The Power of Fasting (Part II)
Mimicking Fasting - the Ketogenic Diet.
Reverse Disease’s One Way Road
If you’re going the wrong way down a one-way road, it's obvious what you must do. Reverse. So why don’t we do that with our modern ailments?
Dr. Kevin Ham
The fasts I spoke about last week, which resulted in rapid reversals, were almost miraculous. But nowadays, pills and supplements have replaced fasts.
As doctors, we seek to cure, but we often seem to just manage chronic disease, using 'Band-Aids' to improve symptoms and numbers without truly reversing or helping change the lifestyle that led to the disease.
Let me take you down history's lost archives of miraculous remedies and how they are being reimagined for today's prevalent diseases.
As I research and look for cures for my diseases (wet macular degeneration and heart disease) and for those who suffer around me, I am so humbled. I seek no more than the joy of seeing others feel more life and purpose. How many and who will benefit from my writings?
And I am so grateful to all the people mentioned in my writings. I wish I could read all their biographies and writings. They should be awarded Nobel prizes. So, chapeau to the many scientists, doctors, and dietitians who dedicated their lives so that we may benefit for many decades or centuries later.
These Eureka protocols that give remarkable results are drowned out in a sea of much 'noise', making it hard to separate the true signals of cures and rapid reversals. I feel as if God has given me a mission to find these one by one and make them known for those who may be searching for such a remedy for themselves or a loved one.
Curing Seizures Fast
When food is withdrawn, the storm in the brain is stilled.
Dr. Guillaume Guelpa
Many people have heard of the famous Frenchman Louis Pasteur's germ theory, published in 1861, which fueled the medical renaissance. But, in 1911, two other Frenchmen, Dr. Guillaume Guelpa and Dr. Auguste Marie, a couple of quiet neurologists, discovered something extraordinary in the wards of Bicetre Hospital, which were filled with incurable epileptic patients.
These were not just mere cases of minor epilepsy, but severe, uncontrollable and debilitating seizures. The treatments back then were crude or disappointing: bromide salts, prayer, rest cures, which did little to quell the storms shaking both brain and body. Bromide intoxication made patients like zombies, and they were often restrained during seizures. Patients who refused food due to the severity of their symptoms sometimes stopped seizing altogether. Marie proposed testing the fasting patients for several days, using laxatives to cleanse the intestines and then refeeding with a modest vegetarian diet.
The results were astonishing. By the third day, the convulsions ceased. When they ate, the seizures returned.
They tested 21 patients during their four-day fast. 100% improvement! They concluded modestly:
“L’abstinence alimentaire semble modérer les accès d’épilepsie.”
(Food abstinence appears to moderate epileptic attacks.)
They presented a paper in 1911, which was largely dismissed. How could such a severe, incurable disease like epilepsy be cured by not eating? Their breakthrough discovery languished like a seed buried deep, without water or sunlight, just as their names faded into the quiet recesses of history.
The Preacher-Doctor of Battle Creek
In stillness and emptiness, life reorders itself.
Dr. Hugh Conklin
Across the waters, also in 1911, Dr. Hugh Conklin, born in rural Michigan when faith healers, homeopaths and scientific physicians fought to be the trusted experts, was a teacher and lay pastor before he became a doctor. He moved to Battle Creek, home to the burgeoning Kellogg Sanitarium, run by Dr. John Kellogg, who preached widely in America that vegetarianism, hydrotherapy, and fasting were forms of spiritual purification.
Conklin had the same ethos, but applied it specifically to seizures, believing they were caused by autointoxication, a popular theory at that time, which postulated that undigested food fermenting in the colon released toxins that 'short-circuited' the brain. If the intestines were cleared and at rest, the body and brain could cleanse themselves.
His radical remedy?
Supervised water-only fasts for 18 to 25 days, with gentle enemas and prayer.
He treated 1200 patients. 90% of children improved. 50% of adults became seizure-free. But they resumed their seizures when they ate again.
When he passed away quietly in 1933, one physician took notice of his remarkable case studies.
