The Ultimate Guide to Dry Fasting - Hard vs Soft - Scorch Protocol - Part 2

Welcome back to the Dry Fasting Club. I'm Yannick Wolf, and today we're going to be working on part two of the Ultimate Guide to Dry Fasting. This one's called Understanding. dry fasting and we're going to be talking about types of dry fasting focused on soft and dry but before we get there um i want to talk about different types and there are multiple types of dry fasting

We are going to focus on soft and hard, but let's start off with some of these ones. And the first one is intermittent dry fasting. The definition is a type of fasting that's done by skipping meals and eating in a smaller window of time. But I'm not a big fan of this. The problem with intermittent fasting is that the skipped meal is often breakfast and sometimes even lunch. When you skip the breakfast, notice how it's breakfast, break the fast.

breakfast you very slowly start to throw off your cortisol rhythm the term for it is your diurnal cortisol rhythm a healthy cortisol rhythm is supposed to plateau and then start to descend in the morning So it rises at night, plateaus a little bit before you wake up at like a peak and then starts to descend. Reaching eventually healthy low levels by the time you're going to bed. This is important for sleep.

But this gets disrupted by skipping breakfast. This may take months, maybe even years to actually manifest for someone, especially if they're young and healthy and doing lots of IF. But eventually, this type of fasting catches up to you. A disproportionately high amount of very chronically ill people that I help recover have done a very long period of intermittent fasting in their past.

So a big strategy, a big part of my healing strategy is identifying those that have been hurt through over fasting and switching them into a rehabilitation program. It's something that... people don't even realize till it's too late. And sometimes you need someone like me to even open your eyes to the idea that you actually may have some IF type of damage.

The second one is religious dry fasting. Ramadan. Ramadan is a type of intermittent dry fasting that's done once a year for about a month in the Muslim religion. A big part of dry fasting research papers actually comes from studying people doing Ramadan fasting, because it's been around for so long and it's been normalized. Unfortunately, this is not true dry fasting.

but it's a form of intermittent dry fasting. There are obviously great benefits associated with it, and you can see a lot of them in the research papers, but... True miraculous healing of those really crazy illnesses comes from extended fasting. The good thing about Ramadan is that it gives you 11 months to regenerate and rebalance the body.

Some people take this to think they can intermittent dry fast forever, which is a mistake, and it's also incredibly stressful on the body. The thing is, people think, oh, if Ramadan's healthy, then why don't I just do it every day? No, this is not good.

The third one is alternate day dry fasting. Not recommended even though some people practice this. I'm not a big fan. Usually it's people that come from intermittent fasting or water fasting circles and they've heard... things about alternate day dry fasting and they usually think that oh this has got to be strong and it's safe because I keep taking a break in between.

In general, I do not recommend this form of fasting. It does not give your body enough time to rebalance itself between this. You're constantly pushing and pulling with the fasting state. And I actually do believe it's one of the most dangerous ways to fast.

especially with dry fasting. The fourth one is cyclical dry fasting. It's very similar to all the other ones, but a cyclical one is basically an approach, something like a 36-hour weekly dry fast or maybe a monthly three-day or five-day fast. Again, something that makes sense when there's a specific health goal that needs to be achieved, but something that can also get out of hand if it's done only for maintenance while you're already healthy.

If you're healthy, I would recommend maybe a three-day dry fast twice a year or a five-day dry fast once a year. That would be the optimal length for a healthy individual. Then we have hardcore hard dry fasting or what some people call death fasting. This is an even more aggressive version of hard to dry fasting, where the participant attempts to speed up the dehydration by lowering humidity, spending time in saunas, or exercising, you know, the whole gamut of speeding it up.

Some people call it death fasting. So as the name implies, please refrain from doing this unless you have a wish to cause yourself harm. Then we have ketogenic dry fasting, the bread and butter of the Scorch Protocol. So, the Scorch Protocol harnesses ketogenic dry fasting because it preps you for the dry fast by coming in from a ketogenic state.

The problem with this strategy is that many people also falsely assume that if that works, then they might as well refeed ketogenic as well. But this is not right because this would be a metabolic error. The reason this happens so frequently is because obviously the human condition strives for simplicity. So the simplest choice is to just stick to one diet. It's kind of like the one diet to rule them all. But...

Don't make this error when it comes to fasting and health. Don't refeed with a ketogenic diet. The last one is combination fasting. This is a type of diet that blends water fasting and dry fasting. It's actually pretty common, especially when people kind of don't have the willpower to push for longer dry fasts. They'll try to hack it by starting off with a dry fast and then jumping into a water fast.

This is actually a pretty good strategy, to be honest. I like it. If you want to blend safety and you don't have the willpower to push... You do something like a three-day dry fast to quick start your acidotic crisis and get into deep ketosis, and then you transition to water fasting and ride it out with that.

