Dr. Alan Goldhamer - Can Fasting Save Your Life?

In this conversation, Dr. Alan Goldhamer of the True North Health Center discusses his journey into health and wellness, focusing on the benefits of medically supervised water fasting. He explains the science behind fasting, its effects on various health conditions, and the importance of a whole-food, plant-based diet. The discussion also delves into the concept of the 'Pleasure Trap,' which highlights the challenges of modern eating habits and the addictive nature of processed foods. Dr. Goldhamer emphasizes the significance of diet, sleep, and exercise in achieving optimal health and longevity while also touching on the roles of autophagy and telomeres in the aging process.

Free consultation to see if you’re a good candidate for fasting at the True North Health Center https://www.healthpromoting.com/

Can Fasting Save Your Life? https://www.healthpromoting.com/store/book/can-fasting-save-your-life

If you want to get in touch with the show, email us at lauren@agelikeabadassmother.com; we'd love to hear from you!

Transcript

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Hi friends! Lauren here and I am back with fresh episodes starting with Doctor Alan Golds Hammer. He'll be talking about water only fasting to reverse serious health conditions and for weight loss. Later we'll talk about the pleasure trap, which explains how we are hardwired to do things that satisfy us in the here and now, but are not in our long term best interest and what we can do about it. I want to thank you, my listeners, for making age like a badass mother, one of the top 10% of all podcast. It's my honor that so many people are connecting to our guest and telling their friends about us. It honestly means the world to me. So thank you. And thank you to my producer, Vanessa for working her butt off to make this podcast something that people will love. If you have any questions or comments or ideas feedback, you can email me at. Lauren. At age like a badass mother.com. And don't forget, you can watch us now on Spotify or YouTube. Thanks again for listening. Hi friends, I'm Lauren Bernick and I'm flipping the script about growing older. My guests have been influencers since before that was even a thing. Welcome to the anti Anti-Aging podcast. Welcome to age like a badass mother. Doctor Alan Gold Hammer is an expert in the use of medically supervised water only fasting. He is the founder and has been the director of True North Health Center since 1984, and has supervised the fasting and care of more than 25,000 patients. Turn North Health Center is a multidisciplinary practice that includes doctors of medicine, osteopathy, chiropractic, naturopathy, and psychology. its health care providers, treat patients with conditions ranging from high blood pressure and diabetes to autoimmune disorders and lymphoma. The center is the largest facility in the world specializing in medically supervised water, only fasting, and a premier training facility for doctors to gain certification in the supervision of therapeutic fasting. Doctor Gold Hammer is the author of the Health Promoting Cookbook and coauthor of The Pleasure Trap Mastering the Hidden Force That Undermines Health and Happiness, and the new book, Can Fasting Save Your Life? He has helped author numerous studies and case reports published in peer reviewed journals. He is a frequent lecturer speaker on the use of fasting, and died in the restoration of optimal health. Please welcome Doctor Alan Gold Hammer. Welcome. Hi. Hi. Good to have you. So, first, I want to just ask you a couple of personal questions, if that's okay. So how old are you, doctor? Gold hammer? Because you look stunning. You look fabulous. 65. Okay, what do you love about being 65? Well, the I got to be 65. Think that's a that's a really sure beats the alternative, you know. Yeah. No kidding. I have a 20 year old grandson who calls me the A0. And I found out recently it stands for the Ancient One. What did I want to say? What I think of that, I, I can't believe you have a 20 year old grandson that's. Yeah, that's a 14 year old granddaughter. And so it's. Yeah. That's crazy. Right? A long time. It's. Well, I'm not that far behind you. I'm 56 and, it's I, I'm really enjoying this phase of life. I have to say, you know, I'm having. So I have three kids, one lives pretty close by, one lives in Australia, and one lives in New York. And since it's the holidays, my one from Australia is home. And we're going to pick the one from New York up at the airport. And I'm like, you know, I love these kids, but God, having everybody under my roof, I, I'm kind of realizing like, that's kind of one of the, the good things about life is just being with your partner and going back to that phase of life where it's just like the two of you, or even if you're by yourself, just that, you know, revisiting that phase of your life when it was just about you. It's kind of nice. I'm enjoying that part. I think the grandkids is much more fun than, the kids are. You could just skip right to the grandkids. That might actually be, you know, I know nobody's doing that, though. I don't even that. My daughter's been married six years. I can't even bring that up. So she gets irritated with me. So we'll say hopefully one day. But, All right, well, let's let's jump into it. So, you know what? I'm curious what fueled your interest in health? Was your family like this growing up? Fourth grade, I was getting frustrated. Even in elementary and junior high school, I liked to play basketball. And my best friend, Doug Lyle, used to beat me just consistently. And I thought maybe if I got healthier, I could get an edge and I would be able to beat him. So I started reading books, and I read a book by Herbert Sheldon that said that health was the result of healthful living, that it was diet, sleep, and exercise that determined health. And so I thought, we'll all adopt a health promoting diet and lifestyle all get healthier, and therefore I'll be able to be a doctor. While didn't work out because he adopted the same diet lifestyle habits, and to this day he still beats my butt every time we play. So it wasn't successful at getting me, to be a doctor. Wow. But it did get me interested in this whole area, and I was inspired by my uncle, who was a medical doctor who, at my 16th birthday, was invited to my birthday by my mom because she was concerned I had adopted this vegan diet. And he thought she thought that might be a problem. And he told my mother not to worry about the diet. These kids go through different diets, and as long as I ate plenty of gefilte fish, I'd be fine. Oh my. Explained to my uncle that it was a vegan meant no animal products of any kind. He said it was called being a a sugar, and I would stop it right that moment. And at the same, party, I decided to announce to my family what I was going to do for a living. I decided to go into this alternative medicine field. He was irate. I thought I would actually see my first stroke because his veins were sticking out in his neck and he said that I was not going to go into this field of alternative medicine, that nobody in our family would see a doctor like that, let alone become a doctor like that, and that better. I should be a communist spy. So they finally got rid of him. And my dad, who was a very serious guy, took me aside. He said, son, I don't know anything about this alternative medicine, but anything that makes him that mad and angry, it can't be bad. So you stick to your guns and good luck to you. Oh that's good. You know, I used to do that, career and, you know, now for 40 years, we've been busy doing medically supervised fasting and, using a whole plant food diet to help people recover their health. Oh, my gosh, that's hilarious. So, so many thoughts. Like, first of all, Doctor Lyle seems a lot taller than you. I don't know, I is he to a lot taller? You're the same height. We're the same height. But he's about, 30 pounds or 40 pounds lighter than I am. He looks like your height, but, boy, he's really good. It's good. Basketball player. Oh. Oh my gosh. And gefilte fish. That is like, the most disgusting thing you could eat if you were gonna eat any animal products. I don't even think, not since I was 16. So I've had 49 years on a completely vegan, diet. So, you know, we're I'm going to give it another 50 years and see how it works out, see how it goes. So did your family ever come along? Did they ever decide to go vegan or anybody in your family? Oh, my dad at, when I first got into practice, I'd gone through school. He'd been very supportive. And then he, who had he had not been living, health promoting, diet lifestyle. He started having tias and he got to the point where he couldn't. What's a tia for kids? He had to retire from teaching. At that point. He came into the center, fasted for 26 days, had a fabulous recovery. 