Kind: captions
Language: en
this distinction between chronic caloric
restriction and fasting
um
that I find really interesting and led
us for the sake of this discussion
assume that we have a person who is
willing to endure an unlimited amount of
suffering
um and you even you've talked a lot
about the book Unbroken that you read
about World War II people in Japanese
concentration camps and they were
literally being starved and obviously
all of them got lean so what I want to
understand is okay fasting seems to have
all these tremendous benefits
chronic caloric restriction has some but
also has like this really damaging
psychological component if there was no
damaging psychological component
would they be equal or is there still
some difference
it all depends on how you do the caloric
restriction so because it's not just
about the calories it's about the
hormones right so you have to sort of
take it not to sort of this two
compartment problem you have to take it
to like a three compartment problem
right there's what's coming in there's
what's stored and there's what's being
used okay so most people only think of
sort of the two compartments and then
the storage is sort of left over that's
not the way the Body Works
if insulin is high your body is going to
store calories remember insulin is a
nutrient sensor it tells your body that
hey energy is coming in you're eating
you need to store some of this right and
so so you eat breakfast lunch dinner you
get somebody on a low calorie diet like
if you were on 700 calories a day but I
gave you insulin could I make you fat
yeah absolutely whoa
because think about it this way if you
have insulin your body and so if you
think about it physiologically
if you have insulin your body goes into
a storage mode because it's a hormone
insulin is a hormone it tells your body
food is coming in and even if you don't
give food if you just give insulin
you're going to switch your body into
this mode where it thinks that food is
coming in so it's going to store energy
so imagine that for example you are a
coal you know a coal uh plants right the
power plant you get 2 000 tons of coal
coming in and you burn 2 000 tons of
coal that's fine if you have a storage
compartment too so if you're you know if
you do a thought experiment say say you
have 2 000 tons of coal coming in but
you divert the whole thing over to uh or
a thousand tons of coal into storage
well you only have a thousand left so
you're going to feel tired and cold and
hungry and you're going to get fat at
the same time right that's what's going
to happen but it's because of the way
that you've diverted off the energy so
think about it from a human body
standpoint suppose you have 2 000
calories coming in 2 000 calories going
out now you artificially inject insulin
well you shuttle a thousand calories
immediately into body fat and you have a
thousand calories left
to burn well what's going to happen your
your body heat generation is going to go
down your heart rate is going to slow
you're going to feel tired you're going
to feel hungry because you want to get
more energy right that's the signal for
you to get more energy so that you can
get more you can burn more guess what
that's exactly what happens when you go
on a chronic calorie restricted diet
and the the point is that if you do it
correctly and you you correct that
insulin part of things so that none of
it's going into storage and you can't do
that with chronic calorie restriction
you certainly can but you have to know
that you have to do it properly like
cutting out
processed foods cutting out refined
carbohydrates that kind of thing but it
all depends on that sort of that sort of
toggle in the middle that says how much
goes here how much grease here insulin
what it does is it tells your body to
store fat but it also turns off fat
burning remember fat is purely a store
of energy it's a store of calories so
you're immediately shuttling all your
energy into storage and you have nothing
left
so say you take uh 700 calories that
you're pumping people full of insulin so
that energy is going to go into into uh
storage and 700 is probably the lower
limit of what you could really do but
your body would then try to subsist on
say five six hundred calories of energy
you get really hungry because you're
you've got no energy coming in you
probably wouldn't be able to last very
long but you can still gain weight
there's a great experiment a few years
ago where they actually took the type 2
diabetics and they gave them a lot of
insulin so they went from zero units a
day to 100 units a day over a span of
six months which is a lot and they
dropped the number of calories that they
ate by 300 okay so they're taking
insulin but they're eating less 700 300
calories a day less
so over the span of six months on
average that group gained 20 pounds
20 pounds by eating 300 calories a day
less why because so let's take an
example you're eating 2 000 calories you
go down to 1700 but the insulin is
shuttling 700 of that immediately off to
storage so you're gaining body fat now
your body can only burn 1 000 calories a
day so you feel like crap you feel tired
you feel hungry and you're still gaining
weight and guess what if you do it wrong
which is constantly snacking and eating
cutting out all the dietary fat and
eating all refined carbohydrates which
remember is almost precisely what we
told people to do in the 80s and 90s oh
I remember it well yeah actually
I had a tub of licorice because it was
fat free and I would just eat it and eat
it I'm like it's fat free what's
happening why am I getting fat yeah that
was a very confusing time it makes
perfect sense from like because but you
have to think of that additional step
that is what is the body actually doing
it's this sort of flip the switch so
when you eat your storing body fat what
you don't eat when insulin is going down
you're going to burn body fat you're
actually going to you can't burn body
fat if insulin is high it technically we
say it inhibits lipolis let's ask then
the reverse question so I fully accept
that all food is a signaling molecule
That's triggering a Some Cascade of
hormones
I know what to do if I want to store a
