Phase 2: The Dry Fast (The Scorch)

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What you need to know

Build up gradually: start with 36 hours, then 72 hours, then 5 days dry. Do not jump straight to a long fast.
The full protocol is 5 days dry followed by 5 days water (not food). Never reverse that order.
Five days dry is the cap because five days is still safe to do at home. Once you are very comfortable with it you can extend a little; some people get their best results from seven to nine days. The deeper the fast, the more aggressive the immune reset, and in my observation the more allergic and autoimmune clearing.
Day 3 is the hard wall (acidotic crisis). Days 4 to 5 are where deep repair and stem cell activity happen.
Feeling worse mid-fast: go on walks, do massages, move the whole system. If it starts to feel really bad, or the pain is excruciating, break the fast. While heart rate, temperature, blood pressure and urination look fine, you can continue.
Stop immediately if your resting heart rate goes above 120 bpm, you stop urinating for more than 12 hours, you feel confused or get blurry vision, or you develop kidney pain or leg swelling.
A cycle is a fast, a refeed and, if the refeed shows a metabolic slowdown, a 30-day T3 course. The next fast opens seven days after the T3 course ends. Fast first, always; T3 before the fast is only for the person fasting has already failed.
Refeeding starts with plain water, about a cup an hour for the first four hours, then kompot. Coconut water waits for day 2. Eating too much too fast is dangerous.
No T3 during the fast. You finish the dry and water fast clean, keep antiviral coverage running through the refeed, and T3 therapy only begins after the first 7 days of refeeding.

Step 1: Getting Ready

Preparing correctly avoids a “detox crash” and makes the fast easier.

Pre-Fast Checklist

Hard Stops:Do NOT start if you are pregnant, have active kidney or heart disease, are underweight (BMI under 18), have a current acute infection, or are on diuretics. These are absolute contraindications, not suggestions.

Support Team:Have you set up a way to check in daily with someone you trust? (Very important for fasts over 3 days).

Choosing Your Path: Preparation comes in two roads.
- Plant-based path (gold standard): A whole-food, salt/oil/sugar-free taper over your final weeks, finishing on raw and steamed vegetables. It heals deeper and gets you closest to fully healed, but it asks for precision.
- Ketogenic path (safer fallback): 50g of carbs a day or less for 1 to 2 months before you start. Far more forgiving and the right call if you are sicker, on many medications, or have struggled with fasting before.
The full breakdown of both paths is on the Preparation page.
Get Your Mind Right: Write down why you are doing this and focus your mind. A strong mindset helps you through the tough emotional parts.

Step 2: Starting Slowly

Do NOT jump straight to 5 days. You must build up your body’s strength.

1. Beginner “The First Step”	Start with a 36-hour dry fast. Then recover fully.
2. Intermediate “The Scorch”	After a successful 36-hour fast (and a week-long break), try 72 hours.
3. Advanced “Deep Repair”	Only after finishing 72 hours successfully, move to 5 days dry, followed immediately by 5 days water (10 days total). This is the full Scorch Protocol fasting block.

Between the build-up fasts: wait a week or so while eating normally before the next step up. Once you are running the full protocol, the rhythm is a cycle: a fast, a refeed and, if the refeed shows a metabolic slowdown, a 30-day T3 course, with the next fast opening seven days after the T3 course ends.

How Deep: Five Days Is the Cap, Not a Wall

I cap the Scorch Protocol at five days dry because five days is still safe to do at home, and it does get a bit difficult by then. Once you are very comfortable with five, you can try to extend it a little longer. Some people get their best results from a seven-to-nine-day fast. The deeper you go, the more aggressive the immune reset, and in my observation the deeper fasts clear more of the allergic and autoimmune load that drives so much chronic illness. The margin narrows with every day past five, so this is an extension you earn with comfortable five-day fasts behind you, not a target you set from the start.

What the evidence says: the measured dry-fasting literature stops at day five. Khoroshilov’s thesis studied six healthy men for 68 hours and his own method is a dry start of one to three days by individual tolerance, then water fasting (Khoroshilov 1994); the two Athens studies took twenty healthy, unmedicated adults through five dry days with a physician checking bloods daily, and their authors call medical supervision obligatory (Papagiannopoulos 2013; Papagiannopoulos-Vatopaidinos 2020), so “safe at home” is my judgement, not theirs. Nothing measures a human past day five without water, and no study compares five against seven to nine days on any immune or clinical endpoint; the one published harm report from a multi-day dry fast is kidney failure on day four, alone, in a single conference abstract (Philip 2026). The deeper immune reset and the allergic and autoimmune clearing are my observation; the regeneration science behind the idea comes from water-type fasting cycles, mostly in mice (Cheng 2014).

