Meet Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: A Deep Dive into Healing Through Plant-Based Nutrition

Have you ever wondered if your body has the power to heal itself? Dr. Nathan Gershfeld, a chiropractor and fasting expert, believes it absolutely can—if given the right conditions. In a fascinating conversation on The Glen Merzer Show, Dr. Gershfeld shares insights on plant-based nutrition, water fasting, and the body’s incredible ability to repair itself.

From Skeptic to Advocate

Dr. Gershfeld wasn’t always a believer in the power of plant-based nutrition. Initially, he followed a standard diet, but after experiencing health struggles, he turned to the teachings of Dr. Alan Goldhamer and the TrueNorth Health Center. Through his personal transformation, he became a firm advocate for a whole food, plant-based diet and therapeutic fasting.

“Your body is designed to heal. The key is removing what’s harmful and providing what’s beneficial.” – Dr. Nathan Gershfeld

The Science of Water Fasting

One of the most intriguing parts of the discussion was Dr. Gershfeld’s deep dive into supervised water fasting. He explains how fasting allows the body to reset, reducing inflammation and even reversing chronic diseases like hypertension and diabetes.

“Fasting isn’t about starving—it’s about healing.”

Why a Plant-Based Diet Matters

Dr. Gershfeld emphasizes that a whole food, plant-based diet is the foundation of long-term health. He debunks myths about protein deficiency and argues that nutrient-dense plants provide everything the body needs.

Take Control of Your Health

Whether you're plant-based or just curious about improving your health, Dr. Gershfeld’s insights are a must-hear. Listen to the full episode of The Glen Merzer Show and discover how simple dietary changes can transform your life. Meet Dr. Nathan Gershfeld

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DISCLAIMER: Please understand that the transcript below was provided by a transcription service. It is undoubtedly full of the errors that invariably take place in voice transcriptions. To understand the interview more completely and accurately, please watch it here:

Here's the transcript:

Glen Merzer: Welcome to The Glen Merzer Show. You can find us across all your favorite podcast platforms. You could find us on YouTube, and please remember to subscribe. And you could find us at RealMenEatPlants.com. I'm excited to get to know our guest today. I've seen him around the internet, around YouTube, but never had the pleasure of conversing with him before. Dr. Nathan Gershfeld. I had a life-changing health experience that I hope we're going to find out about. And that caused him to change careers from electrical engineer to doctor of chiropractic. Following an internship under Dr. Alan Goldhammer, he joined the medical staff of the world renowned True North Health Center from 2011 to 2014. Then Dr. Gershfeld moved his practice to Southern California and founded Fasting Escape. A health center offering supervised therapeutic fasting, fasting escape, later expanded to doctor supervised remote fasting program, guiding you through your own fasting experience from the comfort of your own home. Dr. Gershfeld is also the co-host of the Beat Your Genes podcast with Dr. Doug Lyle. Dr. Gershfeld, welcome to the show. 

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Hey there. Welcome, Glen. Good to be here. And thanks for thanks for having me on.

Glen Merzer: Well, it's great to meet you. The first question is, can you tell us about that life changing health experience? 

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Yeah, absolutely. So this was, we'll actually back up a little bit before I get into the health experiences. My grandmother was a chiropractor as well. And she actually became a chiropractor at 60 years old after being a chemist. She had herself, she had some low back pain, some health problems, and she ended up going to a chiropractor who told her, you you got to eat a little differently and you got to do some, some holistic things and you know, don't, you you're really heading towards disaster if you're maintaining all this extra weight. So she, you know, it sparked something in her. And so she went to chiropractic school where she learned even more about health and wellness. And so that sets the stage for her starting to tell me and my sisters when we were, you know, young kids, we were, you know, our teens about how we should avoid dairy and how we, you dairy is death and how we should avoid unhealthy foods. And she would frequently, she and I were very close and she would frequently say, Nathan, I love you, but I see what you're eating. You know, you, probably, don't want to eat this stuff. Like it was a lot of junk food. And so, so, so now this is, this sets the stage for me being, about 19 years old, 19, 20 years old. And I'm in college. I'm completing my last year of my electrical engineering degree. And for some reason I developed a tumor in my neck. It was a pretty big tumor. It's about the size of a small plum. And my mom noticed it and she said, you got to go to the doctor. And of course I was doing some really fun classes and I didn't want to get distracted with something else. And of course I just thought it was nothing. I had no idea at all about what tumors are or anything health related or anything about the body. All I assumed it was was just my muscles got tight. And that's what happened. Right. So that was the story in my own head. But my grandma said, you know, you really got to go check that out because, if it's something really bad, you want to know about it. So she eventually convinced me to go to the doctor and they said, yeah, it's a tumor. wanted to do a biopsy of it. They didn't know if it was cancer or not. This was kind of shrouded in a little bit of mystery, but there was a few things going against me, which was I was male, I was 20 years old. And those two factors tend to be more concerning when males and the tumor was quite big. It was about four and a half centimeters. And so those three factors were concerning for the doctor. So they were trying to push me to do surgery. So not just the biopsy, but they wanted to cut out the entire thyroid gland. And in the middle of this, they also through the blood work saw that I had hypothyroidism and an autoimmune disease called Hashimoto's thyroiditis. That's where the body attacks its own thyroid cells. And that's probably what was contributing to the hypothyroidism. In any case, at the time, I had no idea what any of this meant. All I knew was tumor is bad. And I didn't really differentiate between metastasis or benign. To me, was all kind of the same thing. I had no idea. So I talked to my grandmother and she said, yeah, no matter what it is, whether it's benign or cancerous, benign or malignant, or whatever it is, I see how you're eating. She brought that up again. And it's not a bad idea to start altering your diet. So she wrote me up a plan. She gave me a couple of cookbooks to look at. And so I went off the deep end and started doing this sort of diet, a whole food plant-based diet. At the time, there wasn't really a name for it. At the time, vegan and vegetarian meant the same thing. You probably remember that. 20 years ago, was vegan and vegetarian meant the same thing. But it had also had more political undertones. And so this was more just whole natural foods kind of in the style of natural hygiene. So, and at the same time too, the doctor's trying to push me to do this biopsy. And, you know, I, I wasn't really satisfied with a lot of his answers. He really didn't, you know, I asked him one time, said, well, what's, what's the cause of this tumor? If you're going to be poking around in there and wanting to cut things out, if you don't know the cause, isn't that going to come back again? Once you're done, it's going to come back somewhere else. And now I realize that's kind of a really broad question that I asked him. And so. You know, it's no surprise he was a bit irritated with me, but for whatever reason, I decided to do things on my own. And I just asked him, said, well, what's the worst case scenario here? He said, well, worst case scenario is you have five years to live and this thing is really aggressive. And so in my head, as an engineer at the time, I'm just thinking, okay, well, let's just assume it's the worst case scenario and then work around that, which, you know, it's not something I advise people to do, but that's just how my mentality was at the time. So I went off the deep end and started changing my diet. My grandma told me, there's this fasting clinic up in Northern California. I think at the time it was True North Health Center, but at the time it was called Center for Conservative Therapy. So I called Dr. Goldhamer and I talked to him about what I should do. And he said, come over, do a 30 day fast and see if that makes a difference. So I went over there and as hard as I tried to do a 30 day fast, I really only lasted five days. But the interesting thing is, so I did this five day fast and a couple of things happened. Number one, the cravings for the junk food that I was struggling with, they went away even that short of a break allowed me to get back on track and succeed on a healthy diet. The second, me, 

