Valuetainment - Doctor Who Believes In 40 Day Water Fasts

00:00:00.320 Fasting is a physiological state when the body still has labile reserves.

00:00:04.040 There is no pill, potion, powder, product. There's no magic. These are ancient practices.

00:00:09.000 Isn't another word for fasting starving myself?

00:00:12.600 And starvation is very dangerous and will result in death.

00:00:15.820 The patients we fast for 40 days are still in the fasting state. We do not go to starvation.

00:00:20.500 Now there are certain people that you don't put through this fast.

00:00:23.120 There's many people that would not be good candidates for long-term fasting.

00:00:27.020 What have you found over the last 36 years?

00:00:28.940 Even the same patient, one fast to another fast can be entirely different.

00:00:34.700 46 years you've been doing this. How much of this stuff do you apply to your own life?

00:00:38.720 A whole plant food SOS-free diet that's free of meat, fish, fowl, eggs, steroids, oil, salt, and sugar.

00:00:44.440 And that's the diet I've eaten every day since I started this experiment.

00:00:48.060 You've been on the same diet for 46 years?

00:00:50.320 I have so far.

00:00:51.260 I'm 42 years old and I look at my skin and I'm looking at your skin. You look like a baby. 1.00

00:00:55.760 You don't look 61 years old. That's insane to be thinking about that.

00:00:59.740 What are you going to have for Thanksgiving? I mean, what happens to the turkey?

00:01:02.160 Honestly, once people adapt, they really don't miss the greasy, fatty, slimy, dead-decaned flesh processed foods that make other people feel so compromised.

00:01:09.120 I hope you're happy with yourself because you ruined everyone's Thanksgiving.

00:01:12.140 You've got this fat turkey sitting there and are you going to be thinking about Dr. Allen?

00:01:16.200 And it is really difficult to live healthy in our society today because the society is designed to give you what you want, not necessarily what you need.

00:01:24.120 My guest today is the author of the book called The Pleasure Trap, as well as his expertise is helping people who are stuck in self-destructive cycles.

00:01:38.720 What a thing to be able to help, right?

00:01:39.880 If you've got any kind of self-destructive cycles, hopefully we're going to be able to fix that today.

00:01:43.520 That is Dr. Allen Goldhammer.

00:01:45.180 Dr. Allen Goldhammer, thank you for being a guest on Valuetainment.

00:01:48.600 My pleasure.

00:01:49.180 So, look, I mean, I've read a lot of books on, you know, diet and fasting.

00:01:54.840 And, you know, I got my CFO in the office here.

00:01:57.660 He's all about fasting.

00:01:59.000 I got Kai over here is going on a 46-hour fast now.

00:02:04.040 You broke it already?

00:02:05.160 He broke it.

00:02:05.660 He said he's going to try to do 48 hours.

00:02:07.180 He broke it at 44 hours.

00:02:08.980 Everybody in our office is about fasting except this guy.

00:02:11.680 So, but I'm open to it and I'm learning about it.

00:02:14.720 We had a couple other friends here on talking about this guest as well.

00:02:17.480 So, it's good to have you on.

00:02:18.800 But you take it to a whole different level.

00:02:20.760 You don't say a 12-hour fast or a 24-hour fast or a 48-hour fast.

00:02:25.100 You go all the way down to a 40-hour fast.

00:02:27.800 And you've done this with nearly 20,000 people.

00:02:30.520 So, how did you get about thinking of wanting to do 40-hour fast?

00:02:34.880 And tell us a little bit about your background on how you came about with this philosophy.

00:02:39.320 Well, you know, actually, it's actually 40 days of fasting at the extreme.

00:02:43.800 So, you know.

00:02:44.440 Did I say 40 hours?

00:02:45.620 You did.

00:02:46.100 No, it's 40 days.

00:02:47.680 It's 40 days.

00:02:49.200 Well, you know, Moses, David, Elijah, and Jesus said to have fasted for as long as 40 days.

00:02:54.020 And certainly, several hundred of our patients as well.

00:02:56.900 You know, there's really two kinds of fasting that people are talking about today.

00:03:00.580 One is intermittent fasting, which is what your colleagues there are actively engaging in.

00:03:05.760 And the fact is, everybody intermittent fasts to a certain degree.

00:03:09.500 You know, you eat your last meal, whatever time that is.

00:03:12.260 And then you go to sleep.

00:03:13.820 And when you wake up in the morning, you break that fast with something we call break fast or breakfast.

00:03:18.900 And so the question is, what's the ideal period of time for that intermittent fasting period to be?

00:03:25.940 In our practice, we encourage patients to fast every day for 16 hours so that they have an eight-hour feeding window.

00:03:34.080 And what that means practically is that you stop eating at least three hours before your normal bedtime, and then you defer your morning meal until you've had a period of around 16 hours of fasting.

00:03:48.260 And it's thought that that cumulative benefit from intermittent fasting over long periods of time may have some significant health benefits.

00:03:58.300 In our practice, we have another type of fasting that we utilize, which is long-term water-only fasting.

00:04:04.560 And this is fasting that's done under medical supervision in a controlled setting where patients go from anywhere from five to 40 days.

00:04:12.380 So although intermittent fasting can be done safely by virtually everybody and may be a healthy practice for everybody, long-term water-only fasting does need to be done in a controlled setting in order to ensure that it's safe and effective.

00:04:25.840 So there's a history, exam, laboratory monitoring, medical management that's done.

00:04:30.600 And that's how we're able to do this safely and effectively.

00:04:32.760 And we have done this over 20,000 times with patients over the past 36 years.

00:04:37.940 So we have a lot of experience, and it's used mostly in helping people overcome specific health problems.

00:04:45.520 Now, there are certain people that you don't put through this fast, and I think it's five criteria, if you don't mind sharing that with the audience.

00:04:52.560 Well, yeah, certainly there's many people that would not be good candidates for long-term fasting, unlike intermittent fasting, which can be done by virtually everybody.

00:05:00.840 Long-term fasting, you have to actually have the appropriate reserves, capacity, and adaptive situation in order to be able to safely adjust to it.

00:05:12.320 There's also patients, for example, that are on medications.

00:05:15.580 Medications that can't be arbitrarily discontinued without serious consequences wouldn't be candidates for water-only fasting.

00:05:22.500 Water fasting is done when patients are stable off their medications.

00:05:27.120 Patients that have problems with kidney disease or cardiac instability or have other contraindications to fasting wouldn't be good candidates.

00:05:35.320 And actually, people that are afraid of fasting probably are not good candidates for fasting.

00:05:40.280 Fear itself is a pretty expensive emotional response.

00:05:43.580 And so that's why it's important for us to educate people about fasting safety and efficacy before we try to get them to undergo this process.

00:05:51.440 Now, you said 36 years, over 20,000 people.

00:05:56.440 What have you learned after going through 20,000?

00:05:59.420 And is it still new findings that you're getting?

00:06:01.680 Or have you pretty much realized what works, what doesn't work, what results we're getting, what people go through after day one, day two, day three, day four, day five?

00:06:10.640 What is the biggest challenge when you hit a wall?

00:06:12.700 You know how it's kind of like when you're running the 26.2 mile, I bet there's probably got to be a wall, people, maybe multiple walls.

00:06:19.700 What have you found over the last 36 years?

00:06:22.020 Yeah, well, one of the really interesting things and exciting things about using fasting is that it's really different every time you use it because the people that are fasting are different.

00:06:31.260 And even the same patient, one fast to another fast can be entirely different.

00:06:37.720 One thing I have learned is that if you do good preparation before fasting and you are very careful about selecting appropriate patients for fasting, it is a whole lot less stressful because you can have very predictable results with certain conditions.

00:06:54.100 Other situations may be less predictable.

00:06:56.340 So we get really good at cherry picking out the people we expect to have really good results.

00:07:01.300 And we focus on those conditions and those patients that are going to make us look good.

00:07:06.100 You're saying that right up front.

00:07:07.420 So you're not even trying to do the impossible.

00:07:10.280 You're just making sure you have a certain set of criterias that you get the best results.

00:07:14.580 You focus on those folks.

00:07:15.940 Yeah, you know, the fact is it looks like what we're doing sometimes looks miraculous.

00:07:20.240 And of course, it's not at all because all we're doing is getting the body to do what it does best.

00:07:24.660 And that's heal itself when you get out of the way.

00:07:26.560 We actually don't do anything when you think about it other than carefully select and monitor patients to go through this very natural process.