Step 3: The Dry Fast (The Scorch)

How it works: Your body starts getting water by burning old, damaged cells and fat. This speeds up deep cleaning (autophagy) and releases new building blocks (stem cells).

The Stages of a 5-Day Fast

The full arc of a dry fast. Day 3 is the hard wall (acidotic crisis); Days 4 to 5 are where the deep repair lives. Five days is the cap I set because it is still safe at home. Days 7 to 9 are the extension some people reach once five days is very comfortable, and where, in my observation, the deeper immune reset and the allergic and autoimmune clearing show up.

Burning Sugar (0–24h): Your body uses up its sugar stores. You will feel hungry, but thirst is usually okay.
The Acidosis Stage (24–72h): Your body switches to burning fat. This creates a mild “acid” state that triggers a massive “deep clean” (The Scorch). You might feel heat inside your body.
The Peak Stage (Day 4–5): This is the deepest repair phase. You might feel a “healing fever.” You will pee less, and your energy might dip before you feel clear-headed.
Regeneration (Day 5+): New cells are released, and you might feel a surge of energy as your body adapts.

What to do During the Fast

Environment: Stay in a cool room with fresh air. Rest as much as possible, only do very light walking.
Daily Habits: Try gentle belly massage, dry skin brushing, and light stretching.
Tracking: Watch your weight (you will lose 1–2 lbs per day), heart rate, and the coating on your tongue.

Feeling Worse: Push Through or Stop?

Feeling worse partway through is the normal texture of a dry fast, and the first response is movement, not panic: go on walks, do massages, move the whole system. The protocol has a few hacks for this, and the organ massage and walking notes on the Tips and Tricks page are the ones I reach for first. The rule from there is simple. If it starts to feel really bad, break the fast. If the pain is excruciating, break the fast. As long as you are tracking heart rate, temperature, blood pressure and urination and they look fine, you can continue. The red flags below are the hard stops that override all of this.

When to Stop Immediately (Red Flags)

Heart rate stays over 120 bpm while resting
Feeling very dizzy or fainting
Strong pain in your kidneys
Feeling confused or having blurry vision
Swelling in your legs or hands
Not peeing for more than 12 hours

Step 3B: The Water Fast (Days 6–10)

After completing the 5-day dry fast, you do not break the fast with food. You transition directly into a 5-day water fast. This is not a cool-down period: it is its own distinct and powerful therapeutic phase.

Order Is Locked: Never Reverse This

The sequence is always dry fast first, water fast second. Going the other way (water fasting before a dry fast) is dangerous and defeats the purpose. The dry fast creates the internal conditions that make the water fast supercharged. Do not attempt this in reverse.

Why the Water Fast After a Dry Fast Is Different

A water fast done after a 5-day dry fast is not the same as a standalone water fast. The dry fast has already completed the deep cellular cleanup: the old damaged cells are gone, toxins have been burned, and your body is primed at a cellular level it cannot reach through water fasting alone. The water fast that follows is supercharged by this state: you are washing through a body that has already been restructured from the inside.

What Is Allowed During the Water Fast Phase

Water: drink freely. Your body is now able to absorb it properly.
No T3 during the fast: T3 is no longer taken during the water fast. It now begins only after the first 7 days of refeeding (see below).
No L-carnitine: we no longer use L-carnitine. In my experience it works against the thyroid gains the protocol is driving (it blunts thyroid hormone’s effect in the tissues), and my working theory is that this is part of why the thyroid slows on carnivore-style diets.
Nothing else: no food, no juice, no broth, no electrolyte supplements.

No T3 During the Fast

Earlier versions of this protocol started T3 during the water fast. That is no longer how it is done. You finish the entire fast, dry first and then water, with no T3 at all. Adding a metabolism accelerator while the body is still deep in fasting scarcity works against the fast instead of with it. The fast has one job, which is to clear the system as deeply as possible. Let it finish that job clean.