lot of fat I'm going to eat a lot of
processed carbohydrates that are going
to remove all my Society mechanisms and
it's going to spike my blood glucose
like crazy my body's gonna pump a bunch
of insulin to make sure that that gets
pulled out of the bloodstream I'm going
to get fat okay
is there a diet that's optimized on the
exact opposite side where I'm taking in
a very satiating amount of calories but
it's dropping my insulin or failing to
trigger my insulin is maybe the right
way to think of it and therefore I'm
eating maybe more than your average bear
but I'm actually getting leaner
certainly lots of them uh there and the
principles are much the same one is you
want to avoid sugar because sugar the
way that we process fructose is sort of
particularly bad and that's why sugar is
particularly fattening really and that's
that's true if you're a bear you're
eating a lot of ripe berries and stuff
because you're trying to gain fat and
it's also true as anybody knows if
you're eating a lot of cookies and
brownies you're probably going to gain
weight the
um the other thing is you can't eat all
the time because again it's a cycle
between feeding and fasting that's what
we're supposed to do if you don't give
your body time to burn off all those
calories that it's taken in which means
the fasting period you're gonna overall
gain weight it's like a one-way valve if
you go in but don't come out eventually
everything just gets bigger same thing
that energy cannot come out if your
insulin levels are high that's just the
way it's designed and it's sort of like
you know if you see a tanker you know
those tanker trucks on the side of the
road sometimes you think oh they'll
never run out of fuel because they have
all this fuel but they do run out of
fuel of course because you can't access
that fuel that's in that big container
same thing with your body fat right it's
locked away if you do not lower your
insulin levels you will never have
access to those stores of energy
once you lower it hey all that energy
just comes flowing in and and for people
who are who are on Long who have done
longer fast and this is what's so
interesting about the whole process when
you actually do it is that the hunger
starts to go down significantly the
psychological hunger goes up because
people are like oh I really want to eat
that but the physical hunger actually
tends to go down meaning it's measured
by things like ghrelin or whatever so
hunger hormones and so on and and people
you talk to people and you know I've
done it live I know lots of people have
done it and they they all say the same
thing by day three day four the hunger
is almost completely disappeared and why
is that well because you're fueling
yourself from your body fat stores and
therefore you actually have no no need
to eat it's it's it's it's an
interesting process which people never
think about but it's completely
physiologic
yeah so I've done my longest fast was
five days
I've done many fasts that are 24 hours
to 72 hours I find 72 while not pleasant
I find it relatively easy I don't
decline in performance but day four and
five I do and I'm super curious to know
if I am doing something wrong like am I
supposed to be supplementing and I'm
talking a true water only fast
um
should I be eating salt should I be
taking magnesium like what what is it
yeah everybody's different certainly
some people salt is probably the main
thing people get into trouble with
because we're on a relatively high salt
diet and then to go to a sort of zero
which is water only zero salt is a bit
of a transition sometimes so some people
find that their pressure blood pressure
goes low
um and uh that that makes them not feel
so good so a lot of people have found
better from taking salt either salt and
water or just the salt the like a under
their tongue even magnesium is another
one that that tendo low and some people
find it helpful to supplement there as
well the other things that people find
useful is to take some broth for example
which is going to give you it's not a
true fast none of these I was gonna say
that sounds like cheating to me yeah
they're they're sort of like um I call
them variants because they're not the
water only fast is really a true fast
but you can get a lot of the benefits by
taking some of these other things and it
makes it easier so it's a sort of a
trade-off it's sort of like Bulletproof
Coffee which is of course not fasting
but it's a very very pure sort of fat
and therefore it's going to provide a
lot of satiety and then that you go
through the day maybe it allows you to
go long and overall you might wind up
positive in terms of uh weight loss and
so on so lots of people certainly have
found that useful not everybody but
certainly it's it's that but water only
fast can be more difficult because of
the associated electrolyte uh problems
your body is supposed to handle it
but it doesn't always sure so if we're
looking at longevity and we want to
prolong life as much as possible and
anti-cancer in fact this might be the
perfect transition into your uh
brilliant synthesis of what's going on
from cancer Paradigm 1.0 to 2.0 to 3.0 I
found that absolutely fascinating in
your new book cancer code it was subtle
and yet changes everything and if you
can just like give a quick sort of
thesis on that one two three thing I
think that really help people yeah yeah
and and you know I'm not the one who
made it up I just was the one to sort of
explain it sort of in an accessible way
and honestly it's It's the Most
Fascinating story in medicine today I
think is cancer because it's undergone
this tremendous change in the last sort
of 10 20 years and no one even talks
about it and what I talk about is sort
of the these modern paradigms of cancer
so the way that we look at cancer and
the reason they're important is because
they determine what sort of treatments
we use so the first sort of modern
Paradigm of cancer is sort of this
cancer is a cell that grows too much so
you have breast cancer for example you
have a breast cell now something happens
to that normal breast cell okay so it
starts off as a normal cell but somehow
mutates into this breast cancer cell or