00:07:34.760 And what's interesting and what I've learned in response to your question is that the people that respond the best to fasting are the patients that have problems that were brought about by dietary excess.

00:07:46.640 So, you know, when you think about it, it's not shocking that conditions like obesity and cardiovascular disease, including high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, autoimmune diseases, and conditions like lymphoma, these conditions we know from experience are made worse by poor dietary choices.

00:08:02.380 It's not shocking that they would get well faster with fasting than they would perhaps in other circumstances because the reason they're sick to begin with is because they haven't taken the ability to control what they're putting in their mouth and they're developing diseases of dietary excess.

00:08:18.480 These diseases used to be called the diseases of kings because it was the wealthy elite kings that used to get these conditions.

00:08:25.320 Now they've become ubiquitous because even poor people in our modern world are living as only kings used to live in the past.

00:08:35.060 That is eating highly concentrated, highly refined foods.

00:08:39.080 What do you mean by these diseases are named after kings?

00:08:41.180 Can you name a thing?

00:08:41.580 For example, cardiovascular disease and high blood pressure used to be very rare.

00:08:45.000 The only people that used to develop cardiovascular disease, coronary artery disease, were the wealthy elite that could afford to eat like we all eat today.

00:08:53.660 You know, in the world of our ancient ancestors, getting enough to eat and not getting eaten was the imperative of life.

00:09:00.280 In fact, most humans, according to the anthropologists, never lived to reproduce.

00:09:04.980 They never passed on their genes.

00:09:06.740 It was only the rare people that survived long enough to pass on those genes, and those were our ancestors. 0.95

00:09:11.940 The people that didn't make it were, you know, what we call losers.

00:09:15.340 They didn't, they're not your ancestors.

00:09:17.000 Your ancestors are the winners.

00:09:18.780 We're the end result of a thousand generations of successful survival and reproduction.

00:09:23.400 We're the piece de resistance.

00:09:25.720 And the problem is our brains that allowed us to do that were designed, evolved in the environment of scarcity.

00:09:33.640 And now we've changed the environment because humans are so innovative and so creative.

00:09:37.800 We've been able to change our environment.

00:09:39.280 And now we live in an environment of abundance.

00:09:41.880 And as a consequence of those changes, our brain doesn't serve us well unless we become very conscious of the vulnerability to the pleasure trap.

00:09:50.560 That's very deep.

00:09:51.480 So now you're saying 90% is, you pretty much lock on to the people that are the ideal candidates for you to work on, not the impossible cases.

00:10:00.960 What is an ideal candidate to go on a potential 10, 20, 30, even a 40-day fast?

00:10:06.380 So I find what appropriately motivated patients have better long-term success.

00:10:12.340 And the most effective motivation in my experience are pain, debility, and fear of death.

00:10:18.520 So we tend to see a lot of people that are kind of, they call us True North Health Center, the last resort.

00:10:23.820 Because many of the people, they've tried all the pills and potions, powders, the surgeries, all the magic bullets, all the easy fixes, and now they have to get down and dirty and do the hard work.

00:10:34.660 And it is really difficult to live healthy in our society today.

00:10:38.500 Because the society is designed to give you what you want, not necessarily what you need.

00:10:43.980 And what we want is to live without having to limit any of our behaviors.

00:10:49.740 And what we need is to figure out a way to escape the dietary pleasure trap and actually give the body a chance to heal itself.

00:10:56.060 How do you do that?

00:10:57.460 What we do is education.

00:10:59.620 So we teach people about the fact that health results from healthful living.

00:11:03.020 And from our viewpoint, healthful living involves diet, sleep, and exercise.

00:11:07.300 So we teach people how to make sure they prioritize their sleep, that they get appropriate activity, and that they control what they put in their mouth.

00:11:15.180 And from our viewpoint, that diet is a whole plant food diet that's SOS-free.

00:11:19.660 And as you know, SOS is the international symbol of danger.

00:11:22.460 It also stands for chemicals that we add to food that fool the satiety mechanisms in our brain, lead to systematic overeating, and lead to the metabolic syndrome that's epidemic today.

00:11:33.600 And that metabolic syndrome is responsible for contributing to the diabetes, the high blood pressure, the autoimmune disease, and some forms of cancer.

00:11:41.360 So when people are educated about that, they can make a decision to make sure they're sleeping, exercising, eating properly.

00:11:47.880 Some people, that's not enough.

00:11:49.300 They need a little extra help.

00:11:50.500 And that's where we have an inpatient facility where people can come in and live in a controlled setting so that they can go through fasting if necessary safely, they can make the dietary changes, and they can get educated about what it's going to take to actually get well.

00:12:05.440 And once people experience getting well, sometimes they're motivated to comply.

00:12:09.880 What does O stand for in SOS?

00:12:12.080 Oil.

00:12:12.520 So it's salt, oil, and sugar.

00:12:14.200 Those are the chemicals that we put in the food that make us fat, sick, and miserable.

00:12:18.040 So those are the words, salts, oil, and sugar.

00:12:21.260 Yeah, so these are not actually food, but they're fractionated food byproducts that we put into the food to stimulate the dopamine in our brain.

00:12:30.520 Got it.

00:12:31.380 So you were talking about healthy diet, healthy sleep, healthy exercise.

00:12:37.760 And, you know, when you look at these things, you look at, you know, in bodybuilding, they'll say 80% of bodybuilding is diet, 20% is actually training because you've got to eat right.

00:12:47.020 And if you don't eat right, there's no way in the world you can compete because 80% is diet, right?

00:12:51.980 How much of us staying healthy has to do with, if you were to rank them, diet, sleep, exercise, sex, how much of a healthy living has to do with those four things?

00:13:03.440 So the fact is that we know that a lot of health is involved in things you don't have control over.

00:13:11.260 And genetics are a dominant component in that.

00:13:13.260 But of the things that you can do something about, it's my estimation that about 80% of the effect size is from what you put in your mouth.

00:13:20.600 And the balance comes from your sleep, your activity, and the psychological variables, which certainly would include your interpersonal relations and all the things that go along with that.

00:13:29.940 The reality, though, is you can take an individual and limit their exercise, you can limit their sleep, or you can limit their diet, any one of which can compromise their health.

00:13:41.280 If you want to get and keep people healthy, you have to really control all three.

00:13:47.300 So you're not even putting one ahead of the other one?

00:13:49.900 What I'm saying is that the largest effect size is in fact-

00:13:53.160 80% is diet.

00:13:53.860 Is diet.

00:13:54.300 But the fact is that if you compromise sleep, you compromise health.

00:13:58.060 If you compromise, if you get inadequate activity, you'll still eventually compromise health.

00:14:04.820 Interesting.

00:14:06.300 So in other words, you are putting diet ahead of the other two.

00:14:09.600 If you were to only do one, you are putting one ahead of the other two.

00:14:12.380 Of the things that we have to implement in people, probably 80% of it is involved in controlling what people put in their mouth.

00:14:20.820 Got it.

00:14:21.340 So Pleasure Trap.

00:14:22.680 What inspired you want to write this book?

00:14:24.220 I mean, obviously, it's done very well.

00:14:25.600 I'm looking at the reviews.

00:14:26.560 What inspired you want to write this book?

00:14:28.880 Well, you know, we've been in practice a long time before we started writing The Pleasure Trap.

00:14:32.280 And the idea was to try to explain how it was these patients that we were seeing get well were actually getting well.

00:14:38.680 Trying to come up with an explanation that made sense, that was consistent with our experience, and the facts as we could determine them.

00:14:46.120 And so, you know, in our mind, the pleasure trap, that is the artificial stimulation of dopamine in your brain, that dopamine is what's associated with pleasure.

00:14:56.240 The more dopamine, the more pleasure.

00:14:58.740 The more dopamine, the better the food tastes.

00:15:00.900 The more, the better the experience is perceived.

00:15:03.860 The reason why your brain gives you dopamine is to reinforce behaviors that favor survival and reproduction.

00:15:10.500 So it's not surprising that the only natural, normal stimulants of dopamine are food and sex.

00:15:15.560 Food and sex are the only natural, normal, intense stimulants of dopamine.

00:15:20.020 As you'd expect, because if you didn't engage in enough feeding behavior, you wouldn't survive.

00:15:24.100 If you didn't engage in enough sexual behavior, you wouldn't survive.

00:15:27.500 And so it's logical that the body would, the brain would reward the body by engaging in these positive behaviors.

00:15:34.780 The problem was humans got really clever.

00:15:37.060 And we learned to short circuit this very natural system with the use of certain chemicals.

