The entire North American culture is centered around more. It’s an incredible race of one upmanship. How can we make something bigger, better, faster… just “more.” More money, more gadgets, more food, more sugar… which means more striving, more sickness, more drugs, more diabetes, more struggle, more confusion. More begets more but not in a good way. At some point the philosophy of more backfires miserably.
What if the part of the path to “more” health is less? A strategic, conscious implementation of less. I’m specifically referring to food today.
Over the last few years of being chronically ill, people are concerned if I’m eating enough. Because that’s what sick people need right? More food. 3 meals a day with all the food groups right? Wrong. The more I research and experiment, the more I realize this couldn’t be further from the truth.
One major breakthrough I had a while back was plain and simple listen to your body Dorothy. Not societal regimen. The simple decision of eating 2 times a day instead of 3 cut the rashes and pain associated with mast cell activation down substantially. My joints were even a bit less angry. It also really helped with gastroparesis by just giving my digestive system a break. There is absolutely no scientific research to back up that 3 meals a day is the healthiest way to live. In fact, there is quite a bit of research that points to the opposite. Yep, it’s kind of socially awkward that I don’t eat the evening meal. But I choose awkwardness over unrelenting abdominal pain and zero sleep because of it.
When I was still desperate for answers in 2016 before I was diagnosed, I came across research by Dr Valter Longo. All I could go by were interviews in English because his research was in Italian. He had done many experiments with what he called the fasting mimicking diet. (FMD) He discovered the bare minimum a person could eat yet still induce all the biological benefits of fasting. He has done these experiments with people receiving chemo and found their recovery and results were much better than those who didn’t fast during chemo. It had a way of ushering in the chemo to the cancer cells but preserving the healthy cells. Inflammation markers in the blood would go down. When non cancer individuals embarked on a series FMD’s they had much better blood work results as well. He has also had tremendous success with groups of diabetic and MS patients as well.
Most ancient cultures and religions have a component of fasting. There is feasting too of course. But our modern society has forgone any type of fasting and focused on feasting. Our ancestors would have had forced times of fasting naturally because food was scarce. With an overabundance of food available to us 24/7, 365 days a year, our bodies never enter into a fasted state to induce autophagy. Believe me, we want some autophagy!!
Autophagy means “self eating.” But this is a GOOD thing. When we give our bodies a break from constantly processing more food, it takes the time to spring clean. It gets rid of broken cells that aren’t working. It’s able to recycle cell parts and create new healthy ones.
Fasting also can induce apoptosis (programmed cell death) to get rid of bad cells that should die.
Think of it this way. What would your house look like if you had every single item of clothing you ever wore or bought from baby till now still in it? Your house would look like it should be in an episode of Hoarders! You wouldn’t be able to get in and out of rooms. You wouldn’t even be able to function or live in that house. You’d want to move and burn that one down. But we can’t move into another body. We’ve got to fix the one we are in.
To go a little further with this example, visualize that we only have one “work crew.” The crew can either build more, or repair what’s already there and it’s very difficult for that crew to accomplish both effectively at the same time. If you were building an addition onto your house, you wouldn’t try and clean out all your closets at the same time. Neither project would be done well. You’d finish one and then focus on the other. The ideal order would be to purge first and build after.
The other component to this, is stem cells are turned on by calorie restriction. This is amazing news for anyone thinking of stem cell therapy. Stem cell therapy is expensive and doesn’t always work as planned. Fasting is free, has very little risk and can be done under medical supervision if necessary.
This type of fasting is also neuroprotective, and spares muscles. If weight is lost, it’s more visceral fat than anything else.
How it works
An FMD is usually 5 days long, some of the studies done were 7 days. The first day you are allowed 1090 calories allotted in this way:
10% protein
56% fat
34% carbs
The four following days you are allowed 725 calories allotted this way:
9% protein
44% fat
47% carbs
Then go back to normal eating. Dr Longo recommends a Mediterranean diet with lots of fish. (This obviously wouldn’t work for everyone due to allergies) The refeeding can’t be overlooked. This stage is just as important as the FMD portion. Original diseased or dysfunctional immune system cells have died (around 40%) but now we need to build new ones.
Depending on the starting health of the patient, desired outcome and goals of the patient, an FMD might be done once a quarter, or once a month.
What you will notice about the calories allotment, is that protein is highly restricted. This is part of what turns on autophagy. Since we don’t consume amino acids, our body goes to work to recycle and reuse ones within the body. It breaks down dysfunctional cells and reuses the amino acids.
My Experience
In 2016, I did 4 consecutive months of FMD cycles. Before starting my eyelids were cracked and bleeding, and I had rashes and abdominal pain constantly. I felt fairly good during the fasts except I was ridiculously cold and had to sleep a lot. It brought tremendous relief to just give my digestive system a rest. The rashes and eyelid cracking did ease up during the fasts. Eating in and of itself releases histamine so only eating a small amount of food 2 times a day helped empty my body of excessive histamine. On the fourth cycle though, I didn’t feel as good. In hindsight, it was too many too close together. I just so desperately wanted to get back to a better level of health, I pushed through when I should not have.
This summer I did 2 consecutive FMD cycles, with some major differences.
First, I was already doing a low carb/keto way of eating so going into a deeper state of ketosis during the fast was an easy transition. Second, I ate all the calories in the morning. I didn’t break it up into 2 meals. Third, I erred on the side of fat. I think my carbs were a bit lower and fat a little higher than in 2016.
The results were fantastic. I had ZERO pain during the fasts. Absolutely zero. (Did you hear that? Yeah that was angels singing, I heard that too during the fasts;) For someone who is in pain every single day that was huge.
I wasn’t tired. Not even a little. In fact I got more done those days than usual because of no pain and not having to take the time to prepare my usual second meal and eat it.
I didn’t get cold this time around until the fourth and fifth days and it wasn’t near as cold as when I did them I 2016. I believe this was because of already being keto before the fasts, my metabolism was different. I was able to transition to high efficient fat burning easier.
I wasn’t hungry. Not joking. Not even a little. I had the desire to eat out of habit but when I analyzed how I was feeling I really could not describe that feeling as hunger, but as habit.
Any residual MCAS itchiness was gone during the fasts. Eczema on my eyelids went away a didn’t come back for a few weeks.
I had some major hip pain before I started the fasts and it didn’t come back till 2 weeks after the fast.
Stomach issues have improved even more.
After the huge success of these last FMD’s, this is a health strategy I will definitely keep in my toolbox for healing. It felt so good, I honestly would stay in a fasted state for much longer. But this wouldn’t be healthy. As with anything, there is a sweet spot to maintain its efficacy. Too much fasting too close together would create new problems. As I stated before, the rebuilding is incredibly important.
Have you fasted for any length of time? Why or why not?