this lung cancer cell and this lung
cancer cell then grows and grows and
grows and then it moves around and
spreads or this is called metastasis
then you die so the first Paradigm is
hey this is a cell that grows too much
so therefore our treatments are actually
ways to kill cells and that's the sort
of core of modern oncology is to cut it
out which is surgery you can burn it
with radiation or you can poison it with
chemotherapy chemotherapy is really
nothing more than a selective toxin it
kills some cells faster than it kills
another cell so that's why you have
these horrific side effects their hair
falls out they nauseated all the stuff
you think about with chemotherapy is
because the idea of chemotherapy is to
kill the cancer slightly faster than you
kill the patient that's really it it's a
selective toxin but that's the Paradigm
and it makes sense from that you know
because if it's if it's growing too much
then kill it that's basically it now
that reaches limits probably by the 60s
and by then we're talking about genetics
so everybody started to look at genetics
and then that's the sort of next huge
paradigm shift is that we were trying to
understand at a deeper level not we
weren't saying that cancer cells didn't
grow the question we're trying to ask is
why are they growing and so we said well
the answer now is that they have genetic
mutations that lets them grow too much
and sure enough when we looked we found
these onko genes and tumor suppressor
genes so genes that control growth and
when this cell gets a mutation in one of
these critical genes then it would grow
too much and that made perfect sense
so the point of of something like lung
cancer and smoking because we know
smoking for you know clearly causes lung
cancer
smoking is not a targeted mutation
device it's very non-specific you're
just creating damage all over the place
so what they said was that this is a
random genetic mutation so you're just
creating damage in the genome and if
you're damaging a lot you're getting a
lot of chances to hit this critical
growth Gene area and it's going to let
cells grow so this was the the genetic
Paradigm which really has dominated
cancer medicine for the last 50 years
and so instead of trying to kill cells
this led to new treatments and instead
of trying to kill cells we're trying to
correct the genes that controlled it and
the first few drugs of the sort of
genetic Paradigm were just amazing so by
the 2000s we were like we are going to
cure cancer so we did this whole Human
Genome Project we said all we need to do
is map out all the genes look at the
cancers map out those genes and see
what's different we're going to find one
or two genetic mutations we're going to
find a drug to cure that one or two
genetic mutations boom we're going to
cure cancer and that was really what we
thought at the time it was a time of
incredible promise but it didn't work
that was
like if you look at the number of
genetic treatments of cancer that really
made a difference you're talking maybe
five right in the last 40 years five
really good drugs that's not a lot and
that's a long way from curing cancer
and the problem is when we went back so
they did the Human Genome Project then
they did this cancer genome Atlas
where they mapped out all these genes
they took 30 000 cancers mapped out the
genes and said what are the one or two
critical genetic mutations they didn't
find one or two each cancer had like 50
or 100 genetic mutations and and it was
crazy because if you had a Cancer Clinic
where one patient had lung cancer so
patient a had lung cancer patient B had
lung cancer
patient A's lung cancer had 50 mutations
patient B had 50 mutations completely
different mutations
so how are you going to treat this you
can't get 50 drugs for patient a and 50
completely new drugs per patient B it's
just impossible and that's why cancer
treatment just sort of slowed to an
absolute crawl I was just uh you know a
huge amount of disappointment
um and that sort of spelled the end it
wasn't a random genetic mutation so it
wasn't that genes weren't mutated it was
what is driving these mutations and that
sort of spawned this whole next paradigm
shift to cancer Paradigm 3 which so few
people people talk about and I don't
understand why because I I find it
endlessly fascinating and what we were
trying to do we weren't trying to uh
invalidate that these genetic mutations
because clearly these genes had
mutations what we're trying to
understand was once again try and get to
that one level deeper of why why are
these genes mutating and the totally
fascinating answer that they came up
with is that it was an evolutionary
process not a forward moving
evolutionary process it was a backwards
evolutionary process towards a more
primitive form of our cell which was
there from Evolution and what's fast is
that if you look at Pathologists like
the way that people who look under the
the microscope at cells that is exactly
how they describe cancer cells primitive
uh undifferentiated like gotta use you
use an analogy or a metaphor in the book
about a bear and a tutu that I thought
oh my God like it lets you conceptualize
what this is so perfectly will you walk
people through that
yeah and the point is that the cancer is
actually a reversion to a more primitive
form of the cell and it's a sort of like
if you have a wild bear you can raise it
and teach it to dance and wear a tutu
but it's still a wild animal so if you
provoke it it'll still kill you like
it'll still wear a tutu but it'll still
kill you so it reverts to being that
wild animal and our cells are very much
like that so we came from unicellular
organisms so all of us sort of evolved
from small bacterias and so on fungi and
so on and under the right conditions
these cells actually undergo an
evolutionary process back towards this
more survivalist sort of primitive cell
a single-celled organism its primary
mandate is to compete with other cells
as opposed to a multicellular organism
which its mandate is cooperation and
they are fundamentally against each
other as we move from cellular
competition to Cellular cooperation we
had to put on all these instructions on
top these genetic instructions to