Glen Merzer: excuse me, when you say junk food, are you talking about sugary treats or was it also hamburgers and meat products?

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Was eating everything. So hot dogs, hamburgers, my healthy meal at the time was a Caesar salad, you know, coated in Caesar dressing with croutons and everything. So, so I mean, as much as I ate more salad than people my age at that time, it was not even close to being, you know, a health promoting diet. So, and once I changed my diet with my grandmother's help, I was doing better, but it was a constant struggle and I was constantly going out and getting foods that were junk foods and just, it was just hard to get, you know, get some momentum there. So the fast, you know, just helped with that. The other thing that happened is the Hashimoto's, the, the antibody level in my blood and the hypothyroidism reversed. So I no longer, by the blood work, I no longer had Hashimoto's and hypothyroidism. And then the really cool thing is that the tumor, we did a follow up ultrasound and it had decreased by about 80 percent. 

Glen Merzer: 80 percent in 30 days?

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld:  I did a five day fast. 

Glen Merzer: so the five day fast after the five days, you went home or you continued eating, you know, healthy foods at the Old True North.

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Yeah, I ate there for a couple of days just to refeed. And then I drove home. So it was about seven hours away from my home. 

Glen Merzer: you were there for about a week and you got an 80 percent reduction in a tumor. 

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Yeah, I believe 

Glen Merzer: You did not know at this point if this tumor was malignant or not. 

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Correct. Yeah. Yeah. And and now now that I've had more experience, you know, it you know, benign tumors tend to respond much better to fasting. And so so that and Dr. Goldhamer and Dr. Soltana kind of, they didn't say it so directly, but it was like, okay, well, this bodes well for you that the tumor reduced. so that was really encouraging and it kind of helped motivate me to continue. thought, okay, I'm onto something here. I don't know quite all the details, but I'm onto something. And so that set off a journey for me to continue changing my diet, keep fine tuning things, a regular fasting once a year. And the other thing that happened was is, you at the time I had just actually finished graduate. I just graduated my electrical engineering degree. And I thought, you know, I really like engineering, but this is something that's really interesting. And I had been considering after I got my, you know, after I learned about my health, you know, a year prior, I'd been considering kind of, I want to know if I want to do something different because I was faced with the, with the worst case scenario of, you can die in five years. I thought, well, would I be really happy doing what I'm currently doing? And I did like it, but I really missed the interaction with other people and helping people with their individual problems versus working on a huge project as an engineer on like one little part of a radar system or a robotic system. know, it was just a little different psychologically than what I was aiming for. So long answer to your question. That's how I, that was the life-changing health experience. And that's essentially how I changed my diet and lifestyle at 20 years old. After all this, I had talked to Dr. Goldhamer and I said, I really want to come and work for you and be at your apprentice, so to speak. And he said, well, we really don't do that unless you're actually after you're done with school. So I enrolled in chiropractic school. did some prerequisites for a couple of years. then my first semester of chiropractic, actually, yeah, about a month before chiropractic school started, I called him up and said, okay, I got the prerequisites. I'm finally enrolled. Can you let me come and intern there? And so he was very polite, very professional. said, well, we're not sure, like write me an email. see. It's really for clinical people who have clinical experience already. But I told him, said, I'm very professional. I keep my mouth shut, my eyes and ears open. I'll scrub your toilets, wash your dishes you know, clean your floors, just let me come and stay and watch and see what this whole process is. And thankfully he was gracious enough to let me come in and intern. And I saw things there and this was before I even became, you know, came to like went to chiropractic school. This was right before. And I saw incredible things. I, and I was lucky enough to be an intern along with, Dr. Goldhamer's clinic to North health center, they, they do internships or at the time they did internships with different medical doctors and and different naturopaths and other professionals in the health space. And I was interning with a medical doctor who, during our breaks, she would explain to me what was going on in people's different diseases. So we would see people with high blood pressure get reversed, type 2 diabetes, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, autoimmune diseases, like just things that in people, the patients would tell me. I've been to doctors for 30 years, or these were sometimes very well-connected patients that say, I've had the best top doctors in Mayo Clinic and Duke and everywhere else and nobody was able to help. And here they were coming in, staying for a few weeks or a month or so or longer, and then getting almost virtually complete resolution of their issues. So I was sold and at that point I decided that's what I wanted to do. So I went through chiropractic school and here I am. 

Glen Merzer: Now your grandmother became a chiropractor at the age of 60. Dr. Goldhammer, who has for 40 years been supervising water fasts and other fasts at the True North Health Center, is a doctor of chiropractic, and you are a doctor of chiropractic. What is it about being a chiropractor that leads people towards fasting supervision? What is the one thing, I think of it as manipulating the spine, because you have back pain. 