00:15:41.720 And one of the most obvious are drugs, alcohol, cocaine, methamphetamines.

00:15:46.920 These chemicals all stimulate dopamine production and make people feel good.

00:15:51.360 The problem is it's an unnatural stimulation and so it can lead to addiction.

00:15:55.520 I mean, that's the hallmark of addiction where you're having to do something to continue not only to feel good, but to avoid feeling very bad, you know, the withdrawal effect.

00:16:03.400 And the same thing happens when you add these chemicals into the diet.

00:16:07.060 They taste really good.

00:16:08.480 They make foods taste good because they result in dopamine stimulation in the brain, just like drugs do.

00:16:12.800 But it's an artificial stimulation and you can literally develop an addiction, if you will, to the artificial stimulation of these chemicals.

00:16:20.780 And now you have to keep eating these chemicals to avoid feeling very bad.

00:16:24.480 And people don't like to think of themselves as addicts because they're eating a sugar, salt and oil rich diet.

00:16:30.420 But the reality is when they try to stop it, it's very difficult.

00:16:33.740 And that's why today two thirds of people are overweight or obese.

00:16:36.540 You know, the majority of people are developing these chronic degenerative diseases and people are dying and becoming debilitated, which was maybe even a bigger issue, years before they pass.

00:16:48.060 You know, life expectancy up until recently had continued to increase.

00:16:51.580 The last few years, it's actually starting to decrease.

00:16:54.020 And even perhaps more important or urgent to people than life expectancy, that is how long they're going to live on average, is healthy life expectancy, how well they're going to live when they're alive.

00:17:05.300 The reality is 9.6 years of debility is average now.

00:17:09.520 So people are not living a good life and then having a good death where they go to bed and don't wake up.

00:17:15.260 They're spending years or decades unable to talk or move, lying in nursing home beds, waiting for people to come and change their diaper because they've had strokes or heart attacks or preventable debilitating illnesses.

00:17:26.600 And that's what we're interested in helping our patients prevent.

00:17:29.360 We know they're not going to live forever.

00:17:31.200 Look, you have 109 billion modern humans that have been born on the planet.

00:17:35.180 There's about 7.7 billion of us alive today.

00:17:38.280 But we only have good documentation of five people living past 117.

00:17:43.600 You're not going to live forever.

00:17:45.060 You have a 1 in 20 billion chance of living past 117 currently.

00:17:50.140 So you know you're not living forever.

00:17:51.880 But what you don't want to do is give up what could be the richest, most valuable years of your life, the last 10 or 20 years of your life.

00:18:00.260 Give them up, essentially, because of short-term pleasure-seeking, self-indulgent behavior that leads you into becoming debilitated unnecessarily.

00:18:09.120 So we want people to live their full life potential and take advantage of that.

00:18:13.940 That's powerful.

00:18:15.280 Let me ask you, SOS, salt, oil, sugar, versus cocaine, pot, ecstasy, Vicodin, heroin, special – I mean, you can go on with all the other addictions that people – alcohol, cigarettes, whatever else we want to add to that.

00:18:31.740 What is more addicting, SOS or all the other drugs?

00:18:35.560 Well, the other drugs are more powerful, and so they're more – it's easier to get addicted.

00:18:41.700 That process is more intense.

00:18:43.220 But the SOS is much more insidious because at least when people are snorting cocaine or shooting heroin, they're usually not in denial of the fact that they're utilizing a drug that has negative consequences.

00:18:54.680 They may not be able to choose to stop or control it easily, but they're not deluded into thinking that there's not a problem.

00:19:00.940 Most smokers know the smoking is going to kill them.

00:19:03.340 It's a problem.

00:19:04.780 With the salt, oil, and sugar, people think this is a normal thing, that everybody eats salt, oil, and sugar, that it's normal to be overweight, to be obese, to develop.

00:19:13.660 Everybody has heart disease and diabetes, and so in some ways it's more insidious, even though it's certainly not as powerful as some of the drugs are, and it works on the same neurochemical cascade of the same pathway.

00:19:28.140 And so it's not that sugar is as bad as cocaine.

00:19:31.300 It's not.

00:19:32.240 But over the long run, it can be even more devastating in the sense that you don't have to take drugs, but you do have to eat.

00:19:41.880 And if you don't understand the difference between a health-promoting diet and a conventional diet, it's even worse than that because we're teaching people they need to eat meat, fish, fowl, eggs, dairy products, that everybody needs milk.

00:19:54.820 There's all kinds of forces at play convincing people that if they don't use these animal-based products or these highly processed foods, they're going to be deficient in things.

00:20:03.460 They're actually going to develop problems.

00:20:04.940 People literally worry about adopting a healthier whole plant food diet because they think they're going to be missing out on some critical issue, and that's in part because we've done a really effective job marketing and advertising these products.

00:20:19.240 So, I mean, you've really got to admire the people that have sold people this concept that these highly processed fractionated food products are actually necessary and even important to sustain health.

00:20:31.660 It doesn't mean it's true, but it's certainly been an effective campaign.

00:20:35.180 We've been convinced, though.

00:20:36.140 I mean, if you think about it, the world's been convinced that it's good.

00:20:40.280 You said it was three reasons why people come to you, the three types of people.

00:20:44.080 You said pain, fear of death, and debility.

00:20:46.380 What was the other one you said?

00:20:47.420 And debility, yeah.

00:20:48.340 Oh, okay, got it.

00:20:48.980 So either they can't do what they want to do, they can't tolerate the pain, or for whatever reason, they've decided they want to stay alive.

00:20:57.040 It makes sense.

00:20:58.180 I mean, it's a good reason to want to stay alive and maybe see your grandkids grow up and the kids grow up.

00:21:02.900 But what gets people to a level, from your experience, 36 years, 20,000-plus patients, fasting all the way up to 40 days,

00:21:13.300 what gets people to the point of saying, you know what, Doc, I got to tell you, I know those three things you talked about.

00:21:19.260 Is that the breaking point where somebody says, I'm willing to change and figure out a way to drop some of these SOSs and change my lifestyle?

00:21:27.860 Is it anything more than those three things that you see where somebody just says, I want to make a change in my life?

00:21:32.840 Yeah, I think sometimes the experience of people they know or trust, and they see them having had an experience, that's very motivating.

00:21:39.260 So, you know, they know somebody that had problems like they had, and then they see them go through what appears to be a relatively straightforward process.

00:21:48.660 You know, you adopt a healthy diet, you get enough rest, you do your exercise, and the body heals itself.

00:21:52.880 And if you want to speed it up, we do this fasting business.

00:21:56.700 You know, there is no pill, potion, powder, product.

00:21:59.320 There's no magic.

00:22:00.480 These are ancient practices.

00:22:01.940 Like I said, if you go to the Bible, you can read about fasting, you know, there's, I think, 1,000 plus references to fasting.

00:22:09.740 So this idea of giving the body a chance to unwind itself isn't exactly a new concept.

00:22:14.600 And as far as the diet, you know, what are we talking about?

00:22:16.800 A whole plant food diet free of highly processed food products.

00:22:20.820 You know, we didn't use to average 150 pounds of sugar a year per person.

00:22:24.540 You know, in the world of our ancient ancestors, you know, sugar wasn't even existent in a concentrated form like that.

00:22:32.800 And the same thing, salt used to be such a precious commodity that was used as a means of exchange, you know, worth his salary.

00:22:40.340 You know, it derives from the fact that, you know, these highly fractionated food products used to be rare, not ubiquitous.

00:22:47.300 We've gotten clever.

00:22:48.260 We've gotten smart.

00:22:49.740 We're post-industrial revolution.

00:22:51.780 And as a consequence, we've changed our environment.

00:22:53.880 Now we're in deep trouble.

00:22:55.560 Yeah.

00:22:55.720 In one of your interviews, I think you said your brother called you and said, I had a heart attack.

00:22:59.980 And your reaction to it was not the typical reaction a sibling would have.

00:23:04.300 And maybe if you can unpack your reaction, it'd be very helpful.

00:23:08.200 Well, my brother is five years older than I am.

00:23:10.520 So we grew up together.

00:23:12.120 And, you know, I got involved in this very young.

00:23:14.460 I wanted to be a better basketball player because my best friend, Doug Lyle, used to beat me just mercilessly.

00:23:20.960 And I thought, well, you know, I practiced.

00:23:23.240 It didn't do any good.

00:23:23.920 I thought maybe I'd get healthier and that would give me an edge and I would crush him.

