The Miracle Doctor: EVERYONE should start Fasting right now! (NEW SCIENCE) Dr. Mindy Pelz

[0] Feminist women out there are not going to like this.

[1] Women are perishing in this modern world more than men.

[2] Well, that's terrifying.

[3] If we want to exist on this planet, we're going to have to...

[4] Dr. Mindy Peltz.

[5] Renowned functional health expert, best -felling author, and keynote speaker, one of the leading voices in educating us about our bodies.

[6] Spend in two decades helping millions worldwide.

[7] You got pretty famous from talking about this certain subject matter, which is fasting.

[8] What do I need to know?

[9] Research shows it's going to make me stronger.

[10] More lean, 1 ,300 % increase in testosterone in men.

[11] Oh, wow.

[12] We see inflammation go down, growth hormone go up.

[13] It's the hormone that keeps you young and helps you burn fat.

[14] You know where it dropped the most amount of weight.

[15] Belly.

[16] Yep.

[17] Literally takes cells that are turning into cancer, and it gets rid of those.

[18] You are tapping into a healing state that you never knew was there.

[19] I'm sold.

[20] Where do I start?

[21] So the first place to start is...

[22] Menstruation or the Big M is considered a taboo topic.

[23] I'm going to say something which is really embarrassing here.

[24] I know nothing about menstrual cycles.

[25] I'm in a relationship.

[26] What advice have you got for me?

[27] Well, the first is, do you know her cycle?

[28] Moving on.

[29] Tell me about your childhood.

[30] Let me give you gold.

[31] The first two days, give her some space.

[32] If you have any conflict you want to resolve with her, do it between day two and day 12.

[33] Her libido is going to be the highest between day 10 and day 15.

[34] And then here's the goal.

[35] You're going to have to report back to me how this is.

[36] works around day 17 this is where you got to go once in a while on this podcast i have a conversation that i desperately wish i'd had sooner this is one of those conversations i'd heard about fasting but i had no idea no idea at all of its potentially life -changing impact weight loss your sex life a woman's menstrual cycle how to heal from illness and injury the incredible power of fasting.

[37] I'm incredibly happy that you chose to listen to this particular conversation because if you're like me and you've never really taken the time to understand fasting and you don't understand the six types of fasting, then maybe this is the conversation you've always needed to hear because it certainly was for me. You are really, really going to enjoy this one.

[38] Take my word for it.

[39] Mindy, if you took the full body of work that you've produced over the last, let's say, 10 years and the work that you're going to produce over the next 10 years.

[40] And you had to summarize the mission that you're on and why it matters.

[41] How would you do that?

[42] Wow, that's a great question.

[43] I'm trying to empower people to believe in themselves again.

[44] And I want to do that through everything in our lifestyle that taps into our body's own ability to heal itself.

[45] We've gotten so far off course.

[46] We don't even realize that we're giving so much of our health power away, our happiness power away.

[47] And all we've got to do is come back home to ourselves and learn that every single thing inside of us, every cell, every neuron, everything is working for us, not against us.

[48] And we have to stop villainizing our body.

[49] We've got to figure out how to believe in ourselves again.

[50] We're the ones that are going to save ourselves.

[51] And we've just lost our way.

[52] What have we fallen into the trap of believing?

[53] Well, in the health world, we've totally fallen into the trap that if I take this pill, if I do this diet, if I do this exercise, then that will cure me. Nobody cures you.

[54] You cure yourself.

[55] And so you have to start to look at the human body as this self -healing organism that's always figuring out how to keep you alive, how to keep you at your best.

[56] And if you're not feeling at your best, then the only thing you to look at is that there's an interference.

[57] There's a physical, emotional, spiritual, chemical interference that is pulling you away from this power that's inside of you so that you can start to heal.

[58] Once you pull those away, you see yourself in a whole new light.

[59] I mean, this is what fasting did for millions of people.

[60] You just see yourself so differently in what you're capable of doing.

[61] Where have we gone wrong in terms of our attitude towards what it is to be a human?

[62] because you know i often think much of the health advice that is thrown at us these days has this underlying belief that like in some way we're broken yeah yeah oh my i i so agree with you it's the messaging is like you did something wrong you have a genetic profile that you're doomed to have a you know a disastrous outcome and everything is is is exogenous blamed at us and i really think that that comes from not only our health care system, and I'm not trying to bash the health care system, but we have lost our way.

[63] And it comes from, for women, specifically, it comes from the messaging we get from, you know, social media and magazines, like everything is outside in.

[64] We got to go inside out now and start asking what we want on a physical, spiritual, emotional level so that we can create the life we want and stop looking outside for the answers.

[65] We got to go within.

[66] I love that inside inside out inside out living you got pretty famous from talking about this certain subject matter which is fasting now I want to talk about fasting because I've heard about it and I'm sure here I represent a lot of my audience right now I've heard the term fasting I've heard loads of people in recent times over the last I'd say two years get really excited about it and say that it's a good thing yeah but that's really the extent of my knowledge on the subject so let's just start right there you I mean, you wrote a book called Fast Like a Girl.