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Well, I mean, one way to phrase it is that instead of adjusting people's spines, we're simply adjusting their lifestyles. That's one way to phrase it. But to be honest, I'd be speculating here, but I'll give it a shot, which is that I believe that most doctors in the modern world want to help people in whatever way they can. So I've met a number of medical doctors, including the wonderful medical doctors at the True North Health Center. and my medical director, Dr. Thomas, and other medical doctors and students across my journey. And most all of them want to help people in some way. I think, I mean, at least in, I didn't go to medical school, so I can't really speak to how they get educated in medical school. But in chiropractic school, the idea, the big overarching philosophy is that when we don't know the precise physiological mechanisms for something, We fall back on the philosophy, which is that if you give the body the right conditions, perhaps it can heal itself. Now, it's not going to be true in every single little case, but for the most part, this is every paper that comes out tends to support this assertion that again, if you find the right conditions that your body is able to heal itself of almost anything, you know, of course there's a few genetic mutations and and there may be some things that are too far gone. But overall, let's look at the top leading causes of death. Heart disease. We've seen Dr. Dean Ornish, Caldwell Esselstyn, William Castelli. We've seen, know, what's it, T. Colin Campbell's work. We've seen that a number of studies confirm that we don't need a lot of technology. We don't need a lot of chemical alteration to the body. That it can actually heal itself if we find out the right conditions. And if that's true, then the next question is, what are those right conditions? And so in chiropractic, chiro means hand, practic means doing. So the chiropractic, that word comes from done by hand. And so the old school chiropractors and even the current chiropractors, their main tools are their hands. So if someone's dealing with some back pain or some joint pain of some kind that needs some relief from the restriction, very often adjusting things in just the right way can relieve that restriction. In other words, you've created the conditions where the body can fix itself and heal itself in some ways. And so I think that philosophy applies all the way throughout the body, not just with physical manipulation or physical changes with your neuromuscular skeletal system, but also chemically with the food that we eat, the air that we breathe and the beverages that we drink. 

Glen Merzer: Okay. Now, When you had your life-changing health experience, you had an 80 % reduction in one week of fasting, five days fasting and two days, I guess, of re-feeding. Did it, within weeks after that, go 100 % away?

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: No, it's, so since then, I've done a number of fasts and it's kind of stayed where it has. Dr. Goldhamer has told me before, it's like, no, we really got to get you to do a longer fast if we're going to expect, if we're going to have any chance to make go away. The truth is, a long fast is just, you know, I get very restless when I'm fasting and I, and this thing doesn't affect me that much anymore. Obviously I've had some years, you know, some, some times where I haven't eaten the best and I get my blood work done every year. And during those times where I'm not eating the great greatest most of Dr. Goldhammer doesn't see this, but, the times where I'm not eating the best, the blood work comes back and shows that things are progressing in the worst direction. So it's a good motivation for me to do another fast and get back on track. So, so it's been a, for me, it's been an excellent management strategy for other people, especially people who have, know, cysts or benign tumors in areas that are, that are uncomfortable. They're much more motivated to do a longer fast.

Glen Merzer: So you've got your own health metric that you could keep consulting. 

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Right. 

Glen Merzer: And you've had it now for many years. And so you never had to prove that it was benign. It just clearly is. Right. 

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Well, no, I actually a year into chiropractic school, I actually learned that that tumors all grow their own blood supply. So I realized, OK, well, if it's benign, then it grew its own blood supply. If it's malignant, it's grow its own blood. It's going to spread no matter what. And also this, nature of a thyroid tumor is it's actually very superficial. so any tracking that the needle might, might do from sticking needle into the clump of cells and then extracting it out, any seeding of those cells is going to be very small. Whereas if someone's doing something deeper into their abdomen, for example, there's, or in their prostate or in their uterus, that's going to be, there's going to be more risk of tumor seeding. And so I ultimately did the biopsy and it confirmed that it was benign. However, the doctor did say that with tumors, even if they're above two centimeters, it's hard because they can't sample every little bit of the tumor. that's what basically relaxed me a lot because that was the big pressing worst case scenario in my mind.

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Right. Now, there seems to be an epidemic in the country of people being told by their doctors that they have tiny tumors on their thyroid or tiny growths on their thyroid. 

Glen Merzer: Is it something in the water or is it just that we're doing so many scanning images that we're finding things that we never knew we had in the past? 

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: I think that's both. think that there's there people are being exposed to a lot more. There's going to be some some low levels of radiation, not just from flying and from from the sun and then any sort of scans. There's also some genetic components to it. There's also going to be I think there's there's we draw a pie chart. There's going to be number of things that are all contributing to this thing. But I also agree with you is that when we're looking for things at a more careful level, we're going to find more things. And so it's hard to compare if we've actually had more from before because we haven't been testing as much from 30 years ago or 50 years ago. 

Glen Merzer: I always try to avoid having doctors scan me if at all possible. And when they say why, and I say, because you'll find something. I don't want to know. No, I'm feeling fine. Don't go looking. Yeah. So I monitor my blood work and I'm good. That's that's my attitude. 

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Yeah. And feelings are there. They're one part of the puzzle for how you how you're doing with health feelings. You if you're if you're vital feeling, you know, you're high vitality, you're able to sleep restfully, wake up feeling refreshed. You can exercise without, you know, without feeling like you're going to die if you are in a good mood and you feel, you know, you're not. pain and discomfort, that's a really good measurement of your health. It's not the only measurement, but it is a legitimate measurement of your health. 

Glen Merzer: OK. Now, after you worked at True North, you moved down to Southern California and you founded Fasting Escape, which used to be a physical facility in Yorba Linda where people would come and stay much like at True North, guess modeled on True North. But now you are conducting, supervising remote fasts, I guess with people all over the country or is it all over the world? 

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: All over the world. 

Glen Merzer: So all over the world. 

