Why I don't fully agree with the Pheonix Protocol by August Dunning

Welcome back to the Dry Fasting Club. Today we're going to be talking about the Phoenix Protocol and specifically about my article Why I Don't Fully Agree with the Phoenix Protocol by August Dunning. And before we go too deep into this. Obviously I want to acknowledge the importance of August Dunning's work. and how significant his work it was to popularize dry fasting.

So his book, The Phoenix Protocol, is probably the second most popular dry fasting book out there after Philanoff's 20 questions and answers. Dunning goes into what really what really separates Dunning's book. from other dry fasting books is that he goes into the autophagy part of

Dry fasting. So he dives a little bit deeper into some of the scientific literature. He has a protocol that involves some of his supplements from his supplement line, and he basically talks about doing a seven-day dry fast that is that focuses on a a a few things, but basically a seven-day dry fast once or twice a year. And you have to take into consideration that

He is fairly healthy. Uh I believe he's around seventy years old. Uh and I think he looks great and uh he is in great shape for his age. Uh some people do say that maybe he looks a little bit older than they would have hoped, uh, when you hear about the rejuvenating effects of a dry fast, but

I don't think that really plays a big role. It's really how he feels and you can see through his activity levels that it's working for him. I do think that it's important to remember that dry fasting is an evolving practice and Just because someone has a scientific background or is able to pull some papers to promote his ideas over others.

It doesn't mean that they are inherently correct. It is an evolving practice. We still don't know too much about it, and you do have to still try and balance safety and your own instinct. As to what works for you and what doesn't. Collecting information from Filonov versus Dunning is important to take into consideration that Filonov actually has a lot more experience with it and he has dealt personally with a lot of cases, so

what he's seen from his anecdotal data is very important and you do have to remember that Dunnings is more of an N equals one type of situation. So So obviously the best thing to do is to collect as much information as you can and make informed decisions. But just remember that you have to keep in mind that practices like dry fasting, despite their popularity, could still pose risk.

The best thing that you can do is play it safe, approach dry fasting gradually, build your dry fasting muscle, experiment, and keep track of your symptoms.

So there's three things that I don't fully agree with when it comes to Dunning's protocol, and I want to talk about it. We're gonna basically address his obsession with physitin, which is a synolytic. Uh, we're going to address him advocating for sitting in cold water for extended periods of time and his recommendation of having baking soda after the dry fast, which is a common thing that people do for water fasting as well. It's very common in the snake diet world.

What is the snake diet? The snake diet revolves around Cole Robinson and his pretty crazy YouTube videos where he yells at you and his pretty extreme methods of dieting. He did invent this thing called snake juice, which is basically electrolyte water that you can make at home. And baking soda is a very popular component of it. Okay, first off, let's start with Physitin. Physitin is amazing and it's kind of like BioHacker Gold. So Dunning is definitely onto something here, but

If you put so much weight on physitin, you might as well just get the whole NAD precursor package. So the whole supplement line like NMN, NR, physitin and all the other things that uh places like Do Not Age and and other life extension companies provide. So why don't I agree with Dunning on how hard he pushes it? Well basically

I do believe one of the biggest arguments is that he's trying to sell his supplement. Physotin is not really v uh extremely popular, so there aren't There isn't a lot of competition on the market, so he's found um a science-backed supplement that probably has pretty good profit margins with lower competition, but physicin is expensive and

If you do look at synellitics and synellitic research, we see that Quersetin and Curcumin are actually fantastic synellics and they are so much cheaper. So if that's something you're looking for, Just look for a liposomal version. Uh of course it's near curcumin and you are in a really good spot. You also have to remember that physitin is found in a lot of fruits and vegetables. Yes, in smaller quantities.

but you do get it through your diet. Which is actually really interesting on a side topic. Um it's just extra evidence that throwing away all plant foods from your diet, you are going to lose a lot of uh plant flavonoids, synolytics, and so much more that is going to be extremely difficult to supplement by maybe thinking that you can just buy physicin and you'll be good. There are thousands. of compounds in plants and vegetables that we don't get in a meat and animal-based diet.

Also want to throw in that coffee and green tea are pretty high in quercetin. In fact, some scientists think that caffeine is actually not that good for you. It's actually the quercetin in coffee that makes it a neuroprotective component. Also, milk thistle, great for the liver, something I recommend for everybody if you're not allergic to it. And it's also a powerful synolytic. What is synolytic? I just uh realized that I didn't uh lead with it, but a synolytic is

A compound that gets rid of senescent cells. So cells that are basically dead, almost near death. They've stopped replicating. They release cytokines and other pro-inflammatory markers. So it is something that you want. to remove from your body. And your body does this by itself, but the older you get, your ability to do that lowers, diminishes. So taking

synolytic supplements is a good way to sort of combat that one marker of aging. So in the end, do you really even have to worry about synolytics that much? To be honest. You don't, because if you have dry fasting, nothing, no other synolytic compound can touch the power of dry fasting and what dry fasting offers for the removal of senescent cells. So So in the end, you can save your money and just harness the natural power of fasting. Okay, let's move on to baking soda.