suppress all these competitive urges
when you cause genetic damage and strip
away you damage all these sort of
controlling layers
what shines through is that competitive
nature and then the cells those cancer
cells actually behave exactly like
unicellular organisms and that's
fascinating again because our own immune
system has actually identified these
cells as foreign cells like there are
you know immune cells in our body that
identify sort of self our own Cells
versus other cells so you avoid Friendly
Fire and cancer cells are actually
identified intrinsically without being
having seen them ever before your own
body will identify these as foreign
cells and Destroy them and that's really
the reason why we don't have cancer sort
of uh with 99 of the population because
when you suppress the immune system of
course you increase your risk
significantly of developing these
cancers because it's our immune system
which is playing that anti-cancer role
so what you're trying to do is weed out
so our body has these very efficient
anticancer mechanisms where we go around
and we're hunting down these sort of you
know anarchists and stuff trying to
these people who are not going to follow
the rules who are who are competitors
not Cooperators we try and hunt those
down and we kill them so that we stay
cancer-free it's only at the end of you
know only with time uh when stuff falls
through or with chronic damage such as
with lung uh lung cancer for example the
smoking that that you're damaging the
genome and those controlling organisms
and allowing to shine through which is
called an activism which explains a huge
amount like that this Theory just
explains so much about cancer because if
you think about
say let's take lung cancer again so you
have 50 mutations in patient a 50
different mutations in cancer in in
patient B but their lung cancers look
exactly the same under the microscope
how does that happen like if you have a
hundred mutations your cell should look
completely different than this other guy
cell yet they look precisely the same
under the microscope it's because it was
the original sort of cell You're simply
stripping stuff away you're not adding
mutations on you're actually stripping
those away and what's fascinating is
that the genetic so all this genetic
stuff that we've done when you look at
the mutations of cancer they're all
concentrated in this area which is the
the the difference between unicellular
and multicellular organisms so they did
these studies where they take all the
genes and they say let's rank them by
evolutionary age so these are the
ancient genes these are the recent genes
and they put them on and then they say
where are the cancer
mutations the truth is hitting your
career goals is not easy you have to be
willing to go the extra mile to stand
out and do hard things better than
anybody else but there are 10 steps I
want to take you through that will 100x
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link in today's description alright my
friend back to today's episode they're
all clustered right around the point
between unicellular and multicellular
organisms I'm like that is so
interesting so then of course the reason
it's important is because now you have
if this is an evolutionary problem if
these are actually unicellular organisms
well now we actually have ways to fight
these unicellular organisms and that's
our immune system and that's to this
sort of explosion and interest in
immunotherapy because we're not trying
to kill cells with immunotherapy we're
not trying to
um we're not trying to fix genetic
mutations what we're trying to do is
treat these cancers like a foreign
species like an invasive foreign species
and be able to identify them and also
bolster our own immune system to attack
them but now you're getting a totally
different Paradigm because you're the
concept of what this disease is it's an
evolutionary disease
which requires immune system to fight it
because that's our own defenses that's
fascinating like that's a totally
different Paradigm and such an
interesting uh way to look at it and
it's going to lead to all these new
treatments so in the book I talk about
immunotherapy we talk about the obscopal
effect which is how radiation plus
immunotherapy may actually help unearth
these things we talk about adaptive
therapy where
perhaps you don't have to give maximally
tolerated doses of chemotherapy because
you may not need it it may be more
effective to use smaller doses
all stems from the understanding of The
evolutionary Paradigm of cancer as
opposed to the genetic Paradigm of
cancer where you would never be able to
understand why these treatments that are
coming up now are going to be effective
man this this is really feels and you
talk about sort of the hope this brings
in the book and it really does feel
hopeful you know because if you've
pursued something to a dead end it's
like until you have another path to go
down it's a pretty ugly place to be one
of the things that you outline in the
book that I thought was really
enlightening is what it is exactly the
you talk about the seed in the soil so
what is it about our Modern Life that
creates this soil that stresses the cell
just enough that it is like sort of in
scramble mode of whoa I have to I'm
constantly looking for this new mutation
or stack of mutations it's going to
allow me some path through this
cigarette smoke this dietary problem
this whatever
um if you can walk people through what
we've sort of done to the soil and
please if you can't mention the when you
talked about the bomb in in Hiroshima
and Nagasaki how they were expecting a
certain cancer rate but they didn't get
it and why that is so interesting yeah I
thought I thought so too thanks this
concept is that you need both genetics
as well as the environment like both are
important I'm not saying one is more
important but you have to have a seed
which is obviously all the genetic
material that you need to become a plant
for example but you have to plant it in
the right soil so you take a seed you
put it in the desert it doesn't grow you
put a seed put it in proper soil and
give it water it grows so cancer
the seed is there in every single one of