Bridging Faith and Chemistry
We need not starve the patient; we can feed them differently
Dr. Russel Wilder
Wilder had just graduated from the University of Chicago in 1910 and joined the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. He was an empiricist, analytical and fascinated by metabolism. He had collaborated with Dr. Banting, who had discovered insulin in Toronto and had a deep interest in diabetes.
He had read Conklin's reports and Guelpa & Marie's forgotten paper. Surely there must be some biochemical mediator occurring in the brain. He recruited volunteers to fast and to have their blood and urine tested. What he discovered astonished him. As glucose levels dropped, levels of B-hydroxybutyrate (BHB) and acetoacetate rose. Instead of using glucose for energy, the body began producing ketones derived from fatty acids, which could cross the blood-brain barrier.
His eureka moment: The ketones that arose during fasting could be mimicked by a diet that emulated the fasted state to maintain ketones in the blood (ketosis).
He coined the term "the ketogenic diet" in 1921, claiming it "reproduces the physiological effects of fasting."
He started clinical trials at Mayo. The protocol:
80% fat
15% protein
5% carbohydrates
Calorie-restricted to maintain ketosis.
The results were dramatic. Children became seizure-free within days. It was reported in the newspapers as the 'miracle diet'. Wilder wasn't fazed by the popularity. He was dogmatic about precision, data, and medical supervision to achieve ketosis and cure seizures. He collaborated with dieticians.
He wondered if ketosis could influence other diseases of metabolism like diabetes, obesity and even schizophrenia?
Ketogenic Medicine
The spoon can sometimes do what the syringe cannot.
Lydia Pauli
Wilder's work on the ketogenic diet reached the ears of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, and Dr. Samuel Livingston eagerly adopted it together with Lydia Pauli, a Swiss-trained dietitian, who designed the meal plans that were both therapeutic and tasty. "Food is the most intimate form of medicine," was her maxim.
Their work at Hopkins inspired dozens of hospitals, and by 1930, America was 60% seizure-free and 90% improved. The ketogenic diet became the standard treatment for pediatric epilepsy.
But in 1938, phenytoin, the first true anti-seizure drug, was discovered. By the 1940s, this drug rapidly replaced the ketogenic diet. When Livingston retired in 1950, he wrote a single line in his final lecture:
“It is regrettable that in medicine, what is forgotten is often what is most needed.”
Resurrecting the Lost Cure
Sometimes the cure is already in the archives.
Jim Abrahams
Like a washed-out and forgotten actor, decades passed, burying the ketogenic diet. In the 1990s, Jim Abrahams, a celebrated movie director and producer of hits like Airplane! and the Naked Gun, was desperate.
His two-year-old son, Charlie, was suffering from relentless drug-resistant epilepsy, seizing hundreds of times a week. They tried every drug and treatment, but nothing worked. The doctors told him there was nothing further they could do and that he should prepare for the worst.
But Abrahams could not sit idly by and watch his son succumb to this debilitating disease.
"If we can invent flying machines and atomic bombs, then there must be a cure for seizures somewhere."
Then, in his frantic search for any miracle, he came across the Ketogenic diet while reading an obscure 1930 neurology piece about its miraculous results. He contacted Johns Hopkins, where Dr. John Freeman was still practicing this therapy. Charlie's seizures ceased completely—a miracle.
Abrahams, determined to help other children, formed the Charlie Foundation in 1994 and then produced a film starring Meryl Streep, First Do No Harm, after the Hippocratic Oath that all physicians take. Over 100 hospitals re-established the ketogenic diet. The Charlie Foundation still advocates the ketogenic diet for epilepsy, autism and cancer.
Regenerating Neurons in the Brain
Every cell has a clock; fasting winds it back to zero.
Dr. Mark Mattson
Growing up with a fascination with nature in the backdrop of Minnesota, exploring forests and rivers, and observing how the cycles of nature —its hunger, hibernation, migration, and feasting —led him to remark, “Everything that lives thrives not on constancy, but on rhythm.”
Earning a Ph.D. While studying neurodegeneration, he joined the National Institute on Aging and became its Chief of Neurosciences. He combined molecular and evolutionary biology to ask, “Why does the brain benefit when we fast?”
