Originally published via Armageddon Prose Substack:
“The best of all medicines is resting and fasting.”
— Benjamin Franklin
There is no shortage of smutty clickbait smut out there with titles like “The #1 Secret the Medical Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know.”
Most of what it’s pushing is pseudoscientific trash for a quick buck that won’t really do anything but add digits to the proprietor’s bank account.
I won’t and will never do that. I’m not pushing anything here but the truth – the single greatest commodity, albeit in short supply, that man has ever had or ever will.
At the time of writing, I am about 80 hours into what was intended to be a 72-hour water fast, with black coffee and green tea sprinkled in. After hitting the finish line, I decided there was no real reason to quit then, particularly because my hunger pangs have totally subsided.
Neither Fauci’s NIH nor Pfizer can patent and monetize fasting (at least for now; let’s not give these bastards any ideas), and so for that reason alone you will never hear any Public Health™ authority tout it, just as you will never see any television advertisement for fasting.
Related: The Corporate Media’s Sick Jihad Against Vitamin D
Hell, you’d be hard-pressed to find a Western-trained doctor, even an honest one, who knows much of anything at all about fasting benefits, much less one who will actively encourage his patients to commit to it. They don’t teach cheap interventions that anyone can do without paying an insurance co-pay in medical school.
But here’s what it can do. Don’t take my word for it; click the links to legit medical literature:
· Substantial brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) boost, which increases both new neuron (brain cell) growth and enhances longevity of existing functioning neurons
· Increased insulin sensitivity
· Enhanced metabolic flexibility (the capacity to switch between fats and carbs as fuel source)
· Massively reduced systemic inflammation, increasingly recognized as the hands-down #1 driver of chronic disease
· Lengthened life span (in rats)
· Activated autophagy (“auto” meaning “self” and “phagy” meaning “eating,” or “self-eating”), the process by which non-functional cells are recycled to be replaced with fresh, functional ones
· Immune system fortification and suppression of autoimmune activity
· Angiogenesis (new blood vessel growth)
· Lifted depression and anxiety
… And many, many more.
Throughout my current fast, which matches my experience in prior ones, fasting for long periods, at times, sucks. I was highly uncomfortable for a not-insignificant amount of the time. But perhaps a little discomfort is what we need in this decadent, self-indulgent culture. I certainly do.
Although I would never feign expertise in this area, I do have about a half-dozen long-term fasts under my belt by now. If you’re serious about trying it out and would like some guidance, my email isn’t hard to find.
Godspeed.
Ben Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile, is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.
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