00:23:28.100 Well, the problem was it failed because he adopted the same diet.

00:23:31.480 And he still, to this day, I'm 61 years old.

00:23:33.360 We go out, we play competitive basketball. 0.91

00:23:35.240 He still kicks my rear every time. 0.95

00:23:38.240 So complete failure. 0.98

00:23:39.480 But it got me interested.

00:23:40.500 I started reading and I read these books and they said that doctors that use this approach had the best job in the whole world because the body did all the healing.

00:23:48.180 And the patient had to do all the work and all you had to do as a doctor was take credit for the good results.

00:23:54.220 And I thought, that's the job for me.

00:23:56.760 You know, I got interested in it.

00:23:58.500 And so, you know, started to pursue this.

00:24:01.840 Anyway, my brother, you know, he continued to live more of a conventional lifestyle.

00:24:06.640 Really brilliant guy.

00:24:07.780 But, you know, he ate too much, gained weight, got to the point where his knees were swollen.

00:24:12.100 He couldn't play volleyball anymore.

00:24:13.980 Really starting to suffer.

00:24:15.020 And, of course, I would always give him, you know, a hard time.

00:24:18.440 And, yeah, he didn't want to hear about it.

00:24:20.140 At one point, my sister-in-law, his wife gets ill, comes to our facility, does a fast, recovers, avoids surgery, does great, adopts a health-promoting diet.

00:24:30.120 He still won't do it.

00:24:31.500 She's having to make two meals. 1.00

00:24:32.880 He's making –

00:24:33.680 You're the younger brother.

00:24:34.780 I mean, I don't want to listen to you.

00:24:35.680 He doesn't want to listen.

00:24:36.440 A buddy of his, he's at Boeing.

00:24:41.400 So he's, you know, one of his buddies from Boeing.

00:24:44.380 Actually, unbeknownst to him, comes to our facility, recovers his health, quits smoking, overcomes his blood pressure, gets off the drugs, goes home and starts to tell my brother, you should go to this place, true north.

00:24:55.440 It was really helpful.

00:24:57.020 He goes, oh, it's my brother.

00:24:58.420 Won't do it.

00:24:59.360 Finally, I get the call.

00:25:01.060 He's in the hospital.

00:25:01.900 He says, Alan, I've had a heart attack.

00:25:04.300 And I said, well, you survived it.

00:25:08.940 That's wonderful.

00:25:10.540 And he goes, no, no, no, you don't understand.

00:25:12.400 I had a heart attack.

00:25:13.620 I said, I heard you.

00:25:14.880 Best thing that could have happened.

00:25:16.660 Now you're going to have to start to listen.

00:25:18.900 So the surgeon is telling him he's got to have a four-way bypass.

00:25:23.140 And I asked him to talk to the surgeon.

00:25:24.960 The surgeon – he asked the surgeon, if I do this, won't they eventually plug up again?

00:25:29.900 And the surgeon explains, yeah, they will plug up again, but it will last much longer than if we just do stents and whatever.

00:25:36.140 Anyway, long story short, he checks himself out.

00:25:38.580 He adopts a health-promoting diet and lifestyle.

00:25:40.500 He loses 50 pounds.

00:25:42.040 He avoids the procedure.

00:25:43.700 He's able to get – he's passed his stress test.

00:25:45.680 He's had a great outcome.

00:25:47.100 And now he's adopted the diet and lifestyle.

00:25:50.080 Took me – you know, took him having a heart attack and me 30 years of nagging.

00:25:54.100 But nonetheless, today he looks fabulous and he's doing really well.

00:25:57.480 It's been a couple years now.

00:25:58.340 He's back playing volleyball.

00:25:59.900 Everything looks good.

00:26:01.220 Well, I mean, you said you're 61, so that means he's 66?

00:26:04.700 Yeah.

00:26:05.480 Yeah.

00:26:05.760 I mean, going out to play volleyball, that's great to you at 66 years old.

00:26:09.800 Well, especially after – yeah.

00:26:11.840 More power to him.

00:26:12.640 And the reason why I wanted to bring up your brother's story is because of you saying the types of people that come to you as pain, debilitating where they can't do certain things, or fear of death.

00:26:23.700 They finally say, listen, you know, I may want to do something about my life.

00:26:26.380 Okay.

00:26:26.840 So here's a question for you.

00:26:28.600 You probably get this all the time.

00:26:30.380 So isn't another word for fasting starving myself?

00:26:35.680 I mean, isn't that the same exact thing?

00:26:37.880 If I'm fasting, you know, you hear these stats where they say – you see these kids that grow up and they're adults and their bones and their joints are so weak because they grew up in the bad parts of town and their family didn't feed them well.

00:26:51.660 And because of that, they're so – they break down easier.

00:26:54.120 They get hurt easier.

00:26:56.020 If that is something we hear about 20 years later when a kid becomes an adult, why would we fast ourselves?

00:27:02.000 Aren't there certain nutritions that we can't get outside of water?

00:27:04.680 Yeah, that's, of course, a very common idea.

00:27:07.900 The reality is that fasting is a physiological state when the body still has labile reserves.

00:27:12.540 If you keep fasting long enough, eventually you deplete your labile reserves and you enter a process called starvation.

00:27:18.460 And starvation is very dangerous and will result in death.

00:27:22.420 So, yeah, you can't fast a person beyond their reserves.

00:27:26.000 That's one of the things we do when we assess a patient is to determine if they have adequate macro and micronutrient reserves in order to undergo the process.

00:27:33.480 And then we continue to monitor them, including things like potassium and electrolytes, kidney function, et cetera, to make sure that we're still in that window where they're going to get benefit.

00:27:43.160 And so, again, everybody fasts.

00:27:45.040 It's a question of how long should they fast, and that's determined by their reserves and their adaptive capacity to adjust to the fasting state.

00:27:52.420 The patients we fast for 40 days are still in the fasting state.

00:27:55.480 We do not go to starvation.

00:27:57.400 Because if you go to starvation, then people would die, and that would really mess up your outcome data.

00:28:01.020 That makes sense.

00:28:02.180 You don't want to be able to say out of your 20,622 people died.

00:28:05.660 It's not a good adaptation.

00:28:06.320 No, in fact, we actually have done a fasting safety study where it's been published in peer-reviewed journals looking at this very issue of fasting safety and adverse events.

00:28:14.880 And, you know, people that are interested can go to our website, and they can download those articles, and they can see for themselves exactly what happens in fasting.

00:28:22.800 It's been well testified.

00:28:23.940 And the conclusion is that fasting is, in fact, a biologically natural, safe, and effective experience as long as it's done according to a reasonable protocol.

00:28:32.180 I might mention of the 20,000 patients that we've had come to the center for fasting, 20,000 people that walked in, 20,000 people were able to walk out.

00:28:40.380 We have a very strict rule.

00:28:41.520 If you're able to walk in, you have to be able to walk out.

00:28:44.000 And so far, you know, we've been able to preserve that safety record.

00:28:47.480 That's good stats.

00:28:48.220 Out of your 20,000, how many of them went 40 days?

00:28:51.780 About 5% of patients are doing the very extreme fasting.

00:28:54.920 The vast majority of fasting patients are fasting between one and three weeks.

00:29:00.140 Oh, they're still going for one week.

00:29:01.780 So during the time of me fasting, what am I taking?

00:29:04.760 What am I eating?

00:29:05.460 Is it just water?

00:29:06.180 Because you hear different things.

00:29:07.800 Coffee, you can have juice, you can have all these other things, apple juice.

00:29:11.020 What's yours?

00:29:12.040 So water fasting is just that, water only.

00:29:15.300 In fact, it's distilled water only, fractionally steamed, distilled water.

00:29:18.900 So the only thing they're getting during this fasting experience of 5 to 40 days is water only.

00:29:25.020 Now, there is juice fast and other modified programs that people can do, and they can be very helpful, but they're not water fasting.

00:29:31.720 Water fasting induces a unique biological adaptation that's really unique to water fasting.

00:29:36.220 So for the conditions that we're treating, there's nothing that works quite as well as doing water only fasting.

00:29:42.420 If you're trying to normalize blood pressure, overcome type 2 diabetes by reducing insulin resistance, breakdown, lymphoma tumors, dealing with these autoimmune diseases, water fasting is a really unique biological adaptation.

00:29:57.820 Water fasting.

00:29:58.440 So that means for 7 days, all I'm having is water.

00:30:02.260 For anywhere from 5 to 40 days, correct?

