For the last 40 years, I’ve advocated a low-glycemic, high-fiber diet; exercise; and targeted nutritional supplements as the foundation of optimal health. Unfortunately, many have allowed salt, sugar, and processed foods to sabotage their diets. The result? Excess weight, poor exercise tolerance, accelerated aging, and a whole host of other health problems. Fortunately, there’s a solution: fasting for health.
The Scientific Benefits of Fasting
Fasting for health boasts unique attributes no other therapy provides. It rapidly rids the body of excess sodium and fluids, which eliminates edema and lowers blood pressure. It promotes weight loss—water weight but also fat loss—and it facilitates detoxification, mobilizing and eliminating toxins.
Fasting also gives the gut a break and allows it to repair itself, which often leads to improvements not only in stomach problems, but in allergy symptoms and autoimmune disorders as well. It increases insulin sensitivity, which lowers blood sugar and improves virtually all aspects of metabolic syndrome. In short, one of the main benefits of fasting is that it seems to reset your metabolism and break disease cycles.
Fasting Improves Blood Pressure, Blood Sugar, and More
Most important, improvements are maintained after the fast ends. Alan Goldhamer, DC, founder and director of the popular fasting clinic TrueNorth, and the medical doctors who work with him have published two studies detailing fasting’s effects on hypertension. In one of these studies, they followed 174 patients who came to TrueNorth with blood pressure in excess of 140/90. After undergoing a fasting regimen, 90 percent of these patients achieved normal blood pressure (the average reduction was 37/13 mm Hg), and all of those who had been on antihypertensive medications were able to get off their drugs. Moreover, the mean blood pressure of patients who were tracked for an average of 27 weeks after leaving the clinic was a perfectly healthy 123/77.
The benefits of fasting extend to patients with diabetes as well. John K. Davidson, MD, PhD, a retired professor at Emory University School of Medicine and founding director of the diabetes unit at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, describes in his popular medical textbook the use of seven-day fasts as initial treatment for obese patients with type 2 diabetes.
In addition to rapid and predictable improvements in blood sugar, blood pressure, and weight during the fast, Dr. Davidson reports that patients easily transitioned to low-to moderate-calorie diets. And over five to seven months, they gradually achieved both their ideal weight and control over their blood sugar without the use of insulin or other drugs.
Fasting Alters Food Preferences
What I find almost as remarkable as the health benefits of fasting is how it alters food preferences. It may be hard to believe, but after the fasting is completed, processed, fatty, sugary, salty foods just won’t appeal to you, and sticking with a good diet is not only easier, but—get this—more enjoyable.
According to Dr. Goldhamer, fasting helps your taste buds adapt to lower salt, sugar, and fat intake, which facilitates the adoption of a health-promoting diet. It also helps you escape your addiction to these unhealthy foods. In his book The Pleasure Trap, co-written by Douglas Lisle, PhD, Dr. Goldhamer makes a convincing argument that many of the foods that contribute to our health problems create a physiological response similar to that of opiates, alcohol, tobacco, and other addictive substances. These foods are pleasurable to eat—so pleasurable that we become addicted.
Think about all the people who are 40 or 50 pounds overweight, disturbed by the way they look, and suffering with diabetes and the many obesity-related diseases that are ripping through our society. They know their current habits are contributing to their ill health and leading them toward an untimely death. Yet they cannot or will not change their diet. They’re caught in the pleasure trap of food addiction, and the quickest way of breaking it is fasting.
Fasting Undoes Damages From an Unnatural Diet
Today’s typical diet is unprecedented in human history. Rich, high-calorie foods may have been available in centuries past to the royal and powerful (who were afflicted with modern diseases), but they were beyond the reach of most people. Only in the past 100 years or so have entire populations had easy access to cookies, pizza, chips, and other fatty, sugary, salty foods.
Our bodies simply cannot handle the excessive quantities or quality of these foods. It’s like watering your houseplants with a fire hose rather than a watering can that delivers optimal amounts of water. No wonder more than two-thirds of Americans are overweight, 38 percent are obese, and millions upon millions suffer with chronic health problems.
I’m not saying that personal discipline plays no role in making food choices. It most certainly does. However, eating right does not stem solely from old-fashioned willpower. If it did, we wouldn’t be in such bad shape.
Fasting Can Jumpstart Your Journey to Health
Although fasting is quite safe—physicians who condemn it as dangerous are simply biased and uneducated—it’s much easier to do in a supportive setting such as TrueNorth. And I certainly wouldn’t recommend that anyone who has a serious health problem or is taking prescription drugs undergo fasting without medical supervision.
That said, the “rules” are few and simple. Fasters need to drink a lot of water (eight or more eight-ounce glasses of water every day), relax and take it easy (walking is fine but no vigorous exercise), and avoid distractions that make the process more difficult (grocery shopping, cooking, etc.). Drugs should be stopped only by a physician. Fasts should be gently broken with fresh vegetable and fruit juices, followed by the gradual addition of whole, natural, unprocessed foods—which I guarantee you’ll enjoy even if you never have before.
Do yourself a favor and seriously explore this safe, simple, proven therapy. Fasting can launch you into a healthier lifestyle and make your journey back to health easier, quicker, and more pleasant than you could ever imagine.
Benefits of Fasting Recap
Fasting is best done in a medical setting. If you are taking prescription medications, have a serious health problem, or need to fast for a prolonged period, you should undergo this therapy only under medical supervision.
To learn more about TrueNorth Health Center, which specializes in short and prolonged fasts, call (707) 586-5555 or visit healthpromoting.com. You’ll find a wealth of information on fasting on this site. To order Dr. Goldhamer’s book, The Pleasure Trap, which I highly recommend, call (800) 810-6655.
If fasting doesn’t appeal to you, consider intermittent fasting. At the Whitaker Wellness Institute, we encourage patients to try my mini-fast with exercise. This program, which is much easier to adhere to than full-on fasting, has helped thousands of Whitaker Wellness patients achieve remarkable improvements in weight, diabetes, hypertension, metabolic syndrome, and heart disease. For information, call (866) 632-8890.