our cells
in not just us but every animal
practically that we know has that seed
of cancer because cancer of course is
our sort of genetic ancestor that that
was the unicellular organism from way
way back
yeah exactly the selfish sort of the
unicellular organism but that seed of
cancer is there luckily if we prevent it
from growing by using the proper soil we
can actually prevent it and you look at
these things that cause
um you know cause cancer they're called
carcinogens uh turns out our diet is one
of the biggest ones so other than
tobacco smoke
diet is sort of way up there and when
you look at carcinogens there's a
specific sort of thing that have to be
chronic and they have to be sort of
sub-leafly damaging which is the point
about Hiroshima that is radiation we
know causes cancer for sure so when they
drop the atomic bomb they thought man
we're going to get a lot of cancers
coming down the pipes but it was a
single large dose of radiation not a
chronic low dose of radiation which does
cause a lot of cancer so they did these
Atomic uh they did these studies where
they followed people for for years and
years and there was a little bit of
extra cancer but like on on average way
less so when they estimate how many
months of you know months or years of
life lost it was like two months
something like that so people these
people were living like 82 years and
they estimate that that that Atomic
radiation maybe cost them like two
months of Life way less because we are
thinking that these people are going to
get
you know cancers at age 20 sort of thing
and that didn't happen because it wasn't
this chronic thing and that the reason
it has to be chronic is that cancer is
an evolutionary process if you do not
have chronic selection pressure you
don't get this change if you just change
the mutations and you need they're going
to be random and they need to occur over
time
they have to occur continuously because
that's the way that selection Pressure
Works in an evolution in a population of
cells that is if you if you select for
certain cells and do it once that's not
going to be that effective if you keep
selecting for those cells like you only
take the the the the cells that are sort
of survivalists which are the the sort
of more primitive cells then you over
time you're going to select the
population that's going to have more of
those sort of survivalist cells if you
have a single event
there's no further selection pressure
that is uh if you look at you know if
you look at evolution of species it's
the same thing you can't simply have one
event it has to be a continuous
selection pressure that produces that
change and that's why it has to be a
chronic thing so it's tobacco smoking
for example you look at viruses so if
you have a single terrible virus like
hepatitis A which is causes feminent
hepatic failure it kills you but it
doesn't give you cancer as opposed to
Hepatitis B which is a chronic virus it
doesn't kill you but it certainly does
give you cancer H pylori in the stomach
for example a very low-grade chronic
infection is what gives you cancer not a
single sort of feminine episode of of
inflammation that doesn't give you
cancer so
um you know all of these these sort of
things UV light and so on they're all
chronic damage and that's part of that
soil and diet plays a huge role and the
promise of course is that if you look at
traditional populations like when they
looked at populations that live very
simply so very low sugar very natural
foods they weren't eating all the time
very little obesity so people in Africa
that they had studied Dennis Burkett in
the 50s and 60s and then in the Inuit
people which live in the far north for
example
they used to say
these Expeditions up to the Arctic
Circle to find why these these native
peoples these Inuit were immune to
cancer then of course they became
civilized we gave them you know sugar we
gave them white flour because they
didn't go bad then they got all the same
cancers turns out they weren't immune at
all it was their environment it was the
soil that was so important but the
promise is that if you can fix that soil
that means you could actually
overcome the genetics
not in all cases but in many cases
especially of these obesity Associated
cancers the breast cancer colorectal and
so on and that's the sort of really
important thing in the sort of take-home
message for a lot of people is that the
diet actually plays a massive role and
by understanding it perhaps you can
reduce your risk of cancer and that's
where fasting as a way to control your
weight as a way to control type 2
diabetes which is a risk factor as those
are going to lower the risk factor for
obesity which is a big risk factor for
those obesity Associated cancers but
it's your lifestyle that's going to play
a big role not necessarily some drug
that's or anything like that so it's all
in your own hands it's amazing
that that is truly amazing now as one
sort of final point on this
is is The Chronic stressor is that
simply being tipped into growth mode or
is it inflammation coupled with the fact
that we're tipped into growth mode like
what is it specifically about our diet
that's causing this perfect soil for
mutations over time
um that leads to cancer
I think they're I think both are are
correct so if you have a chronic
hyperinsulinemia insulin is a very
powerful growth factor uh inflammation
as a cause of chronic damage in itself
will cause cancer so you look at the
disease such as ulcerative colitis or
Crohn's colitis these are called the
so-called inflammatory bowel diseases
there's this chronic inflammation in the
bowel and what you get is a super high
risk of cancer down the down the line so
both inflammation and hyperinsulinemia
and obesity all of them are risk factors
and this is the important thing is that
there's a lot of different things that
can contribute to the risk of cancer
it's not just that if one is right then
the other is wrong I mean both are
correct so if you eat foods that are
highly inflammatory and a lot of people
feel that for example omega-6 seed oils
perhaps are in in these big doses that
we take perhaps those are highly
inflammatory that even if it doesn't