[67] You've got so much content out on the internet about fasting for both men and women.

[68] This book was written in 2022.

[69] Why?

[70] Why are you so focused on fasting?

[71] Why do I need to care about it?

[72] What's it going to do for me?

[73] It's the quickest antidote to what we just said.

[74] If we've got all this physical, emotional chemical stress coming at us, we've got taste buds, we've got a change.

[75] We've got behaviors we have to change.

[76] there's a lot there.

[77] But I can show you how to compress your eating window into a 10 -hour eating window, leaving 14 hours for fasting, something as simple as 14 hours.

[78] And I can show you how you can start to heal yourself without money, without time.

[79] You are literally tapping into a healing state that you never knew was there.

[80] And I think part of why we've had so many people pour on to YouTube and so many women gravitate to the book is that, it's so once you learn how to fast you start to see your body in this whole new way it can absolutely heal itself so for me fasting became this incredible tool that everybody could do and we just had to learn how to do it the women that i'm watching that are just dropping i mean men and women hundreds of pounds and medications they're getting off of and mental health that's coming back just because I taught them how to compress their eating window and leave a longer time for rest so their body can repair.

[81] That is all each individual is doing that.

[82] I didn't do that.

[83] I'm the type of person that very much needs like stats to believe things.

[84] I'm one of those people.

[85] And once I've got the stats or some kind of like scientific evidence, then I'm all in.

[86] Beautiful.

[87] What do I need to know from a scientific standpoint?

[88] What research has been done on fasting?

[89] Okay.

[90] So let's let's go through the basic principle of fasting, and I think this will help everybody, is that you have two metabolisms.

[91] So you burn energy when you eat and you burn energy when you don't eat.

[92] But there are two different mechanisms.

[93] So when you eat, like let's use myself as an example.

[94] I had eggs and some avocado for like around 11 o 'clock today.

[95] So that's going to bring my blood sugar up.

[96] Now as my blood sugar starts to drop, what's going to happen is my body's going to switch over.

[97] into this other energy system.

[98] And I call this the fat -burning energy system.

[99] I call this one the sugar -burner energy system.

[100] When it switches over into this fat -burning energy system, it starts to make a byproduct called a ketone.

[101] And that ketone will go up into the brain and it starts to repair your brain.

[102] And what most people don't realize is your brain needs 50 % ketones, 50 % glucose.

[103] So you're giving a fuel source to your brain that it desperately needs, which is why people when they fast are like their mental clarity goes up, their cognition improves, their brain fog goes away, because you're literally giving a fuel source to your brain that it may never have been given before.

[104] It takes about eight, somewhere between eight hours to metabolically switch over into this fat burning place.

[105] Ah, okay.

[106] So if I'm doing a podcast and I want to be sharp, I shouldn't eat eight hours before.

[107] Yes.

[108] Oh, fuck.

[109] Did you come back in seven hours?

[110] Seven hours?

[111] Yeah, sure.

[112] I should have given you the memo before we got here.

[113] Yeah, so I think of it like a hybrid car.

[114] You know, you switch over into this fat burning place.

[115] So at eight hours, you start to make the switch.

[116] By about 12 hours, your body's now starting to make a good dose of ketones.

[117] The brain is excited.

[118] So you're getting that mental clarity.

[119] Ketones turn off the hunger hormone.

[120] So you also, when you switch over, there's going to be a point which you're not hungry.

[121] And that all happens at about 12 hours.

[122] But you're also, if you stay there a little longer, if you stay there and you go 14 hours, 15 hours.

[123] So check this out.

[124] Research shows at 15 hours, we see growth hormone go up.

[125] Okay, growth hormone is the hormone that keeps you young and helps you burn fat.

[126] We also see in men, 1 ,300 % increase in testosterone just from somewhere between a 13 to 15 hour fast.

[127] 13 % increase in natural testosterone stores.

[128] And we can explain why that happens in a moment.

[129] And then we start to see inflammation go down.

[130] So all of a sudden, if you have people who have like joints that are hurting, they start doing 15 hours of fasting every day and they're like, God, you know, my joints just don't have that same stiffness in them.

[131] anymore but if you stay in that fasted window you keep going 17 hours your brilliant body turns within and it goes wait a second no food's coming in we better get stronger so it literally takes the bad cells the cells that are slowing you down the cells that are turning into cancer and it gets rid of those they're called senescent cells and it literally recycles them out of your system and it goes into the cells that are still usable and it makes them stronger it fixes the inner cellular parts, we call that atophagy.

[132] And that actually was the, if you want stats, the Nobel Prize in 2015 by a Japanese scientist, Dr. Osumi, he won the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology for this term called autophagy.

[133] And that's when you go without food, your cells will heal themselves.

[134] That was back in 2015.

[135] So I want to go into all of that.

[136] I want to start with why?

[137] Why does fasting help so much?

[138] And really like what I'm getting at there is if this, if the effects of this are so profound in so many ways, then where did we go wrong?

