Starving to Heal in Siberia
The following is an excerpt from Starving to Heal in Siberia, by Michelle Slater, available on September 13, 2022 from Greenleaf Book Group.
INTRODUCTION
I’d like to tell you about a place called 1 Bed Avenue. It’s where I used to live — sometimes for months at a time. Diagnosed with Lyme disease in 2012, I received outstanding care from the specialists I saw. All the same, I didn’t get better. There I was, like so many other people with chronic Lyme and other mystery illnesses — like chronic fatigue or certain autoimmune diseases — that stump doctors. “You’ll have to adapt to this new normal,” the best of them said, sounding sympathetic, if less than reassuring. My new normal meant taking up residence in my bed — where I spent days that smudged into nights, until, once in a while, I’d have the surreal realization that weeks had passed, much to my chagrin. I did not choose to shelter in place confined to a bed. It was untenable; “normal” was its antithesis.
I lived in Connecticut just miles away from the town of Lyme, where the disease was first diagnosed in 1977. Ticks are now ubiquitous in Connecticut and Massachusetts, my stomping grounds for long walks in the woods. I knew to be vigilant in checking for the elusive tiny black vampires after every walk I took, because Lyme disease had become rampant throughout New England (and cases have been reported throughout the United States, Europe, and beyond).
Lyme, caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi (named after the researcher Willy Burgdorfer, who first identified it), is the most prevalent vector-borne disease in the United States. If one is bitten by a microscopic tick in the genus Ixodes that is infected with the bacteria, one has a high likelihood of contracting the disease. Researchers have identified multiple coinfections associated with ticks that transmit Borrelia burgdorferi, including Bartonella, Babesia microti, Ehrlichia, and Anaplasma phagocytophilum. The Borrelia bacterium is a spirochete, one of the most aggressive bacterial forms. Their coiled shape allows them to spiral through the body, employing sophisticated ways of burrowing into the joints, cells, and organs — and even crossing the blood-brain barrier. Because of the miniscule size of the tick, which makes it hard to find once it has burrowed in the body, and the invisible war the spirochetes wage from within, diagnosing Lyme disease is challenging.
Treating Lyme is also problematic. Although it’s widely believed that between 70 and 80 percent of infected individuals develop the classic bull’s-eye rash known as erythema migrans, I have spoken with countless chronic Lyme patients who, like me, never developed the rash. The common symptoms of fever, migraines, headaches, and fatigue (among multiple others) lead many patients to seek medical attention, but these symptoms can be attributed to numerous other diseases as well. If a patient undergoes laboratory testing and is treated immediately, Lyme disease has a higher chance of being eradicated with antibiotics. But if Lyme disease is undetected and untreated, as mine was, the infection becomes chronic and can spread to the joints, heart, brain, and nervous system. Nearly 10 percent of untreated patients develop neurological problems, or neuroborreliosis, as I did. Mine happened to be one of the unfortunate cases that lapsed into late-stage Lyme disease. Although I had always been careful to check myself for ticks, the tiny vampires had ravaged me, as they have millions of others. Chronic Lyme disease is notoriously challenging to cure.
You may have come to this book because you’ve been told the same thing I was: that, having exhausted all the options of your caregivers, you should adjust to the “new normal” — which, like me, you may have found devastating. Or you may be a doctor who has had to tell your patients to adjust to the chronic symptoms of an autoimmune disorder or post-treatment Lyme that didn’t dissipate under your gold-standard care. Or you may have heard your family members, friends, or colleagues lament the perpetual state of their declining health, as if their former selves had vanished as the insidious disease claimed them — this is a big population of people. Or you may also have read about intermittent fasting and be curious about the research and science behind dry fasting.
What I would like to offer, as the beneficial result of my painful experience, is the antidote to despair for chronically ill patients, as well as for doctors and their circles: there is hope for recovery, and a complete recovery, at that. I haven’t resided at 1 Bed Avenue for more than an eight-hour stay per night since I discovered that the body could be the doctor. My verve for life came back. Intrigued?
I wrote this narrative just for you, and it takes you from my longlasting habitat in bed all the way to Siberia, where I was cured through a method called dry fasting. I then delve into the science behind my treatment, and I offer a protocol based on the one that I received from my doctor there, who is the current leader in this method.
I decided to rise up and fight the complex illness plaguing me, and I know I’m not alone in feeling that I could no longer live with being sick but that my disease was mysterious.
Autoimmune disorders are on the rise worldwide, along with “mystery illnesses,” such as chronic fatigue syndrome, which elude treatment and recovery. The American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association reports that nearly 50 million Americans have autoimmune disorders, and the National Institutes of Health estimates that 25 million Americans have been diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder.
I believe that the escalation is the signal that it’s time to start dry fasting.
Dr. Sergey Filonov, the Siberian doctor who played the pivotal role in my recovery, identifies inflammation as a major contributor to the rise of chronic illnesses and autoimmune disorders. According to recent research, an abnormal inflammatory response is directly related to autoimmune disorders. Additionally, researchers have pinpointed an excess of adipose tissue as a contributor to autoimmune diseases, because adipose tissue creates an inflammatory reaction that activates “adipokines,” or pro-inflammatory factors in the body, including leptin, TNF cells, and C-reactive protein. If we have excess adipocytes, then we’re activating an immune response that elevates inflammation in the body. Dr. Filonov’s protocol for dry fasting, paired with a clean diet that avoids excess fat, sugar, salt, and processed foods, is the greatest weapon against the rise of autoimmune disorders, mystery illnesses such as chronic fatigue, and most notably — in my case — chronic Lyme disease.
As Dr. Filonov explains the efficient process of dry fasting, “Understood as a community of cells, the organism during the fast ‘eats’ not only the fat cells but also all the elements that are superfluous, morbid or malfunctioning. The continuation of the organism’s life is impossible without the self-cleaning of its cell populations. Cells infected with viruses, toxins or damaged by radiation . . . have to either leave the organism or be eaten.”
Radical autophagy is the only treatment out of dozens that has cured me, and cure is the right word. One of my doctors in Europe told me during a check-up after I returned from Siberia, “Michelle, if all of my patients went to dry fast in Siberia like you have, I would no longer have a job. That would make me very happy.” I have not even had one Lyme symptom since I returned home from Siberia in the fall of 2017; nor have I taken a single pill or supplement of any kind.
I no longer conduct late-night Google searches in desperate search for a cure; nor do I break down sobbing at the state of hopeless decay in my body. Psoriasis, sinus pain, joint pain, migraines, chronic fatigue, brain fog, candida, mold symptoms, insomnia, light sensitivity, and despair are no longer in my life. I no longer have to worry about the nebulous forms of testing for tick-borne diseases that are flawed, for I no longer manifest clinical symptoms. I’m not a scientist, but I know that clearing accumulated waste in my body created a state of health in me that I have not heretofore experienced.
In the chapters that follow, I spell out each step I took and share the embarrassing pitfalls I encountered as I established my healthy routine. In the appendices, I share protocol tips and recipes that contributed to my newfound health. As a person who rarely gives out even my last name, I would only write such a personal memoir if I knew it could help many people; helping you is the reason I have written this book.
