Fasting Page #8

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I had to accept the fact

that I was gonna gain

some weight back.

I was 145 pounds, I was 6'3"

and I was totally zeroing in

on 140 and that's how I worked.

I would always go in five pound increments

and to me those were huge victories.

- Any food restriction is

problematic for somebody

who has had an eating

disorder, is currently,

actively trying to get

over an eating disorder,

who has a family history

of an eating disorder.

It's likely to send you

back into an eating disorder

if you have a history of it.

- For me, fasting has

actually been a remedy

in my healing process and

I feel that it has helped

my relationship with food.

One of the things that

works so efficiently for me

to keep my eating disorder in

check is eating in windows.

I feel like I don't have to

put as much thought into food.

It kind of basically

takes my mind off of food.

So I become more relaxed

and because of that,

it improves my relationship with food.

- You don't see too many old fat people

and there's a reason

because being overweight

is definitely hard on the system.

I'm a bit overweight and

I'm worried about it.

I might even look into this

fasting myself (laughs).

- There's essentially two forms of fasting

that are being advocated currently:

the intermittent fasting

which is essentially intermittent feeding

in which you narrow the feeding windows,

you may restrict calories on

one or two days or more a week.

These can be done safely

often in an outpatient basis

but medically supervised

water only fasting

is a little bit more complicated.

It does require supervision.

It does require a contained

environment in order

to ensure a safe and effective experience.

So when we talk about the

long-term water only fasting,

that's done at facilities like

the True North Health Center

where people are able to

undergo physical exams,

laboratory monitoring,

being in controlled and

contained environment

and in that type of a setting,

fasting can be done,

even prolonged fasting,

can be done safely.

It's also important

that fasting be applied

at patients at the right time.

In other words, there are some

people who have conditions

where they would be better

off with a different approach

than fasting.

Fasting may be too vigorous

or may be inappropriate

because of complications

with medical management

or at least until medications

can be withdrawn, et cetera.

So fasting has a wide

range of applications

but where it does it's

best work is in dealing

with conditions that are caused by excess.

So conditions associated

with dietary excess

include things like obesity,

high blood pressure,

and other cardiovascular related

disease, Type 2 Diabetes,

a host of autoimmune

diseases and even some forms

of cancer like lymphoma seem

to be intimately with our diet

and lifestyle choices

and so it makes sense

that where dietary excess

is a contributing factor to the problem,

fasting may be a helpful means

of rapidly giving the body

a chance to reverse the

consequences of dietary excess.

- In 1994 I had a head injury

and when I regained consciousness,

I had a terrible headache

and prior to the accident,

I had been a practicing dentist.

So because of the nerve

damage to my hands,

I also had to quit practicing dentistry.

I sought medical advice to

get rid of the headache.

I visited with several neurologists.

They were unable to help me.

I also tried some alternative treatments -

acupuncture, cupping -

unfortunately, nothing

was able to help me.

I had a headache everyday

for 16 years, 24/7.

It just never ever went away.

So the neurologist told

me that the reason I had

this never-ending headache

was because the dura mater,

the leatherlike covering of

the brain and the spinal cord

had been torn and had become

inflamed and then when I saw

on the True North website that a number

of the health conditions that they treated

were based on inflammation,

I decided to call and see

if maybe their treatment

of water only fasting

would be helpful to me.

- At the True North Health Center,

we take a rather clinical

approach to fasting.

All patients are

carefully screened by both

taking their history as well

as reviewing their previous

medical treatment.

- He was very honest in

saying that they had never

treated a patient with

this particular problem

but he thought I might have a chance.

When I initially came to True North,

they asked me how long I wanted to fast.

I didn't know I had a choice in that.

I just thought they would tell me.

- Fasting protocols here at

the True North Health Center

can range anywhere from five to 40 days

depending on the patient

and how they respond.

Not everybody or not every

condition has a stereotypical

amount of time that's associated

with its optimum outcome.

- And I told him I was going to fast

until one of three things happened:

either the headache went away

or I could not fast any longer

or all of the doctors

got together and said,

for my own safety, I

needed to quit fasting.

People have wondered at my

commitment to water only fasting

but you have to remember

I had been in serious pain

every minute of the day for 16 years.

I had tried everything that

traditional western medicine

had to offer,

I had tried alternatives.

I also knew there was a

very good chance that I was

going to live to be an old lady.

We have longevity in my

family and other than this

never-ending headache,

I really didn't have any health problems

and I did not want to be 80

years old one day thinking,

what would've happened if I'd

gone to that True North place?

I wanted to try everything

that was possible

to get out of pain.

So I started fasting, the

doctors come in twice a day.

- They're monitored twice

a day by staff doctors

during their fasting experience

where we're taking vitals

and monitoring their conditions.

- To check on you, to make

sure you're doing well,

and everyday it was the same question -

how are you doing?

And everyday for 18 days

it was the same answer,

I didn't have any change.

I still had the headache

but then on day 19 I woke up

and I thought uh oh, something's wrong.

I didn't know what it was

but it was really scary

because something was wrong and I decided,

I'm not moving out of this

bed until I figure out

what it was and I've got to

say it took me about a minute

to realize what was wrong is

I didn't have a headache anymore.

I had forgotten what it

felt like not to be in pain

and that lasted for about five minutes

and then I went down to tell Dr. Goldhamer

and if possible I think he

might've been more excited

than I was.

He kept saying, "It's

amenable to treatment.

"It's amenable to treatment."

So I went through that whole day wondering

because the pain had only been

gone for about five minutes,

then it came back and I wondered,

I wonder if this will

happen again tomorrow.

The next morning I woke

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