The whole concept of having baking soda after a fast is too Calm the acidity and help out your kidneys balance that acidity. At least that is the main idea behind using it. And yes, some people may suffer with overacidification that can affect the kidneys, maybe cause some kidney pain after exiting a fast. And in really serious situations, Having some baking soda on hand.

Could make some sense, but overall, in general, for most people, we don't want to be taking baking soda after the fast because. It is both bicarbonate and sodium. We already know that we do not want sodium in the body after a fast. I have tons of articles about this. Basically, it causes edema.

which is retention of water and bloating. If you've done a dry fast in the past and wondered why you gained back so much water weight right afterwards and maybe even had trouble getting rid of it afterwards. then you know exactly what's happening here and why sodium is highly not advised after a dry fast for at least a few days since. Your body is upregulating uh the aldosterone, which is retaining sodium molecules like crazy. And that is

why you need to lay off the salt. And now what about bicarbonate? Bicarbonate is the main reason why baking soda is even advised in the first place because You want to use that bicarbonate. as an alkaline response to that acidity, the acidity, the acidification of your body, all those fatty acids, all those proteins that were being degraded and turned into energy or nutrients. Release the acidifying compounds in the body and your body was basically trying to buffer them.

Suddenly when you break your fast and you start taking baking soda, you're throwing off this homeostasis mechanism that the body undergoes. I actually have something here. You can see how the body uses glutamine, which is an amino acid in the body. And it is used to create ammonia. And through that reaction, it also creates bicarbonate. Ammonia pulls out acid. from the body into the urine, but then you have the bicarbonate that buffers the acidity in your blood and keeps you at normal levels.

In fact, there's a study called Showing that after a very long fast, patients had a little bit of glucose and suddenly their body went into hyperalkalosis. This means that. By introducing glucose or even just calories in this case that increase the insulin response, your body is going to stop ketolysis. It's going to stop lipolysis and breaking down that fat. What that means is fatty acids suddenly stop.

But the body is still pumping out bicarbonate. So we have internal mechanisms to deal with this. We don't want to throw them off. So throwing baking soda into this mix. is a recipe that I do not agree with.

Instead of taking baking soda, let's focus on things that our body actually depletes itself on during a fast like magnesium, potassium, vitamin B and vitamin C. And now let's move on to the last thing, and that's sitting in water. And we can talk about a few different things here. We can talk about anecdotal evidence, what Philinov says, what I've experienced. But I also want to talk about aquaporins, which is a fantastic paper and research into the molecules that

Basically, help transport water across cell membranes. There are studies on aquaporins, but there was a beautiful one that by accident actually. tested for dry fasting conditions. And we saw that the aquaporin levels changed drastically around day three. And these were aquaporin levels in the brain. I have it somewhere here.

You can see that during dry fasting, no water or food, we see that the aquaporin levels change quite drastically on day three. And this correlates very closely to the that acidotic crisis. timeframe, which is amazing because it just further provides proof that the acidotic crisis is A milestone in the healing journey in a healing portion of the dry fast. Because of this, because aquaporin expression changes as you get dehydrated. It means your body is actually on the hunt for water.

So giving it water, especially after the day three, means that you are most likely going to be throwing off a lot of these mechanisms. Our point is to invoke hypertonic stress. We want the dehydration, we want these changes, so we don't want to feed into them by giving the body water. If the aquaporin levels increase in the skin, it makes sense that the deeper into the fast, the water is actually going to be able to absorb.

more water and create a potentially um powerful osmotic shift where water actually permeates into the blood. And that will hydrate the body and will throw off a lot of the healing mechanisms of the dry fat. And this is why Philonov actually has shifted over to a more of a hard, dry, fast type of approach, even though he used to. Allow people to take ice plunges, very quick ones, or maybe dump cold water over your head. But Dunning actually talks about sitting inside of cold bath.

fast which I would highly recommend not to do if you are looking for maximum healing. Of course, if you're doing shorter than three-day dry fasts, I think you should be just go straight ahead. Sit in the water, do whatever you need to help you get through those beginning stages while you're building your dry fasting muscle.

Okay, that basically wraps up the main three things. I think other than this, there is so much knowledge to be gained from Dunning's book as well as Filonov's and all other resources about dry fasting. So Other than these three things that I disagree on, everything else I mainly agree with August Dunning. I hope that you don't view this as.

someone coming from a hater background, I simply wanted to open up a discussion about these specific topics. So if you have anything that you want to contribute to this, if you have any ideas, different thoughts or maybe corroborations with your own experiences, leave them in the comments below. I look forward to seeing them. And as always, good luck on your healing journey. Thanks for sticking around.

If you've dry fasted before, have any questions or requests for future topics, please leave them in the comments below. I always check the comments for inspiration and ideas. If you're looking for a chat or to set up your dry fasting plan, check out the dryfastingclub.com website and subscribe. You should also check out the Discord community where you can meet other new and experienced dryfasters.

Remember, no two people are the same, so every fasting experience is unique. Thank you and good luck on your dry fasting journey.