Phase 3 is akin to the harvest, when you enjoy the sustained benefits of the symbiotic relationship between what you consider yourself and your holobiome: vitality, weight management, and longevity blessed with good health. Think of it this way: Your goal is to die young at a very old age.
Once their “inner you,” the gut, is happily stabilized, most of my patients who initially came to me to lose weight notice that this desired result is part and parcel of their overall improved health. In other words, if you are doing everything right, you will return to your appropriate weight, whether you were underweight or overweight when you started the Plant Paradox Program. My autoimmune and arthritis patients revel in their pain-free and energized new lives. In fact, all my patients who attain success with the program embrace the fact that it is a lifestyle, not simply a diet.
You’ll achieve two things in this lifestyle phase. First, you will ascertain whether your gut has indeed healed, and that your gut buddies are happy and empowered to keep you in continued good health. Second, you can test whether you can reintroduce certain lectins—but only if those gut bugs are happy and only after the minimum of six weeks spent in Phase 2. Don’t feel you have to rush to test your tolerance for lectins just because forty-two days have elapsed. If you prefer, continue to follow the meal plans for Phase 2. If you are in no hurry to try adding back some formerly problematic lectin foods, you will find meal plans for a Phase 3 Five-Day Modified Vegan Fast you can follow on a monthly basis if you wish.
Patience Will Be Rewarded
HOW LONG BEYOND the six weeks before you can try to reintroduce some lectins? When you achieve the goal of ongoing good health depends, of course, on the particular condition or set of conditions you had when you started the Plant Paradox Program. Thanks to the sophisticated blood tests I run on my patients every three months, I can spot when a patient’s rain forest has been restored and the gang members and their LPSs have vacated the premises. However, my patients can also usually sense themselves when this occurs. So, I’m going to let you decide when it is time (if ever) to try reintroducing small amounts of lectin-containing foods into your gut.
How do you make that decision?
• Have your bowel movements become normal? One test that many of my successful patients report is that they no longer need toilet paper. You are reading that correctly. Think about it. Do you see your dog using toilet paper? There’s no need with perfectly formed poops. Your great ape cousins don’t need TP either. If everything is as it should be, there is no sense of urgency as a result of loose or poorly formed stools to push out lectins or bad bugs. It’s a fascinating test to tell that things are returning to normal. Need I remind you that all illness starts in the gut?
• Have your joints stopped hurting?
• Has your brain fog cleared?
• Has your skin cleared, is your face glowing, and has any acne disappeared?
• Is your energy level over the top?
• Do you sleep without restlessness or awakening several times a night?
• If you were overweight, are you now wearing a smaller size? Or, if you were underweight at the start, are you filling out your clothes more?
If the answer to any of these questions is no, please don’t get antsy and make the mistake of trying to leave Phase 2 prematurely. You’re not ready yet.
Similarly, if you have been diagnosed with an autoimmune condition, or even suspect that you have one, or if you had your tonsils removed, are hypothyroid, have arthritis or heart disease, have chronic sinus issues, or you see yourself in any of the accounts of my “canaries,” those folks who are supersensitive to lectins, I urge you not to waver in your avoidance of the foods on the Just Say “No” list. All too often, I have witnessed the reversal of good fortune as the result of small and seemingly harmless missteps. Don’t be in too much of a hurry to experiment with your tolerance for foods you have given up for the last month and a half.
Fortunately, most of you are not “canaries”! And in this phase, I want to teach you some techniques to ensure that you have a lifestyle you can live with, literally and physically. I’m also going to illuminate the tricks shared by most long-lived societies, along with the cutting-edge research that confirms the principles that you’ll put into practice. Despite what you may have heard about the so-called blue zones (see “What Are the Blue Zones?”), most of these cultures have striking similarities that escape cursory inspection. The common misconception is that these cultures appear to have very different dietary practices—the staple foods differ among them—but, in fact, they all share a unifying dietary practice, which I have already mentioned. This universal practice is the restricted consumption of animal protein, which I believe is the key to a vibrant health span.