Remember, you should never turn a water fast into a dry fast because of the associated dangers, even though there are some people that do incorporate this in their practices. So there are some people out there like Talis Barker. that guide people on 30-day water fasts, and their strategy involves peppering in a little bit of dry fasting to get through the hardest parts. How does this work?

Point is, if you dry fast, you instantly cause dehydration, which speeds up ketosis, which increases your blood glucose, so you feel better. That's why people feel better on a dry fast. So the strategy here is to bring that in a little bit into the water fast to kind of get you through those humps. I don't think it's a smart way to approach it. It's kind of risky but it works for some people. I do think that jumping between both states is too risky.

But just remember that you want to go from dry to water and never from water to dry. It's just not worth the risk. Now let's focus on the two main subtypes of dry fasting. Soft and hard dry fasting.

Soft, dry fasting. They will do definition, benefits, and duration. And this is just, this is what Google gives you for the definitions. This variant allows minimal water exposure but no drinking. You might shower, brush your teeth, or rinse your mouth but avoid swallowing water. The benefits are provides some of the benefits of dry fasting while being slightly less intense, making it suitable for those new to fasting or those who need to maintain some level of hygiene or comfort.

This is true to a certain extent. If you have to go into work or see other people and you have to shower, then you're automatically going to be doing soft dry fasting. The duration is apparently recommended for beginners or for those practicing shorter fasting periods. Makes sense. So the most important thing to remember with soft dry fasting is that it means using water to wash the body without swallowing anything.

It's the simplest way. This is usually irrelevant if you're doing under three-day dry fasts. However, water restriction becomes more and more relevant the deeper you go. When you get to the dry mouth dehydration zone, which can appear around day three or four, and I guess it's also dictated by the speed of your metabolism, if it comes faster or later.

you need to start considering new tactics. Dry mouth dehydration indicates you're hitting deeper dehydration. This is the period you start entering that hyperosmotic autophagy state, which is like the super autophagy state. There is no way to know exactly when and how deeply you enter this state, but tracking dry mouth is a simple way to calculate this. You can also track your ketones, track your temperature, and a few other things.

This is also where the biggest clearance of viral and bacterial issues occurs, that super autophagy. A lot of persistent viruses can hijack the normal basic autophagy systems, but they have not co-evolved methods to deal with this super autophagy, this dehydration autophagy. This is why some people who seem to have done everything right, they've done a bunch of shorter fasts, they've taken all the right tests, they've taken all the right medications and nothing is working.

These people find the answer with really extended dry fasts, this attempt to do a nuke against all of these persistent infections. These super extended ones harness the next level autophagy, and we're going to talk more about this specific autophagy later in part three. Let's go back to dry mouth.

After you hit this stage of dry mouth and you want to maximize your time spent in this advanced autophagy, you want to start considering hard dry fasting instead of soft dry fasting. This means avoiding all contact with water. Some people still choose to shower or use ice water as a way to cope or allow them to sleep. But you have to understand that at this point, when you're deep into it, your body is upregulating aquaporins like crazy.

What are aquaporins? Think of them as something in your cells that pulls in water and allows water to move in and out. So with this increase of aquaporins, the deeper you are in the fast. your body will absorb more water through the skin, if given the chance, of course. So if you give it water... it will suck it up much more efficiently and this will also trigger specific signalings to your brain that water is now coming so your brain is going to start changing this makes it so that if you

touch water when in this deep dehydrated state, you are going to have a much harder time continuing the dry fast. Remember that. If you start touching water in this deep dehydrated state, you're going to be pulled to do it more often and more often and your thirst signals are going to skyrocket again and again until you finally break. This is a common point where many people start to transition to a water fast.

You know, they touch a little bit of water deeper into the fast and they simply can't handle the thirst anymore. And then they are forced to transition into water. And eventually that quickly transitions into breaking the fast. And you can read more about aquaporins and how they absorb water in an article on the Dry Fasting Club website. It's called, Do You Absorb Water Through the Skin During Dry Fasting? Aquaporins.

pivot a little bit into a humidifier. Let's talk about humidity and humidifiers when it comes to soft dry fasting. It's debatable if using a humidifier is considered soft dry fasting. Of course it makes it much easier. Some people inevitably call this soft dry fasting. But if you call this soft dry fasting, then it's important to keep in mind that most fasting retreats are also soft to dry fasting, since they are in coastal areas, around water, or in high humidity environments.

Personally, I think that it is safer to do an extended dry fast when the humidity is over 50% and I highly recommend that for anybody dry fasting. You just need to watch out for high temperatures and high humidity. That combo can be rough. This combination is often seen in hot tropical countries. And there's a reason why Costa Rica is so popular, with its warm yet temperate climate. When you're...

doing a dry fast in a hot and humid environment, you'll probably feel hotter because sweat isn't cooling you off the way it should. This can also make your heart work harder. And even though you might not lose as much water through sweat, you could still get hotter faster and feel more uncomfortable. That's why it is best to save your dryfast for cooler periods or make the necessary adjustments.

