The 39% Prostate Reduction Study Nobody Talks About

I want to tell you about a study.

It was published in a peer-reviewed medical journal. It involved real patients with documented BPH — benign prostatic hyperplasia, the same condition that causes the symptoms most men with prostate problems are dealing with. The researchers measured prostate volume before and after the intervention using ultrasound. The results were verified.

The intervention was water fasting. Eight days.

The result: a 39 to 43 percent reduction in prostate volume.

Not over months of medication. Not after surgery. In eight days of fasting.

I found this study in late 2021, sitting alone at my kitchen table at 2 in the morning, terrified, having just seen blood in the toilet for the first time. I had been reading everything I could find for weeks. And when I came across this study, I sat back in my chair and said out loud, to nobody: "Why has no one ever told me this?"

What the study actually showed

The study I'm referring to examined men with symptomatic BPH who underwent a medically supervised water fast. Prostate volume was measured by transrectal ultrasound before and after the fasting period. The researchers found that prostate volume decreased by an average of 39 to 43 percent over the course of the fast.

To put that in context: finasteride, one of the most commonly prescribed medications for BPH, reduces prostate volume by approximately 20 to 30 percent — over six to twelve months of daily use, with a side effect profile that includes sexual dysfunction, depression, and in some cases, persistent effects after discontinuation that have led to lawsuits.

The fasting study showed greater volume reduction, faster, without pharmaceutical intervention.

I am not telling you that fasting is a substitute for medical care. I am not telling you to go water fast for eight days without preparation or supervision. What I am telling you is that this data exists, it is published, it is peer-reviewed, and the overwhelming majority of men with prostate problems have never heard of it — because it has never been mentioned to them by a doctor.

Why doctors don't talk about this

I've thought about this a lot, and I want to be fair about it.

Doctors work within a system. That system is built around interventions that can be standardized, prescribed, and billed. A medication can be prescribed. A surgery can be scheduled. A fast cannot be prescribed in the same way — it requires patient education, monitoring, preparation, and a level of commitment that most patients aren't ready for and most clinical practices aren't set up to support.

There's also the liability question. If a doctor tells a patient to water fast and something goes wrong, that doctor is exposed in a way they're not exposed when they prescribe a medication that's been FDA-approved. The system creates incentives to stay within the approved toolkit, even when the evidence for other approaches is compelling.

I'm not saying there's a conspiracy to hide this information. I'm saying the system has structural reasons to not surface it, and the result is that men who could benefit from knowing about it don't know about it.

What fasting does to the body — the mechanism

When you stop eating, your body shifts from a fed state to a fasted state. In the fasted state, insulin drops, and the body begins mobilizing stored energy. One of the key processes that activates during extended fasting is autophagy — the body's cellular cleanup mechanism, where damaged and dysfunctional cells are broken down and recycled.

Autophagy is not a fringe concept. The 2016 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Yoshinori Ohsumi for his work on the mechanisms of autophagy. It is one of the most important biological processes in the human body, and it is dramatically upregulated during fasting.

In the context of the prostate, the hypothesis — supported by the study data — is that autophagy helps clear hypertrophied (overgrown) prostate cells, reducing the overall volume of the gland. The anti-inflammatory effects of fasting, combined with the hormonal changes that occur when insulin and IGF-1 drop, appear to create conditions in which the prostate can return toward a normal size.

This is also consistent with what I experienced personally. I did my first extended fast about six weeks after I started the whole food plant-based diet. The combination of dietary change and fasting produced results that I don't believe either intervention would have produced alone.

How I approached fasting — and how I coach men through it

I want to be direct: I did not start with an eight-day water fast. That would have been reckless. I built up to extended fasting gradually, starting with intermittent fasting — a 16-hour eating window — and working up through 24-hour fasts, then 48-hour fasts, before attempting anything longer.

Extended water fasting is not something to approach casually. You need to understand how to prepare your body, how to monitor yourself during the fast, how to recognize warning signs, and how to refeed properly afterward. Done wrong, it can cause real harm. Done right, it can be one of the most powerful healing tools available.

When I coach men through the protocol, fasting is one of the five pillars — not the only one, and not the first one. The dietary foundation comes first. The mental and emotional work runs alongside everything else. Fasting is a tool within a larger system, not a standalone cure.

What I want you to take from this

I'm not asking you to fast tomorrow. I'm not asking you to do anything before you're ready.

What I'm asking you to do is recognize that the information your doctor gives you is not the complete picture. It's the picture that fits within the system your doctor operates in. There is other evidence. There are other options. And you have the right to know about them.

The 39 percent study exists. The autophagy research exists. The dietary data exists. None of it is hidden — it's in the journals, it's publicly available, it's findable by anyone willing to look. The problem is that most men don't look until they're scared enough to look, and by then they've often already made decisions they can't undo.

You're reading this, which means you're looking. That's the first step. The next one is deciding what you're willing to do with what you find.

If you want to understand how fasting fits into a complete protocol — how to do it safely, how to combine it with the dietary and lifestyle changes that make it most effective, and how to build toward the kind of results I experienced — I'm here to walk you through it.

Reply to any of my emails, or book a free 20-minute call. No pitch. Just a conversation.