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Yeah. So I, I, the goal of me going to work with Dr. Goldhamer is I told him, said, I want to learn from you because I want to learn how to run a fasting clinic. I want to learn how to help people fast. And he said, okay. So, I, I worked at true North for several years, both as an intern for three years and then on as a staff doctor. And then once it became time to run my own clinic, I came down to Southern California and started my own fasting clinic, which you mentioned fasting escape. And it was busy. It was a large house with five bedrooms in there. So I lived in one of the bedrooms and the other four bedrooms were for patients to come in from all over the world. And so we really could see, four people. And then if there was three or four couples, it could be seven or eight people. And now what happened is during the pandemic, We actually got fairly busy because some people didn't have to take vacation time from work to go to a fasting clinic. They could simply work remotely and travel to the fasting clinic, do a fast, maybe take a little break when they were fasting if there was a little bit of intense fast. But for the most part, we got fairly busy. But on the other hand, because of some of the travel restrictions and the lockdowns, and there was also some nervousness around COVID, you know, and coming to clinic and from different states and also from different countries. And so a number of people started asking me if I could help them do a fast from home. And my first thought was, well, it's kind of hard to do. I had assumed at the time that that some of the benefit of the fasting is that people are coming to another environment and getting out of their current environment, resetting, and then they're going to go back and then reset up their environment. And then they can they can maintain some of the benefits. And and also when people come to a fasting clinic, at least when they came to my house, It was, it's a foreign place. You don't really know the area. This is not your home. And so the likelihood of going and sneaking into the kitchen or the pantry was going to be very low because there's some social costs with that. You don't want to get embarrassed. And you don't want somebody to like hear you crinkling the, you know, the lentils, you know, in the, the, pantry. But what I found as I started to help people do a fast from home, the first thing was people were incredibly good at setting up their own environment. So they would clean out their pantry, their house, know, to just clean out all the junk food. And this was actually excellent because it helps them prepare for doing a healthy diet after the fast, which is exactly what they need to do anyway. And the other part is so as they're going on this fast, just knowing that I was calling them every day was enough to keep them on the program. I've had almost nobody, maybe I can count on one hand how many people just had a bit of a chaotic lifestyle. Maybe they had a big family and everybody was tempting them and they just weren't able to set up their life that way. But most everybody else, as long as they were able to set up their life as if they're going to a clinic, they could do it from home. And the other thing that I noticed as I started doing this was people really liked the fact that they not only get the practice of setting up their house for a healthy lifestyle after the fast, but once they're done fasting, At my clinic, would just cook the, I would cook the food or my chef would cook the food for them and they'd just show up to the dining room and eat the food. and you know, every so often I'd have, I do cooking demos and people would put on an apron and just actually get in the kitchen and shop and, I mean, chop for the food and make their own dishes. But there's nothing quite like doing it at home because you have to for three, four straight days, you know, or 10 days after a 20 day fast, where now somebody who may have, you know, not even made 10 salads in the past year. They've now completed 10 salads in the last five days, okay, for lunch and dinner. And so that's some sort of level of skill and practice that they did not receive before the fast. And now they're getting it makes it. And they are telling me that this makes it a lot easier for them to stay on it because they've these just little tactile skills of learning how to, how much lettuce to put in the salad. And this is sometimes we don't realize, you if I've eaten this way for a long time, I don't quite realize how it was before I even started this is I didn't even know that Swiss chard was a vegetable. didn't know that I didn't know how to steam vegetables like I remember that I don't I didn't even know I knew that for a salad you throw in some lettuce tomato and cucumber, but I didn't know how to like spice it up with oregano and chop up a little thing and blend it with some tomatoes like it's things that I send people videos and how to do these things and it ends up being a lot more sustainable after the fast and the good thing too is people get the same benefits as well. They're lowering their blood pressure. They're reducing their pain. They're lowering their blood sugar. They're eliminating a lot of these conditions that they're coming in with. 

Glen Merzer: Well, when you had that thyroid growth, you got hit by all kinds of health ideas at the same time. You got hit by this idea that fasting could help you and the idea that if you change your diet completely, that'll help you. the idea that eating animal foods is a bad idea. 

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Right. Right. fact, that's the first thing I did.

Glen Merzer: Do you remember being overwhelmed by all those different concepts? I shouldn't be eating any animals. shouldn't be eating sugar. Shouldn't be eating a high salt diet. Shouldn't be eating oil. And I should not eat at all for a few days. 

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Yeah. I mean, there was definitely a learning curve and there was a process where where I was at the time. I mean, You know this as well as anybody, but, know, even 20 years ago, there was really, there was no YouTube. There was not, not barely any internet. And, and, know, you couldn't really, there were no real forums where you can go and ask people's opinions. My education was I would go to medical conferences. Like I would just go, I would audit, you know, classes. I would go to the medical library and just read the textbooks, or I would just go to the health food store and every health food store at the time, there was like a shelf, like the one you have behind you and the one I have behind me. was like a shelf with all the little pamphlets and different books of all the different health conditions that there were herbalists and naturopaths and chiropractors that would write about these things. And I'd found a book by Herbert Shelton called Fasting Can Save Your Life. He had a whole volume of different books. So I read those. I read Arnold Eritz, Mucosalist Diet. I I remember all these different classic books in the topics. But for me, when I would read these books, I would first actually turn to the recipe section. And if I saw processed foods in the recipe section, I just, wouldn't even read the whole thing because I just thought, you know, how can the book be correct if it's, the, the, the practical aspect of it, the conclusion is, well, you should put some oil or you should put some of this or that, or the other in there. So I had a little kind of bizarre system, but it, but it ended up leading me towards this path. There wasn't as much confusion at the time. Maybe there was a little bit of the Atkins diet, but there wasn't as much confusion about eating, you got to do keto this or high meat that. Everybody was pretty much on board with you should eat a whole plant foods diet or a vegan vegetarian diet for the most part, at least I remember. 

Glen Merzer: Everybody was on board with that? When? 

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: the time, the books that I had read at the health food stores.

Glen Merzer: Those are the ones that that you read a good selection because I just happen to be like, there's never been a time when everybody's been on board. 

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Yeah. 

Glen Merzer: There was Dr. Atkins and there were. 

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Yeah. But those were I remember those were little tiny pamphlets and it was very easy to look at the recipe section. Say, OK, fine. If you want to make the argument that meat is not an unnatural food, but then you look at the recipes and they want you to fry it in oil. It's like, OK, that's like you've lost me there. Like I can understand the argument of meat not being being a natural food. But the frying in an oil and putting butter and ghee and margarine and all these other things, you lost me there. 

Glen Merzer: Well, you have to make it fatty enough. 

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Right. Right. 