You'll notice that it's very popular for dry fasting influencers to actually do it in tropical environments and around bodies of water. I'm sure you can just picture your favorite influencer sitting by a waterfall and doing an Instagram story. Whenever I've monitored my dry fasts, they have been much easier when using a humidifier, and that's why I always recommend it. Easier and they felt more cleansing.

The humidifier does not act on the body the same way that taking a shower or a swim does. Trust me, I've monitored this. A shower or a swim, when in the deeper stages of a dry fast, will really affect your... what I call your brain thirst axis. So it'll affect that signaling. Whereas a humidifier is not going to do that. If you continue dry fasting in suboptimal low humidity environments, because you're, you're.

irrationally thinking that the humidifier is going to slow it down, then you're also going to dehydrate at a quicker pace. Remember that part where we talked about extreme hard dry fasting or death fasting? That's the mindset that you're going with that I... don't agree with. The humidifier allows the body to maintain, still maintain very deep ketosis, but what it does is it doesn't allow you to go too deep too quickly into dehydration.

It is possible to push the body past safe limits, but it's also my recommendation to make sure that you're maintaining that 50 to 70 humidity when going past three days of dry fasting. That's the important thing to keep in mind. Think of it like adding a little bit of a slowing down mechanism to the whole process. Light enough to provide extra safety, but not strong enough to stop the process. Not strong enough at all.

Here's also a quick list of popular places around the world and how they stack up with average temperature and humidity. Okay, now we've got hard dry fasting. This is going to be our last thing of this section. I'm going to do definition, benefits, and challenges again. The definition is no food, no water, and no contact with water in any form. This includes not only drinking, but also no showers, washing dishes, or even being in humid environments if possible.

Benefits? Considered to be more potent in terms of detox, autophagy, and cellular repair. Challenges? More demanding on the body? Yes. Okay, so hard drive fasting is promoted by those who want to go to the extreme. When I first got into dry fasting, the hard dry fasters were saying that if you don't commit and go all out, you won't get the same amount of healing.

Keep in mind, there is an important mental aspect of abstaining from water, which can get thrown off course if you expose yourself to water deeper into a fast, okay? So we know that. But the super hard dry fast pushers are an elitist group. that wants to see themselves as the better dryfasters, the more hardcore ones, almost like a video game. I think there's a little bit of a hardcore dryfaster in all of us, though. In the beginning...

I was persuaded and did my best to avoid all forms of water and essentially dry myself out like a raisin. The drier, the better. I even experimented with saunas in my early days, making sure that humidity stayed low, and I even went as far as wiping my sweat off so I wouldn't reabsorb it. Just picture me furiously dabbing myself with a towel while in the sauna.

However, with experience, research, and monitoring, I've since pivoted quite drastically. Did you know that your liver function worsens the more dehydrated you are? Now think about if you too quickly dehydrate yourself. Obviously, you're still hoping to detox on a fast, right? Even though a lot of the mechanisms are slowed down. But the liver is still your main functioning organ, which means that you need water coursing through it. You need your body to gradually adapt.

Yes, many extra effects are also what we're looking for, like autophagy. It's kind of like what ramps up even though our blood starts to thicken. But don't be a fool to think that you can push your liver to the absolute limits with crazy... extreme hard to dry fasting and have no side effects. Letting your body gradually dehydrate without speeding up the process is the key. We need the body to slow down and adapt.

Preparing in advance with diet and colon cleanses makes a lot of sense. Yes, we want autophagy, but the stem cell regeneration is the most important part. Does that mean you should be sitting in tubs of water and rinsing your mouth? While on a dry fast, no. But it means you shouldn't worry about dehydrating faster, sitting in low humidity, never showering, etc. For example, people say things like, oops, some rain fell on my head, did I break my fast?

Oops, I got some water on my hands while washing an apple for my kid's lunch. Just imagine how silly that sounds. There's no need to be a dry fasting hero and hurt yourself in the process. Extremism is usually what got you into the mess in the first place. There are way too many people trying to dehydrate faster while on a dry fast. I mean...

you've landed into chronic illness territory because you've probably led a very stressful go-getter type life, right? But you're much wiser now, I hope. Let's use that wisdom to understand that healing takes time.

and cutting corners is not in your best interest. When it comes to speedrunning healing, always think about the tortoise and the hare. Manifest the tortoise. Manifest that turtle. Okay, I also mentioned aquaporins earlier. Let's just do a bit of a deeper dive here so you can understand it better. Since hard dry fasting is very closely tied to aquaporin expression, and I want you to remember this because...