As a native of Nebraska, which dubs itself the Beef State, along with its official designation as the Cornhusker State—what do you think those cows eat?—it saddens me to admonish you about this fact. But the truth is that animal protein intake is low in all these long-lived societies. Animal and (now) human studies validate that long life is associated with eating minimal amounts of meat, poultry, and even fish.1
Finally, I am going to show you that perhaps you can have your cake and eat it, too—no, not that kind of cake—by employing the practice commonly referred to as intermittent fasting. This involves periodically prolonging the periods of time between meals, or just restricting protein consumption and overall calories intake a certain number of days each month or each week. I am going to take you through this step by step.
SUCCESS STORY
The Food Chain Up Close and Personal
Patrick M., a forty-five-year-old executive from the midwest with chronic fatigue syndrome, arthritis, and hypertension, sought my help after he had visited some of the finest spas and health centers in Switzerland, all to no avail. Within six weeks of going on the Plant Paradox Program, all his symptoms cleared and he was able to stop his blood pressure medications. He also felt alert and his arthritis abated, allowing him to resume his active travel schedule. When we spoke by telephone six months into the program, Patrick noted that he was doing well except when he dined out on the road. Despite eating his safe fall-back foods of chicken or shrimp, his symptoms returned. He speculated that it might be because flour, and the gluten it supposedly contained, had been used in cooking these foods. What he hadn’t grasped was that the chicken or shrimp served in a restaurant had probably been fed corn and soybeans, meaning that he was eating what the thing he was eating ate. Within a month of stopping these “safe foods,” Patrick reported that he was no longer experiencing any fatigue or pain. The trigger wasn’t hidden gluten; rather, it was the shrimp and chicken, which might as well have been corn and soybeans.
The Program: Phase 3
UNLIKE THE FIRST two phases, which have a suggested duration, this is really a lifestyle. Staying on this phase indefinitely will greatly enhance your chances of living to a ripe old age without being plagued with an array of health issues. You will continue to eat much the way you have been eating, and depending upon your tolerance for lectins, you can make some dietary changes.
• Continue to eat foods on the Say “Yes Please” list, consuming primarily locally grown foods that have been picked when ripe (meaning in-season produce).
• Once your gut is repaired, consume more ketogenic fats. These are medium-chain saturated fatty acids such as MCT oil or coconut oil that kick-start fat burning, rather than being stored as fat.
• Continue to avoid the Just Say “No” foods. However, if you wish to and can do so, gradually reintroduce small amounts of immature (no seeds or only tiny seeds) lectin-bearing foods such as cucumbers, zucchini, and Japanese eggplant to test your tolerance. Try one at a time for a week before trying another food.
• Later, if you can handle these foods, try to introduce heirloom tomatoes and peppers that have been seeded and had the skins removed. Give each a week to see how you do, before introducing another.
• Next, try to introduce pressure-cooked legumes in small amounts. Again, do this one week at a time. Hey, there’s no rush—you’ve got the rest of your life, after all.
• Finally, after you’ve reintroduced the lectin-containing foods and are doing well, you might be able to introduce Indian white basmati rice in extreme moderation or other grains and pseudo-grains that have been pressure cooked—with the exception of barley, rye, oats, and wheat, all of which contain gluten. We’ll discuss pressure cooking later in this chapter.
• Eat less food overall and have less frequent meals. As you’ll learn in chapter 10, this will give your gut, brain, and mitochondria the chance to rest between doing the work of digestion and energy production, as well as minimize the time that LPSs are loose in your body.
• Progressively reduce your animal protein to no more than 2 ounces per day; instead, derive the vast majority of protein from leaves, certain vegetables, mushrooms, nuts, and hemp.
• Continue to take the supplements recommended in Phase 2.
