Medical school teaches pathology in a very analytical fashion – it starts with the normal anatomy and physiology, continues with basic clinical diagnostic practices and then with its several medical and surgical rotations.
Everything seems to have its own little shelf. Every disease has risk factors; very few have causes – although they may well be researched for.
For this reason, we need theories of disease(s) and one such theory is depicted in the book “Fasting and eating for health“.
Drawing upon several aging theories and well-conducted clinical studies, it is amazing how much Dr. Joel Fuhrman has accomplished through fasting patients – with pre- and post-fasting nutritious vegetarian diets.
Apart from temporary fasting before surgeries or minimally invasive procedures like endoscopy, therapeutical fasting was not mentioned during my medical studies – just as I learned about caloric restriction with optimized nutrition (CRON) increasing lifespan in several species, including primates, from my personal free time readings.
Most of my patients would be reluctant to fast even for one day – some of them even get upset for suggesting them that losing weight would diminish their symptoms – so reading this book may not be practical in a clinical setting – but for my own health and my intellectual curiosity, I don’t regret reading it – if you’re short in time but curious about medical fasting, I’d suggest you read the bibliography only. It is amazing how many well-conducted clinical studies on (voluntary) fasting and (involuntary) starvation were done all over the world, especially in Russia.
