I Cured My Own IBS With a 10-Day Water Fast

I'm not sure where I first heard of water-fasting to cure SIBO. If you google the two, you'll come across more than one blog about it. It certainly wasn't the first thing I tried to heal my permeable gut and the imbalance of methanogens revealed by a SIBO breath test at my gastro's office. I'd dismissed the antibiotic treatment that's so popular right now (40% cure rate and almost certain recurrence didn't sound like a fair exchange for wiping out all the good bacteria in my gut.) The first thing I did was start eliminating gut damaging foods: first gluten and seed oils, then eventually all grains. Then FODMAPs and nightshades and eventually AIP foods. (You can read about the diet I was following and my trial of Atrantil under Treatments.)

If you 've ever restricted your diet in this way, you'll know how it affects your entire life. When I thought about the many ways having IBS impacts my life, beyond all the foods I couldn't eat—how it sparked other disease in my body, like insomnia, the autoimmune condition that's attacking my joints, increasing A1C and fasting glucose levels. How I had to cook every single thing I eat myself and how just making a grocery list was fraught with tension. How traveling was no longer pleasurable. How bathroom habits made me late for work sometimes. How belly fat kept accumulating and a food belly was a permanent fixture... given all that, fasting seemed worth a try—and would be almost a relief from the stringent shopping and cooking.

So I did it. For 10 days I subsisted on only water, tea, and one cup of diluted coffee (more and more diluted each morning until I was having hot water). I stopped taking all of my vitamins and supplements, except for key electrolytes like calcium, magnesium, and sodium. After the first few days, hunger wasn't even an issue, though I did encounter some other challenges.

You can read the daily diary here:

Day 1 of Water Fasting to Cure My IBS + SIBO
Day 2 of Water Fasting to Cure My IBS + SIBO
Day 3 of Water Fasting to Cure My IBS + SIBO
Day 4 of Water Fasting to Cure My IBS + SIBO
Day 5 of Water Fasting to Cure My IBS + SIBO
Day 6 of Water Fasting to Cure My IBS + SIBO
Day 7 of Water Fasting to Cure My IBS + SIBO
Day 8 of Water Fasting to Cure My IBS + SIBO

It really wasn't hard for me, because I was highly motivated. I had a good deal of certainty that it was going to not only heal my SIBO but also do a lot of other good things for my overall health as well—and that kept me going.

I did a lot of research on both the healing qualities of extended water fasting and the dangers of extended water fasting and I went into this with my eyes wide open. And I'm not suggesting that anyone else try it either. Do your own research. Start with the studies below. Check in with your doctor, especially if you are on medication of any kind.

I didn't have any of the conditions that would make fasting dangerous: I'm overall healthy with normal blood pressure and cholesterol and triglyceride levels, about 15 pounds overweight, and carrying the SIBO belly bloat you'd expect. I'm on no prescription medications. So I felt prepared to wing it. I promised myself that I would truly listen to my body. And if at any time I felt nauseous (that's one of the signs to stop), I would allow myself a 1/2 cup of homemade bone broth with salt to rebalance electrolytes and if that didn't help I would break the fast..

I didn't pick a day on the calendar, it picked me. I had been intermittent fasting (eating only in an 8 hour window from 2:00-8pm) and instead of beginning my first meal at 2:00 I just kept pushing it back and back and back until I was fasting.

I wasn't afraid. If anything, I was eager to start.

The research was very convincing. Especially this 2006 study in the International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, where 58 patients with IBS were divided into two groups. One was given prescription meds and psychotherapy to reduce IBS symptoms. The other group fasted for 10 days, drinking only water. After 10 days was up, the fasting group did better. Fasting was found to significantly improve 7 of 10 symptoms assessed, including abdominal pain-discomfort, abdominal distention (bloating), diarrhea, anorexia, nausea, anxiety, and interference with life. Among the group treated with drugs and psychotherapy only 3 symptoms improved: abdominal pain-discomfort, abdominal distention, and interference with life. (More studies below.)

Fasting is not a new concept:

It is estimated that fasting for the alleviation of human suffering has been practiced uninterruptedly for 10,000 years.—Dr. Herbert Shelton, MD

The natural healing force within each one of us is the greatest force in getting well. Our food should be our medicine. Our medicine should be our food. But to eat when you are sick, is to feed your sickness.—Hippocrates (460 BC - 377 BC)

Instead of using medicine, rather, fast a day.—Plutarch (45 AD - 127 AD)

Fasting Cleans the Gut

We who have IBS and other digestive conditions spend a whole lot of time (and money) focused on what we eat. We are all of us restricting things—whether it's gluten, all grains, legumes, seed oils, sugar, FODMAPs, nightshade vegetables, inflammatory foods... the list goes on and on. But what if the answer doesn't lie in what happens when we're eating but in what happens when we're not eating.