Glen Merzer: How do you decide how long to fast a patient for? When to do a five day fast, a 20 day fast, a 30 day fast? 

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Yeah, there's a number of different factors. But generally speaking, most of what limits people's fasting length is how long they can actually take off of life. So as before, we mentioned that when you're doing a fast, whether it's at a clinic or whether it's remotely with me, you want to make sure you're setting your life up so that you can have a restful fast. So you're not being distracted right and left and having a, by the way, I got to go get my teeth pulled and no, I got to get this, that, and the other, you know, I've got to go my granddaughter's birthday and you know, we're going to, have to jump into bounce house on day 12 of my fast, you know. So a lot of that is limited by what people can actually extend out to their fast. But let's run a thought experiment and assume that everybody has an open-ended amount of time for fasting. And that's when we get into how chronic is your problem and then what are your end goals in mind. So as an example, if someone like you, Glen, is eating very healthy diet and there's really no health problems to speak of and You know, the question would be number one. Do you even need to fast? Okay Some people like to fast they like the reset one way to find out if it's time to fast if this is if Whole natural foods without added salt taste good Okay, or if just whole natural foods if if you don't need to add a whole bunch of stuff to these whole natural foods if they taste good on their own then you're fine, but if your body is is tasting these foods as bland and trying to mute the taste buds, then it might be time to do a short fast. How short? Well, it could be 24 hours, could be three days, could be five days, could be seven days. But we probably wouldn't need two or three weeks of fasting with somebody like in this condition, okay? It's a nice little reset, it's a nice little break, and then gets you back to eating healthy foods and maybe give you a little break. And most people end up doing a short fast like this every few years anyway when they somehow catch the flu. their appetite gets lost and they don't really feel like eating for two, three days. And then when the fever breaks, they emerge feeling a lot better. Okay. Now let's suppose somebody had a chronic condition. Okay. So let's suppose they had high blood pressure and they were on a couple of medications and they were starting to see their doctor said, your cholesterol is going up along with your blood sugar, your overweight, and they're getting aches and pains everywhere. And there's no question that that sort of disease process has been building for several decades. And so as a result, it takes a bit longer to unwind all those processes. So relax, get that extra salt out of your system, relax those blood vessels, start to get that fat unclogged from the cells to reduce that insulin resistance, start to reduce that inflammation, all your joints and reduce that aches and pains. So that might take a longer fast, maybe 10 or 14 days, in some cases, three or four weeks. And so as you see, there's a lot of different people out there with different conditions. And sometimes it's kind of both. It's like, well, I'm pretty healthy, but I still got a little bit of this or that. And I got a little aches and pains. I'm getting a little bit older. My joints just aren't that the way I used to. So it's a little bit of an art to figure out. But in general, if someone's dealing with some sort of health problem, we can aim for anywhere from, one to three weeks is kind of where, where it can be in. That's a wide range. People's like, well, seven days without food versus, you know, 30 days without or 21 days without food. That's a big range, but it really just depends on the person, what their health history is like, what their life story is like, what their home life is like. And that's why I talk to everybody before they do a fast with me to get a sense and get a feel for them, what they're, what they're aiming for. But yeah, that answer. I hope that answers your question.

Glen Merzer: Yes, sir. Well, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Goldhammer, and he had a theory that people who are in excellent health get even extra benefit from fasting, and he suggested I come down to True North for a fast. 

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Yeah, think there's good information about that, that the healthier you get, the better your body is able to continue to cleaning things out. So my grandma used to tell me, and I believe this is a this is an old saying that she told me, but she said, it's a lot easier to stay well than it is to get well. And so this is the idea that if you've lived for 30 years under processed foods conditions and maybe smoker or other things, it's pretty intense to get better. But if you're already there, you don't have to make huge, huge, huge changes.

Glen Merzer: Now, are your fasts always water fast or are they sometimes vegetable juices? 

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Most of the time I'm working with people with water fasts, but there are a few times when juice fasting or any sort of modified fasting, like with juice or broth or some sort of vegetable bland vegetable soup, that can be more appropriate. The most important one is if people are on medications that they can't wean off of before fasting, then we do a modified fast so that we can get some of the benefits of the break the taste buds improve the sensitivity. but we can maintain the medications. If some medications are not able to be weaned off very quickly, like some psychiatric medications, others are, but that's where I employ the help of Dr. Renee Thomas, my medical director, to help people with complex medical histories, or they work with their local doctor to reduce those medications before they fast. 

Glen Merzer: Now, there are people who have cured themselves of cancer with the Gershon therapy, which is largely drinking, tremendous quantities of vegetable juices. There's also a component of it. No one asked me to explain it. That's a coffee enema. but, for patients with cancer, do you see a benefit in drinking, in having a vegetable juice fast that has all those nutrients in it as opposed to a water fast? 

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Yeah, it's a really good question. And I'm going to start off by saying that that I'm going to take an attempt to answer this question, but I don't believe that it is known which way is better. OK, so cancer has been thought of to be a disease of genetic mutations rather than a deficiency disease. And so

Some of the logic behind doing juice fast for cancer is incorrect, but that doesn't mean it's not helpful. It just means that you may not need as many nutrients. if you drink a lot of juice, you're going to get a lot of nutrients, but your body has a threshold. After a certain amount of nutrients, your body just urinates it out. And so drinking a lot of juices, the thought was that you're just infusing your body with good, healthy vitamins and minerals and antioxidants and phytochemicals and everything else. And that's going to help your body kind of build a good foundation to fight the cancer. And I believe that that is that is true. It's just that that I don't know if that's going to be the only thing that cures cancer and so to speak. So there's also promising research with fasting and cancer. In other words, when you get the body into ketosis, not a mimicking ketosis, but an actual ketosis through fasting, it appears to significantly slow down the growth pathways of the tumor. So IGF-1 levels decrease. You've got the mTORC pathway that's being inhibited. You've got all kinds of different ways that the tumor is being slowed down. And then you've also got ways that the body is now able to consume dead cells and unnecessary cells. And so a lot of this looks very promising. Although I don't know if we know one way or the other, know, what's going to be, you know, what's going to be more useful than others. But I think that I've worked with a number of people with cancer and the ones that tend to respond the best are going to be people with lymphoma. And that has been a case study published with True North Health Foundation. So I'm on the board of the True North Health Foundation. so Dr. Goldhamer and his team, all work hard and Tasha Myers and their team all work hard to publish these studies. And one of these major case series was on lymphoma. Now this is you know, an interesting cancer because it's a blood cancer. It's not genetic. And so it might be related to some of the pesticides spray and other sort of, you know, environmental waste that people have been exposed to, but it's, it's kind of hard to say, but that might be why it's responding that well with something else, like say an aggressive brain cancer. I don't know if you could drink enough juice or fast enough that you could affect it all that much. So there's definitely a lot more to be learned about it. I have worked with different people, women with say breast cancer and every so often when they do follow up with me, they'll send me their MRI or their different PET scans and they'll see that the tumor's either gotten smaller or it stayed the same. so that's always encouraging, but cancer is a multi-factorial disease and there's a lot there. 

