417. MICHELLE SLATER HAD LATE-STAGE LYME DISEASE THAT WAS SO BAD SHE CONSIDERED ASSISTED SUICIDE, BUT CURED IT WITH A 9-DAY “DRY” FAST IN SIBERIA

READER RESOURCES: THE APOCALYPSE ALMANAC: Hidden cures in our dystopian age. Check out the “Cure Cancer in Your Kitchen” chapter. FULLSCRIPT SUPPLEMENTS: top quality and economical.

If you would rather listen to Michelle than to my monologue above. HERE and HERE are podcasts starring her. The second one is better.

“Inflammation cannot exist without water.” —Dr. Filonov

Background:

Before you start, read my description HERE about how the US military subjected Lyme to “gain of function” research to turn it into a bioweapon. I also tell how Lyme was deployed against us here and in Europe, and how it spread worldwide. This sounds insane, and it is.

Dry fasting is an extreme form of fasting that I first encountered in Michelle’s book. While fasting from food is commonplace, fasting from water as well is not. Some religions call for such a practice, and it has resulted in the death of elders. But Slater got her life back.

Table of Contents

Part 1: A Summary of Michelle’s 2022 book about her experiences, Starving to Heal in Siberia and the Science Behind the Protocol

Part 2: A summary of Dr. Sergei Filonov’s book: Dry Medical Fasting: Myths and Reality

Part 3: Background, evidence, and resources

Part 4: The bombshell: I was recently diagnosed with advanced Lyme disease

With gratitude for the work of the brilliant Michelle Slater.

Summary

• Michelle Slater, PhD, contracted neurological late-stage Lyme disease in 2012 and spent six years bedridden, exhausting every conventional and alternative treatment before traveling to Siberia in 2017.

• Under the care of Dr. Sergei Filonov, she completed multiple dry fasts, culminating in a nine-day fast, and returned to the United States symptom-free.

• She has reported no Lyme symptoms since 2017, and as of the book’s 2022 publication, has hiked long-distance trails and returned to full professional work.

• Western blot and other Lyme antibody tests do not typically revert to negative after successful treatment; the CDC states that IgG antibodies persist for months to years and cannot be used to confirm cure. Recovery is assessed by clinical symptom resolution, not serology. Yoho comment: this mainstream view is wrong, see below.

• Dr. Filonov’s protocol progresses from a 24-hour water fast to multi-day dry fasts over months; the full nine-day dry fast is reserved for patients who have completed preparatory fasts and is supervised in person.

Part 1. A Summary of Michelle’s Starving to Heal in Siberia and the Science Behind the Protocol

About the author

Michelle Slater holds a PhD in French Literature from Johns Hopkins University. She worked as a professor of comparative literature, earning a tenure-track position, until her illness prevented her from teaching. She founded and directs the Mayapple Center for the Arts and Humanities, a nonprofit foundation in Stamford, Connecticut. She has published three books, the most recent of which is a forthcoming novel, The Lunatic. She divides her time between Connecticut and Switzerland.

The illness: timeline and symptoms

Slater traces the probable onset of her Lyme disease to 2005, when she was completing her doctoral dissertation at Johns Hopkins. She began experiencing brain fog, inability to retain text, and unexplained fatigue. She powered through her dissertation and obtained a tenure-track teaching position in Wisconsin by rising at 4:45 a.m. daily, but eventually could not sustain the workload and resigned.

Her health gradually declined. In the summer of 2012, she traveled to Istanbul for a comparative literature conference. There, she developed excruciating joint pain, migraines, and severe cognitive failure. She could no longer form complete sentences or read. She was formally diagnosed with Lyme disease upon her return to New York.

Her diagnosis fell into the category of late-stage neurological Lyme, or neuroborreliosis, a complication affecting roughly 10 percent of untreated patients. The spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi that was causing her disease had crossed the blood-brain barrier.

Over the following years, Slater’s symptoms included: constant joint pain in the arms, legs, knees, hands, and feet; brain fog so severe she could not read a text message; tinnitus; chronic sinusitis; night sweats; tachycardia; insomnia; inability to drive; and severe fatigue that kept her bedridden for months at a time. She also carried coinfections common to tick-borne disease, including candidiasis, and her physicians noted an autoimmune component. She developed psoriasis as well.

She underwent years of aggressive antibiotic treatment. She tried holistic and naturopathic protocols. She maintained a strict organic, plant-based diet throughout. Nothing produced a lasting recovery.

By late 2016 and into 2017, her condition reached its worst point. She was unable to change a lightbulb. She could not recall her thoughts for more than a minute. To attend a single public event for her nonprofit foundation, she had to write out every word she intended to say. She began making concrete plans for assisted suicide at a Swiss clinic.