00:30:05.440 Anywhere between 5 to 40 days, all I'm having is water.

00:30:08.840 And so if you can walk me through this, you know, day one, what happens?

00:30:14.500 Because, you know, the typical one we hear about is the 18-hour one.

00:30:18.040 You start at 6 o'clock.

00:30:19.100 You don't need to lunch at 12 o'clock.

00:30:20.460 That's what you hear about 18-hour fasting, you know.

00:30:22.080 So what is the body going through within the time?

00:30:26.100 Yeah, it's the same process, but it's going to be extended out.

00:30:28.680 Instead of breaking your fast with breakfast, we would continue.

00:30:31.360 Now, in our patients, let's be clear.

00:30:33.840 First, there's a review of history, exam, and laboratory baseline.

00:30:37.480 So we know from the history, the physical examination, the laboratory testing, that the person is a good candidate, that they have the reserves, that they have adequate kidney function, that they've got cardiac stability, that we've gotten them weaned off their medication safely beforehand.

00:30:49.960 And they've done a good lead-in program.

00:30:51.940 So they've eaten fruit, salad, and steamed vegetables only for a couple days.

00:30:55.080 There's no meat, fish, fowl, eggs, dairy products, oil, salt, sugar, or highly processed foods being used.

00:31:00.340 That makes the transition to fasting much easier.

00:31:03.240 And as I said, they've been stabilized off any medications.

00:31:06.220 Now they start fasting.

00:31:07.820 During the fasting state, we impose a degree of rest.

00:31:11.640 So people can move around.

00:31:12.880 We even have little classes and things that they do.

00:31:15.060 But basically, they're not doing vigorous exercise or intense stressful activities.

00:31:21.560 And the reason for that is if you are extending a water fast and you continue to say exercise, what you would do is you'd force the body to generate more glucose to provide use for the muscle in the brain.

00:31:33.620 And the only place that it can get that glucose after the glycogen reserves, after the first, say, 48 hours, is through a process called gluconeogenesis, which is a breakdown of protein.

00:31:42.980 So we don't want to deplete a patient's protein reserves.

00:31:45.660 We want them to burn fat.

00:31:47.760 And what's really exciting is we have actually recently acquired a DEXA scanner.

00:31:53.520 And we've been able to do really detailed whole body composition changes.

00:31:56.860 And what we've done in this study that we're publishing is we've been able to show that visceral fat is preferentially mobilized during fasting, not just fat.

00:32:07.920 Fat is preferentially mobilized, but specifically visceral fat.

00:32:11.600 So, for example, a person might lose 20% of their total body fat during fasting, but they may lose 40% to 60% of their visceral fat.

00:32:18.100 So the body's actually going in and mobilizing this fat that tends to accumulate around the core and around the organs that's thought to be most associated with compromised health.

00:32:28.280 It'll mobilize visceral fat first and preferentially. 0.92

00:32:32.040 And then it'll mobilize adipose tissue.

00:32:35.120 And then it will preserve protein.

00:32:38.180 So that when you look at the weight that's lost during fasting, let's say a person loses, say, 20 pounds, some of that's fat, some of it's protein, some of it's glycogen, some of it's fiber that was in the gut, some of it's fluids.

00:32:51.180 And then when they come off the fast, they regain weight.

00:32:53.720 But the weight that's regained during recovery is almost exclusively protein, water, fiber, and glycogen, and not fat.

00:33:04.080 In fact, the fat loss continues during refeeding.

00:33:08.800 And so what we found with water-only fasting is it's a unique way of mobilizing visceral fat, which helps open up blood vessels, gets rid of the health-compromising components, much more so than, say, going on a high-protein, high-fat, keto-type diet.

00:33:22.840 You know, the fasting-mimicking diets, which can blunt hunger and facilitate weight loss, that may have some short-term benefit, may have some long-term serious consequences.

00:33:31.420 Just like with water fasting, you wouldn't water fast forever.

00:33:34.200 You water fast for a period of time, and then you go back to eating a health-promoting diet.

00:33:38.560 But the net effect on the body is to reverse visceral fat, normalize blood pressure.

00:33:44.800 It reduces insulin resistance, which allows diabetics to normalize their blood sugar levels.

00:33:48.900 It breaks down some of the masses.

00:33:50.560 For example, a person might lose 10% of their body weight, but they won't lose 10% of their tumor.

00:33:55.400 They may lose 50% or 100% of their mass because the body is preferentially mobilizing tissues in inverse proportion to their need.

00:34:02.860 And that's why visceral fat, tumors, growth, other things sometimes go away in fasting, disproportionate to the percentage of weight that the body loses.

00:34:11.040 So 36 years you've been doing this, how much of this stuff do you apply to your own life on what you do?

00:34:17.020 So how often are you fasting?

00:34:18.580 What's your diet look like?

00:34:19.680 What's your daily regimen of sleep exercise look like?

00:34:22.380 Well, I decided at 16 that I was going to do a 50-year experiment and adopt this whole plant food diet to see if I could beat Dr. Lyle in basketball.

00:34:29.300 I'm 46 years in.

00:34:30.800 I haven't been able to beat him yet.

00:34:32.700 I have a few more years to complete the experiment.

00:34:35.020 But I have adopted a whole plant food SOS-free diet.

00:34:38.040 So I eat – my diet is, you know, just what we feed the patients at the center.

00:34:42.500 In fact, that's one of the benefits of working at the True North Health Center.

00:34:45.420 We have excellent food prepared every day.

00:34:47.500 So we have oatmeal and fresh fruit and greens in the morning.

00:34:49.700 We have large salads, steamed vegetables, potatoes, rice, beans, small amounts of nuts and seeds.

00:34:54.300 A whole plant food SOS-free diet that's free of meat, fish, fowl, eggs, dairy products, oil, salt, and sugar.

00:34:59.660 And that's the diet I've eaten every day since I started this experiment, you know, when I was a teenager.

00:35:06.320 And it seems to be working well for me.

00:35:09.720 Have you been on the same diet for 46 years?

00:35:11.940 I have so far, so far.

00:35:13.980 When's your birthday?

00:35:14.820 What month is your birthday?

00:35:15.700 I'm January.

00:35:16.920 January what?

00:35:17.480 So I'll be 62 in January.

00:35:19.260 January what?

00:35:20.180 28.

00:35:21.060 28.

00:35:21.580 Interesting.

00:35:22.320 Wow.

00:35:22.580 So as far as, you know, exercise, you know, I like basketball.

00:35:30.260 So, you know, my routine up until COVID was 10 hours a week of full court basketball with a group of, I must say, much younger gentlemen.

00:35:39.000 And I, that's, other than all the deaths and problems, that's really been the hardest thing for me with this current COVID situation is that, you know, public basketball gyms have been closed.

00:35:48.780 It's been a real, what I consider a tragedy.

00:35:51.160 So I've been still playing basketball, but it's not the same when you're playing on your court, you know, and not engaging in the mock worker. 0.96

00:35:57.500 Familiar with it, yeah.

00:35:58.400 So, and, you know, I've had to resort to treadmill and other things, which, you know, aren't as interesting.

00:36:03.320 And as far as fasting, I hate fasting.

00:36:05.780 I do it every year.

00:36:07.380 I do it every night for 16 hours, and I do it every year as a preventative measure.

00:36:12.880 But the worst part of fasting is you have to rest.

00:36:15.140 You have to take it easy.

00:36:15.920 You can't work.

00:36:16.460 You can't play basketball.

00:36:17.200 So there's definitely a price that's paid to do fasting properly.

00:36:20.580 But in addition to 16 hours a day, I do a week or so every year.

00:36:25.760 If I fast a patient for a week and there's no symptoms and they're healthy, there's no other issues, then usually that's the end of that and we move on.

00:36:32.320 The only reason we go longer is because we're trying to achieve an end goal in terms of, you know, people have health issues that we're trying to normalize.

00:36:40.200 And that's how long do we go?

00:36:41.280 We go however long it takes.

00:36:42.520 For example, high blood pressure, we fast for 5 to 40 days.

00:36:45.680 What determines that?

00:36:46.380 Well, however long it takes to normalize the blood pressure.

00:36:49.160 Now, if we get to 40 days and we still have a problem, we may have to break it, re-aliment somebody, build them back up, and then bring them back and do it again until we get the problem solved.

00:36:58.380 So it's not that every problem solves first pass.

00:37:01.400 But if you look at our data, we had 174 consecutive patients in the study we did on high blood pressure.

00:37:08.100 174 people were able to normalize blood pressure without medication.