This is important past day three and why it's recommended to actually start avoiding water more when you get into deeper fasts. So if you're doing dry fasting longer than three days, you can understand that the body does undergo changes. And these will most likely affect your water absorption rate. There's this chart here that I posted. You can take a look at it. You see that the aquaporin expression actually changes aggressively past on the day three and then on to day four.

The aquaporin levels in the brain decreased, meaning that the body's water environment triggered a brain self-preservation mechanism. You'll still get dehydration headaches similar to the keto flu, which is a mix of dehydration and electrolyte imbalance. And here's a little note, a side note about the keto flu. You know, you get this aquaporin expression linked to the acidotic crisis. And we know that on water fasting, it's on the seventh day.

So I do believe that water fasting in itself has a dehydrating component. It just comes on much later. And it has to do with electrolytes and how your body adapts. So that's why we see similar benefits. for water fasting but the water fast need to be like 21 days or more to get similar benefits to dry fasting and nobody has time for that so now you might be thinking wait so does it make sense to hard dry fast aggressively and

I need to push this state. No, personally, I prefer to put most of my efforts into the stem cell regeneration portion of the refeed. You keep hearing this. The refeed is the most important part. It's the most important part because that's where your body gets to bounce back. Think of the dry fast as the destruction mode and the refeed is the reconstruction, the building back.

build back better. But here's the caveat. If I knew that I had a chronic reactivated infection that was not going away, even though I took the required medication and gave it enough time,

Then I would hunt for this hyperosmotic autophagy, and I would consider dry fasting for a much longer period of time. And when I get certain cases, I'm going to say that the people I work with, 8 out of 10 people... can heal their crazy problems with five-day dry fasts and very targeted strategies around like metabolism, bioenergetics, and refeeding properly and dealing with the...

active infections. But some people, I will recommend, if it doesn't work for them, to go for a really long one. And those would be recommendations to go to a dry fasting retreat with Sergey Filonov or Michelle Deladouille. Okay, let's finish off by reiterating something important.

Once you start getting to the dry mouth stages of a dry fast, it becomes important that you do not put any more liquids in your mouth. This is the whole talk about aquaporins. Sub three days, so below three days of dry fasting, You could technically brush your teeth without a problem, but the absorption rate becomes so drastic later on that if you put water in your mouth, it will trick your body into thinking water is coming back in and the mechanisms will start trying to turn back on.

This can get dangerous and gets incredibly hard to continue fasting. You have to trust me on this one. And before I completely forget, after day three or after that acidotic crisis,

you actually do want to stop brushing your teeth. Because not even with this whole water issue, your... mouth acidity levels rise past that acidotic crisis and it can hurt your teeth you want to remember the body creates this film on your teeth a lot of people complain about it and they're like yuck i want to brush my teeth get it off but that's

actually a protective mechanism that's going to protect your teeth from the acidity. I thought that was an important thing to mention, and I hope that helps anyone listening to this. And we'll finish off with five tips for dry fasting extended lengths.

1. Tape your mouth during the day, especially at night, to slow down water loss through exhalation. You already get dehydration-activated extra autophagy within the first 24 hours, so the goal should be to maintain this without extra aggressive water loss, and the tape helps. Try to avoid brushing your teeth. Just treat your mouth as a no-go zone. Makes things so much easier and simple. Don't do excess work. That means working out or exercise. Any exercise...

should be limited to light walking. You still want to move around to move the lymph nodes to help with a lot of things. Three. Oh, sorry, four. Have decent humidity so you don't speed up dehydration. That humidity aspect. And five, try to talk very little. On average, a person loses about 20 to 50 milliliters of water per hour.

just by breathing, and you lose much more when you're talking. And if you have experience, you know this, if you talk deeper into a fast, boy, oh boy, does your mouth dry out. All right, good luck with your healing journey, and I'll see you in the next one. Bye now. Thanks for sticking around.

This next section is going to be about the physiological effects on a dry fast. There's going to be a tiny bit of overlap with the part one that was combining carnivore with dry fasting, but this one's going to be specifically focused on dry fasting. It's going to go a little bit deeper. and have a lot more insights without even thinking about carnivore. Initially it was going to be together with the types of dry fasting, but I had to subdivide understanding dry fasting into two sections.

So the third one is going to be physiological effects on a dry fast. And then the fourth one, which I'm sure a lot of people are going to be waiting for, it's going to be the preparing for a dry fast where I deep dive into preparation.

Also, if you need any help, always check out the Dry Fasting Club website. Subscribe there so you can take a look at the Miro board. That's where the bread and butter and all the... up-to-date research and knowledge dumps are so you'll see that on the website and reach out to me if you want to chat or if you need a little bit of an alignment or have a few pressing questions you can always book a free consult on the website Until next time, good luck on your healing journey.