars are going down,
which over time is gonna be indicative
of that reversal of the diabetes as well.
Her blood glucose levels
every day have slowly been dropping.
That is not a direct measurement
of whether or not her diabetes
has now reversed,
but everything is looking like
it's going in the right direction.
- And the blood pressure.
- And the blood pressure, absolutely.
Yeah, I mean, it's beautiful.
So, yeah.
Her blood pressure
has definitely normalized.
I think this morning was 105 over 61,
which is fantastic.
So, yeah, that's amazing.
You're doing phenomenal
during this fast.
Fasting is extremely powerful.
Our idea is that in the next ten years,
we feel that there should be
a fasting-based approach
in every doctor's office,
all over the world.
My laboratory has been
doing research on fasting for 30 years.
I always say, fasting, it's a word
similar to eating.
Of course we moved away
from just saying: "eating is good,"
"eating is bad."
Of course it depends what,
how much you eat.
And it's the same way with fasting.
These old ideas, uh
Bring lots of positives,
and lots of negatives at the same time.
We can see the difference
between controlled and starved.
I got into fasting
when I started starving bacteria
and and showed that they lived longer.
We've been able to show that with fasting,
we can cure mice with type 2 diabetes,
mice with type 1 diabetes,
mice with multiple sclerosis,
mice with cancer.
In fact, we discovered if we treated mice
with cancer with chemotherapy,
and some in combination with fasting,
100% of the animals
that were on a normal diet died,
and 100% of the animals
that were on the fasting diet survived.
And so the potential is great,
but these are mice.
They want phase two trials.
That can be long.
- I think up to five years.
- Five years. Yeah, five years.
We're very ambitious.
We have 45 clinical trials running,
or about to start, on human subjects.
If one out of three works,
that would be remarkable.
Could you hold the needle
with the other hand?
Of course.
Carla is a patient
who suffers from breast cancer.
Leave it.
She takes part
in this clinical study
to answer the question whether fasting
actually helps cancer patients
achieve better, uh
Control of their tumors.
Patients usually undertake fasting
at the same time of their chemotherapy.
But everything is still experimental,
and there's no guarantee
it will be effective.
I think it's very premature
to talk about fasting curing diseases.
Yes, fasting, of course,
it's got very powerful effects.
But, uh you have to keep in mind,
anything that powerful can work for you,
or against you,
uh.. depending on how
you use it or misuse it.
Multiple clinical trials
are gonna be needed
"yeah, this is gonna work,
uh and it's not gonna do any harm."
Here we go.
I just got my very first juice.
Take a look at this.
Isn't that yummy?
So, we're gonna have a taste.
Oh, my goodness, that is so good!
You did it!
- That's amazing!
- Yes.
It always seems like it is
the longest journey,
and then you get to the end,
and it just flies by.
You did amazing,
and you actually accomplished
a lot of your goals, right?
Overall, Wanda sailed through
her 28-day fast.
She has reversed her high blood pressure.
This is an amazing number,
this time.
Blood pressure is amazing!
You look good. Keep up the good work.
She is reversing obesity,
and she is reversing diabetes type 2.
I had a great fast, so I am on cloud nine.
This is what I needed to do.
I didn't think I could do it.
But I was glad that I was able
to make it through.
Day eight of re-feeding,
little by little of the food.
It's always more fun at mealtime.
It is.
This is the height of our day.
The re-feeding process
of fasting is really critical.
Part of the benefits of being
in a medically supervised setting
is we have a very specific protocol
that we follow.
Started out with raw vegetables
and raw fruits the first day.
Then the next day
they add a little steamed,
and the next day they add
a little more, maybe starch,
so they gradually increase.
So, now that
you've overcome the first steps,
the challenge is going home
to an environment
that may not be supportive.
And overcoming those roadblocks
may turn out to be
one of the most challenging
parts of this process
that you're gonna face.
When Wanda goes home,
she's got some serious work to do.
If you went back to eating greasy, fatty,
slimy, dead, decaying flesh,
you'll get your blood sugar levels
out of whack again.
But as long as you're willing to do
dangerous and radical things,
like eat good, exercise,
and go to bed on time,
there's a very good chance you'll be able
to sustain results.
You gotta make sure that the home is safe,
'cause the problem is,
in your moments of weakness,
that's where temptation comes up.
- That's Mississippi sweet tea.
- Sweet tea.
And I'm originally from Mississippi,
and I live in Texas.
Both of these places have
the worst kind of food that you can eat.
Going to social events where food is,
that would be hard to be around
the fudge and pizza.
But you don't want to slip, go back,
because I wanna keep front-and-center
why I did this.
I do believe this way of eating,
as well as the fast,
will help prevent the cancer
from coming back.
But I'm not going to ruin this
opportunity I have to be healthy.
I just feel
like I've done something for me
to help take care of myself
for the future.