00:37:11.900 And we have the largest effect size that's ever been shown in treating high blood pressure in humans with an average effect size of 60 points in stage 3 hypertension.

00:37:19.560 So people who started off with blood pressures of 180 or more, average blood pressure drop was 60 points.

00:37:25.520 That's the largest effect that's ever been shown.

00:37:27.620 And we're essentially doing nothing.

00:37:29.480 Water-only fasting followed by a whole plant food diet.

00:37:34.720 So let me recap.

00:37:36.780 By the way, I'm 42 years old, and I look at my skin, and I'm looking at your skin. 0.96

00:37:40.940 You look like a – take this as a compliment.

00:37:43.400 You look like a baby.

00:37:44.340 You don't look 61 years old.

00:37:46.940 That's insane to be thinking about that.

00:37:48.660 So you said 10 hours of basketball a week.

00:37:52.100 For 46 years, you've been following this diet.

00:37:55.120 And then you said when you're doing your fast once a year, you don't do the 40-day.

00:38:00.960 You go around one week per year is what you do.

00:38:03.160 And you fast 16 hours every day.

00:38:05.160 That means you're only eating eight hours every day.

00:38:07.220 But that's any day, including Thanksgiving, Christmas, no matter what it is.

00:38:10.860 Every day.

00:38:11.200 Well, we celebrate every day as if it was Thanksgiving and Christmas.

00:38:14.500 We celebrate every day with wonderful fresh fruits and vegetables, grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds.

00:38:21.020 So every day is a holiday and a celebration for us.

00:38:23.600 We don't reserve certain days of the year where we compromise our health by loading ourselves up with highly concentrated processed foods or other things.

00:38:30.940 So every day, healthy diet, every day, celebration.

00:38:35.080 What are you going to have for Thanksgiving?

00:38:36.300 I mean, what happens to the turkey?

00:38:38.080 Well, yeah, somebody else will have to have the turkey.

00:38:40.680 But we, you know, on Thanksgiving, we do seasonal rotation with food.

00:38:43.720 So there's things like wild rice and yams and sweet potatoes.

00:38:46.420 And there's, you know, greens and chard.

00:38:48.580 And there's all kinds of wonderful things that rotate with the season.

00:38:51.360 And certainly, you know, some of those Thanksgiving foods, traditional foods, can be very health-promoting.

00:38:57.440 So there would be no harm in doing those.

00:38:59.420 And honestly, once people adapt to eating a whole plant food diet, they really don't miss the greasy, fatty, slimy, dead, decaying, flesh-processed foods that make other people feel so compromised.

00:39:08.760 And, you know, what I ask patients to do is think about the long-term, not just the short-term.

00:39:13.420 You know, what you don't want to do is find yourself unable to talk or move lying in that nursing home bed waiting for people to change your diaper.

00:39:19.160 So one of the things they can do is get a little magnet and put an adult diaper up on your refrigerator as a little subtle reminder every time you go in to choose what you're going to eat, you know, of how you want the last years of your life to be.

00:39:29.940 You want to be enjoying your grandkids, not asking them to come in and, you know, and care for you.

00:39:35.180 I hope you're happy with yourself because you ruined everyone's Thanksgiving.

00:39:39.060 But you can have a fabulous Thanksgiving.

00:39:40.920 Just make better choices.

00:39:43.500 You got this fat turkey sitting there.

00:39:46.040 You cut it.

00:39:46.900 You want to take that one leg and just take that bite like a caveman, and you're going to be thinking about Dr. Allen.

00:39:53.960 Well, what you want to do is first have a big salad, a lot of steamed vegetables, have the potatoes, rice, and beans.

00:39:58.500 If you eat enough of that, there's not that much room left for the more processed foods.

00:40:02.880 You have not partied with Middle Easterns before because we like to break records, and we like to really, you know, do things that's never been done before when it comes down to food.

00:40:13.480 But you are making a lot of sense when it comes down to this.

00:40:16.180 So have you ever yourself done a 40-day or no?

00:40:19.160 No, I've never.

00:40:19.820 I've been very fortunate.

00:40:20.900 You know, I got started at 16 years old.

00:40:22.660 I'd never smoked or drank or had a cigarette or a cup of coffee, or I'd never utilized these because, you know, you're a young kid.

00:40:28.340 You don't get started on those bad habits.

00:40:30.500 And so I've been fortunate enough that I've never had to do a 40-day fast in order to rebalance.

00:40:35.360 I've had to do sometimes longer fasts.

00:40:37.360 I did one longer fast that was I was playing basketball, and I accidentally hit some guy in the mouth with my elbow.

00:40:46.100 So I got basically a human bite wound.

00:40:49.960 And, you know, even though I knew better, instead of stopping and cleaning the wound carefully, I finished the game.

00:40:55.140 We won, by the way.

00:40:56.940 But nonetheless, I got an infection in my elbow.

00:41:00.000 And human bite infections are not nice.

00:41:02.040 The organisms can be pretty nasty.

00:41:04.500 And so swallow up.

00:41:05.620 And I ended up having to do a longer fast in order to get that infection to clear because I was, you know, stubbornly not wanting to use antibiotics in that particular case.

00:41:13.200 Fortunately, healed up, did fine.

00:41:15.640 But with that exception, I've never really had any problems.

00:41:18.660 I've been so fortunate to get started so young that I haven't had the health issues.

00:41:23.480 And so when I fast for a week, if everything's clinically stable, just like with patients, I'll terminate the fast and move back to healthy eating.

00:41:29.460 And always great relief because when you're fasting, you have to rest.

00:41:33.480 And as I said, I hate that.

00:41:35.320 So how long was that fast with the elbow and the mouth?

00:41:37.500 That took me nine days to clear that infection.

00:41:40.440 So, you know, I had nine days of fasting and then a little recovery time after that.

00:41:43.180 But no matter what, you do your seven days every year?

00:41:45.920 Every year I fast for a week, begrudgingly.

00:41:48.700 Is there a specific season?

00:41:49.480 Is there a time of year you do it?

00:41:51.440 Yeah, usually it's usually towards the end of the year, November, December, just because the way we do our staffing, it's easier for me to take that time off with less disruption.

00:42:01.040 I was just waiting for you to say I do it during Thanksgiving or Christmas.

00:42:03.980 I'm like really extreme.

00:42:05.320 Well, I don't do it during Thanksgiving or Christmas.

00:42:07.520 I have to work Thanksgiving or Christmas.

00:42:09.200 A lot of the staff like to have time off for their families.

00:42:11.580 And so my family all work at True North Health.

00:42:14.060 So we all work over the holidays.

00:42:15.800 And that allows a lot of the staff to be able to take off and spend that with their families.

00:42:19.980 You're a good boss.

00:42:21.060 Just a technical question.

00:42:22.380 Are you LDS or no?

00:42:24.120 We're not, although we have a lot of LDS patients.

00:42:27.440 And we have, you know, I speak a lot to those organizations and those churches because they're very supportive of fasting and the whole idea of diet playing an important role in vegetarian diets and this type of thing.

00:42:40.420 So what's your, is there a denomination you are or no?

00:42:44.320 I'm Jewish.

00:42:45.040 So I was raised with the K-foods, you know, the Kugel, the Kreplau, the Knishes, the Blintzes. 1.00

00:42:49.780 And boy, it wasn't a shock to my parents when they had to make these changes themselves and give up their own traditional diets because of the need to regain their health.

00:42:59.160 And I was very fortunate that both my mother and my father ended up actively embracing this style of life and did very well.

00:43:08.520 My mother actually, when she was 92 years old, had outlived all 50 of her lifelong friends.

00:43:15.400 And she told me that, you know, many of them used to make terrible fun of her because she wouldn't, you know, her son's crazy diet and all that stuff.

00:43:22.520 But at 92, she realized the last of her lifelong friends had passed away and she was alone in terms of her lifelong friendships.

00:43:28.960 And she said to me, she said, Alan, you need to warn your patients that if they're going to adopt these diet and lifestyle habits, make younger friends.

00:43:39.100 And she said, much younger, because, you know, even the people a few years younger, they were still dying and they still couldn't engage.

00:43:46.600 So I warn patients now, make younger friends. It's never too soon to start making younger friends.

00:43:52.660 It's very good advice that she's giving. I mean, some men in their 50s, 60s may even take you that advice in a whole different way.

00:44:00.940 But, but, but, but I heard you made, I heard you made 48 out of 50 shots. I mean, free throw wise. I mean, it's, that's pretty impressive. That's like Walt Williams type of a statistics.