cause obesity could be a factor because
we know inflammation chronic
inflammation can certainly do that so
both can be very important we really
recommend there's two types of fasting
there's there's short-term intermittent
fasting which we recommend people do
every day that everybody fast every day
for between 12 and 16 hours depending on
what your target is and that means that
you don't eat at least three hours
before you go to sleep hopefully going
to sleep at a reasonable hour and so
that gives you 12 to 16 hours of fasting
and eight hour feeding window we
recommend that that in that eight hour
feeding window that the you know whole
natural food diet that you eat excludes
all the chemicals in the processed foods
and the other stuff and in doing that
you get the quantity and quality of
nutrients you need and you give yourself
a 16 per hour period of fasting every
day and cumulatively that's thought to
induce changes and and stimulate factors
that are that promote healing it also
helps minimize overeating and so you
know the net effect of that intermittent
fasting which virtually everybody can do
safely on their own is something we
recommend and then periodically we
recommend people take a longer period of
time to do water only fasting in our
Clinic we fast people from 5 to 40 days
and so typically faster two three four
weeks of time that needs to be done in
America only for people that are obese
no no not at all in fact most of our
patients uh it's high blood pressure
diabetes autoimmune diseases lymphoma
and we have also healthy people that are
just coming in for a shorter period of
time like a week the reason we talk
about Supervision in that regard is
number one not everybody's a good
candidate for fasting some people should
not be fasting give me something
candidates
well if people have for example Cranium
levels over 2.0 their kidney function
isn't adequate putting them on a fast
could shut their kidneys down result in
kidney failure and death
um if they have sorry I've never heard
that but why would your kidney shot
because when you go on a fast you
massively mobilize a detoxification
response and the kidneys can only
process so much material and if you
overload the kidneys you end up with a
kidney failure situation and that's you
know you've heard recently there's been
people that have tried dry fasting and
dry fasting particularly puts a heavy
load on the kidney and there was a death
associated with one of its proponents
just because you know you have to have a
solute in order for the kidneys to
function you have to have a way of
getting the material that's mobilized
out of the system why does fasting
trigger detoxification
well if you think about it when you're
going on a fast there's nothing for the
body to do except mobilize its reserves
and in water fasting particularly in a
resting state those reserves are
predominantly fat in fact we've done a
study recently at the True North Health
Center where we've used a dexa scanner
with a software that allows to do whole
body composition we've determined not
only is mostly fat mobilized during
water only fasting but specifically and
preferentially visceral fat
so a person might lose say for example
20 of their adipose tissue but they'll
lose 50 60 percent of their of their
visceral fat which is really exciting
much faster than for example being on a
a low carbohydrate diet in terms of the
ratio of visceral fat mobilization to uh
subcutaneous fat and in that fat
contains a lot of fat soluble materials
and that's where a lot of toxins are
stored when those fats are mobilized you
get a increasing load pcbs dioxin
pesticide residues Etc all these fat
soluble nutrients are rapidly mobilized
processed and eliminated but you need to
have the capacity to actually eliminate
materials and most of those materials
are eliminated in the urine that's the
blood being processed by the kidneys and
if you do a fat bopsy on any person
you'll find hundreds of different
chemicals in various concentrations and
if you track back how did those
chemicals get in the body where did they
come from obviously if people take drugs
or they smoke and they drink alcohol and
they eat foods from the environment that
are polluted that's a 10 potential
Source but about 90 percent According to
some researchers got there from one
behavior and that's eating animal Foods
animals biologically concentrate the
toxins from their environment so a
calorie of animal food could have two to
a thousand times the concentration of a
given chemical compared to say a
plant-based Food calorie and so the
consumption of large amounts of animal
food potentially exposed people to
proportionally higher ratios of these
materials and it's also why people on
very high animal food diets often have a
much more difficult time adapting to the
fasting State initially because there's
just literally more to process and
eliminate but it does and so that's
particular I might mention true of
refined animal products just like
refined plant products have particular
problems so I think we need to be clear
that it's actually these highly
processed foods of any kind that seem to
be the biggest sources of concentration
of of chemicals it's not necessarily the
brown rice that's the main problem that
might be the rice syrup or it's the
products that the highly concentrated
products that result in the largest
concentrations of materials on
undesirable materials when you fast
though the body rapidly mobilizes these
materials if you fast and exercise them
once you've depleted your glycogen
stores after say 24 or 48 Hours the only
way the body would get the needed
glucose to maintain muscle activity or
excess brain activity would be through
gluconeogenesis you'd have to break down
proteins in order to get that so what
happens is if you fast and exercise you
actually lose more weight but more of
its lean tissue if you fast and rest you
you mobilize predominantly fat and
specifically and preferentially visceral
fat so in addition to making sure a
person's a good candidate for fasting
with a History exam and lab we also need
to make sure they rest during fasting
now there's modified fasting when you
take a certain amount of calories