What does carry through the transition is your antiviral coverage. The fast clears out the viral reservoirs, and the moment they are most likely to try to re-seed is when food comes back, not during the fast itself. So the viral reactivation protocol stays in place straight through the fast-to-refeed handoff and across the whole refeed: L-lysine back on water day 1, monolaurin and olive leaf with the first meal, valacyclovir as the standing antiviral backbone from refeed day 3 at the earliest (never during the fast, dry or water, because a water fast still leaves the body dehydrated and the drug is renally cleared), ivermectin alongside it as supportive coverage plus the primary antiparasitic, and a valacyclovir loading dose on top at the first sign of a prodrome, once that standing course is actually running. A prodrome that arrives while you are still fasting is the exception: there is no standing course to escalate and no rehydrated body to clear the drug with, so that case converts to water with electrolytes, takes L-lysine at once, breaks the fast once rehydrated, and brings valacyclovir in on the standing rule. The Viral Reactivation page has the full stack.

During the first 7 days of refeeding we also add targeted mitochondrial and metabolic support: methylene blue, and in some cases ethyl pyruvate. This is decided case by case with each person, against their own history and lab numbers, so no fixed amount is published here. It is worked out directly in a consult. Its job is to help the mitochondria come back online as calories return, before any T3 is layered on top.

T3 therapy does not start until after the first 7 days of refeeding. The body needs to be eating again, rehydrated, and metabolically back online before you add the T3 signal. That first week is also when you learn whether this cycle needs T3 at all. Running hot, holding your weight and feeling great: you skip it. Cold, weight stuck, the old symptoms still there: that is the metabolic slowdown T3 is for, and the 30-day course runs on the Wilson’s pattern (ramp, hold, taper) as laid out on the T3 Therapy page. Seven days after the course ends, the next fast opens.

What the evidence says: the judgement of who needs T3 after the fast, and the T3-first exception, are my clinical rules. The literature has no published criterion for who needs T3 after a fast; the nearest objective candidate is the low free T3 and high reverse T3 pattern measured in chronic fatigue patients (Ruiz-Nunez 2018), which is a blood test, not the screen I use.

Step 4: Breaking the Fast (Refeeding)

Very Important: Eating too much too fast can be dangerous. Your refeed should last roughly as long as the fasting block. For a 10-day fast (5 dry + 5 water), give your body at least 10 days before returning to normal eating. Your antiviral coverage keeps running straight through this refeed window. During the first 7 days of refeeding we also add case-by-case mitochondrial support (methylene blue, and in some cases ethyl pyruvate), worked out individually rather than by any published dose. T3 therapy is deliberately not part of this window: it begins only after day 7 of refeeding.

The First 4 Hours: Plain water only. Room temperature, small sips, about a cup (200 to 250 ml) an hour, 1 litre at most over the four hours. No gulping. Not coconut water: after days without water your kidneys are holding on to every drop and your blood is thicker than normal, and a potassium load into that state is the wrong first move. Plain water lets the kidneys wake up.
After Hour 4: Once you are urinating normally, kompot joins (a large pot of water with a little fruit, fresh or dried, simmered, strained, no sugar, cooled; it should taste like faintly flavoured water, not juice). Same pace, never more than a cup an hour. Day 1 total is about 2.5 litres across water and kompot, and nothing else: no food, no electrolyte powders. Caveat: coconut water is not part of day 1. If a diuretic kick-start is clearly needed, a small unsweetened coconut water may be added, not before about 12 hours after the first water, at most 250 ml in an hour and 500 ml for the day.
Day 1 After the Fast: Water, then kompot, nothing else. Continue your antiviral protocol (L-lysine in your water from day 1; monolaurin and olive leaf join with the first cooked food on day 3), and this is where case-by-case mitochondrial support (methylene blue, and in some cases ethyl pyruvate) is layered in. No T3 yet: it does not begin until after day 7 of refeeding.
Day 2 to 7: Day 2 is kompot, unsweetened coconut water in small amounts and broth with no added salt, still liquids only. Day 3 brings the first solid food, cooked fruit and cooked vegetables, and white rice joins on day 4; from there follow the food ladder on the Refeeding Page. Through this first week, keep the antiviral coverage and the case-by-case methylene blue (and, for some, ethyl pyruvate) support going. T3 has still not started.
After Day 7: Decide on T3. If the fast left you running hot, holding your weight and feeling great, you skip it this cycle. If the metabolic slowdown is there, begin the 30-day T3 course. See the T3 Therapy page for the ramp, hold, and taper.