20 years later, he helped edit the Pleasure Trap. So he was really one of my first and most successful, patients. Did very well. My mother, at 92, she realized she had outlived all of her lifelong friends, all of them were dead, including the ones that used to make fun of her for going on her son's ridiculous diet. And, she said that it was getting harder to make new friends because at 90, even the people ten years younger were still too old to do what she wanted to do and play bridge and whatever. And so she said, Allen, you have to warn your patients if they're going to eat like this, they need to make a younger friend. And she said, not just a little younger, a lot younger, or pick a couple that are health conscious to the people left at the end. Oh my gosh, that's so funny. You said your dad was having Tia. What does that stand for? Transient ischemic attack. So little mini strokes. He was he was really I mean, he was in big trouble at that point, but he was fasting. He normalizes pressure, he normalizes function. And as I said, he did very well, to advanced age. So, you know, we were grateful that he was willing to adopt his, his, health promoting diet. That's really amazing. Can you explain a little bit of the okay, so we said in the intro that you do, supervised water, only fasting at True North. What can you explain, like the science behind it? Why does this work? And what kind of disease states does? Is it useful? For sure. Well, today people are sick and suffering and dying from a limited number of conditions. These are conditions that, interestingly enough, for all associated with dietary excess, people get fat. They develop visceral fat, which is the fact that accumulates around the organs and the belly. And it has a, pro-inflammatory component, that acts like a tumor. So people like literally, if they're 20 pounds overweight, have the equivalent of a 2 pound tumor in their abdomen, giving off hyper metabolic products, inflammatory products that contribute to certain diseases like cardiovascular disease and high blood pressure, diabetes, autoimmune diseases and cancers like lymphoma. Now, these conditions are the leading contributing cause of death and disability, but they're treated as if they're completely separate conditions. You have to actually go to a different doctor to even be diagnosed with them or treated with them. And yet they're all associated with the inflammation associated with the excess fat and the excess visceral fat. So it turns out it's not shocking that when you fast, you lose fat and preferentially visceral fat. So, for example, in the study we recently did using a Dexa scanner we took and individuals that lost that fasted for two weeks on average, and they lost 10% of their entire entire body load, but they lost 20% of their entire fat load and 40% of their visceral fat. So the body was preferentially going in and mobilizing this tumor like visceral fat. And as a consequence, they normalize their blood pressure, they normalize your blood sugar levels, were able to get them off their medications. And for those willing to do dangerous and radical things like eat well and exercise and go to bed on time, they're able to sustain those results. We recently did a study with our colleagues from the Mayo Clinic, where we took 27 subjects with hypertension and 26 of them were able to entirely normalize their blood pressure without medication. The 27th required half dose medication, and they were able to sustain that at six weeks. And then we follow these people for a year. And it turned out that 76% of the follow up patients were able to maintain their weight loss, and the majority were able to maintain normal blood pressure with that medication. A year later. Now, they weren't all perfect, but they did well enough to keep their weight off and their blood pressure analyzed. And it turns out it works with type two diabetes, and it even works with conditions like lymphoma, which is a type of lymph cancer. And we've published not only case reports, but also case studies now in the British Medical Journal looking at, you know, long term effects, including one patient we have has ten years cancer free now, and is willing to do the diet and lifestyle changes in order to sustain the results and the diet and lifestyle changes. Our whole food plant based, oil free, sugar free. So they're exclusively whole plant food diets. That's free of S.O.S.. S.O.S. is the international symbol of danger, but it also stands for salt, oil and sugar. Salt and sugar are not food. They're hyper concentrated products derived from foods that are added to food to make food taste better. And that's what tasting better means is that when you put those chemicals in your mouth, more dopamine production happens in your brain. Dope means the neurochemical associated with pleasure, so the more dope, the more dopamine, the better. You like something. And the reason your brain does that is because it evolved in an environment of scarcity. In a world of our natural environment, it was hard to get enough to eat. In fact, most people didn't live long enough to reproduce. The people that got it after it didn't get eaten were the winners. They're there. Who your relatives are. They weren't the ones that could, you know, that didn't have the ability to restore and, conserve fat and their nutrients. And as a consequence, you're designed for this environment of scarcity. But now we've changed the environment. Think about this for 200,000 years, people lived on whole plant foods. That's what they ate, at limited amounts of animal foods for half a day. There was no refined carbohydrates. There were no processed foods. 200 years ago, with the industrial Revolution, we changed our diet from whole foods to ultra processed foods and dramatically increased the amounts of animal food in the diet. And as a consequence, now we've had increasing amounts of obesity, where 72% of the people now are overweight or obese. If you're not overweight, you're actually abnormal today. And that extra weight and the extra visceral fat that goes along with it is why people die from diseases that used to be so rare. They used to be called the disease of kings, because it was only the wealthy elite kings that overeat consistently enough to get the heart disease and the gout and the other conditions. And now these conditions are, endemic because we have a condition of dietary excess. We eat salt and sugar added to our food. It fills our brain. We overeat, and then we get fat. We get the visceral fat. We die unnecessarily, prematurely from diseases of dietary excess. Yeah. It sounds like you've we've gone into the pleasure trap, territory. So. So maybe we should talk about that, because that's, a seminal book. If people haven't read The Pleasure Trap, by Doctor Gold Hammer and Doctor Lyle. It's it's an incredible book. And I know that, I always see pictures of people at true, true North reading this books lying around because I know when they're fasting, they're encouraged to relax, not, exert themselves. So let's talk about the pleasure trap a little bit. What are the traps? The hidden force that undermines health. Happiness is the reason why people are fat, sick, and