The Man Who Treated His Crohn's By Fasting For 38 days

Against the Grain

Fasting is becoming more and more popular nowadays and is being promoted for everything from obesity, diabetes, cancer and now diseases of immune dysregulation. There are many forms including prolonged water fasts, fasting mimicking diets, intermittent fasting and time restricted eating. There is no strong research I know of supporting the use of fasting as a treatment modality for IBD and can in fact be dangerous in someone who is malnourished and underweight. By chance I discovered a thread on a forum where a man named Vit Smilauer from the Czech Republic claimed to have "cured" his Crohn’s disease by fasting for 38 days. I contacted him and he kindly shared his experience which is truly remarkable and a compelling story. As a disclaimer, this is not an endorsement or recommendation to try fasting for inflammatory bowel disease as I think this can be very dangerous depending on your personal circumstances and health. This also has not been rigorously tested in a clinical trial to confirm safety and efficacy so at this point this is simply an anecdote. I would not recommend anyone try this but hopefully this can open the scientific community’s eyes so that the appropriate research can be done.
His protocol can be found here:
http://mech.fsv.cvut.cz/~smilauer/Crohn_Smilauer_fasting_en.pdf