Prolon
fast May 5, 2023 -- I've done it again. Not at Truenorth this time but at home. Not for three weeks but for five days. Not water-only but with a scientific "fasting nutrition program designed to nourish your body & mind while providing fasting benefits" (quoted from the box the food comes in).
Prolon: "5-day fasting with food." The Prolon box (5-day fasting kit: $190) is beautiful, elaborate packaging with some powdered soups, fancy crackers, vitamin pills, nut bars, a few olives, and a liquid they call L-drink (I presume the L is for Longo). You measure and consume the L-drink according to your body weight. Fasting means intake of zero calories. Prolon is not that. There is doubtless some real science behind these components but I'm convinced that the real value of the Prolon fast is simply calorie reduction, even if it's not quite to zero. Prolon is 1150 calories on Day 1 and 750 calories on Days 2-5. This is a third or a fourth of typical daily intake, enough to stave off hunger yet reach a mild ketosis and fasting metabolic state.
The beauty of the plan is that when you get really hungry, you have some morsels to nibble, so it's easier than water-only fasts such as I have done previously. That matters, because those previous fasts were at a site where everyone was fasting, there was medical supervision, and opportunities to stray (i.e. eat) were absent. Prolon is done at home, in the course of ordinary daily life, where temptations abound. But is the science real? Sure, I don't doubt it. The company claims to have done decades and millions of dollars of research and this, too, I don't doubt. They do call it "fasting mimicking" [italics mine] described as "...micro- and macro-nutrients in precise quantities and combinations that nourish you, but are not recognized as food by your body." But the real value, I believe, is simply the calorie restriction. The rest is window dressing and fancy packaging. Why five days? They claim the duration is scientifically devised. I believe their marketing tells them that longer would be harder to sell. Cleverly, Prolon makes the five days relatively easy, with little disruption of our busy lives. Though -- I'm also certain -- the longer you fast, the more you benefit. No doubt their marketing is right. In the five days, I have lost five pounds... Hurray! Would I do it again? Indeed I shall, perhaps quarterly (unless I repeat those stricter, longer water fasts.) Go Prolon! And go nutrition-savvy nurses! |
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Dan Keller's Nursing, Health Policy & Healthcare Technology Blog
Nursing Informatics · Clinical Perspectives · Healthcare Systems
"The United States alone [among wealthy countries] treats health care as a commodity to be distributed according to the ability to pay rather than a social service to be distributed according to medical need." — JAMA (2003), 290, 798
The method? A package named 
The fast was facilitated by my friend Darcie Ellyne, nutritionist formerly at Mills Hospital (where I used to work).
She ran pre-, mid-, and post-fast Zoom sessions for the five of us participants. We did check-ins and chair yoga.
All helpful!