• Periodically, try to fast and restrict your caloric intake, particularly in the form of animal protein. I’ll present some specifics on how to do this later in the chapter.
• Restore daily and seasonal rhythms with exposure to daylight, ideally for an hour each day, at or near midday. Also get eight hours of sleep a night and regular exercise.
• Avoid blue light as much as possible in the evenings and use one or more of the blocking strategies discussed in “Blue Light Trojan Horses”.
SUCCESS STORY
A Nut Allergy “Cured”!
When Amelia W. asked me for help, she was fifty-one years old and had diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. She also said she had such a severe allergy to all nuts that she carried an EpiPen of epinephrine (adrenaline) in case she had an attack after accidentally eating nuts in a restaurant. I explained to her that her immune system was so activated by lectins and LPSs that it was shooting at any foreign protein regardless of whether it was friend or foe. She shrugged her shoulders, nodded, and said, “Sure, just help me lose weight.” She started the Plant Paradox Program. Six months later, she was down thirty pounds, and her diabetes, hypertension, and cholesterol problems were only a memory. However, it was her recent experience at a restaurant that caught my attention.
Amelia and a girlfriend had a Caesar salad at a hip place in Los Angeles. During the meal, she noticed that her eyes were itchy and watering a bit, but she tossed it off as the result of a lot of dust in the air. When she awoke the next morning, her eyes were still a bit puffy. She thought nothing more about it until her girlfriend called in horror two days later to say that she had discovered that the restaurant used walnuts in the creamy Caesar dressing! But instead of calling her attorney, my patient bought a bag of pistachios and another of macadamia nuts. She started with tiny bites and waited. Nothing happened! More nuts, bigger bites, but still nothing happened. Then a handful of nuts, but still no reaction. She now was eating nuts with abandon! She wanted me to know that she was cured. In fact, though, she wasn’t cured of anything. Her immune system had been reeducated by her gut buddies to chill out, and those nuts were her gut buddies’ friends—and now her friends as well.
Testing the Waters
BEANS AND OTHER LEGUMES: Even my nonvegetarian and nonvegan patients miss their beans, and as I noted in chapter 6, you can try to reintroduce legumes as long as you cook them in a modern one-touch pressure cooker. Simply follow the cooking directions that come with your machine. Beans are a great source of resistant starches, the sugars that your gut bugs can use, as long as you remove those nasty lectins. When compared with animal protein, bean protein is associated with greater longevity, at least in a head-to-head comparison between beans and beef.2 Interestingly, when compared with red meats, eating fish or chicken did not appear to reduce longevity.
THE SAFEST GRAIN: Of the four billion people who use rice as their staple grain, most opt for white rice. Rice eaters traditionally have little or no heart disease, a fact that I attribute to the lack of wheat germ agglutinin (WGA) from wheat in their diet. In my opinion, if you are going to add a grain back into your diet, the safest option is white basmati rice from India—not the American strain. Indian white basmati rice has the most resistant starch of any variety. You can make the starch even more resistant by refrigerating rice after cooking, and then reheating before using it, or making a cold rice salad. That said, if you have diabetes, prediabetes, or cancer, or if weight loss is your goal, stay away from even this relatively benign grain. And do remember sorghum and millet are the only grains that contain no lectins, meaning they are safe from the get-go.
Only in America
NIGHTSHADES: The Italians and French learned two centuries ago to peel and seed tomatoes before eating them or even when cooking with them. Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and other members of the nightshade family are the next group of lectin-containing foods to try to reintroduce—in limited quantities, of course, and always peeled and deseeded. Americans have been slower to adopt these techniques to defang the nightshade family. To easily peel tomatoes, immerse them in boiling water for about 30 seconds. Or pierce tomatoes on a long fork and rotate them over the flame of your gas burner. Do the same with peppers until they blacken and then place in a paper bag to cool. The skin will easily peel off.