therefore you have more glucose
available you're able to you know
minimize gluconeogenesis that's a
different process water only fasting
though needs to be done resting if
you're going to maximize detox preserve
lean tissue and maximize fat loss and
that we've been able to prove now in a
we've actually done this and we've done
you know before during after fasting six
week follow-ups we've got the data and
so we can put a lot of the old wives
tales to rest that paper will be
published later this year and and I
think that'll really make people aware
of just why this rest which is so
contrain to people trying to maximize
weight loss is important with fasting
and you know if the goal is to really
detoxify the best way to do it is Prep
properly before fasting really important
people that try to say quit coffee at
the same time they're going on a fast
really undermine themselves because the
caffeine withdrawal is actually quite
difficult fasting isn't so difficult if
you prep well all of a sudden fasting
doesn't even look that hard people go to
cooking classes they're interact they go
down to the dining room they interact
with people even on these long fast two
three four five weeks and they're do
they do fine but they are resting and so
resting in some ways is a little bit
harder but it's more effective I say
it's harder because you'll detox more
you'll feel worse but we don't care how
you feel we care how well you get so if
you you feel bad and fasting doesn't
bother me as long as you get well you'll
totally forgive us and so next time you
fast you want to make sure you rest
during that doesn't mean you can't do
some stretching you can't do meditation
there's things you can do but they're
more passive and then you look at how
your recovery is plus fasting you'll
find it's really quite fabulous because
not only you get rid of the inflammation
and the joint pain and some of the
chronic injuries but then you recover
quickly and we and we're able to
demonstrate that quantitatively now as
as lean tissue recovers fat continues to
go down after fasting so you're losing
fat you're losing fat you continue lose
fat even though you're regaining quote
weight because glycogen water fiber and
muscle come back after fasting fat does
not what's interesting is you have two
pounds of glycogen so you know you're
going to get that two pound back you've
got fiber that has to go back in the gut
unless you're eating an all meat diet
then there is no fiber and there's also
hydration there's a physiological
dehydration with fasting now that's more
when you're exercising you dehydrate
more so it looks like you're losing more
weight but all you're doing is
dehydrating why are you dehydrating if
you're drinking water
it doesn't matter if you're drinking
water if it's you hold it in the cells
there's a physiological adaptation to
fasting where there's a natural
dehydration State it's probably part of
the conservation mechanism there's a lot
of weird things that happen very
contrain
fasting like for example you know we
talked about exercise increasing brain
derived neurotrophic factor that
preserves the brain and protects the
nervous system it also increases in
fasting you think about exercise you're
vigorously active fasting you're laying
on your around and not doing much they
both are changing these same things in
the same way it's it's really really
um
non-intuitive but when we look at the
science if we look at the data and then
we look at the clinical outcomes it's
really apparent and now we're tracking
people 30 35 years I've got people now
that are in their 80s that we started
off in their 50s and they all say the
same thing including my mother who at 92
had outlived all 50 of her lifelong
friends every one of her friends was
dead she was alone and she said Alan you
need to warn your patient if they're
going to do this diet make younger
friends
so I'm telling people starting right now
make younger friends so when you're
older and you're still around you know
they'll you'll have people to interact
with that I mean you know still
heartbreaking but good problem to have
so talk to me about the longer duration
fast so I know that the longest fast is
like 280 days or I mean just something
absolutely absurd so I knew that it was
physiologically possible but I imagined
it was more proportional to the amount
of body fat that you have but like
somebody with a normal BMI
um maybe we'll Peg them at something
like 15 body fat how long can they fast
water right so an a 155 pound 70
kilogram male okay could go 70 days the
problem is once you get through fasting
you enter a process called starvation
and now once you enter starvation
there's a relatively short period of
time and then you die we don't do that
because it would really be bad for our
outcome data so we're very careful to
avoid that we've had 20 000 walking in
20 000 people walk out we are experts at
not letting people enter into starvation
the other thing with fasting while we're
talking about risks is the refeeding
period if you have a long period of
fasting and you refeed inappropriately
you can get a condition called refeeding
syndrome which can be fatal it's a very
serious problem where electrolyte
balances and all kinds of stuff can
occur we've never seen that because we
have a very specific refeeding protocol
that's followed and we refeed for a
period of no less than half the length
of the fast in a controlled setting so
it is it is important you can also get a
condition called post-fasting edema when
you get off all the greasy salty
processed crap that people are living on
and you do a fast all that gets flushed
out of the body if you then expose a
person to very high concentrations of
sodium like in commercial soups or
something like that the body will suck
that material and fluid up to protect
itself from it and that can result in
post-fasting edema if you do it slowly
you can get back to whatever your normal
diet was without that problem but it has
to happen over a period of time so
there's a refeeding period that's
important particularly in this long-term
fasting you know in the three day the
five day fast for most people that's not
going to result in you know as much of