miserable. And it involves this artificial stimulation of dopamine in the brain that comes from the chemicals out of the food, like salt and sugar. It's not real, complicated. It's just really difficult to get out of because once you're addicted to drugs, whether it's alcohol or caffeine or cocaine. Or addicted to the artificial stimulation of dopamine from salt and sugar, quitting is difficult. You know, the hallmark of addiction is that when you quit, you go through withdrawals. And believe me, people not just withdraw from stopping alcohol or cigarets. Caffeine. They also withdraw when they try to stop using sugar, oil and salt. You know, it's a very challenging transition. And that's where fasting can be helpful, where we do medically supervised fasting and help people get through that cycle. And then good foods start to taste good. Yeah. You know what? I think I know that that's correct because, I when I switched to a whole food plant based diet ten years ago, I just dove right in. I didn't fast, but I literally found out I had heart disease. I bought the book Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease. And the cookbook I just started cooking out of it. I didn't have one less fat meal for the road or anything like that. I was just like, I don't want to die. I'm going to just do this. And so I did it 100%. And it was I would say it was difficult, but, well, I think that just going diving in when it took you about a month to adapt to a of diet, took you probably a couple months to adapt to a low fat diet. It happens a little quicker with this, but it happens whether you fast or not. It's just you have to stick to it long enough in order for your body to neuro adapt. Yeah, exactly. You know, Giuliana. However, Giuliana Haver said a few weeks ago when I interviewed her, she said it's very simple, but it's not easy. And I was like, that's such a good way to put it. I. I love that because it wasn't easy, but it was simple. I mean, like, I just if you just do it, I probably should have fasted. So, you know, there's, there's three, three main things that are that go along with the pleasure trap, that pleasure seeking, that that's where we're adapted to seek pleasure so we could procreate and and eat and all that, and then pain avoidance and energy conservation. Can you just talk about those? A little pleasure seeking is pretty obvious. So the body, the brain rewards the body when the body does things that favor survival and reproduction. That's how the body gets to make sure you eat enough. Like if you weren't reinforced for eating, you might not eat enough calories and then you would die. So you're heavily reinforced and that works great. Except in in the modern world, we've learned to artificially concentrate the calories in foods by using salt on the sugar. So we fool the brain. This is just like drug addiction. You know you're going to artificial stimulation that results in an addictive response. So now you're having to do it not just to try to feel good, but to avoid feeling very bad. Kind of the hallmark of addiction, which is withdrawal. So, pain avoidance is pretty obvious. If you do something that hurts, the body's brain signals you and gets the body to stop doing it. So, for example, you touch the hot stove, you know, you pull your hand away, and hopefully you learn not to be touching the hot stove. And then energy conservation isn't so obvious, but it's critical because in the environment of scarcity that we evolved, people that wasted their energy didn't survive to reproduce. So people that were able to conserve their energy, because the truth is, the limiting factor biologically is getting enough to eat in a natural setting. It's tough business, and so we're designed to eat as much as we can, whenever we can, have the most concentrated foods that are available. And in a natural setting that's good, that allows you to survive. But in the modern world of hyper concentrated foods, ultra processed foods, you're in trouble. Because if you eat to your satisfaction of those foods, you're going to get fat. And if you get fat, you're going to have visceral fat. It's going to produce inflammation. You're going to die like most people do, prematurely worse than dying those they're going to become debilitated. And, you know, people spend the last between 10 and 16 years of their life often, compromised. They find themselves unable to talk or move, lying in a nursing home bed, waiting for people to come and change their diaper because they've had a stroke or heart attack or premature cancer. And as a consequence, it's not just living longer that we're concerned about. More importantly, it's living better. It's we want to have a good life, good long life, hopefully, but also a good death. Where are you going to sleep and don't wake up and not spend the last decade or two of your life dependent on everybody around you. Yeah, that's I know I just kind of saw this all firsthand. You know, with my mom, she she kind of went through this. She, was a prolific dyer. She lived her life on the Atkins diet, which is, you know, the precursor to the dreaded rest in peace. Exactly. Yeah. Doctor Atkins, and she was on ten medications and, just couldn't do it, you know, spent 22 hours a day in a recliner and lived in a place where she had to be will down for meals. And, when she was inspirational to you because now you've decided not to follow in her footsteps. And so it motivates you to do the right thing. So that's good. Yeah, exactly. She she I call her my cautionary tale, and I hate that. But it's true. Okay. So what is fasting the best way to extend health and therefore life? Well, health results from healthful living. So it's diet, sleep, exercise. You know, fasting can be a useful tool to help recalibrate the system to normalize taste or rotation, to do some detoxification, and to give you help people get off medications. But fasting won't result in health unless it's followed by diet, sleep, and exercise. So diet, sleep and exercise is the key. Whether you fast or you don't fast, most things will recover over enough time, but to get people to make those changes, fasting can be very helpful. Okay, I get that. So, you talked about sleep and exercise. I think I do the worst in in the sleep area. And I know you're making the face at me. I know, because sleep is one of our most important activities. It's where the anabolic cascade of hormones that trigger healing takes place. It's where your ADP becomes ATP and where energy comes from. If you don't get enough sleep, you're not going to function at your full potential. You're not going to be as healthy, you're happy as you would be otherwise. And that means you need to learn to sleep in a cool, dark, and quiet place so you're not disrupted that you go to bed, early and sleep later so that you can get that eight hours of sleep or seven hours of sleep that you need and that you don't eat 3 to 4 hours before you go to bed, because when people eat right before they go to bed, they don't sleep as well. They're having to wake up, empty their bladders. It's very disruptive. So if we don't eat 3 to 4 hours for you to bed, that means you're going to have a 12 to 16 hour fast every single day. That type of intermittent fasting or, time restricted feeding can be very helpful in improving the sleep quality and ultimately your health. Okay, I think I get enough hours, but I think what I do and I don't eat before I go to sleep. But I think what I do poorly is I fall asleep with the TV on. Like I love to just get my bed, snuggle up, put on like, you know, Seth Meyers or Jimmy Kimmel or whatever, watch TV, fall asleep and I know that that's not right. What what does that do to you when you fall asleep on the TV or watch TV? Whatever, that's fine. But then when it comes time to go to sleep, you might instead develop, some relaxation techniques, do some meditation for 10 or 15 minutes, and then go to sleep. Not as good going to sleep to to the, stimulatory effect. You're going to get a better quality sleep if you