What to Expect at Each Stage

36 Hours: A quick energy reset and light detox.
72 Hours: Deep cleaning starts and inflammation goes down.
5 Days Dry: Maximum repair, new stem cells are released. The body is primed for the water phase.
5 Days Dry + 5 Days Water (10 Days Total): The full protocol fasting block. Deep cellular restructuring followed by a supercharged water fast that carries straight into a guided refeed. This is the definitive version.
7 to 9 Days Dry (the extension): For people who are already very comfortable with five days. The second acidotic crisis, a more aggressive immune reset, and in my observation more clearing of the allergic and autoimmune load. The refeed discipline rises with every extra day.

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References

Papagiannopoulos IA, Sideris VI, Boschmann M, Koutsoni OS, Dotsika EN. Anthropometric, Hemodynamic, Metabolic, and Renal Responses during 5 Days of Food and Water Deprivation. Forsch Komplementmed, 2013;20(6):427–433.5 days of total food and water deprivation was hemodynamically stable in healthy adults (~1.4 kg/day weight loss)
Hyperosmotic Stress Induces Unconventional Autophagy Independent of the Ulk1 Complex.dehydration triggers autophagy independently of the nutrient-sensing pathway, and turns on faster
Hypertonic stress promotes autophagy and microtubule-dependent autophagosomal clusters. Autophagy, 2013.hypertonic (dehydration) stress rapidly clears p62-positive protein aggregates
Absolute fasting: the effect of the complete absence of food and water on the human body (Khoroshilov).metabolic-water production (~0.5–0.8 L/day) from fat and glycogen oxidation
Cahill GF Jr. Starvation in Man. New England Journal of Medicine, 1970.the day-by-day starvation metabolic timeline (glycogen → gluconeogenesis → ketosis)
Khoroshilov IE. Clinical and hygienic aspects of absolute (dry) fasting. Author's abstract of a Candidate of Medical Sciences thesis, Military Medical Academy, St Petersburg, 1994 (abridged English translation, Siberika Publishing, 2020).six healthy men fasted 68 hours without food or water: a 2 to 4 percent fluid deficit, no rhythm disturbance, the acidotic switch around day three; the author's own method is a dry start of one to three days by individual tolerance, then water fasting, and nothing in it measures a fourth day
Papagiannopoulos-Vatopaidinos IE, Papagiannopoulou M, Sideris V. Dry fasting physiology: responses to hypovolemia and hypertonicity. Complement Med Res, 2020;27(4):242-251. PMID 31958788. DOI 10.1159/000505201.ten healthy, unmedicated adults through five dry days under daily medical measurement: compensated hypovolaemia, cortisol and uric acid sharply up, and the authors' own statement that supervision is obligatory and the method is limited to a few days
Philip R, Shahid R, Rehman S, Jussa M, Rao HS, Philip M. Severe dialysis disequilibrium following an extreme dry fast: hypernatremic dehydration and rhabdomyolysis leading to multiorgan failure. Am J Respir Crit Care Med, 2026;212(Suppl 1), ATS conference abstract A51-43. DOI 10.1093/ajrccm/aamag162.4785.the one published harm report from a multi-day dry fast: oliguric kidney injury with rhabdomyolysis after four days alone; a single conference abstract with unknown confounders
Cheng CW, Adams GB, Perin L, et al. Prolonged fasting reduces IGF-1/PKA to promote hematopoietic-stem-cell-based regeneration and reverse immunosuppression. Cell Stem Cell, 2014;14(6):810-823. PMID 24905167. DOI 10.1016/j.stem.2014.04.014.the immune-regeneration finding behind the 'immune reset' idea: 48 to 72 hour fasting cycles in mice drove stem-cell self-renewal; water-type fasting, mostly in mice, with no comparison of dry-fast depth
Ruiz-Nunez B, Tarasse R, Vogelaar EF, Janneke Dijck-Brouwer DA, Muskiet FAJ. Higher Prevalence of "Low T3 Syndrome" in Patients With Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: A Case-Control Study. Front Endocrinol (Lausanne), 2018;9:97. PMID 29615976. DOI 10.3389/fendo.2018.00097.the nearest thing to a published criterion for who might need T3 after a fast: chronic fatigue patients carried lower free T3 and total T3 and more reverse T3 than matched controls at a similar TSH; a blood pattern, not the screen used here

See the full research & citations page for the complete evidence base and how each study is used.