The best of all medicines are resting and fasting. — Benjamin Franklin

The best of all medicines are resting and fasting.

Author: Benjamin Franklin

Insight: We live in a culture that treats our bodies like machines that need constant fuel and optimization. We're taught that more is better—more productivity, more nutrients, more exercise, more supplements. But Franklin's old-fashioned advice points to something we keep forgetting: sometimes doing less is the actual medicine. When you're run down, your instinct is usually to push harder or add something—a new vitamin, another coffee, a workout to "burn off the sickness." But rest and fasting work differently. They're not passive; they're active restoration. Rest lets your immune system focus its energy where it's needed. Fasting—even just eating less or skipping a meal—gives your digestive system a break, which paradoxically frees up resources for healing. It's the opposite of our grab-and-go mentality, which is probably why we resist it so much. The counterintuitive part is that these "medicines" are free and require zero willpower to use correctly; they require letting go. In a world selling us expensive solutions to every problem, the most radical thing might be to simply stop for a while and see what happens.

Source: Poor Richard's Almanack, 1733