Let's say goodbye to 2024 and welcome 2025 as the year of your return back to health!
Once you've already tackled most of your issues, have been eating healthy, avoiding triggers, lowering stress, and done extensive blood work, if everything is still coming up fine, you most likely have HPT and HPA axis dysfunction. Notice how this indicates Thyroid and/or Adrenal issues. These are issues that may be worsened by fasting too much. The point? A few successive fasts are critical for targetting initial clotting, spike proteins, allergies, and other abnormalities in the body post-covid. But once those are cleared up with a handful of fasts, it's critical to address issues that fasting may not heal.
Remember, there's usually no need to go on extremely long fasts, in fact depending on your symptoms and blood work, long fasts might actually make your full recovery harder. If there's a way to simplify this concept it's to say learn fasting principles but also bioenergetic ones. You'll notice that bioenergetics usually frown upon any form of fasting, but let me be clear. You need to fast initially for the autophagy and stem cells. But you need bioenergetics to get back to 100% health. It's always safer to start with smaller ones and master fasting. Most people will never need to go further than 5-day dry fasts. I myself have over-fasted and ended up on an extended period of rehabilitation afterward and thank goodness I kept track of everything and identified the issues. Doctors are notoriously bad at recommending blood tests and even worse at deciphering them (unless you get VERY lucky).
I've more than recovered from severe PEM long covid, I've returned to my pre-health and possibly am moving past it. A norovirus/covid infection just ran through my family very recently so I'll have to keep an eye on symptoms of re-flaring. I don't want to jinx it but I'm very confident I've mastered the way to tackle infections/viral reactivations, when to fast, and most importantly, when NOT to fast while targeting bioenergetics instead.
I've become a bit of a professional at rehabilitation from overfasting injuries and guiding people on what to tell doctors to get the right testing done and the right prescriptions. Sort of an in between translator / mediator to get you back to 100% health.
There was a recent post from someone who reminded me about the adrenal/thyroid issues that are very common when it comes to long covid and many chronic fatigue illnesses. So I decided to address these additional issues that are not addressed in my older protocols but are just as important to dive into.
Adrenal Issues
Adrenaline surges can be a symptom of dysautonomia, a condition that affects the autonomic nervous system (ANS).
The adrenal gland releases adrenaline as a normal response to stress, infections, medications, caffeine, and other stimulants. However, dysautonomia can cause the sympathetic nervous system to be in overdrive, while the parasympathetic nervous system underperforms. This can lead to an adrenaline rush, even when standing up or during routine activities.
Dysautonomia also causes non-diabetic nocturnal hypoglycemia. It can happen when waking up from a nap or sleeping anytime of the day.
Adrenal insufficiency
When the adrenal glands don't produce enough cortisol, a hormone, this condition can cause fatigue, weakness, and weight loss. It can also cause psychiatric symptoms like anxiety, depression, mania, and psychosis. Adrenal insufficiency can be caused by Addison's disease, when the adrenal glands don't produce enough cortisol and aldosterone or secondary adrenal insufficiency, when the pituitary gland doesn't produce enough ACTH. In some cases, adrenal insufficiency can lead to an addisonian crisis, which is life-threatening and can cause low blood pressure, low blood sugar, and high blood potassium.
Thyroid
Thyroid issues can cause symptoms that are similar to anxiety, including nervousness, irritability, and mood swings. These symptoms can be caused by hormonal imbalances, such as when the thyroid gland produces too much or too little thyroid hormone.
The key to the thyroid is dessicated thyroid and t3, never synthetic t4. There's actually some very interesting science that shows the fasting messes up our RT3 ratios, and we need some T3 to bring them back. If you have access to a prescription and a compounding pharmacy you may be able to get your hands on slow release T3, very powerful stuff.
Hyperthyroidism
An overactive thyroid can cause a fast heartbeat, restlessness, and sleep issues. Other symptoms include unexplained weight loss, sensitivity to heat, and a "thyroid storm" that can feel like a panic attack. Hyperthyroidism can also be confused with an excessive response to stress, and diagnosis often occurs later in the disease.