Finding Dr. Filonov

On a Saturday afternoon, while bedridden and researching end-of-life options, Slater encountered the work of Dr. Sergei Ivanovich Filonov, a Russian physician who has practiced and written about therapeutic dry fasting for over 30 years. His clinic operates in the Altai Mountains region of Siberia, near Gorno-Altaysk, roughly on the Siberian-Mongolian border. The setting: primitive dachas, outdoor sleeping platforms, a communal bania, the Katun river for walking alongside, and spring water.

Filonov charges approximately $50 per day, inclusive of all treatments, lodging, meals after the fasts, and ongoing WhatsApp consultations.

Slater became his first American patient. She arrived in August 2017 and stayed through October.

The Siberian treatment

Slater arrived, unable to walk unassisted. Dr. Filonov described her muscles as “hard as stones.” The treatment protocol at the clinic combines dry fasting with daily 10-kilometer walks, full-body massage, including a deep decongestive honey-tapping massage*, and sleeping outdoors in the mountain air.

She completed several separate dry fasts. The first lasted three days and was done at home in preparation for the Siberia trip. The second fast in Siberia lasted seven days. The third and primary fast lasted nine days, with no food and no water whatsoever.

Michelle slept outdoors on a wooden platform next to a dam. Dr. Filonov monitored her daily. Morning check-ins were done by his nursing staff, led by his daughter Anastasia.

On day two of the nine-day fast, she walked five kilometers to the bridge over the Ust-Sema River. On day nine, she described feeling fearless and peaceful, with minimal headache and reduced joint pain.

After the nine-day fast, she was severely underweight. Dr. Filonov had not originally planned a nine-day fast for her, given her fragile condition. He used a psychological target of eleven days to motivate her to get through the medically optimal nine. He told her afterward that he had not slept for two nights during her fast out of concern for her safety.

Breaking the fast began with hot spring water only, then progressed to watermelon, chosen by Dr. Filonov for its benefits to the kidneys, then to fruit compote, then to millet porridge with apricots, salads, and vegetable soup. The exit period was harder than the fast itself. She experienced a severe migraine on night eleven, dizziness, ringing ears, and profound weakness. Dr. Filonov told her this was normal and expected: the fast had triggered a release of bacterial debris and toxic residue, and the influx of water was mobilizing it for clearance.

*Honey-tapping is a facial treatment using raw honey that involves a rhythmic patting and lifting motion to create a gentle vacuum effect, promoting lymphatic drainage, circulation, and deep cleansing. This technique reduces puffiness, boosts collagen, and gently exfoliates for a brighter, firmer complexion.

Dr. Filonov’s explanation for why the fast worked

Inflammation cannot exist without water. Every inflamed area in the body swells with water. Microorganisms, viruses, and bacteria can only multiply in a moist environment. During dry fasting, the body generates endogenous water by burning fat, producing roughly 1.1 grams (cc) of water per gram of fat oxidized. Healthy cells compete successfully for this internal water; pathogens and diseased cells cannot.

The body’s glucocorticoid hormones (cortisol, for example), normally 70 percent bound by transport albumins, flood the bloodstream in free form at three times their usual concentration when those albumins break down during fasting. The resulting surge of glucocorticoids produces a powerful anti-inflammatory effect, suppressing all foci of inflammation simultaneously. Each cell, in the absence of external water, becomes what Filonov calls a “mini-furnace,” destroying everything superfluous and leaving only the healthiest cellular material.

Subsequent fasts and the complete protocol

Dr. Filonov told Slater before she left Siberia that one nine-day fast would not be sufficient to reverse years of illness and pharmaceutical residue. He told her the process could take one to two years.

She completed a second nine-day dry fast in the Berkshires of Massachusetts in November 2017, alone, walking daily and sleeping on a screened porch. She completed additional shorter fasts in subsequent months and years.

In 2018, she attended a pop-up clinic that Filonov ran in Kaliningrad to follow up. She has since fasted for nine to eleven days on multiple occasions and has coached others through extended fasts.

Recovery: duration and current status

According to all published sources, including the 2022 book, the publisher’s description on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, and Slater’s own website (michelleslater.com), she has been symptom-free since 2017. That is at least seven years of complete remission as of this writing in 2026. She hiked the Vermont portion of the Appalachian Trail in less than a week, carrying a ten-kilogram pack, one year after her return. She has returned to full professional activity, writing books and running her nonprofit. She describes no residual Lyme symptoms.

The book does not state whether the results of her Lyme standard tests, the Western blot or the ELISA, reverted to negative.