Glen Merzer: Well, I'm glad you mentioned ketosis because that was going to be my next question. So you've given me a segue here. Those who advocate the ketogenic diet, a diet of 60 to 80 % fat, eating meat all day, and if the meat isn't fatty enough, you put some butter on your meat or you cook it in oil or whatever. They argue that you need to put your body in ketosis because there are all kinds of health benefits from ketosis. Now, there are also side effects from people eating a diet like that. They get bad breath. It's bad for their kidneys. They get constipated. They all kinds of problems from... They get headaches. They get dizzy. All kinds of problems from ketosis. And so I, for years, had sort of cavalierly...made an argument, you don't want to be in ketosis. That's unnatural. The natural fuel for the human body is glucose. Why are you making fat, which is a backup fuel? Why are you making that your primary fuel? Eat your starchy vegetables, eat your fruits and make glucose your primary fuel. But it turns out that with fasting, the whole idea is to put the body in ketosis and burn I guess some of that visceral fat and fat stores that are in the body that are excessive. So it brings me to the question, ketosis good, ketosis bad, or ketosis good some of the time? For therapeutic reasons. 

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Yeah, I'm in the door number three, which is ketosis is simply a side effect of the fast. It's not, we're not trying to get into ketosis at all costs because we want to look at this as a whole, a totality of the general plan. So if we look at fasting, not only is the body just happens to be in ketosis, that's what allowed our ancestors to roam around and risk getting into environments that didn't have food, is the ability to get into ketosis. And so there's other primates out there that stay in the same location, their entire species, because they can't afford to go somewhere else and risk for two, three days, wander around and they'll just die. They can't actually get into ketosis. They'll burn up all their fuel reserves. So humans are able to do that. And so that allowed us to actually roam the planet with a lot more risk. And so the fact that we are able to get into ketosis does not mean that we should strive to only be in ketosis because it comes with some stress on the kidneys. So one of the contraindications to doing a long-term water fast is if someone has chronic kidney disease, okay? And it's because the kidneys get stressed while they're in ketosis as they're detoxifying and filtering out all these waste products. And so if we're in ketosis for a long period of time, it's not really ideal. Let's also back up the camera and say, okay, let's suppose, let's just run a thought experiment that if it were true, that ketosis was some magical elixir, why do we need to be eating foods that we know are unhealthy when you're not in ketosis? And so to me, you can't contradict other aspects of science while trying to invent a new aspect of nutrition and science. so for me, if it is true that ketogenesis is desirable, it's gotta be done in a different way than high fat, high animal foods. We know those cause problems with growth factors, inflammation, endotoxemia, heart disease. Even if you can make the argument that cholesterol really doesn't make a big difference, which I agree with that, then maybe it's saturated fat. I mean, there isn't just one thing that can be causing these problems. so, you know, let's suppose somebody wants to eat a whole natural foods diet. Look at all the tribes in Africa, the Bushmen of the Kalihari and others. They're all eating whole natural foods. Some of them have a little bit more meat than others. Some of them are a lot less meat, but none of them are having problems and they're not in ketosis. They're not specifically trying to prick their finger and see if what they're eating is increasing their blood sugar. So the other thing is everything that you eat turns into sugar eventually. that's how your body gets its adenosine triphosphate fuel. It's called oxidase phosphorylation. And so these ketogenic diets are useful in some ways in very, very constrained conditions like maybe epilepsy and seizures, but I don't see a lot of utility in long-term health and in long-term diseases, particularly not the disease. 

Glen Merzer: Now, I've often felt that hypertension is a disease that that's a really good indicator for how we should be eating and decisions we could make about health. Because as far as I know, there isn't a quack out there who says that high blood pressure is a good thing. 

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Right. Not yet. 

Glen Merzer: Not yet. You never know. But as far as we know, nobody's saying high blood pressure is a good thing. And every study I've seen, multiple, multiple studies, the whole food plant based diet or the whole plant food diet reduces healthfully reduces blood pressure. Vegetarian diet not quite as good as the vegan diet on that and meat eating diet, the highest blood pressure. And of course, too much salt makes things even worse. And as far as I know, nobody debates that or contends that eating meat is good for your blood pressure or eating cheese is good for your blood pressure. And of all the therapies, which is the therapy that has proven most effective for hypertension? 

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Yeah, it turns out that if we look at all the different interventions for high blood pressure, we've got, you know, I'll name a few that I have off the top of my head. If you reduce caffeine intake, you can actually reduce your blood pressure by about four five points on the top number. If you reduce your alcohol consumption, you can reduce it by about five to seven points on the top number. If you engage in exercise, you can reduce your blood pressure by about six or seven points on the top number. And if you reduce your weight, it appears that for every kilogram you lose, you'll lose about two points off your blood pressure.

Glen Merzer: Now, if you do all these things at the same time, is it cumulative? 

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Well, turns out, so McDougal did this. Dr. John McDougal did this where he said, well, why don't we just do everything? So we had people come to his program, you measure their blood pressure, and just 11 days they were able to reduce their blood pressure by 17 points. Okay, so not quite exactly added up altogether, but close. Okay. Now, just for reference, one blood pressure medication can reduce your blood pressure by about 12 points on the top number and about six points on the bottom number. Okay. And so just doing a healthy diet like this, and that's with McDougall where even he had some salt in there, just doing a McDougall style diet could reduce your blood pressure 150 % more than one blood pressure medication. And so, but let's suppose now we bring people into a health center like True North. And we do everything. eliminate not just the caffeine, the alcohol. We're also reducing weight, but we're also engaging some of these intricate systems in your body to reduce the tone, the sympathetic tones, and basically relax your blood vessels, reduce all the extra salt, take the load off your kidneys. If we do all that, it turns out this is a study Dr. Goldhammer did years ago where it found that the average blood pressure drops. in his patients was 37 points on the top number and 13 points on the bottom number. 