allow yourself to wind down, get over, get rid of the blue light, etc.. The blue light. What does that blue light do to you? Is it to be stimulated with your ability to get into the non-REM deep sleep that you're that you're looking for and get that recuperative phase? So, you know, again, I don't know, okay, how significant it is. The research on it isn't really clear. But you know, probably a better idea to kind of wind down without having to rely on electronic media for the last few minutes before you go to bed. Take it. Come on. Tell me what I want to hear. No. Anything that you find, that gives you joy or comfort, we're probably going to take it away from you. I know, I know that about you. You've been. You're like, the Grinch. But you give health, so you're really not the Grinch. I know you're doing it. I'll forgive you no matter what. How you put them through, as long as they have a good result. So it's just been an intense and miserable experience. You. If people get well, they end up having a net positive effect. That's true. That's true with diet. It's not easy adopting a health promoting diet in a world designed to make you fat, sick, and miserable and so if you do this, not only will you be successful, but you'll probably also piss off a lot of people. And so, you know, that is particularly true, I think, for women who have even more difficulties and men do, just because the way society treats women and deals with women. So, you know, if you're, you know, and women have also a harder time losing weight than men and then that's not psychological. It's biological. Women are energy conserving fat storage devices, biologically speaking. They're full of estrogen, which is a fat storage hormone. And it's there for a reason. It's because women are the only people biologically capable of reproducing, and they have to be able to store fat in order to survive a period of biological vulnerability called pregnancy. And as a consequence, a healthy woman is going to have 5% or more additional fat in their body than a healthy male. A healthy, miserable testosterone, which is a fat burning hormone, if you like. If you inject women with a bunch of testosterone, their fat would melt off them, but they would get hairy and get cancer and die. So it wouldn't be a very good thing. If you inject men with enough estrogen, they get fat, they grow breasts, they get hips. These are biological differences, not psychological differences. So what does that mean? If you're a woman trying to lose weight, it means you work twice as hard. You get half the results. So, you know, get used to it. That's okay. We're used to it. We also earn less money and we do more work. So it's everything. That's fine. We're used to it. Yeah. Like to see some of that change, I guess. Guess we're not going to see the weight loss part, though, change any time. So that's how it's going to be harder. But what about, exercise do we need, you know, what kind of exercise do we need? Especially as we're, as we're aging? Yeah. You know, exercise is really important. You have to build flexibility, strength, balance, and endurance. And so the best exercise is, in my opinion, our whole body exercise is walking, hiking, biking, swimming, dancing. And I think a variety probably is better now. I have to say, I don't practice what I preach or I like to play basketball, so I'm playing full court basketball, you know, four times a week, I like basketball. I should probably do a variety of other activities, but it's so much fun to play basketball. It's hard to justify using the time for, you know, boring stuff. But in any case, the best advice is walking, hiking, biking, swimming, dancing, getting a variety of activities that will build strength, flexibility, endurance. And if you do that, you know you're able to sustain your function. You don't get the sarcopenia, you don't get the atrophy, you don't increase your risk for the osteoporosis. Any other problems? But the problem is that you can get enough to eat, not get eaten in our society, and not even move around. You know that men now often don't exercise at all. They hire other people to exercise for them. It's called the NFL. Oh, the NFL is essentially an organization where you sit in an overstuffed chair drinking high caloric beverages, and then you hire other people, to engage in mock warfare, and you pretend like you're part of the winning coalition. Go, Rams. I know I always my husband just starts jumping up around and screaming, and I'm like, you know, calm down. I don't think they're going to ask you to suit up, but you're okay. Like, you can sit down here because he's getting his. No, that's he he runs. He does. He actually still runs. And, we go to yoga. I'm shocked that he he has really taken to yoga. That was something I did without him for long, is good looks for 25 years, etc.. Yeah. Combine that with some aerobic activity. Yeah. And you know that. Then you can be achieving your your exercise needs actually is also important. Helps you dissipate the effects of stress. Helps improve sleep quality. Exercise does a lot of things. You know our ancestors never had to join clubs and stuff because in order to survive, they got hot, they got cold, they got thirsty, they got hungry. They didn't want to get eaten. They had to move around. They also didn't have any trouble figuring out when to go to sleep because it got dark. They went to sleep. It got like they woke up and those that wanted to stay up at night partying, they got in. Yeah, those are not your ancestors. You know, that's how we're evolved. And then our diet to eat as much as they could of whatever's available. What's typically available was Whole Foods. Yeah. That that made me think of some of the, the things that kind of go along with maybe, maybe fasting or like, can you explain, about autophagy and telomeres that can you explain what, what. Yeah, that is so, you know, Your Honor, I assume you won the Nobel Prize in medicine, 2018 for his work on autophagy. Autophagy is essentially how the body gets rid of cancer cells and takes old and decrepit cells and breaks them down and recycles the material. And so there's some things that increase autophagy, like fasting. It's interesting. If you take rats and you periodically fast me, they will live twice as long as rats, everything else being equal, that are not periodically fasted because it's a dietary excess that results in premature death and disability, and fasting and exercise both have one thing in common they get rid of the consequence of dietary excess. So, as I said, fasting preferentially mobilize the visceral fat helps break down the tumors. That process is stimulated by this autophagy. Do this. This immune system's response, to fasting and exercise is autophagy kind of like cleaning up the cells and cleaning house. Is that basically what she's healthy eating. So it's basically the whole body gets those cells, breaks them down into the component parts and gets rid of them. Okay. So you're forming cancer cells every day. Your body's trying to get rid of them every day. If you get rid of them faster than they form you stay healthy. They form faster than you get rid of them. You start growing tumors. Okay? So you want to do what you can to minimize, the inflammatory products and also maximize autophagy sleep, diet, exercise, fasting those are all proven things to improve the body's ability to heal itself. Okay. And so, we talked a little bit about intermittent fasting. So even if you just stop eating three, four hours before you go to bed and then you maybe delay breakfast until you do a little exercise in the morning that will maximize weight loss. So what, 16 hours? What do you think is the core between 12 and 16 hours? There's a lot of evidence supporting the 12 hours. There's a little bit less, research supporting the 16. We advocate a 16 hour fasting window for people trying to lose weight, and a 12 hour fasting window for kids or people trying to gain weight. Okay, what if you're just trying to maintain 12? So somewhere between 