Fasting Page #9

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up and I had no pain

for about 10 minutes

and everyday thereafter

I had a little more time without pain

but almost even better than

that was during the afternoon

and evening my pain was decreasing a lot.

When I first got to True North,

they asked me what my pain

was on the zero to 10 scale

and my answer was,

"It's about a six to an

eight all of the time

"with the exception of those rare moments

"where it kicks up to a 10

when I truly could not move,

"when it would stop me in my tracks,"

and after day 19 and the pain

started to reduce over time,

it finally got to the

point in the afternoon

where I was down to a one or a two.

You just can't imagine

what a blessing that was

and finally on day 41 I woke up,

I had had a whole day without pain,

the doctors wanted me

to quit and I was ready

to quit fasting.

So on that day, I had

a full day without pain

for the first time in 16 years.

Dr. Goldhamer explained that sometimes

it takes more than one

fast to solve a problem

and it turned out that

happened with me as well.

When I started the re-feeding process

which is a very careful re-introduction

of food after fasting.

I started to get some

twinges of pain on and off.

So after two months of re-feeding,

I went back to Dr. Goldhamer and said,

and at the time I couldn't

believe I was asking

to do this again but I said,

"I need to fast again.

"What do you think?"

and he said he thought

that would be a good idea

since I had had good

results on the first fast

and I said, "Great, I'll

start again tomorrow,"

and he said, "Oh no, you

can't start fasting right now,

"you've only been

re-feeding for two months,"

and I said, "Well, what's the problem?"

and he said, "You need to rebuild

your nutritional reserves.

"That's very important,"

and I said, "Well, how

long will that take?"

and he said, "With the length

of fast that you've done,

"probably at least six months,"

and then six months to

the day after I ended

that first fast,

I started fasting again,

again, not knowing how long I would fast,

and I just kept fasting until

all of the pain was gone.

It turned out it was another 40 days

and then I started to

re-feed and at that point,

I didn't have any pain but I had worries

that it would come back

but I just kept following

the doctor's recommendations

about what to eat,

how to eat and it finally

dawned on me one day

that that headache was

gone and that was in 2010

and I haven't had a headache since.

(dramatic music)

- Well, I found out

about True North through

one of the talks that Dr. Goldhamer

gave to our medical school

and I remember seeing him

and thinking, I definitely,

definitely need to do an internship there.

- We have an opportunity

for doctors to train

in the use of fasting.

We have about 30

clinicians a year that come

from medicine, osteopathy, chiropractic,

and naturopathology.

As part of their rotation,

they're able to do rotations.

We're a ND residency site for

the naturopathic profession

and those doctors come

in and spend a year.

We've recently completed, for example,

a fasting safety study

which shows that fasting

can be a safe and effective

means when it's done properly.

- The conclusion was

that water only fasting

in a medically supervised

facility such as True North Health

using the True North Health protocol,

because we didn't compare

any other protocols,

is relatively safe.

- We're actually very

excited because we see

a wide range of conditions

that tend to respond

to this approach and now

we're in a position finally

with the help of our nonprofit

True North Health Foundation

to begin to document those results

and present them in a way that I think

both clinicians and scientists

will find acceptable.

- What the foundation

is now doing is turning

that into accepted, peer

reviewed published research

and so we're doing the

human subjects research,

bringing people in to look at how fasting

changes biomarkers in the

blood, taste and adaptation,

different studies.

So we'll actually have published material

that we can show people and

people will start seeing fasting

as a modality of healing that

really does amazing things

and has been for millennia for humans.

- For example, in the treatment

of high blood pressure,

we did a study with our colleague,

T. Colin Campbell from Cornell University.

We took 174 consecutive patients

that had high blood pressure

and we put them through

a period of fasting followed

by a whole plant food,

sugar, oil and salt free diet.

Of the 174 consecutive patients

with high blood pressure,

174 people lowered their pressure enough

to eliminate the need for

medication and in that study,

we were able to

demonstrate and effect size

of over 60 points average

drop in stage 3 hypertension.

That's the largest effect

that's ever been shown

in treating high blood

pressure in humans as far

as I'm aware of.

Essentially if you have

high blood pressure

and you undergo fasting and

make diet and lifestyle changes,

you have an exceptionally high likelihood

of being able to normalize

your blood pressure

and if you're willing

to do really dangerous

and radical things like

eat good and exercise,

go to bed on time,

you have an excellent chance of being able

to maintain those results.

- The reason I stayed after

my residency at True North

is because you see that

on an everyday basis here.

You don't have to be

here for years in order

to understand the profound

effect that water fasting has.

(slow pensive music)

- [Alan] If someone is going to fast

for a day or two,

most people in the United

States are going to have

absolutely no issues with that.

We have plenty of fat

reserves, we can do that.

It is important to make

sure that people are getting

adequate amounts of fluids during that

because dehydration can be very dangerous.

- I think what's happening

right now is that

a lot of people are improvising.

- If someone's going to go

and say, as you mentioned,

a 21 day fast.

That is something that

I think should actually

be monitored that people are doing well.

- So fasting and re-feeding

cycles are extremely powerful,

probably more powerful than

a powerful cocktail of drugs

and so when you eliminate the doctor,

you eliminate the registered dietician,

you eliminate something that

is being clinically tested,

you're now really putting

yourself in a lot of,

in a very dangerous position

and it could be that

it's not very dangerous to you today

because maybe your immune system is fine,

you're not taking any other

drugs but maybe two years

down the road you try it again,

now all of a sudden

you're immuno suppressed

or you have a viral

infection or you're taking

a drug for Diabetes or

you're taking another drug

and now together they

become very problematic

like the infection now could

become a lethal infection

or the insulin.

Now we know some of the people

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