Glen Merzer: 37.

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld:  It's triple that of one medication. 

Glen Merzer: For how long a fast on average?

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: This particular study was 5 to 28 days. And I have seen the same thing when working with people is there's a range. Some people have a little bit more stubborn blood pressure, will need a longer fast. But when I was working at True North, both as an intern and as a staff doctor and in my own fasting clinic, physical fasting clinic. And now with remote fasting, I have seen the same thing. I have yet to meet somebody. I've maybe had one or two people who weren't able to reverse their blood pressure problem. And those two people had underlying conditions that they, know, that one person had a kidney tumor. And so that was what's causing the problem. But, virtually everybody with actual high blood pressure gets, can actually normalize their blood pressure. And that was similar to what Dr. Goldhammer study showed.

Glen Merzer: Now explain to our listeners why prolonged water fast should be medically supervised. 

People shouldn't be going off and doing this on their own. Yeah. So as I talked about early about our adaptation is our ancestors just they fasted out of necessity when there's no food. OK. In today's world, we're fasting therapeutically because there's a number of foods that we've consumed, there's air we breathe, this all causes health problems. Monitoring is about making sure that your body can do the fast safely without any complications. And so if you're healthy, you could probably do a fast without any problems, but you probably don't need to do a longer fast. If you've got some health problems and you do a longer fast, now it gets a little tricky, meaning we want to make sure that we're checking your blood pressure and pulse and temperature and weight and checking your electrolytes. checking your blood, making sure your liver and kidneys are working fine, that everything else is going as planned. And so it also gets a little tricky that sometimes the longer you go, we might need to modify things. We need to know if there's certain symptoms that can sometimes look like it's detox, but it's actually a symptom to that's time to break the fast. And so this is just, it's like hiring a soccer coach because they've played in the big league. So they know all the little details. that are required to get better training. so this is, know, fasting is no different. It's a, it's just, there's a lot of little things that can go wrong. There's a lot of things that can go right. And knowing the difference is going to be the difference between having a successful fast and also refeeding is also very carefully done as well. So that is actually one of the most important parts of fasting supervision is to make sure that people are reintroducing food properly after a fast, slowly, carefully and the right food so that they can maintain the benefits of the fast afterwards as well. 

Glen Merzer: And if people are on hypertensive meds and you put them on a fast, you need to monitor that very closely, don't you? 

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Yes, very often. So we'll work with people, work with their doctors if they need to get they need to get off the meds before they can attempt the water fast. And a lot of doctors are willing to phase them off and wean them off. Sometimes if the doctor is not really open to it, then people will book it with Dr. Renee Thomas and she'll help them out or a lot of times if there maybe they want to stay on the meds, then we do a modified fast like a juice fast. And so then they can get some of the break with their taste buds for the high salt food. And then they go back after the fast and improve their food. And then they can come off the drugs as their blood pressure improves. 

Glen Merzer: Dr. Thomas is your colleague at Fasting Escape, right? 

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Yes. 

Glen Merzer: So how are the responsibilities divided? Does she take certain types of patients and you take other types of patients? Or how do you how do you divvy things up?

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Yeah, well, everybody who's attempting a fast gives me a call or does a phone consultation, a free phone consultation with me first. And we discuss their health history. We figure out kind of what their home situation like, see if it's a good fit to do a remote fast. If they're not in a good situation to remote fast, then I send them off to true north and then they can go in there in person. But if they are a good candidate for remote fasting, then the next is discussing, you know, when they can do the fast. And if they're on medications, they'll usually either go back to their medical doctor and they'll discuss what we talked about and see if they can get a wean off schedule for the medications as they change their diet. If that doctor is not open to that, then they'll book a visit with Dr. Thomas. It's a paid visit with her and then she'll figure it all out with them and do all the medication stuff with them. And then they book the fast with me whenever they're ready to do so. 

Glen Merzer: When people are doing a remote fast, are you in touch with them every day?

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Yes, calling every day, holidays, weekends doesn't matter. 

Glen Merzer: So you're on the phone a lot or is it on Zoom? 

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: It's on the phone. So we're chatting, making sure everything is going OK. And they're collecting their own blood pressure and pulse and temperature and weight and any other metrics we have. For example, if someone's dealing with psoriasis, they'll very frequently take pictures and send it to me every few days. And we can track and see how things are going throughout the fast. And it's very important.

Glen Merzer: You're also a podcast host like everyone else in America, right?

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Well, well, with me, I was too cheap to actually pay Dr. Lyle for for for sessions. And so I thought, well, you know, I might as well just start a podcast and I can ask them all my questions on the podcast. 

Glen Merzer: So so it's you and Dr. Lyle. And it's called the Beat Your Genes podcast. Yes. And tell us about that and where people can find it.

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Yeah, beat your genes is a concept that I learned from Dr. Lyle when I was working at True North. So Dr. Lyle used to go to True North and lecture, you know, once a week or every so often. And the lectures were so fascinating that I would try to finish rounds as quickly as possible and like sneak into the back room where we're standing room only to listen to Dr. Lyle speak. And one of the concepts that he would weave into his explanations was that our genetic code codes for proteins that codes behaviors that's all designed to increase our likelihood of survival and reproduction. That's the meaning of life from a biological standpoint. And so that's why he wrote the book, The Pletter Trap is to explain that our genetic code is trying to get us to eat unhealthy foods because they're rich and flavorful and the brain interprets them as extremely valuable for survival. And so This is why people get caught into an addictive trap is that they're literally following their genetic code. There's nothing wrong with them. They're simply following what their genes are telling them to do. And so as a result, if they're able to beat their genes, then they can have a chance at living a happier and healthier life. And so it turns out that hyper palatable food is not the only trap in the modern world. There's a whole number of different traps that we can get we can get caught in that we are simply following our genetic code, but that may not necessarily lead to more happiness.