A note on Lyme serology and what “cured” means on a blood test

This point affects how one should interpret any claim of a Lyme cure.

The CDC states explicitly that Lyme antibody titers, once elevated, will remain elevated for months to years and cannot be used to determine cure. IgG antibodies produced against the Lyme spirochete, Borrelia burgdorferi, persist long after the infection resolves. The standard two-tier testing algorithm, consisting of an initial ELISA or enzyme immunoassay followed by a confirmatory Western blot, is designed to detect past or present exposure to the spirochete. It is not designed to measure active infection or treatment response.

The CDC guidance states: “Results should not be used to monitor or establish adequate response to therapy. Response to therapy is confirmed through resolution of clinical symptoms.”

This means that even if dry fasting eradicated every Borrelia burgdorferi spirochete in the body, the IgG bands on a Western blot would remain positive for an indeterminate period, often years. A patient cured of late-stage Lyme disease would not necessarily show a negative Western blot. Expecting serological normalization as the measure of cure sets an impossible and irrelevant standard for this particular pathogen.

Comment: This is all mainstream “thinking.” However, advanced practitioners such as Rachel West, DO, have documented resolution of Lyme disease-related antibodies during treatment.

Slater maintains that the only measure that matters for a living human is complete and sustained resolution of symptoms over seven-plus years, with a return to vigorous physical and intellectual activity.

Dr. Filonov and subsequent Lyme patients

Dr. Filonov (his website is in Russian) was using his methods to treat many chronic illnesses, but Slater was his first Lyme patient. Her case attracted other Lyme patients from across the world to his clinic. In his foreword to his book, which I summarized in Part 2, Filonov writes that many of the patients who came to him following Slater had severe Lyme disease. Some of them underwent multiple dry fasting courses ranging from seven to eleven days, experienced full recoveries, and returned to their former professional and personal activities. He does not provide a patient count, case series data, or outcome statistics.

The theory behind dry fasting

Dr. Filonov’s central mechanistic argument rests on three biological principles:

• First, autophagy. Nobel Prize-winning biologist Yoshinori Ohsumi won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work on autophagy, the cellular process by which damaged organelles, misfolded proteins, and pathological cellular material are broken down and recycled. Ohsumi’s 2016 Nobel banquet speech stated: “Life is maintained by a delicate balance between continuous synthesis and degradation. I found that degradation is just as important as synthesis for the maintenance of dynamic biological systems like the body.” Dry fasting, Filonov argues, induces more intense and comprehensive autophagy than water fasting because the absence of external water forces every cell to generate endogenous water by first destroying its weakest and most damaged components.

• Second, glucocorticoid release. During dry fasting, the transport albumins that normally bind 70 percent of the body’s glucocorticoids (cortisol relatives) and sex hormones break down to provide amino acids to the brain and heart. This releases a massive surge of free glucocorticoids, which, at concentrations three times normal, act as potent anti-inflammatories, suppressing inflammation throughout the body.

• Third, immune regeneration. The body’s white blood cells, weakened or dysregulated by chronic infection, are broken down and replaced with new ones during extended fasting. Stem cell production increases. The process mirrors findings from USC’s Valter Longo, who showed that prolonged fasting triggers stem cell regeneration in animals and, in early human data, initiates an immune system reset.

Filonov insists that the environment matters. His patients fast outdoors in mountain air near running water. He argues that the moisture in clean mountain air hydrates the skin during a “hard” dry fast, and that the body absorbs some water through the skin in the absence of any internal supply. He requires daily walking of approximately ten kilometers to maintain circulation and lymphatic drainage.

The fasting protocol: a progression for newcomers

According to Appendix B of Filonov’s book, the protocol is strictly sequential. No one should attempt extended dry fasting without completing each prior stage.

Stage 1: 24-hour water fast

The fast begins in the morning. Consume only water starting the night before, and break the fast the following morning. Two weeks of preparation are required: activated charcoal on an empty stomach twice daily, 1 teaspoon of aluminum-free baking soda in hot water each morning, and elimination of coffee, alcohol, sugar, processed foods, heavy meat, and simple starches. Stop all pharmaceutical medications where medically safe to do so. Switch to an organic plant-based diet of vegetable broth, green vegetables, whole grains such as millet and buckwheat, fresh-squeezed vegetable juices, and small quantities of seeds.

Stage 2: 3-day water fast

After the 24-hour water fast passes easily and a week’s recovery follows, extend to three days of water only.

Stage 3: 7-day water fast

After recovery from the 3-day fast, attempt a full week of water fasting.

Stage 4: 24-hour dry fast

On the day preceding the fast, consume only water. The dry fast starts at bedtime and ends on the second day in the morning, 24 hours later.