SQUASH: As with tomatoes, peel skin and eliminate the seeds before eating squash. Alternatively, eat baby summer squash. Do not spiralize mature squash unless you peel and deseed them first. Peel and remove the seeds of winter squash before cooking as well. Regardless, always keep in mind that these are fruits, not vegetables, and long ago our forebears ate them only to gain weight for the winter.
A word of warning: The fructose in these fruits, even though we call them vegetables, is often enough to initiate weight regain, as a number of my well-meaning patients have experienced. If your scale is heading in the wrong direction after reintroducing these fruits, simply reverse course. Cease and desist eating any food that stimulates weight gain or makes it difficult to control your appetite. The same advice applies to pressure-cooked grains or beans. Remember, there is no human need for these foods. A two-by-three-inch muscle in your mouth—that’s right, it’s called your tongue!—should not rule (or ruin) your health.
A Pound of Flesh, No Way!
I HAVE MENTIONED the dangers of excessive intake of animal protein earlier, but now it is time to really start the culling process. Two recent human studies have hammered the final nail in the animal protein coffin, a fact already established in animal studies.3 Both studies conclude that meat consumption contributes to the current epidemic of obesity as much as, if not more than, our staggeringly high consumption of sugar does. Yes, you read that correctly. Eating meat makes you as fat as eating sugar does! Luckily, no such strong association was found with fish or shellfish consumption. I recommend these two as the best choices for nonvegans and nonvegetarians. Moreover, red meat contains Neu5Gc, the sugar molecule linked to both cancer and heart disease. Think about that the next time you Paleo folks reach for that grass-fed steak, hot dog, or slab of bacon. Instead, enjoy some wild salmon or shrimp.
The combination of meat and the bread or buns on which it is served at fast food restaurants creates the perfect storm in a way you would never expect. The simple sugars in the fries, chips, bun, or bread enter your bloodstream as sugar almost immediately. In fact, a single slice of whole wheat bread raises your blood sugar higher and faster than four tablespoons of straight sugar. The meat that you ate is more slowly digested, entering your bloodstream slightly later. Unfortunately, your cells are full of the sugar from the bun or fries you ate so there is no need for more calories. Little did you know, when this occurs, that protein converts to sugar, which immediately turns into fat.
What Are the Blue Zones?
Journalist Dan Buettner teamed up with National Geographic to visit and research parts of the world where people live the longest, reaching the century mark at ten times the overall rate achieved in the United States. After publishing an article about his findings in the magazine, Buettner went on to write the best-selling book The Blue Zones. And the winners are: the Italian island of Sardinia; Okinawa, Japan; Loma Linda, California (yes, where I once was a professor); the Nicoya Peninsula of Costa Rica; and the Greek island of Ikaria. The key is that all these different dietary styles share one thing and one thing only: they dramatically limit animal protein. Stay tuned as we are going to do a deep dive into this subject shortly.
A Look at the Mediterranean Diet
SHARP-EYED READERS WILL notice that two of the blue zones are found on islands in the Mediterranean, so perhaps you are thinking you should just eat the Mediterranean diet and not have to give up grains. I know—I love bread, too! It is positively addictive. Sadly, I have to inform you that meta-analysis shows that cereal grains are actually a negative component of this diet,4 which is countered by vegetables rich in polyphenols, as well as the olive oil and red wine consumed in the region. In fact, because the lectins in grain bind to joint cartilage, Italians overall have significantly high rates of arthritis;5 Sardinians have a high proportion of autoimmune diseases; and my Adventist friends from Loma Linda keep their orthopedic surgery department very busy. Remember, your goal is longevity with vibrant health, not just limping along for another year on the planet.