When we're not eating, the body goes into supercharged house cleaning mode. The process is called autophagy (self-eating), and has been well documented in medical literature. After a few days of not eating, the body switches from burning incoming carbohydrates (glucose) to burning fat stores for fuel. This sets off hormonal responses that signal the body, telling it "we're in a time of scarcity, so let's get rid of everything non-essential that we're carrying around right now". (I like to picture my gut as the Starship Enterprise.) Non-essentials include the detritus of dead cells, mainly dead organelles, damaged proteins, oxidized particles, damaged DNA. In the gut specifically, the migrating motor complex (MMC), a wave of electrical activity, sweeps through the small intestine like a snake disgorging an egg, pushing undigested food particles and bacteria from the stomach and small intestine to the colon. This constant sweep toward the colon prevents our mucus layer from accumulating too much bacteria.

But the minute we eat, the migrating motor complex, no matter what phase of process it's in, halts in it's tracks. So, when we take the advice of so many dietitians to eat "lots of small meals a day" or if we're night owls, snacking before bed, or if we're insomniacs hoping a comforting bite will make us sleepy, we interrupt the MMC.

What happens when we do this day in and day out? Bad things. Our mucus layer gradually becomes loaded with bacteria—and this leads to leaky gut. Gut bacteria get crowded and push up to places they shouldn't be, like the small intestine—and this leads to SIBO. Endotoxins from dying-off gut bacteria build to such a toxic level that our livers can barely keep up, so the body stores these toxins in the only safe place in the body—our fat stores. Meanwhile, the protective mucus barrier in our gut  becomes so degraded, it starts letting toxins, viruses, bacteria and food particles pass through to the bloodstream. The immune system marks these particles as foreign invaders and creates a wave of inflammation to get rid of them. It also begins making antibodies against them. Some of these particles look very similar in composition to the body’s own cells. For example a protein in wheat looks much like a thyroid cell. The immune system gets confused and starts attacking human tissue. This is why gluten has been implicated in autoimmune thyroid and other autoimmune conditions. This process of mistaken identity is called molecular mimicry, and it may be happening more than we realize.

How many people do you know who've been recently diagnosed with an autoimmune condition? The National Institutes of Health (NIH) estimates that 23.5 million Americans are now affected by autoimmune conditions. The American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association (AARDA) estimates it's closer to 50 million. It was 9 million in 1979.

And after listening to two game-changing podcasts by two different doctors in two very different fields (neither of whom specializes in IBS)—Dr. Thomas Seyfried and Dr. Jason Fung—I expected this fasting might do more than just heal my gut; it could ultimately make me leaner and extend my longevity.

Dr. Seyfried's field is cancer research and Dr. Fung's clinical practice is involved in reversing type 2 diabetes in severely high risk patients. The thing the two have in common? Both utilize a 10,000 year old healing practice: therapeutic fasting, AKA water fasting.

Why Americans Are Fat, Sick, and Growing Sicker

If you've ever tried to lose weight—and who among us hasn't—you're probably familiar with these dieting platitudes: A calorie is a calorie; eat less, move more; and eat many small meals a day. But ask anyone who has struggled with obesity and they'll tell you these concepts haven't worked for them. What is it that we're getting so wrong?

Dr. Jason Fung, MD, a Canadian nephrologist and world-leading expert on intermittent fasting for treating people with type 2 diabetes has a pretty good idea.



The body doesn't know from calories
"The body has no receptors for and doesn't measure calories... it has no way of measuring that.. it has no way of responding to that. The only reason we think that is because it has sort of been ingrained in us. If you put 100 calories of sugar in your mouth versus 100 calories of olive oil, the physiologic response is completely and utterly different... There's no insulin response to the oil, but to a brownie that's the same number of calories, insulin spikes way up. The body responds to hormones. Everything runs on hormones—thyroid, insulin... That's how the body knows what to do."

The body is like a thermostat that responds to hormonal signals
"The body works on a negative feedback loop...a thermostat is a perfect example. If it's winter and it's really cold, the temperature in the house drops to 69 degrees, the thermostat senses that, turns on the heat and brings it back up. That's a perfect example of homeostasis... We have a mechanism in our body that determines how fat we get. If you get too fat, you're not going to survive because you're not going to be able to catch food or somebody's going to eat you. If you get too skinny, you're also not going to survive. The body actually sets a certain set weight, which is defended very vigorously. If you try to lose weight, the body tries to make you gain that weight back. The body makes you hungry, and then it slows down your metabolism. You cut your calories further, the body makes you hungrier and it slows down your metabolic rate even more. It's not about calories; it's about this body set weight.