12 and 16 hours and you can experiment and see what works you know best in your life. But the most important thing is don't eat 3 to 4 hours before you go to sleep, okay? That is one thing my husband does. Like I said, he he runs and he does yoga and, but he eats before he goes to bed. He's like, snack, you need to stop that. And then he might that he functions even better. He doesn't have to wake up as much, at night. And there may be a lot of benefits and he'll start to, achieve. Okay, I'll discuss that with him. He already knows that. Like, we we both know all the things we need to do. I think, like everybody else, it's just you gotta get some benefit, get older now, and you need him to get healthy because you don't have to be breaking in another one. You spent a lot of work breaking him, and you don't. That's right. That's all over. Yeah, I got him just the way I like him. Yeah, exactly. So you want to tell him that way? I'll tell him that. And then telomeres. Can you tell us about telomeres that they noticed that one of the aging process is that, you know, the, telomeres tend to shorten, and so they look for things that well, what are they what are telomeres components in the cell. Cellular components. You know what how reliable that is is is debatable whether, you know, what they're always trying to do is come up with like fasting, mimicking drugs, fasting. Because fasting will increase telomere length. They want to come up with the drug, the increased time. Solomon like so something you can take that'll do it. Fasting does, but without actually having to go through the fasting process because, you know you can't sell that, but you can sell pills, potions, powders and treatments. Yeah, exactly. But tell them for biomarkers that predict aging or predict health. And you know, there's interesting work being being done. There is. But telomeres are what they're part of your DNA. So they you know cellular component. They can measure the the end tips of those components are supposed to be correlated with the aging process. So that like a predictor of how well you're going to age or supposedly how well or how long. But again, I don't know that the evidence is is overwhelmingly compelling in terms of, you know, how reliable that's going to be for an individual. Okay, still, in kind of the research stage, not so much in the where you can go out and do clinical measurements and have a reliable indication. Okay. Got it. Well, I can't say though, there are biomarkers. For example lipoprotein little AA, which is thought to be untreatable. The protein little layers of biochemical marker cardiovascular disease. You can do a blood test if you're protein little layer which is a component of cholesterol elevated. That's a bad thing. Yeah. Got that. People have elevated lipoprotein little AA. But they there's nothing that no pill that lowers it. There's no treatment. So like Medicare will pay for you to do one test, but they won't pay for repeat testing because there's no treatment until now. And we've just published a paper, our first paper, second papers in review right now that shows that lipoprotein little aa profoundly reverses with fasting. So really, if we had long term vegetarian, even though it's not a vegetarian diet, lipoprotein little low was elevated, as was cholesterol and blood pressure. We fast as expected, cholesterol and blood pressure is. But his lipoprotein literally also reduced by 40% and he was able to sustain that. And then we just did another long term vegan who, had, you know, normal values, normal weight, but had elevated lipoprotein little and cholesterol 100 point drop in lipoprotein literally after just five days and water only fasting. So now we're we're looking at a whole bunch. I just got another 28% reduction on another patient. We have fasting on follow up. So what we've realized even though there is no drug to treat it, there is a treatment. And that's water only fasting. Oh no, that's wow. Because I have that. Mine's really thought of now that was thought to be untreatable or has been unsuccessfully treated long Covid and Covid vaccine injured patients, people that have got damage from accepting the Covid vaccines or they've had Covid but never recover. About 10% of people that got Covid end up with residual long term effects loss of smell, loss of taste, fatigue, brain fog, etc. and we just published our first paper of a person who went through two years of hell with long Covid, fully recovered after fasting. And so now we're trying to publish a number of those, papers. You know, because it's relatively new, you know, it's taken us a while to get those follow up data. But now that those papers are being submitted and so it does look like we have an effective treatment for long Covid. Wow. Do you have, a certain protocol for how long? You fast somebody or is it very individualized? It's very individual, but it ranges from anywhere from 5 to 40 days. We we do not fast over 40 days. Where the gentleman I studied with Doctor Burton in Australia used to fast people 60 days, sometimes as long as 100 days. And when I went there, this is 40 years ago. I asked Doctor Birx. I said, how come we aren't fasting people over 40 days now? Because at that point he had started, you know, 40 days. And he said, because of the, severe sleep deprivation. And I said, are you saying they have more trouble fasting after 40 days? Because not that patients may. And so the problem is, is you get over 40 days into a longer fast, it gets a lot more delicate electrolyte balance and whatnot. So you have to be a lot more, concerned. Whereas if you keep the fast shorter, what we call shorter, you know, you have that is pretty long. You don't run into those, you know, complications. And we've published fasting safety data showing that you can do this safely and effectively in a controlled setting. I do want to mention, though not everybody's a candidate for fasting. Everybody that does fast should at first history exam, lab and monitoring make sure you're a good candidate for fasting. If you're going too fast, you have to rest. If you don't rest, you can increase gluconeogenesis, which is the breakdown of lean tissue which you don't want to do instead of breaking down fat and you have to carefully refit. Or you can get post fasting edema, feeding syndrome, which could even be theoretically fatal in, long fasting. So, you know, we've been able to successfully do this 25,000 times in a row, but we do in a controlled setting with careful monitoring for people that are interested in fasting, if they really want to understand fasting. And the 22 papers we published in the peer reviewed literature, they really should read our book, Can Fasting Save Your Health? They can get it on Amazon. They can get it from our website. It's a very thoughtful book. The principal author is Tasha myers, who's our director of research. And she's really skilled because she can take a very complex subject but make it understandable. And I think she's done that in Fast and save Your life. It's written so that the average reader can understand what's going on with fasting, but it's also incredible enough that you can give it to your doctor and they will realize you're not necessarily a whack job just because you're looking at doing something like fasting. Yeah, we'll put that in the show notes so that people can, can get that real excited. Just came out, you know, a few months ago, but it's, it's a really unusual book, because it does cross that line between being, accessible to the average reader but also credible to a researcher or a clinician. You were just talking about, so clearly, I mean, you don't want people to go off and fast for themselves like a long, fast day. That's you want everybody to fast for themselves for 12 to 16 hours every day. But if you're going to do a longer fast, whether you're going to do it at home or you're going to do it at a place like junior health center, you still have to. Number one, make sure you're a good candidate with history exam lab and monitoring, and