SUCCESS STORY
When Bread Is Not Bread
Susan R. emigrated from Hungary to Los Angeles seeking a movie career. But shortly after arriving, the twenty-seven-year-old began experiencing severe stomach pain, cramps, and bloody diarrhea. When a workup revealed Crohn’s disease, her doctor recommended she start immune-suppressing drugs. Shocked that this was her fate at such an early age, she visited me at the urging of an actor friend. Laboratory tests showed classic lectin intolerance and massive inflammation. Susan started the Plant Paradox Program and within two weeks, the abdominal pain began to subside and her bowel movements became normal. She continued to thrive and returned to her active life. About a year later, she returned to Hungary, where, at the urging of her family, she dined on local breads and yogurt, both of which had been forbidden on my program. To her delight, she suffered absolutely no gastric distress. Back in Los Angeles, convinced that she was cured, she began eating local yogurt and breads. Within days, all her previous problems returned with a vengeance. A quick visit with me confirmed that her immune system was reactivated. How could that be?
When she was in her homeland, Susan was eating bread that had been made with yeast and sourdough cultures, and with wheat that hadn’t been sprayed with Roundup. The yeast and sourdough starters ate the lectins in the wheat. And the milk used to make the yogurt came from casein A-2 cows that had not been feed corn or soybeans with a Roundup chaser. With nothing to disturb her gut buddies, she was fine. But when Susan returned and ate American yogurt and bread, what she was eating was totally unlike what she had eaten in Hungary. The bread wasn’t simply bread and the yogurt wasn’t simply yogurt because you are not just what you eat, but also how what you are eating was prepared and raised.
Susan’s story has a happy ending. In this country, she avoids our lethal foods, but when she is in Hungary, she eats the same foods (which, of course, are not the same at all), and they nourish her and her gut buddies.
The Protein Connection
STILL DON’T BELIEVE that moderating animal protein intake is the answer to a long, healthy life? As Simon and Garfunkel sang, “A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.” Let’s take a look at the science. With the exception of one rhesus monkey study conducted at the National Institute on Aging (NIA),6 calorie restriction has been shown to extend life span in all animals (including a University of Wisconsin study of rhesus monkeys.)7 While calorie-restricted monkeys had a better health span than did their conventionally fed companions in both studies, monkeys in both groups died at the same age only in the NIA study. The University of Wisconsin, using the same breed, reached the opposite conclusion, that indeed calorie restriction increased life span. Who was right? When Wisconsin researchers looked at the data of the NIA study, they found and reported that all the NIA animals were calorie-restricted, and the proteins used in the two studies might be the real explanation of differences, since the University of Wisconsin monkeys ate less protein and more carbs. (Astute readers will note that this mimics the habits of the people in blue zones.) Researchers at St. Louis University, who have followed members of the CR Society International for years—these folks restrict their calories, eating about 20 to 30 percent fewer calories than normal—decided to put the animal protein hypothesis to yet another test.
Despite eating a lot fewer calories, the CR folks had IGF-1 levels (see “Want to Live to Be 100?”) that were about the same as those of people eating a normal diet. No wonder those rhesus monkeys of the NIA study didn’t live longer than their more rotund study mates. The researchers then recruited vegans and measured their IGF-1 levels, only to find them much lower than those of the calorie-restricted group. For the ultimate test, several CR members were asked to cut their animal protein consumption without changing their total calorie intake. Lo and behold, down went their IGF-1 scores to parallel those of the vegans.8 This means that if you want to be in the game—meaning the game of life—for the long haul, cut down on animal protein or cut it out entirely. I recommend no more than 2 ounces a day. Want more than that at a sitting? No problem, just go animal-protein-free for a day or so and your protein bank account will even out.
Want to Live to Be 100?
