Periodic Fasting: Repair your DNA, Grow Younger, and Learn to Appreciate your Food

198 Pages·2015·1.33 MB·English

by  Cristian Vlad Zot

Periodic Fasting:

Repair your DNA, Grow Younger, and Learn to Appreciate your
Food

Cristian Vlad Zot
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Note to the reader (disclaimer)

The information from this book is intended to describe the possible benefits of therapeutic fasting.
However, if you decide to treat your illnesses, do it under the supervision of your physician. Do not use this
book as a substitute for professional medical care or treatment.

Every effort has been made to ensure that the information contained in the book is complete and accurate.
However, the author is not engaged in rendering advice to the individual reader.

This book should not serve as a how-to guide for therapeutic, periodic, or intermittent fasting. If you decide
to follow such endeavors, do it under the supervision of a qualified physician.

Periodic Fasting - Repair your DNA, Grow Younger, and Learn to Appreciate your Food Copyright © 2015
by Cristian Vlad Zot. All rights reserved.

No part of this book or e-book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written
permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For more
information, contact the author at http://cristivlad.com

Table of Contents

Foreword......................................................................................................1

Introduction.................................................................................................3

Ch.1 - An Inborn Mechanism - How Life on Earth and Fasting
Coevolved...................................................................................................15

Ch.2 - From the Middle Ages to the Early 20th Century....................29

Ch.3 - The Emerging Science of the Last Century...............................45

Ch.4 - Intermittent Fasting/IER and Prolonged Fasting:
Practical Insights........................................................................................65

Ch.5 - The Molecular Mechanisms of Fasting:
When Magic Happens at Cell Level and Below....................................79

Ch.6 - Recent Research in Fasting and Related Fields.......................105

Ch.7 - Fasting and the Emperor of All Maladies................................131

Ch.8 - My Personal Long-Term Fasting Experiment.........................145

Acknowledgements..................................................................................165

About the Author.....................................................................................167

References..................................................................................................169

Covers.........................................................................................................197

Foreword

Professor Richard David Feinman

Is there hope for nutrition?

With the proliferation of meaningless statistico-epidemiologic studies
and the media flipping back and forth between low-carb and low-fat, it is
increasingly clear that individual dieters are on their own. We all have to sift
through the mass of information and search personal accounts for authenticity.

This book will be a great help for its emphasis on the value of fasting
rather, as is so common, the warnings about the dangers of eating too much.
Cristi describes the evolution of his thinking and behavior from early religious
practice to the ketogenic diet and the values of the total-only water fast. The
evolutionary perspective and the rather surprising story of fasting in the animal
kingdom are well presented. The dental and anatomical evolution as well as
social influences puts this in a broad perspective.

In the end, the reader has an insight to the fast, how to get in and how to
re-feed. Encouraging for most of us is the history of fasters in history including a
discussion of Upton Sinclair who, like Cristi, gave us a blow-by-blow. Of
current interest, of course, is how we are going to prevent and cure cancer and
defy ageing with fasting and ketogenesis. There is a very good if maybe overly
optimistic picture of the potential here and the drift of current as well as details
of what to eat -- principles rather than recipes.

In the end, this is a remarkably comprehensive view of fasting. Cristi is
clear that neither the book nor the subject have final answers but researchers and
individual dieters have a great place to start.
Introduction
Introduction

At the time of this writing (Jan. 2015), I was already fairly intimate with
the practices of periodic fasting and intermittent fasting. I had been doing it for
more than 12 months. This book is not about religious fasting, though my
childhood experience of fasting involves religious practices. It is the starting
point of the book.

From a very young age I was raised in the Christian-Orthodox religion.
I lived with my grandparents in a small village in the north-western Romania
until I was 5 years old and left to attend kindergarten in a nearby city. We used
to go to church every Sunday.

Christian Orthodoxy implies several religious fasts (abstinence from
certain foods or total abstinence from foodstuff) throughout the year. The two
biggest fasts are The Christmas Fast and The Easter Fast.

The Christmas Fast runs every year from November 15th until
December 25th, while the Easter Fast is determined in a more complicated way,
but both of them last approximately 40 days.

Milder versions of fasting (according to Orthodoxy) imply not
consuming animals or animal derived products every Wednesday and Friday.
Tougher versions require the practitioner to refrain from these foods every day
of the fast. It is similar to a vegan diet. On the extreme end of the spectrum, there
are people who abstain from food consumption for the entire 40 days. They only
drink water.

As a child I found it very hard to believe that someone will not eat for
such a long period of time. My grandparents were following the usual
"Wednesdays and Fridays No Animal Products" protocol, so they suggested I do
the same, which I did without much discomfort.

My practice of religious fasting started becoming a challenge during a
Good Friday (which is also known as the Black Friday, Easter Friday, or Holy
Friday), the Friday before the Orthodox Easter [1]. My grandmother used to fast
for the entire day, until nightfall. She didn't consume water either. She prayed
various times throughout the day.