it of an issue they may get a belly ache
if they eat eat too much food but
they're not going to get the very
serious consequences as you can see in
very long-term fasting now the other
concern here is of course medications
some medications you don't want to
rapidly discontinue
anticoagulant medication steroid
medications any psychotic medications
the rapid withdrawal of those
medications can induce a very serious or
life-threatening response some
medications you want to get off as soon
as possible but you don't want to be
taking those medications during fasting
so medications that might not do that
much Dam damage feeding can be very
serious fasting even non-sterily
anti-inflammatories in common
over-the-counter medications in the
fasting State strongly contraindicated
result in all kinds of Downstream
consequences
supplementation is included lots of
complications in the fasting State
whereas you wouldn't necessarily see any
problem in the feeding State that's one
of the reasons we talk about making sure
before a person undertakes a long-term
fast they have appropriate History exam
and lab remember 99 of patients have no
complications with fasting but one
percent can have very serious
complications important that percentage
be identified monitored so you don't end
with bad outcomes because that's what
gives fasting a bad name is people doing
it inappropriately they continue to work
they get dehydrated which is one of the
main issues with fasting is maintaining
adequate hydration and drinking water
itself won't assure that in fact
drinking too much water can flush your
electrolytes out and result in
water intoxication so if we do not solve
the problem drinking water how do we
solve the problem
right we solve it by resting maintaining
appropriate hydration and allow the
natural recycling mechanisms in the body
to maintain nutritional status and
monitoring people so that we don't get
into a depleted State that's why we're
monitoring electrolytes that's why we do
twice daily examinations on patients so
it is a safe and natural adaptation if
we remember fasting is a biological
adaptation you notice everybody every
human can fast we have to be able to
fast every human that couldn't fast died
because every time spring came late
there was no way to sustain this bulbous
neural net our massively oversized brain
two and a half times the vast of say a
chimp chimps don't fast you don't feed a
chip in a week or so they're dead they
that's why you'll never see chimps
wandering away from the tropics they
live where the constant year-round
supply of food because their brain
doesn't change to burning ketones your
brain is a bi-fuel brain it changes
completely the normal fuel is glucose
and that's your main burner of glucose
is your brain that's the biggest thing
and when the brain goes into fasting
state it changes to burning Ketone
bodies particularly beta hydroxybutyric
acid and it becomes preferentially
burning it just runs a tiny little bit
of glucose and that's the little bit of
gluconeogenesis that continues during
fasting unless you're active then of
course your muscles burn glucose and now
you really start breaking muscle down so
um the brain being a biofuel brain had
to be that way because otherwise humans
when spring came late because we burned
so much glucose in our brain we wouldn't
have been able to make it and this is
the mechanism by which fasting mimicking
diets and keto diets play because if you
go on a very high fat diet or a high fat
high protein diet which some people do
and you don't eat carbohydrates this
fasting mechanism kicks in so your brain
changes over to burning ketones you go
into ketosis and it has a hunger
blunting effect when you're in a ketotic
state you don't feel hunger and as a
consequence it helps people that are
trying to do short-term weight loss the
problem is what's good for short-term
weight loss isn't necessarily the same
thing that's best for long-term Health
stability so in our Clinic we're not a
weight loss clinic we're not looking to
maximize gross weight on the scale over
a short period of time we're interested
in fat loss and improving health so
we're looking at what does it take not
only to live a long life everybody wants
to live their full potential but more
importantly how do you avoid ability how
do you avoid spending the last 79.6
years in debility 16 years in poor
health that the average person is doing
how do you avoid finding yourself unable
to talk or move lying in some nursing
home bed waiting for people to change
your diaper for the last years or
Decades of your life how do you increase
healthy life expectancy not just life
expectancy the years you live fully
functional how do you ensure a good
death that means you live your life to
your full potential one day you go to
sleep you don't wake up because you
reached your genetic potential and not
become debilitated individual for years
and decades where we spend most of our
money ineffectively trying to manage
illnesses that were caused by poor diet
lifestyle choices that's what we're
using fasting do is try to help healthy
life expectancy and then a whole plant
food SOS free diet to sustain it yeah so
I think now Now's the Time to get into
that so the whole idea of no salt no
sugar no oil
this was the thing that really pulled me
in so we used to joke my last company
was a nutrition company and we used to
joke if it tastes good spit it out and
it was just like it's so many things
that taste good are just absolutely
terrible for you and but you know that's
because people are addicted to the
artificial stimulation of these
chemicals we've done a study a taste
adaptation study we've shown with
fasting your actual ability to detect
salt and sugar your hedonic response to
food actually changes and you can taste
vegetables that are naturally high in
sodium but most people don't you know
like they don't notice it after fasting
oh my gosh you think wow this is really
amazing and so good food starts to taste
good again and sometimes the stuff you
used to like is too spicy too salty
because your actual Paladin now it can
adapt back go back to eating that jerky
and stuff eventually you'll get back to
you know crav