For years I have routinely measured my patients’ levels of insulinlike growth factor 1 (IGF-1), an easily measured marker for aging.9 Both animal and human studies show that the lower your IGF-1, the longer you live, and the less chance for developing cancer. The two factors in animal and human studies, including my own studies, that correlate to lowered IGF-1 are consuming less sugar and consuming less animal protein—specifically, certain amino acids. These amino acids, particularly methionine, leucine, and isoleucine, which are far more prevalent in animal protein than plant-based proteins, activate the cellular sensor of energy availability, mTOR, or just TOR, for “target of rapamycin.” (Rapamycin is a transplant drug that was being testing during my early days at Loma Linda University. Any transplant drug has to undergo years of animal testing for both safety and long-term side effects.) Imagine the researchers’ surprise when animals treated with rapamycin had an extended, not a shorter, life span,10 since most transplant drugs shorten life span! The search for the cause of this phenomenon revealed that the main driver of longevity is a receptor for energy availability on all cells. Researchers, who usually don’t lack fancy names to call things, called the receptor the “mammalian target of rapamycin” or mTor. We now know that the equivalent sensor exists in all living things, even worms, so it is simply called TOR.
TOR senses energy availability. If it senses lots of energy—think food and summer—it is time to grow and TOR stimulates cellular growth by activating IGF-1. If TOR senses little energy—think winter, drought, or starvation—it is time to batten down the hatches, cut back all nonessential functions, and kick any cell not pulling its own weight off the island; in that process, therefore, IGF-1 is lowered. While TOR cannot be measured—it is a receptor or sensor—its downstream messenger, IGF-1, tells cells to either grow or go into hibernation and wait for better times. By measuring IGF-1 (and lowering it with our food choices, such as less animal protein), we can manage our rate of aging. Scary, but true. My ninety- and hundred-year-olds all have very low IGF-1 and so should you.
How Low Can You Go?
WHERE’S THE BOTTOM in terms of protein consumption? My former colleague Dr. Gary Fraser at Loma Linda University probably has the answer. In his studies of the long-lived Seventh-day Adventists and a meta-analysis of six other studies, he has clearly shown that vegan Adventists live the longest, followed by vegetarian Adventists who limit dairy fats.11 Vegetarian Adventists who do consume dairy come next, and the Adventists who occasionally eat chicken or fish bring up the rear in terms of longevity. What does this mean for you? It means that eating animal protein is not necessary for good health and that completely avoiding animal protein produced the greatest longevity among an already extremely long-lived people. If you are still thinking you can’t do without lots of burgers, chops, and steaks, consider this: The risk of developing Alzheimer’s correlates directly with the amount of meat consumed.12 Now just imagine what could happen with a lectin-limited all-plant diet!
As impressive as these studies are, they must be balanced against the other masters of longevity in the blue zones, for whom small amounts of animal protein, particularly seafood, are an integral part of their diet. Dan Buettner, the author of The Blue Zones, hadn’t heard of the very old residents of the mainland Italian town of Acciaroli, located south of Naples. This village has the largest percentage of centenarians recorded—30 percent of the town’s residents are more than one hundred years old—who attribute their remarkable health to eating anchovies with rosemary every day, and washing it down with generous amounts of wine. Having said that, my own studies confirm the connection between the intake of animal protein and sugar (even fruit sugar) and IGF-1 levels. My advice is to embrace appropriate plants as your preferred protein source, maybe throw in some small fish and rosemary, and look forward to a long and healthy life.
Fasting and Ketones
Fasting is perfectly natural. Ignore “experts” who claim fasting is dangerous. Humans once fasted regularly, not because it was trendy or they wanted to cleanse their gut, but rather for a more basic reason: food was not always available. A study performed in 1972 is instructive. Researchers put twenty-three obese subjects on a sixty-day starvation diet. First they were injected with insulin, which removes sugar from the bloodstream. Immediately all got severe symptoms of hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), with sweats, low blood pressure, and fainting. At the end of the sixty days, they were all once more injected with insulin; this time, even though their blood sugar levels were extremely low, they were completely alert and bright. Blood drawn from veins exiting their brains proved that their brains were burning ketones for energy instead of glucose, and therefore did not require glucose.13 This is proof that humans can adapt to use ketones as a primary fuel when we are without sources of sugar from carbs and protein.14 Keep in mind that almost all the great religious traditions have some form of fasting as part of their spiritual practice. Mormons who practice a weekly one-day fast live significantly longer than their nonfasting, although also very healthy, Mormon brethren.15
An Alternative to Animal Protein Restriction
NOT READY TO forgo animal protein completely? Okay, I hear you. What if I told you that there was another way out? Valter Longo of the Longevity Institute at the University of Southern California has shown that a monthly five-day modified vegan fast of approximately 900 calories gives the same results in terms of IGF-1 and other markers of aging, as does an entire month of a traditional calorie-restricted diet.16 Therefore, if you limit calories and avoid animal protein for just five days each month, you get the same benefits as though you joined the CR Society International for the whole month, but without the effort. It is akin to doing specific exercises for one or two days a week and achieving the same physical fitness results as exercising every day (actually, that’s true, too, as research shows17).