Eat many small meals a day" is terrible advice
"Every time you eat, you're going to stimulate insulin... you're stimulating it all the time. If you stimulate insulin all the time you get insulin resistant, your fat cells get big, it turns on leptin. If you turn on leptin all the time, you get leptin resistant. Obesity is not a lack of leptin, it's a lack of leptin response. Now your negative feedback loop is completely busted... that body thermostat is getting adjusted up and up and up. So how do you reset that?.. you need to keep your insulin low for a significant amount of time. The way the body works is, when you eat, the body wants to store food energy. If we're eating 10 times a day, we're telling our body to store fat, store fat, store fat. If you want to burn fat, then you have to tell it to start burning fat. Again, it's a hormonal signal, it's not a caloric signal. You've got to let that insulin fall and the body's going to stop burning glycogen and start burning fat.

So how do you lose weight? You stop eating
"It's not about what you eat, it's about the time that you're not eating. If you drop your insulin enough, you switch into burning fat. You're switching fuel sources, and there's no reason for your body to slow down. Say you go on a seven day fast: As your insulin falls you're going to switch from burning food to burning fat. As insulin falls, you get a counter regulatory hormone surge. The body increases sympathetic tone, adrenalin and noradrenalin, cortisol, and growth hormone. Adrenalin pumps up the metabolic rate, growth hormone rebuilds new protein."

Doctor Fung's practice has been successfully reversing type 2 diabetes. That's right, reversing it. His patients are weaned off insulin or medications like Metformin, undergo supervised fasting, and in the process all markers drop—and serious pounds are lost as well. His approach is successful in treating the related conditions fatty liver and metabolic syndrome (MS), as well.

Well, guess what?

IBS Is Linked to Metabolic Syndrome

According to a paper in PLoS One: "Irritable bowel syndrome status may affect the dietary pattern, food digestion, and nutrient absorption, which are important factors for the prevention and treatment of MS and/or its components. Therefore, it is speculated that IBS may be a potential risk factor for MS."

Cancer Is a Metabolic Disease

Dr. Thomas Seyfried of The Boston College posits that cancer is not a genetic disease but a metabolic one, and that therapeutic fasting can prevent it and help treat it. I caught his podcast at SmartDrugSmart:

"Years ago Otto Warburg said the underlying cause of all cancer is insufficient cell respiration, and therefore the cells must ferment. If the cells cannot respire like our normal cells can, in order for the cell to remain alive, it must have an alternative form of energy, which is a primitive form of fermentation—which is a process of energy formation that existed for organisms on the planet before oxygen came into the environment.

"So, our cells have this capacity, but it takes a while to transition from respiration to fermentation. And what happens in cancer is that many aspects of the environment damage the respiration of cells, gradually, not acutely. Or chronically. It gives some of those cells the opportunity to reconfigure fermentation. The cells become fermentative. And all cancer cells are fermentative in one form or another. So then you say what is the fuel for fermentation? And it turns out to be glucose and some amino acids. And [therapeutic fasts] target the glucose and these amino acids—starving out the cancer's natural energy supply.

"What the body does is start to cannibalize. ...It starts to look for cells that are not functioning at their maximum. And those cells are consumed by other cells, macrophages—they're kind of monitors and controllers of the body, and they eliminate inefficient sources of cells. And those cells are digested. Nutrients are then recirculated into the blood stream and these nutrients now go to other cells in the body that have efficient respiration. And in this way the ones that are left are at a higher metabolic rate of efficiency... less prone to become cancerous. Therapeutic fasting (water only) brings the body into that state—and that will prevent cancer.

The population has to come to understand and appreciate what our bodies are capable of doing. Our bodies can heal themselves in many ways, if they're given the opportunity to do that."

Conclusion

When cells can't respirate, they ferment. That word "ferment" has a special resonance for those of us with IBS and SIBO, doesn't it? We're constantly aware of the bacteria in our guts fermenting our undigested fiber. How can we not be? Our bellies blow up like balloons as they do their thing. Could SIBO sufferers be incubating cancer in our gut? That's was reason enough for me to give extended fasting a try. 

And guess what? It worked.

I tapped my body's own self-cleaning mechanism to heal my IBS, SIBO, and autoimmune joint issues using a 10,000 year old healing practice: water fasting. And I'm going to continue to do five-day fasts two or three times a year, letting autophagy do it's thing to naturally clean every cell of my body.

Studies:

Autophagy in the Pathogenesis of Disease
Short-term fasting induces profound neuronal autophagy
Autophagy: cellular and molecular mechanisms
A periodic diet that mimics fasting promotes multi-system regeneration, enhanced cognitive performance and healthspan
Fasting Cycles Retard Growth of Tumors and Sensitize a Range of Cancer Cell Types to Chemotherapy.”

More Resources:

https://hackyourgut.com/2017/03/06/the-ultimate-guide-to-fasting-for-gut-health/
https://www.amymyersmd.com/2017/10/leaky-gut-autoimmune-connection/
http://thechalkboardmag.com/what-is-autophagy-intermittent-fasting-process
https://smartdrugsmarts.com/episodes/ketosis-vs-cancer/
http://www.autoimmuneregistry.org/autoimmune-statistics/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4226513/