Glen Merzer:  so what other kinds of traps are you referring to?

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: I'll give you one example that's kind of out there, but that people could probably recognize if they were in the audience. OK, so let's suppose you're at a bar, maybe not you and me, because we probably don't drink, but let's suppose you're at a at some event, you know, a bar where there's, you know, males who are drinking and competing with each other in all kinds of social ways. Okay. And you've got two males that are kind of rowdy and they're trying to compete for who's going to look, you know, who's going to be at the higher run. Okay. And then you get one guy who says something wrong to the other guy. Now the other male's embarrassed. Okay. Well, the males are designed to are actually, they, they, they evolved in a small time village. Okay. Where there was, kind of grew up with everybody. and you really didn't have, you couldn't really go to the next village and start a new life or whatever, okay? And so these sorts of fights and threats were actually hugely important for domination, okay? If you walked away or if you back down from something, then it was a good likelihood that word would spread and that you might have fewer mating opportunities for the rest of your life, okay? So that's the way the male evolved in those situations. So now let's fast forward to the modern world. We're in here, you're in a huge city. Okay, and you've got two idiots that, you know, are basically following their genetic code. Okay, and one of them is about to take a swing on the other one. Okay, for what? Okay, there's no village here. There's no girls that are watching this process and that are gonna go report to the other girls in the village. And now you're out of luck with mating opportunities for the rest of your life. No, that's not going to happen. But the male brain in that scenario is designed to actually engage in a fight and try to try to beat the guy up in order to display dominance and show off to the other women that he's got some fitness. so however, in the modern world, if he does this, number one, he can have some serious legal repercussions. Number two, he can have some serious physical repercussions because not only can he get hurt, The other guy gets hurt. Now he has to contend with the moral, you know, moral side of that thing. And not only that, there might be friends behind that are going to come and, you know, find him and whatever. Okay. So that's a very kind of out there example, but it's one example of beating your genes. Okay. In the modern world, in a way that would not have been necessary in a very much smaller little village like that.

Glen Merzer: Well, I am very conflict averse, so I guess I beat my genes. Right. Well, you have never been in a bar brawl. 

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Right. Right. And most of us haven't. But it turns out that alcohol reduces IQ points by about 10 points or 20 points. And when that happens, males drop down below a certain IQ level that will cause them to engage in a lot more violence. 

Glen Merzer: here's my approach to alcohol. Yeah. I mean, in college, I drank beer, you know, but at parties. But now I never drink alcohol and I'm so pure about alcohol that when I drink kombucha, I get a buzz. I will not drink kombucha and drive. 

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Right. Right. 

Glen Merzer: I get a buzz off kombucha. That's a cheap drug. 

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Well, your system is sensitive enough to alcohol. So all alcohol is poisonous. And so some people are more sensitive than others. So you're actually lucky you're more sensitive. Other people can drink six shots and not feel anything, you know, and they take it as if they're like more genetically fit. 

Glen Merzer: So while we're on the subject, I'll make this my last health question to you. What are the poisons in alcohol and what are the different ways it's bad for you? 

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Well, I don't know the specific poisons in alcohol. I believe it's actually just alcohol itself, ethyl alcohol. 

Glen Merzer: In what ways is it bad for you? I'll rephrase the question.

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Yeah. When it actually goes through your liver and processes, it goes in there. I don't, what I've seen actually, people will say things like, red wine is healthy for you. There's some antioxidants in the... 

Glen Merzer: paradox. 

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Right. Right. The truth is, is that they're only looking at one small aspect of health, the antioxidants. Okay. You can get the same amount of antioxidants with your lunch and dinner that you're going to have today or that you had yesterday. And so... But what people will ignore what that particular paradox is, yeah, they might have a little bit less heart disease, but they're going to have an increase in liver cancer from the alcohol. And so as a result, then you can actually see that alcohol actually is a net negative when it comes to everything. So what alcohol does when it gets metabolized is it damages the liver and then enzymes after this damage will leak out into the bloodstream and you're going to have blood work that'll show that ALT, AST, and an enzyme called GGT are going to be elevated. And so this is just damage of the liver. If people drink enough liver, if they drink enough alcohol, their liver will start to deposit these extra fats in there. And it's going to called fatty liver disease. it's, or it's alcoholic liver disease. The other problem with alcohol is that it's, it's, it's the second most concentrated macronutrient out there. So fat is nine calories per gram. whereas alcohol is seven calories per gram. So it's very close to being liquid fat, essentially. Where that's important is because when we look at, you know, how calorie dense certain foods are, if we had, for example, pure oil or butter or margarine, that's 4,000 calories per pound. But you're never going to eat a pound of that in a row. But the concentration of it is such that one tablespoon of oil is the equivalent in calories as a pound of salad. You know this, you wrote the book with Chef A.J. But when it comes to alcohol, alcohol is about 20 % less concentrated and almost double as concentrated as carbohydrates and protein. so anytime people are drinking alcohol, they're increasing the amount of calories that they're drinking, that they're eating. And the problem too with liquid calories is that your stomach, your stretch receptors are not quite used to, they're not as good as counting calories when you don't have fiber in your meals.

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: So alcohol is going to have, it's a triple threat. It damages your liver and your cells. It also increases the calorie density and increase your overeating. And then it's also, you're not going to be as full when you eat it. So not something we'd recommend. In fact, the surgeon general just came out recently. mean, it's about time that the surgeon general came out recently and said that all alcohol is problematic and causes cancer. 

Glen Merzer: Right. So I say, if you want to get a buzz, get yourself clean and then have a sip of kombucha. 

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Yeah, there you go.

Glen Merzer: So people can find you at fasting escape dot com. 

Yes. 

Glen Merzer: And they could consult with you about the possibility of having having you supervise remote fasts and I'm sure you consult with people on their diets as well. Dr. Gershfeld, been a pleasure getting to know you.

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: Thank you so much, Glen. I really appreciate it. Thanks for inviting me on and thanks for talking to me. 

Glen Merzer: Well, keep up the good work, 

Dr. Nathan Gershfeld: All right. Thank you so much.