So, how about it? This next month, just follow the vegan version of the Three-Day Kick-Start Cleanse from Phase 1, which contains about 900 calories, for five days instead of three, and watch what happens. You’ll find meal plans for this Five-Day Modified Vegan Fast. My wife and I love this addition to our lifestyle! You can repeat two days from the Phase 1 cleanse, or make any changes that keep your daily calorie intake in that range. Then follow the Phase 3 Plant Paradox guidelines for the rest of the month—most people can occasionally depart from this for a few days while traveling or on a special occasion—and you’ve got a program that you can probably live with for a very long, healthy time.
Another Alternative
IF THAT IS too extreme for you, then try intermittent fasting (IF). The initial IF programs centered on the idea that twice a week you would drastically cut calories to 500 to 600 a day, and then eat normally for the rest of the week. To get an idea of what that looks like, it could be three approved protein bars a day, or six or eight pastured or omega-3 eggs, or five bags of Romaine lettuce with approximately three tablespoons of olive oil plus vinegar (guess which I choose!). In my clinic, I usually advise patients to fast on Monday and Thursday. On Monday you are coming off the weekend, so cutting back makes easy good sense. After two days off the fast, you cut back again on Thursday so you have the whole weekend to relax again. By the way, my patients usually lose about a pound a week using this technique.
A Third Option
STILL NOT CONVINCED? My colleague and friend Dr. Dale Bredesen, a leading dementia researcher at UCLA and the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, and I agree that the longer you go between meals, the more metabolic flexibility you develop in your mitochondria, the tiny power stations in your cells, especially in the neurons of your brain. How long? Every day, try going for 16 hours without eating. In practical terms, this means if you finish dinner at 6:00 p.m., you’ll have brunch the next day at 10:00 a.m. Or finish dinner at 8:00 p.m., and a noon lunch will be your first meal the next day. Remember, the meaning of breakfast is “break fast.” The farther you extend this time period, the better.18 I am not just now jumping on this bandwagon. If you read my first book, you may recall that from January through May of each year, I fast for 22 out of 24 hours each day during the week, eating all my calories between 6:00 and 8:00 p.m. and drinking generous amounts of green tea and mint tea, as well as a cup of coffee in the morning. I have continued this practice for the last ten years, so I know not only that it is doable, but that it is also sustainable. After all, you are reading this book to find out how to make your life sustainable, aren’t you?
An Intensive Care Approach
SOME OF THE patients who arrive at my center are on their last gasp, often with physical issues such as severe diabetes, cancer, or kidney failure, or with newly diagnosed dementia or Parkinson’s or other neurological diseases. Such dire cases need intensive care because the energy-producing organelles of their cells, their mitochondria, are in shock. And these folks need to go immediately to Dr. Gundry’s “intensive care unit.” If that describes you, or you have a loved one with one or more of these conditions, I’ve designed a modification of the Plant Paradox Program to deal with these seemingly different conditions. The adaptation is called the Keto Plant Paradox Intensive Care Program, and it’s detailed in the next chapter. I’ll give you a hint: Such conditions actually all have a common cause. And I’ll give you one guess, dear reader, what that might be.