Hypothyroidism
An underactive thyroid can also cause anxiety, though it's less common than in hyperthyroidism. Other symptoms include cognitive problems like brain fog, short-term memory lapses, and lack of mental alertness.
In general, more severe thyroid disease can lead to more severe mood changes. Thyroid disease can also worsen underlying mental health conditions, such as panic attacks.
Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS)
Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS) can directly contribute to physiological anxiety due to the release of chemicals from activated mast cells, which can trigger symptoms like rapid heart rate, flushing, dizziness, and difficulty breathing, all of which can manifest as anxiety-like sensations in the body; essentially, the physical symptoms of MCAS can be misinterpreted as anxiety by the individual experiencing them.
The goal of dry fasting is to reset your Mast cell activation by autophagy and immune resetting. The initial help is the extreme cortisol activation, similar to getting prednisone or corticosteroid injections. You'll notice that a lot of the extreme fasters fall into a loop of having to keep fasting to keep up "healing". This is very strongly correlated to cortisol, like a drug addict needing more and more hits. This is not health, the goal is to bring the body back to true health. And that means back to eating a regular all-encompassing diet, being able to exercise, and not needing fasting to make you feel good.
EBV/HSV Reactivations
A very big component of a lot of severe long covid. Very high correlation. You'll want to really bring it back into balance and this requires the anti-viral protocol. Sometimes it may require going aggressive with things like Valacyclovir (or the cheaper version – Acyclovir), but my favorite and highly referenced stack is Monolaurin, L-lysine, and olive leaf, with a boost of Reishi mushrooms as well (very powerful Herx possible). The trick is to also get through the 3-day refeed without aggravating and allowing too much reactivation when the immune system is supressed. Do your best to go into the fast with EBV/HSV under control. Look into antibody tests to see if you are currently under chronic reactivation.
Peptides
A powerful additional punch in your arsenal. This is not discussed in my previous protocols but Thymulin has been a game changer for me. A weaker alternative is daily thymus glandular. This can be added to your Viral reactivation anti-viral protocol. Something I recommend everyone fasting for cancer as well. Just start digging into thymus research to understand how important this can be. Once you start to understand what peptides are and how 'natural' they can be (there's still dangers to them so don't go too crazy), then you'll realize that they can be a of big help. If you can't get your hands on bioregenerators, maybe look into thymosin alpha 1 as a boost to the immune system. You've probably heard of things like BPC157, but it's important to remember that fasting triggers HSCs and lots of growth.
Adding BPC 157 may be too much and may trigger cancer growth during the refeed when cancer-suppressing genes are semi-turned off. (reference my cancer & dry fasting article). The point being, not all peptides represent equal risk factors when you pair them with aggressive stem cell regenerating dry fasting.
Peptides are a big rabbit hole but remember that some of the most powerful peptides are found in human breastmilk. You'll notice that colostrum is touted as a very strong healing super supplement. But it's got nothing on healthy human breastmilk, so if you ever get the absolute pleasure and luck to have access to some, save it for your refeed. Breastmilk and fecal transplants are some of the highest shelf powerful strategies to add into your healing stack, but they are also some of the hardest to get around to.
Like I keep telling people. There is no one protocol that will work best for you. If you're saying, "I need something simpler" my answer to you is that if you're severe you probably need to accept that it's not going to be easy and it's not going to be fast. Lots of my older protocols are pretty outdated experiments. The most recent up to date information is on the MIRO board. The link is at the bottom of the [Simplified Scorch Protocol 2024] article. I highly recommend you use the miro board as a jumping board into understanding concepts about the refeed, anti-virals, liver, mind-body, medications, peptides, detox, and more. Learn the concepts, practice slowly yourself. If you believe you need longer than 5-day dry fasts then start looking into booking one of the retreats. If you go and it's not the end all be all you were looking for, feel free to come back to me and we can slowly look beyond the simplicity of [dry fasting and diet] cures all. Good luck on your healing journey.
