Our bodies have a miraculous ability to heal from lifestyle related diseases! We should, however, stop doing the things which brought on our disease conditions in the first place. When we stop putting fuel on a fire, the fire goes out. This is how Lifestyle Medicine works. We identify the cause, then change the behavior.
Sometimes the damage done to our bodies is so severe that "radical" measures are required. Of course, some people believe that eating a whole-food, plant-based diet without meat, dairy, eggs, or oil is radical. Then when they learn that in our Starch-Smartest program we ask people to also greatly reduce their 'healthy fats' intake and remove added sugars and salts, they believe that is really radical. However, for some disease conditions that may not be radical enough. Some people may choose an even more radical option: Water Fasting.
A study came to our attention the other day published by the Department of Nutritional Medicine, TrueNorth Health Center, in Santa Rosa, California, USA. The Case Report documents the effect of Water-only fasting followed by an exclusively plant foods diet in the management of stage IIIa, low-grade follicular lymphoma, the second most common non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Their patient was a 42-year-old woman. The fully-supervised, water-only fast went on for 21 days at which point the patient's enlarged lymph nodes had reduced in size and were no longer palpable. The patient was then put on a minimally-processed, whole-foods, plant-based diet witout any added salt, oil, or sugar. After six months--and then again after nine months on the diet, the patient was evaluated again. Her weight and BMI had reduced further and her lymph nodes were still non-palpable.
This study is a very interesting read. Our Research Summaries include additional studies, also by some of the same people, which are available as abstracts in the Science section at DrCarney.com. More studies on this fascinating subject will be added as they become available. If you know of a good study that we should look at about water fasting then by all means come to the Dr. Carney Science Section and leave a comment!
For a very good video on the subject of Fasting check out the video entitled Fasting by by Michael Klaper, MD.
Additional Information:
(1) Renew Your Immune System with Fasting
(2) Medically supervised water-only fasting in the treatment of hypertension