Stage 5: 3-day dry fast

The fast begins at bedtime. During the fast, no lotions, no tooth brushing, no face washing, and no contact with any water. Headache, dry mouth, nausea, hunger, and thirst are expected symptoms that will pass.

Stage 6: 5- to 9-day dry fast

Incrementally add days to the protocol. The resting exit period must be at least as long as the fast itself. A 3-day fast requires a minimum 3-day exit. No one should attempt a 9-day fast without consulting Dr. Filonov directly. Contact is available through michelleslater.com or his own Russian-language publications.

During all dry fasting

Walk as much as possible outdoors. Sleep outside in clean, moist mountain air where possible. Avoid heated indoor spaces with electric heaters, which dry the air. Refrain from driving, heavy lifting, and intellectually demanding work. Practice daily deep-breathing exercises in the morning and evening. Avoid all computer and TV screens. Cultivate an active mental state of gratitude and stillness.

Breaking the fast

Start with hot spring water or plain hot water only. Then progress to watermelon. Then fruit compote without sugar. Then, small portions of soft grain porridge with fruit. Then salads. Then, cooked vegetables and soup. Reintroduce oil only several days into the exit. Chew every bite thirty times. Avoid citrus on the first day.

Successes and complications reported in the book

Slater achieved complete recovery from six years of late-stage neurological Lyme, candidiasis, psoriasis, and autoimmune disorder. She has been symptom-free for seven-plus years.

During Slater’s stay, approximately 30 patients were at the clinic. She describes patients arriving from across Russia. At least one other patient, identified as Natasha, completed a nine-day dry fast and emerged in robust health during the same period.

Complications Slater experienced: severe migraine and dizziness on day eleven of her exit; prolonged weakness during the exit period lasting five to seven days; extreme muscle wasting; tinnitus and ear ringing briefly worsening during the exit phase. Filonov reassured her that these were expected purging responses.

Once, Slater experienced a surge of severe joint pain that continued until she had fasted for several days to suppress the inflammation.

Dr. Filonov’s own caution, stated in the book: “Dry fasting, in my experience, is the most effective kind of fasting, but if it is not properly prepared for and practiced, it is fraught with serious complications.”

Fatalities and serious adverse events

Slater’s father asked before she left for Siberia: “How many patients have died?” The question is not answered in the book, and all Slater says is that Filonov is a respected physician who has not been carried off to the gulag for killing patients. This question deserves a more serious answer.

• No fatality data are provided in the book, nor is any case series with adverse event tracking cited.

• Independent published data on deaths attributable to medically supervised extended dry fasting does not appear in the peer-reviewed literature.

• Fatalities from dry fasting are documented in specific contexts outside clinical supervision. These primarily involve religious practice. The most prominent are cases from strict Jain religious fasting, where elderly practitioners have died during extended fasts known as Santhara.

• In Western countries, several deaths have been attributed to unsupervised extended dry fasting pursued through social media or online communities, though these cases generally involve no medical preparation, no exit protocol, and no monitoring.

Filonov and Slater emphasize that unsupervised dry fasting, undertaken without the preparatory protocol, without a knowledgeable physician available, and without proper exit management, is fundamentally different and more dangerous than the medically supervised version practiced at the Altai clinic.

Filonov told Slater that some patients require multiple courses over one to two years. His protocol is not a single event but a practice.

Selected references

1. Slater, Michelle B. Starving to Heal in Siberia: My Radical Recovery from Late-Stage Lyme Disease and How It Could Help Others. Greenleaf Book Group Press, 2022. ISBN 9781626349865.

2. Filonov, Sergei. Dry Medical Fasting: Myths and Reality. Available in Russian; summaries and excerpts available through Slater’s website.

3. Mindikoglu, A.L., Devaraj, S., et al. “Dawn-to-dusk dry fasting decreases circulating inflammatory cytokines in subjects with increased body mass index.” Metabolism Open 21 (2024): 100274. PMC10918425.

4. Mindikoglu, A.L. et al. “Dawn-to-dusk dry fasting induces anti-atherosclerotic, anti-inflammatory, and anti-tumorigenic proteome in peripheral blood mononuclear cells in subjects with metabolic syndrome.” PMC (2022). PMC9731888.