00:44:09.980 Well, I'll tell you something. I wanted it so badly to beat Dr. Lyle that I decided that I couldn't really beat him on the court. He's just too good.

00:44:17.120 So I thought I can beat him in free throws because we know free throw shooting is really just practice.

00:44:21.880 And I shot, you know, 500 free throws a day for six months thinking, okay, I'm going to get this down. I took some coaching. I got some help.

00:44:29.680 And I, you know, casually one day he hasn't played for like a week. Right. And I say, Hey, Doug, why don't we have a free throw shooting contest?

00:44:37.640 He's like, okay, whatever. So I go out there 48 out of 50. I'm so pleased with myself thinking I've got him. I mean, you know, 48 out of 50, you know, he hits 19, misses one.

00:44:51.160 And then he hits 80 in a row.

00:44:52.600 And of course I call him a choke. Cause you know, if you can hit 99 out of a hundred, why don't you just hit, just hit the hundred, you know?

00:45:00.840 And so, you know, like I said, what can I do? I'm still working on it. I've never hit 80 in a row in my life. He hits 80 in a row.

00:45:10.640 Well, you do kind of look like Mark price. So you, you, you, you, you, you know, he had a good free throw. I don't know if you remember Mark price or not.

00:45:15.900 Oh yeah. Yeah. He was a 92, 94% guy. I think one season he even did 96. Okay. So, so we've talked about a lot of different things here with guys. Let me kind of take you to a different place. You know, I'll go to dinner with friends and we'll sit down and we'll talk and they'll say, I follow this diet. I follow that diet.

00:45:32.440 And then, and then the wives will typically start with what we all ought to do. And then the guys will gladly debate any topic just to debate because we have nothing better to do than debate and see who's right and who's wrong.

00:45:46.400 And then you kind of see, well, no, that's not how I do it. I mean, you first have to do the right thing. First get the blood. And then after you take your blood and then when the blood that's going to tell you what kind of food you should eat, because it's different for a and O and B and C and D and all this technical stuff. And I'm just sitting there saying, Oh, this is so complex.

00:46:00.200 And then you look at families and tell me, tell me what you've seen here with 20,000 people that have come to you. You know, most people take up the religion that their parents had. If your parents are Jewish, you're probably Jewish. If your parents are Christian, you're Christian. If your parents are Republican, you'll typically end up being a Republican. They're Democrats. You'll be Democrat. Every once in a while, you'll see somebody says, you know what? I don't know if I believe in the person you believe in. I'm going to go do my own research and then I become something else. I don't know if I believe in being a Democrat. I want to be Republican. I want to be a Republican. I want to be a Republican.

00:46:30.200 Democrat or whatever, maybe. Right. But do you see a similar trends with that being with how we eat based on how our parents ate and how often you see that cycle being broken and what causes for that to happen?

00:46:43.200 Yeah, it's worse than that. It's not only what we've been taught, but diet is a hugely important cultural phenomenon. And so if you decide to step outside the norm on diet, it's very disturbing to people.

00:46:58.000 You know, many of them are well-intentioned, misguided people that are genuinely concerned for your well-being. They think if you don't adopt the diet that they adopted, you're going to be, you know, it'll compromise your health and traditions.

00:47:10.180 You know, I had that experience myself. You know, when I adopted this at 16, my mother was very concerned. I had adopted this, you know, whole plant food diet. And my uncle, who was a physician, actually was invited over.

00:47:22.400 I remember because it was my 16th birthday and she wanted him to talk some sense into me. And he said, oh, you know, don't worry, Phil. These kids go through various diet fads and stuff.

00:47:33.320 And as long as he eats plenty of gefilte fish and, you know, he'll be fine. And I explained to my uncle, I said, no, uncle, it's called being a vegan and, you know, no animal foods at all.

00:47:42.140 He said, it's called being a mashugana. You'll stop it right this minute. Anyway, it's also, I decided that, that I decided at that point what career I wanted to pursue.

00:47:50.580 I wanted to get into this alternative medicine. So I told the family, I decided on my career choice and he was really upset. He was screaming and yelling. I thought I was going to witness my first stroke.

00:47:59.060 He said, nobody in this family would go to that kind of a doctor, let alone become that kind of a doctor. He says, better. You should be a communist spy.

00:48:07.080 And he's screaming and yelling. And finally they get rid of him. He goes away. My dad, who's a really serious guy, takes me aside. He says, son, I don't know anything about this alternative medicine business.

00:48:16.580 He says, but anything that makes him that angry and mad, it can't be bad. So you stick to your guns and good luck to you.

00:48:24.480 But my father later, when I was in school, I was just coming out of school, began to have transient ischemic attacks.

00:48:32.260 He had lived a conventional diet, you know, the traditional foods, was having essentially mini strokes, had lost his cognitive capacity where he couldn't remember his grandkids names.

00:48:42.460 He had to retire from teaching. He was a mess. Comes into the center. We just started up, undergoes 26 days of fasting, recovers, has helped make a long story short.

00:48:51.240 But 20 years later, he helped edit the pleasure trap because he had made such a fabulous recovery.

00:48:56.700 So he ended up being a really fabulous outcome in terms of, you know, doing much, much better as a consequence of dietary change and remained compliant.

00:49:07.060 Interestingly enough, my uncle, who, when I'm in school and we're doing this original work on blood pressure, I'm trying to get him interested in looking at our data.

00:49:16.180 He won't look at our data. I says, uncle, there's a blood pressure. They're getting well. He says, they're not getting well.

00:49:20.260 I said, they're getting well. He says, no, they're not getting well. So I've been in practice 50 years. They never get well.

00:49:25.800 I said, no, they're getting well. He says, you don't know how to take blood pressure. Okay.

00:49:29.560 So anyway, he says, he won't look at our data until it's published in a peer review journal.

00:49:35.180 Two months before our article finally comes out, we get it accepted for publication.

00:49:40.180 Two months before he dies of a massive heart attack.

00:49:42.760 My mother swore to the day she died. He died just so he wouldn't have to admit he was wrong.

00:49:49.980 I think it was the kugel, the kreplek, the knishes, the, you know, but who knows?

00:49:54.120 Did he die April of 01? What month did he die?

00:49:57.240 Because the paper is a June of 01, right? When he came out. Is that, is that the time?

00:50:01.440 Wow.

00:50:02.300 Unbelievable.

00:50:03.600 He never did. He never did review the data because, you know,

00:50:06.640 I'm sure he didn't. I mean, they don't have that kind of stuff up there.

00:50:09.940 Depends on where he went, but, uh,

00:50:11.540 So, but I, I, there's no question. This dietary, when you step outside the dietary norm,

00:50:16.000 you're going to raise some concerns. And in fact, you have to be very careful not to become a social

00:50:21.320 outcast because you're not participating in all the traditional habits and learn, you know,

00:50:25.480 in our book, the pleasure trap, we talk about strategies for going along and getting along and

00:50:29.720 not alienating people and not shoving your belief systems down their throat, but, you know,

00:50:34.780 accepting things as they are. And hopefully they respect you enough that they're willing to allow

00:50:39.140 you the indulgence of adopting a health promoting diet and lifestyle.

00:50:43.200 Who, who sold you on this concept at 16?

00:50:46.540 Um, I actually started reading and there are books like Herbert Shelton,

00:50:50.380 who were talking about health from healthful living, uh, uh, Nathan Pritikin and others that

00:50:55.840 were writing, uh, books, uh, that were very compelling. You know, they made a lot of sense.

00:51:00.580 Why, why did you start reading that?

00:51:02.420 Well, it's because I was trying to beat Doug in basketball. I just was looking for,

00:51:05.380 I was so desperate to be better. I was willing to do anything.

00:51:07.880 Is that really the reason why you said that?

00:51:09.300 Oh, absolutely. No, I was just totally, that was the total thing that got me sucked in wanting

00:51:13.180 to beat him anything to get an edge.

00:51:17.180 January 28, very competitive. So do you have any kids or no?

00:51:20.280 I have two children and two grandchildren. In fact, I have a 15 year old grandson

00:51:25.600 and, uh, 11 year old granddaughter. My grandson calls me the AO and I found out it stands for

00:51:32.000 ancient one.

00:51:34.200 Nice. You could call worse if you think about it.

00:51:37.480 Yeah.

00:51:38.080 Any of your kids, uh, do the fasting as well every year or no?