His landmark experiments in rodents discovered that when food was restricted on alternate days, neurons increased the production of a molecule that promotes neurogenesis and synaptic plasticity. In other words, their brains became sharper, more exploratory and resistant to stress.
Mattson’s eureka moment came when he examined these neurons under the microscope. The fasting group had dense dendritic neural networks. Hunger wasn’t neurotoxic; it was neurotropic, facilitating neural growth and connections. The brain grew stronger in the face of intermittent stress.
He realized that fasting activates an internal survival circuit. When food is scarce, the brain adapts to enhance focus and memory to aid hunting. When food is plentiful, the brain atrophies. Modern overeating is not just a metabolic problem; it’s slow neurological decay.
Fasting improved mitochondrial efficiency —the powerhouses of the cell —reduced oxidative stress, and induced autophagy —the cellular self-cleaning process. He postulated that fasting would help to protect the neurons in diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and depression. He often fasts for 8 hours daily, sometimes eating just a single plant-based meal in the evening so he can keep his mind clear.
He later joined Johns Hopkins and sparked the modern intermittent fasting movement, inspiring millions to adopt a 16:8-hour (16-hour fasts, eating in an 8-hour window) or a 5:2-day (eat for five days and fast for two days) intermittent fasting (IF) regimen.
He remarks the hidden obvious now:
“The body was never designed for constant feeding. Health is found in the spaces between. The body knows how to heal, our job is to stop interrupting it.”
Time-Restricted Eating’s Marvel
It’s not just what you eat, it’s when you eat.
Dr. Stachin Panda
In a building at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, designed by the spiritual architect Louis Kahn, whose hallways captured the path of the sun, Panda investigated the genes that control the circadian clock, the internal rhythm of the body that synchronizes metabolism, sleep, and hormones. He deleted the core clock genes called Cry1 and Cry2 in mice and watched feeding, temperature and glucose cycles become chaotic. The mice grew obese and diabetic, even without eating more food.
One of his students mistakenly left a group of normal mice with limited access to food to only ten hours each night. Despite identical calorie intake, these mice stayed lean, slept better, and lived longer than those fed liberally.
Panda’s eureka moment came instantly as he saw that “It’s not just what you eat, it’s when you eat!” This time-restricted eating (TRE) could reset circadian rhythm and restore metabolic health. He published his studies, restricting feeding to an 8-10 hour window to avoid fatty liver disease and improve glucose tolerance.
In human trials, he observed much the same effects. Reduced weight, improved sleep quality, and sharper focus. Panda associated this with the oscillation of thousands of genes that switch on or off depending on feeding time. This is called epigenetics, where the expression of genes are altered on or off based on environment. When eating is liberal, those genes lose coherence and metabolism drifts out of rhythm, much like an orchestra without a conductor.
He laments, “Modern life is a 24-hour buffet. Our clocks are starving for darkness.” Fasting is not merely abstaining from food, but about rediscovering time as therapy.
Reflection
The rhythm of life
Sets with darkness and light
Disobey and it cuts like a knife
Adhere and you master time’s bite
When dusk descends, let hunger rest
For rest heals the body best
Dr. Kevin Ham
Without context, I did not really understand why or how the ketogenic diet mimics the powerful benefits of fasting. The low carbs reduce glucose levels and, therefore, insulin levels, so the body needs to produce fat energy in the form of ketones, mimicking fasting ketosis. Since the diet is high in fat, you will need to focus on healthy fats (non-processed and little or no heated oils).
Ease the Heartache of Loved Ones
What is the big bottleneck of Diabetes? Glucose or Fat?
Dr. Kevin Ham
If you have friends or family, please forward my newsletter to them and ask them to sign up. I’d like to help a lot of people reverse and heal their disease.
Life-Changing Question
Can you eat the same meals but in a shorter time frame?
Try for an 8-hour restricted-time feeding period, giving you a daily 16-hour fast, as Mattson has popularized. As you get better at producing ketones, try moving to a 6-hour feeding period. The resting or fasting interval between eating is almost as important as the foods you eat.
Next week—
The Power of Fasting (Part III)
Fasting to stress cancer
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