5. CDC. “Clinical Testing and Diagnosis for Lyme Disease.” Updated 2024. cdc.gov/lyme/hcp/diagnosis-testing/index.html.

6. Columbia University Lyme and Tick-Borne Diseases Research Center. “Diagnosis.” columbia-lyme.org/diagnosis.

7. Ohsumi, Yoshinori. Nobel Prize Banquet Speech, 2016.

8. Dr. Filonov’s contact is available through Slater’s website at michelleslater.com.

If you are seriously considering a dry fast, download the Word doc below:

It includes Part 2 and 3:

Part 2: A summary of Dr. Sergei Filonov’s book: Dry Medical Fasting: Myths and Reality

I had a bad Russian translation, and some of it was too mystical for my taste.

Part 3: Background, evidence, and resources

Part 4: Bombshell: I was recently diagnosed with Lyme disease

Rachel West, MD, a brilliant alternative doctor in Los Angeles, told me to be tested, and so here I am, starting treatment for the first time after probably having the disease since my rock climbing days in my early 20s. Here are my test results and an AI interpretation:

I knew about Lyme because my dear curmudgeonly friend, Ken Stoller, MD, managed a hyperbaric clinic in Arizona for several years and mainly treated chronic fatigue patients. He knew about Lyme first-hand because he caught a nasty case of it from his dogs as he removed their ticks. For background on this, do not miss my posts HERE and HERE. Because of this very personal knowledge based on his experience, Ken soon recognized that nearly all of his patients had chronic Lyme.

And so circumstances led him to become a Lyme treatment expert. He primarily used Alinia, which is an anti-parasitic drug that is expensive here but cheap and over-the-counter from foreign pharmacies. It kills the damn spirochetes so well that it can cause dramatic Herxheimer reactions. For this reason, Ken advises starting with low doses and slowly increasing. He eventually developed a course HERE explaining Lyme treatment that I took last week.

However, and unfortunately, Alinia does not do as well against Lyme persister cells. These are the dormant, non-growing forms of Borrelia burgdorferi that survive standard antibiotic treatment by slowing their metabolism and hiding in tissues or biofilms. These bacteria are genetically identical to active ones but become tolerant to drugs, potentially causing relapse of symptoms like fatigue, pain, and brain fog in 10-20% of patients. For that, after he gets the disease under control, Stoller uses hydroxychloroquine once a week indefinitely.

Dave Oates and Curious Outlier and Roi Richards all recommended I use chlorine dioxide (CD). I have many readers who have successfully treated Lyme with it. Since I have spent about 1000 hours and written 20 posts studying CD, I know how to use it. Several months of this can produce complete cures with little chance of damaging the microbiome. Alinia might cause trouble for my troubled and sometimes absent-without-leave “good” gut bacteria.

Anyone trusting a protocol-driven Rockefeller physician at an academic institution to treat their Lyme with standard antibiotics is an idiot who will fail and destroy his microbiome. Anyone who thinks two weeks of doxycycline will cure their issue also likely believes in the tooth fairy.

I am unfortunately in close contact with the bacterial enemies inside me and I will update you soon—hopefully after killing a batch of them.

PS: I’ve been considerably diminished in the past 3 months and am hoping to recover. My ankle arthritis—although partly due to past traumas—and my fatigue and marked strength decline could all be due to Lyme. Ken informed me with calculated brutality that if I did not treat it, I might soon have (more?!) spirochetes swimming around my brain and get Alzheimer’s.

A treatable diagnosis like this is good news for someone like me who thought I just had Parkinson’s. I don’t expect to cure that with chlorine dioxide, but I will likely feel better.

I know some of you are wondering why TF I didn’t diagnose my Lyme several years ago when Ken told me to take the test. My only excuse is that I sometimes DFL.

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Affiliate store: I will never use paywalls, but if you want to help me, I offer competitively priced affiliate products HERE that I have personally tested and used. There is a new entry for grass-fed beef.

Editing credit: Jim Arnold of the Liar’s World Substack and the brilliant Elizabeth Cronin.

Parting Shots

1. Herb Richards is 94 years old and ten years ago cured his and his wife’s severe Lyme arthritis and debilitation with a year of chlorine dioxide. He was probably cured at a month, but, after what he went through, he wanted to be sure. He is alive today because he uses CD and DMSO daily.

2. I am now three weeks into the aggravating daily practice of gradually drinking a liter of water with chlorine dioxide in it over 7 hours. I fast until the mid afternoon to accomplish this. I am using 20 activated drops of each component now, and my exercise tolerance in the gym is better. My advisors told me I would notice definite improvements by now, and maybe I am.

3. Graphic representations of the benefits of fasting are below, contributed by Jerome V:

Disclaimer: I am not your doctor, and am not giving medical advice. I am not going to try dry fasting by myself at home without experienced supervision, and neither should you. Plus, you should read all you can to inform your decisions. If you are in Los Angeles, Rachel West, D.O., is a good place to start. She uses RGCC Q and other innovative therapies.