that you do the fast properly and the rest will state and that you recover properly. We do have doctors that can work with your local doctor to help you do this remotely. If you're a good candidate for that. And the way to determine that is simple, we offer a free consultation. If you go on to our website and fill out the registration forms, I will do a free phone conversation with you one to determine are you a good candidate for that? Is that's something that would be worth considering and to point you in the direction of a doctor, whether it's remote or whether it's at the center or another facility does fasting supervision will help you make sure you do it right. Don't don't make a mess of it. Okay. I'll put that in the show notes too. I'm making a note so I don't forget. Okay. That's really good. And so, you know, some of the other things. So I think we covered that, you know, what you mentioned, like lymphoma. Does this seem to work on other cancers as well, fasting, or is that just, hey, the reason we've been successful at publishing both case reports and case series and lymphoma is because it's well accepted that the treatment for lymphoma, the chemotherapy from the lymphoma, does not reduce all cause mortality. So it's not making people live longer. So it's not considered unethical to, you know, get people well. Whereas if you're treating conditions where they have what's considered accepted standard of practice, chemotherapy, radiation, whatever, to defer that so that you can get well is considered unethical, because that's not the standard of care in the case of lymphoma. The reason the British Medical Journal was willing to publish our case report is because it's not considered unethical to do a watch and wait, with that particular condition. So we have not published, and in some of the other cancers. And also, quite frankly, when form is very different than, say, breast cancer. And so it's much more responsive. Things turn around more quickly. So it's a much easier to work with with something like prostate cancer, breast cancer, the really long term outcome studies in order to determine whether what you're doing is helping you know more and how much it's helping. So that should be done. And hopefully it eventually will be done. But it hasn't been done yet. But you have fasted people with those conditions and help. Oh, absolutely. Do we have, you know, right now at the Children's Health Center, we have, probably 15 people with some form of, cancer history, you know, out of the 70 people that are there. So it's it's certainly a common thing we do, but we haven't published long term outcome data. So it's difficult to know how effective fasting is in some of these other conditions. At least in the case of lymphoma. We've got, you know, a number of case series that we've been tracking and say we have some people, we've done ten year follow up data, whole body CT showing that they're able to maintain cancer free state. Well, tell me some of the most fascinating, cases you've seen. Well, you know, our first lymphoma case was a woman, 42 year old woman who came to us and had a two year history of progressive disease and, you know, palpable tumors, upper and lower extremity. And, her doctors had assured her that diet didn't matter, that she could eat whatever she wanted and that fasting was they told her it was criminal quackery. So given that kind of medical support, she decided to come to tour of health centers, you know, 21 day water fast, during which time her tumors disappeared. Wow. So we couldn't even feel anything anymore. We sent her back to the archeologists who looked at her and said, what happened? And she said, I went to the criminal quacks and I did the fasting and the tumor went away. It was like amazed. Did suggest because her white count was still a little low, that she undergo some gentle chemotherapy. She refused. And then, we, we followed her at one month. At six months? At one year, we did up CT, and then he he acknowledged that, you know, she had done, you know, really well, and then what we did is we submitted, well, first of all, we said, look, we're going to submit this to the BMJ. And we did. And there was a lot of debate, but they did eventually publish the case. But they said, look, you've got to follow this woman long term because, you know, if we give chemotherapy, the tumors go away too, but then it comes back. So you got to show that she can sustain it long term. And so that's exactly what we did. We followed this woman for three years. And we told her, listen, you have to stick to a health promoting diet. Or it could be fatal because I will track you down and kill you. And she believed me, and she stuck to the diet, maintain her weight. And at three years. she was able to, we did a whole body CT scan and was, you know, still cancer free. And then we followed her for ten years. And so now we have ten years of data. She continues to be cancer free. So she went public with her story. And then we started getting a lot of lymphoma patients. So then we put a a series of, lymphoma patients, including one gentleman who had had chemotherapy, but it failed. And then he also responded to long term fasting. And then we had a gentleman who was had a worse condition, actually already metastasized into the bones and whatnot. He did, three week fast against his oncologist advice, went back to the oncologist. He said, oh my goodness, you need to do more of that. Came back to the 39 day water only fast. And he continues to make improvement. And he's also we have long term outcome data on him. So that case series has now been published. And so how long has that been that we published that us earlier in the year and then but I mean when did how well how long is that guy been cancer. We've had a multi year follow up now. Wow. So these are all these are all the ones I'm talking about all long term five. We had a lot of people with short term. And I've also had people that have done well fast who would go back to the conventional diet lifestyle. And then their lymphoma comes back. So it's not that you're curing lymphoma, it's that you're just managing it with a diet and lifestyle rather than, you know, chemotherapy. So you still have to be willing to do those things like eat well, live well, and, and get healthy because that's all you're doing is shifting the body's immune system. So heals faster than you're getting sick. I'm quite confident. If I took my patient that was ten years free, put her back on a conventional diet. We could eventually get that, lymphoma to manifest again. And we could get it back. If we really want to cure obesity, you can lose 100, right? Keep it off. Go back to eating greasy, fatty, slimy, processed food. You're going to get fat again. You know, it's it's there's no cure of obesity. The high blood pressure. We did a study 174 consecutive patients, 174 people who achieved pressure low enough to get rid of the meds. But if you go back to the salty processed foods, you'll get your blood pressure back. You're not cured. You're managed. Yeah. And so that's the thing is, people gotta give up the the model of cure and start focusing on what can I do to get healthy enough so my body can get healthier faster. I'm getting sick and all right. Yes, it's true. It could be a tool, but it's it's not going to be effective long term unless you combine it with healthful living diet, sleep and exercise. Yeah. All those things that are just a little bit sometimes difficult to do, but really. So that's one of the most difficult things you can ask a patient to do. Adopt the diet and lifestyle that's healthy in a world that's designed to make them fat, sick, and miserable. And even when you're successful, you think it's easy. No, people will get all pissed off you and your thin body, and you're pretty smart. You make them sick and they will give you all no, nothing. But, you know, problems. It's really there are a lot of haters out there and they will do and they'll be more than happy to get all over you. And the more successful