00:51:40.920 Yep. My, my son, uh, Gar, uh, has been, uh, uh, uh, been on this program since before he was born

00:51:47.880 and he actually works at the True North Health Center. So he eats all of his meals at True North Health.

00:51:51.960 So he's a very compliant, uh, and, uh, probably the most compliant person I've met in the sense

00:51:57.280 that he's been doing this all of his life.

00:51:58.720 This is a family affair. By the way, I was looking up, uh, our buddy here, Kai,

00:52:01.900 sent me an article to look at regarding Angus Barbieri. Okay. I couldn't believe this.

00:52:07.280 I don't know if you know the story of Angus, a Scottish man who fasted for 382 days, water only.

00:52:15.260 He went from 456 pounds to 180 pounds. He lost 276 pounds fasting for 382 days. I can't even

00:52:25.840 believe it, but he owns a Guinness book of world record. How familiar are you with the story of

00:52:30.320 Angus? Well, I don't know Angus, but there is another one in the medical literature that was

00:52:34.480 about 360 days, a very similar story. These are exceptions though. And these are people that have,

00:52:39.620 uh, you know, significant reserves. Uh, the longest we fast patients routinely is 40 days.

00:52:44.780 And the problem is, as you start getting beyond 40 days, you start getting into a more delicate

00:52:49.080 situation that requires even more careful monitoring in order to avoid depletion, particularly

00:52:53.660 electrolytes and micronutrient depletion. So we arbitrarily limited. There's only been a couple

00:52:58.320 exceptions where we've had to go beyond 40 days just because of the health situation. Uh, and most

00:53:03.600 patients are fasting one to three weeks.

00:53:05.580 Okay. So I'm making a note. Don't try to break Angus's record.

00:53:12.540 No, I wouldn't recommend that. Okay. I just want to make disclaimer to everybody. We got to make it

00:53:16.280 somewhere big here. Do not break Angus's record. We may never see you again. Um, uh, last but not

00:53:21.520 least before we wrap up here for bodybuilders, you know, if you're a bodybuilder and one of the things

00:53:27.020 you worry about being a bodybuilder is thinning up too much and losing muscles, you know, and when I

00:53:31.840 talked to a lot of these Mr. Olympia guys are friends of mine, you know, uh, fasting, some of

00:53:36.920 them actually believe it or not do that. You're very few of them doing their own way as they're

00:53:40.660 trying to cut up, preparing for the competition, but you know, the dizziness comes in and some of

00:53:44.440 these guys take diuretics to suck the water out of their body. And that's definitely not a philosophy

00:53:49.160 you have, but what do you say to people that build muscle and, and they may want to take up this

00:53:55.280 one week to go on it on water. But when you go on it, you could end up losing muscle because

00:54:01.280 you can't lift for those because I know you kind of talked about a little bit earlier when you said

00:54:04.960 you shouldn't be losing weight because you're losing fat and you should keep your, you will

00:54:08.580 lose weight, but not necessarily muscle. What will you say to bodybuilders when it comes on to fasting?

00:54:13.000 Well, there's a couple issues here. Number one, we need to be really clear. What's best for maximum

00:54:17.040 athletic performance isn't always necessarily best for health. So for example, you know, NFL linemen

00:54:22.720 that use anabolic steroids may be bigger and better, but it, you know, they get testicular atrophy

00:54:27.700 and die from heart disease when they're older. So just because it makes you a better performer

00:54:32.240 doesn't necessarily guarantee it's making you healthier. And so the strategies that might

00:54:37.920 maximize a bulk for weightlifting aren't necessarily the same strategies that you would use to maximize

00:54:43.200 health. Second of all, as far as fasting, I think actually quite a few weightlisters do use

00:54:48.300 intermittent and also limited term fasting for the purposes of mobilizing visceral fat.

00:54:54.460 And you can do that. Remember, you don't lose any muscle cells because you, when you fast,

00:55:02.240 you just lose the cytoplasm. Some of the material in the, you know, the size of the cells get a

00:55:06.460 little bit smaller. Same thing with fat. You don't lose any fat cells. You're losing the juice in the

00:55:10.420 fat cells. When you come off the fast, you will rebuild your muscle cells. You'll pump those back up,

00:55:15.020 but you won't pump your fat cells back up if in fact you're eating a calorically appropriate,

00:55:20.340 you know, health promoting diet. And that's one of the things that the study that we're doing is

00:55:24.220 showing is that in fact, fat loss continues on an appropriate diet, but muscle comes back,

00:55:29.600 glycogen comes back, et cetera. So I think that fasting probably does have a role there, but

00:55:37.520 the biggest thing for weightlifters is to try to do what they're doing healthfully.

00:55:42.960 And so if, and you can, you can do it healthfully, but it's not as good as if you're injecting

00:55:48.340 steroids as far as the short-term gain. So there is a price that's paid for doing it healthfully.

00:55:53.020 So we're not getting endorsement on steroids from you here on this episode.

00:55:56.560 Yeah, I wouldn't recommend steroids. What I would tell you though, there's been a number of NBA players

00:56:00.180 that have been experimenting with whole plant food diets. And it's been interesting is looking at the

00:56:06.940 effect in terms of, especially fourth quarter performance. And there's some data that is out there.

00:56:12.880 I'm not an expert on this, but there's data out there showing that particularly when it comes

00:56:16.080 to endurance measures and others, adopting these healthier plant-based diets may actually

00:56:20.680 reduce injury, short-term injury, speed injury recovery, and also affect long-term endurance.

00:56:27.100 So I think there is some building evidence that athletic performance may be enhanced.

00:56:31.840 You know, there's some movies out like Game Changers, James Cameron's movie that makes a

00:56:36.640 compelling case by some very competitive athletes that you can...

00:56:39.720 Persian bodybuilder. I think it's a Persian or Armenian bodybuilder.

00:56:42.000 A guy named Patrick, who's massive, Game Changer documentary, had a lot of controversy behind it.

00:56:47.020 Yes.

00:56:48.380 Yeah. Any... Who's the biggest name that believes in one-week fasting? Any athletes that's a very

00:56:54.700 big name that's done a one-week fasting? Anyone you know, a president, political, business, sports?

00:57:00.500 Unfortunately, I don't mention patient names ever, so I can't really go to that.

00:57:03.720 Not your patient. I'm talking people that have publicly come out and said it. Not your patients.

00:57:07.880 Yeah. I wouldn't have any lists of people on my... that I would be talking about.

00:57:11.800 I was hoping you were going to say Donald Trump fasts a week every month. You know, he takes care

00:57:15.720 of himself. Maybe Chris Christie. But we're not...

00:57:18.580 I wouldn't know anything about it. I really only pay attention to my patients.

00:57:21.960 That's good. Very good. Well, we appreciate you. We had a really good time. Folks,

00:57:25.420 if you haven't ordered his book, we're going to put the link to his book below for everybody

00:57:31.480 to be able to go order, The Pleasure Tramp. Dr. Allen, thank you so much for being a guest

00:57:36.780 on Valuetainment.

00:57:37.340 I would say there's one thing if I might just add. If people have a question about whether

00:57:41.580 they're a good candidate for fasting or fasting might be relevant to them, they can learn a lot

00:57:45.540 about that at our website, or they can call me. We offer a no-cost phone conversation if they want

00:57:50.300 to talk about, is this something that might be useful to them? I'd be happy to help answer that

00:57:54.780 question for them. Well, next time I suggest when you're doing an interview like this,

00:57:58.980 do it in a way where you have the website on the back so people can see it. You may want to think

00:58:04.460 about doing that next time. It just may bring more attention to it. So we're going to put the link

00:58:09.280 below to truenorthhealth.com. We will put the link to the website above the book, and you can either

00:58:16.460 order the book or go to visit the website as well. Again, once again, thank you so much for being

00:58:21.560 a guest on Valuetainment. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Really enjoyed it.

00:58:24.020 Water fasting for 40 days. Would you do it? Would you even go 10 days? He went nine days. He said

00:58:30.280 the average patient goes seven days. What's the longest you've ever gone fasting? I'm curious.

00:58:34.420 Comment below. And also, if you enjoyed this interview, I did another interview with Dr. Jason

00:58:38.460 Fung that's in a similar space, slightly different approach he takes. If you've not watched it,

00:58:42.760 click over here. And if you've not subscribed to the channel, please do so. Thanks for watching,

00:58:46.760 everybody. Take care. Bye-bye.

00:58:54.020 Bye-bye.

Valuetainment - November 06, 2020

Doctor Who Believes In 40 Day Water Fasts

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript