Today on The Empowering Neurologist I had the pleasure of again spending time with Dr. Matthew Phillips. He’s been on the program in the past discussing the effectiveness of the ketogenic diet in Parkinson’s disease.
Today he explores the notion of fasting, and reveals how powerful a therapy this may represent as it relates to both keeping the brain healthy as well as in the treatment of existing disease.
I’d like to share the conclusion from his recent publication, Fasting as a Therapy in Neurological Disease, as I think it says a lot:
"In an era of rising healthcare costs and an increasing prevalence of neurological disease, the introduction of a self-empowering, cost-free, effective therapeutic option for a range of neurological disorders would be a welcome addition to the armamentarium of physicians. Today’s most common neurological disorders are fundamentally characterized by defective metabolism, on many levels. Given that fasting is a simple, multi-targeted, and essentially “metabolic” therapy with a healthy track record for treating a variety of neurological diseases in animals, it holds promise as a treatment for analogous diseases in humans. Despite this promise, the state of the evidence in humans is extremely limited; many more studies are needed before the actual clinical efficacy of fasting as a therapy in human neurological disorders can be ascertained. Yet if these studies can be prioritized, perhaps the day will come when fasting regimens are prescribed alongside medication-based approaches, culminating in the inception of a unified metabolic approach, capable of modifying not only the symptoms, but also the natural course, of the most common, disabling neurological diseases in existence."