you are, the more they'll, they'll get their, annoyances. What do you have advice for people for? For trying to stick to this lifestyle. Is it fasting? Well, I think fasting is a useful tool to get people to the point where they can tolerate, the diet lifestyle changes where the good foods start to taste good at first, when you're addicted to the artificial stimulation of salt and sugar, good foods are disgusting. Tasteless. Well, people can't even imagine how we could choke down fruits and vegetables and things like that. But once you're done fasting, or once you've eaten the diet for a long enough period of time, you get where it's actually preferential. So it doesn't take in discipline forever. You just have to do it long enough to actually get well. But a lot of people are really buried deep in the pleasure trap, and it's it's really difficult to escape. Think about this. If you're an alcoholic and you go to the, an inpatient program and you have 90 visits, 90 days to try to program and you have family support, 83% of those people will be back drinking within a year. If you're a heroin addict and the court mandates you go to inpatient care, 90% of those people will be shooting heroin within a year. And so you think, oh, that's not very good. Success rate, 90% failure. But if you go to a doctor and ask them to use any available weight loss strategy to lose 5% of body weight within a year, 95% of those people will have failed. So it's actually you have probably better chances of solving heroin addiction than you do weight using conventional methods, because the way we treat obesity in our society up until recently was tell people to eat less. And that doesn't work too. It's like telling alcoholics, well, just drink beer and wine. You'll you won't be a drunk anymore. The failure rate is 99%. And the failure rate of treating obesity, whether BMI is over 40 is 99%. Because we tell people, put your food on a smaller plate. Change the color of your meat from red white, chop your food in little bits. Put the fork down between each bite. You won't be overweight anymore. It doesn't work. The only thing that works for alcoholism is to stop drinking. And the only thing in my experience that works for obesity long term healthfully is to stop eating the chemicals at full. Your brain satiety mechanisms. And those are salt, oil and sugar. So if you eat a whole plant food diet, you will lose weight. If you're a woman, you can expect 2 pounds a week down to autumn and wait. If you're a male, about 3 pounds a week, pound bottom weight. Yeah. And so and that works and it's sustainable as long as you do the diet, you go back to eating the chemicals, you're going to fool your brain and then you're going to regain the fat. And so it's not what people want to hear. They don't want to hear what you mean. It's if you think alcohol, it's if you told me you have to completely quit drinking, they think, oh, that's what I want to do. Now that seems radical and extreme. And in fact, the biggest problem with alcoholics is they've been sober for a while and then they start thinking, oh, I'm better now. I can have I can drink normally, I can just have a little bit I want. And of course, the next thing they know, they're waking up under the Golden Gate Bridge naked, wondering how they got there. So the reality is, if you're an alcoholic, you need to not drink. And if you're overweight and you're having trouble with overeating, do not eat the chemicals that are making you fat. And those chemicals are salt on sugar. So what, it was that your, advice don't he did it. Or why? Your advice to try to make it easier. Save your life. Adopt a whole plant food source free diet, see if it's worth being healthy. And if it's not, go back to eating greasy, fatty process junk. But you don't have any tips to try to make it easier to because so many people struggle easier is understanding how it works. Number one, once you understand the pleasure trap that definitely helps. I think that's eye opening. Sure to if you use fasting to help break the addiction, that helps. Just like some people can just quit drinking when they decide you other people need to go to a place and get a little bit of help, or quit smoking or whatever. So that depends on the individual. There is no easy way that the best way is to adopt a healthy morning diet and lifestyle. So for one person that might just be understanding how it works and they do it, other people are going to need a little bit of extra help. And fasting or stay at two of health center can be that extra help for some people. Okay. And some people are not going to do it. It's not like everybody's going to do it. You have to decide what's the value, what's the priority for some people, short term pleasure seeking, self indulgent behaviors, the driving force, that's all they're interested in. Other people are thinking longer term in terms of health and happiness. You know, they're on a happiness model, not a pleasure seeking model. You know, if you ask a cocaine addict who gets more pleasure, the cocaine addict or normal person, well, cocaine, it gets a lot of pleasure, a lot of dopamine stimulation from the cocaine. But they don't ever get happy because happiness has nothing to do with dope. It's all about serotonin. It's a whole different neurochemical response. So if you want to get happy, you got to get healthy. If you're just looking for short term pleasure seeking behavior, well, then cocaine works pretty well. Yeah, ten times the dopamine production is an orgasm during sex, so you can see how reinforcing it might be. Yep. Yeah. What it is. Speaking of, well, I don't know if this is a Segway or not, but what do you think of the GLP one? Drugs are like those that are unbelievably fabulous in the sense that here's a drug you take now you have to take it for the rest of your life. It's incredibly expensive. The moment you stop it, you're going to blow up, but you get to keep feeding your addiction ultra processed foods. But the drug will make you so sick you won't eat quite as much. And so short term, you're losing weight. And being fat is so dangerous that even the dangers of those drugs may be offset by the benefits of getting rid of some of the fat short term. Now, long term, forget about it. The gastric paresis and all the problems that in fact, if you notice, they're already starting the class action lawsuits. If you tell them to tell me they were coming, I didn't. There's advertising for the class. Action suits are already starting the process. So yeah, long term it's a nightmare. But short term, yes, you can lose weight even eating the crap. And so when people don't want to give up their highly processed, ultra processed foods that is a short term with weight loss. Now I have another short term weight loss. If you get a chainsaw and you cut your leg off right at the hip, that's 40 pounds just like that, just cut off both legs. It's like 80 pounds. So in terms of quickness, that's even quicker than GLP inhibitors. But neither of them are probably very good. And from a long term health promoting standpoint, maybe the cocaine's better. Well, you know, heroin, if you look at those people on the cover, those skinny jeans, a lot of them are very skinny. So if you if you get sick enough, in fact, what's the what's one of the hallmarks of skin cancer. It's weight loss. Yeah. Who cares. Well, what it's like, you know, mistakenly advising people with cancer. Oh, well, all you have to do is eat whatever you want, as long as you don't lose weight. As if the weight loss was causing the cancer. That's the problem causing the weight loss. Right? Exactly. Okay. So I think we know where you stand on the GLP one drugs. Is there anything for weight loss? Gravity? No. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Just do they work? Yeah. Yes they do. Absolutely. Right. Okay. So if people were to say, well, let me use this as a transition to adopt health promoting diet less. So that might be an argument. That's not what's actually happening though. And that's not how it works. And if you do the transition you lose the weight anyway. You know, if you're on a health morning day, if you're a woman, you're losing 100 pounds of your weight anyway. You know how fast you need to lose it, right? Yeah. Okay. So you're going to give us all the answers we don't want. You have to do it the hard way, the healthy way, the turn off the TV at night, weigh the all the things we don't want to hear. But we want to tell people with food is really simple. If you want to know, all you do is you close your eyes and you go and say, do I really, really, really, really want it? And if the answer is truly yes, you know, you can't have, you get nothing. What can I say? Because it's actually no fun if you like carrots, but you're not going to like, scratch somebody's eyes out when they tell you not to have carrots. Chocolate. It's a whole nother. It's a whole nother matter. I just if you want to use chocolate, just melt it down and rub it all of your belly and hips where it ends up. And then when you're done, you can wash it off and not carry it around all week. You can't have any chocolate. How do you want to be? I don't eat chocolate once in like a dark chocolate and get away with a little bit of almost anything. It's a little bit. I don't eat a lot. Some people can have a little bit, not have a lot. For example, can some people have a drink and not become a drunk? Sure, yeah. But if you're a drunk, it's not you. Okay. So you can eat a little bit cheese and chocolate and not gain weight. But if you're overweight, it may not be you. So you got to tell yourself, got to know yourself. Well, I don't have any cheese, I can tell you that. Okay. All right. Well, I think you answered a lot of the question. It's basically if we want it, don't eat it. Okay, great. Moving on. Let me ask you some fun questions. Now what? What's the best piece of advice you've ever received? It doesn't have to be health or wellness related or age related. Do you have a good piece of advice just for like health results from healthful living? So focus on healthful living, not pills, potions, powders, and treats. Okay, I should have known that was going to be, I think we already kind of touched on this. Did you? Did what did you learn from watching your parents age? Well, I learned that when you live conventionally, it can be a slow and painful decline, and it can be really debilitating. And when you adopt health promoting diet and lifestyle, even later in life, it's like miraculous. And that the more successful you are, the more of the haters will hate. It is going to hate. Okay. Do you have a favorite health or beauty product? Yeah. You know, I think one of the most health promoting products available to us is actually H2O. It's actually pure water, and a lot of people don't consume enough water and they don't maintain hydration. They don't take advantage of the benefits of water. So if I had to pick one product that may be underutilized, I'd say it's water. How much should we drink and what kind? Right. So you want some kind of purified water? You don't want municipal water with chlorine and hydrogen and how it carbons and whatnot. We use distilled water, but you can also use reverse osmosis. There's lots of different ways of filtering water. But if you think about if the environment was clean, rainwater would be distilled water. That's certainly right. Not would not be foreign to us. So I think that purification of some kind is necessary, but I don't, you know, I don't know that it's mandatory that it'd be one way or another. And how much? Well, that'll depend on your diet when you're eating a really high water content diet, like lots of fruits and vegetables, you're not going to need to drink as much water as people that are eating high protein, you know? And these foods, on the other hand, you should drink enough water that your urine is not overly concentrated. If you notice your urine is really concentrate. You know, maybe that's a sign you want to be getting a little bit more water. And the more you exercise, more you sweat, the more what are you going to drink? Okay, that's that's a good rule of thumb. Do you have a, like a public person that you admire for the way they're aging? Public person. Yes, I have, two, people that I particularly, admire. One of them, is a coauthor of a number of our studies. His name is Colin Campbell, and he's a, the author of the China Study. Yes. He's, a brilliant professor. He helped us publish our first paper, medical supervised water, only fasting in the treatment of hypertension. And our second paper as well. He's helped us tremendously. And he's now he was very sick. He was one of his accomplishments. Is he isolated dioxin, which is the active agent in Agent Orange and got massive exposure, developed dystonia was very ill some decades ago. Came to the center, fasted and got well. And he went public with his story talks about it in his books. And so he and in fact, he wrote the introduction to confessing save your life. And he tells his own personal story. And his wife dies with melanoma and recovering with fasting and whatnot. And so and now he's in his 90s. He is sharp as a tack, doing great. And so even though he was very ill, he's managed to overcome it and continue to live a long, healthy and productive life. And he's just a real hero. Of my another one is Caldwell Esselstyn. He's also a John that we have the pleasure of working with. And he's in his 90s now. And, again, sharp as a tack, doing productive work and, you know, telling the truth about diet and and so he's another example of, you know, what happens when you really, put it to the test. Yeah. I agree with those two for sure. And then this is the last question a little out there, but I just like to know, for my own personal, reasons, what's your favorite concert you've ever been to? Well, I've only been to one concert. What I wasn't for only been to one concert. I was not a person that went out. I had a very focused life. You know, I, I was very young in the school. I started school in my early 20s. I was very young into practice. I've been practicing for 40 years. Once we started practice, we never really left the property because, you know, it's one of those 24, seven operations. But I did go to one concert. One of my patients invited me to come hear him play with his band, and it was at the Oakland Coliseum. And the group was called the Grateful Dead. They've changed their name now, with the demise of some of their members. But so, we went and sat on the stage in the Oakland Coliseum for the one and only concert I attended. It was a very interesting experience. My wife was a little surprised because she knew I wasn't much of a go out, but I asked her if she wanted to come to, and she knew who they were. I didn't know who who they were. I mean, other than the individuals that I was treating. And so it was it was kind of an experience, but it was like going back to the 60s because they had a lot of, marijuana smoke in the, in the thing. And it was very, you know, kind of. But at that point, they already were on they had vegetarian food and they were, you know, they were patients of Doctor Mcdougal's. And so they were trying to do the right thing. So this experience, what year was it? Was that before or after Jerry Garcia died? It was before, Jerry Garcia passed away. Okay. So do you know what year that was? Well, it would have been, 2 or 3 years before Mr. Garcia passed. So. Okay. I don't know when that was. 90s. Yeah. How did he die? Well, I mean, if you were only going to go to one that's a pretty, pretty jam and one pretty good doctor Golden since then. But, you know, maybe someday I'll go to another one, but. Oh, my gosh, you cracked me up. Well, I have so enjoyed meeting you. You are. I know you don't want to be a delight, but you kind of are. So I appreciate you. Thank you so much for all your knowledge, you know, work that we do, I appreciate it. You take care. Bye bye. Thanks for listening, friend. From my heart to yours. Be well. Until we meet again.