[139] Because from what I, you know, have been told, breakfast, lunch, dinner.

[140] Yeah.

[141] Breakfast, lunch, dinner.

[142] And then maybe, you know, dessert.

[143] Yeah.

[144] And then, you know, that's the narrative that I was brought up on.

[145] Yeah.

[146] Well, breakfast is the most important meal a day.

[147] I've done a lot of research on that phrase.

[148] Do you know, where it came from.

[149] No. It was actually, I don't mean to dis any companies out there, but it was a tagline that they came up with for corn flakes for Kellogg's corn flakes back in the 1970s.

[150] They needed a tagline that made people eat corn flakes in the morning, and so they came up with cornflakes.

[151] Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

[152] And that has continued until this day.

[153] I can't find any research and many other fasting experts, many other, Blood sugar experts will tell you the same thing.

[154] There's just no research showing that breakfast is the most important meal the day.

[155] So that became a myth that we need to bust.

[156] Second myth we've been taught is you can speed your metabolism up the more you eat.

[157] Six meals a day.

[158] Remember that one?

[159] Okay.

[160] Also a myth.

[161] There is no evidence that the more you eat, the faster your metabolism will be.

[162] If you want a faster metabolism, you need to know how to metabolism.

[163] metabolically switch.

[164] You need to know how to go from sugar burner to fat burner.

[165] And that's where you start to lose weight.

[166] So that's the other myth that I feel like we have to break apart.

[167] And then we have this, you know, I can tell you as a mother.

[168] And this is, you know, not for anybody to have mommy guilt.

[169] But what we do as parents is we have certain statements we make to our kids.

[170] Like, you know, breakfast, dinner's being served.

[171] The kitchen's closing in an hour.

[172] You need to eat lunch.

[173] You need to eat lunch.

[174] You need.

[175] to eat breakfast, like we are programmed when to eat by a clock, not by our own internal sense.

[176] So kids are raised to eat according to a clock, not according to when they want to eat.

[177] We don't say, am I hungry right now?

[178] That's so true.

[179] We will wait until 1 p .m. to have lunch.

[180] And the morning we wake up, we feel like we have to have breakfast or we're doing something wrong.

[181] Yep.

[182] And then dinner time, you know, any time between, I know, six and eight, we have to sit down and eat again or we're doing something wrong.

[183] Yep.

[184] Like if you just unwind that.

[185] Yeah, where did that come from?

[186] Right.

[187] Usually from your parents.

[188] And it came from a schedule.

[189] What did my ancestors do before my parents existed and the schedules existed?

[190] I can tell you exactly what they did.

[191] What did they do?

[192] They came out of the cave.

[193] I'm going to go back to our primal friends.

[194] go back to our cave friends they came out of a cave they didn't have refrigerator they didn't have a pantry they didn't have DoorDash they had to go find food Did they have Uber Eats?

[195] They didn't have Uber Eats yeah I'm pretty sure they didn't have Uber Eats but what they did is they came out of the cave and they went to go hunt food sometimes they could make a kill really easily and bring it home and they would feast sometimes the kill wasn't as easy and they had to go far to find an animal to kill.

[196] Exercise.

[197] Exercise.

[198] But what did they do when they had to go super far and they couldn't get food?

[199] They switched over into this ketogenic energy system.

[200] And that ketogenic energy system supercharged them because every cell in the human body is the number one priority of our cells is survival.

[201] So we were built to make sure we could stay alive in the absence of food.

[202] So their ketones kicked in.

[203] And when ketones kicked in, they became mentally very focused so they could go find food.

[204] They were able to stay calm.

[205] Ketones will affect a neurotransmitter called GABA and cause GABA to come on so you feel calm.

[206] You're focused.

[207] Ketones will power up your muscles so that all of a sudden you have this incredible muscular energy.

[208] All because they were meant to go find food so they can bring it home.

[209] Okay.

[210] So the body, which is orientated towards survival, when you hadn't eaten, it invests a lot of sort of resources in your brain to increase the chances that you'll catch something to eat.

[211] So that's why when I fast or when I haven't eaten, I'm very focused, I'm very articulate, it seems, and I perform it my best.

[212] Bingo, that's it.

[213] Makes sense.

[214] And then what do they do when they got a kill?

[215] They came home and they feasted.

[216] They didn't necessarily rationed it out.

[217] They ate, and then they divvied it up amongst the tribe, and then they went out again until when the food was gone.

[218] Maybe a couple days, maybe they'd feast for a couple days when the food was gone.

[219] They go out again.

[220] It's called feast famine cycling.

[221] It is how humans were meant to live.

[222] The challenge we have is we have access to food all the time that we are, you know, feasting has taken on a really negative connotation because we're feasting on the wrong foods.

[223] But if we could go back and just be like our primal friends and we could learn how to go in out of this feast famine cycling, using fasting as a tool for performance, for healing, and using food in the proper way and eating the right food so that our brains will work well.

[224] And, you know, there's a whole hormonal pack or a sense of food that can help support hormones.

[225] If we're really conscious about the quality of the food that we eat, we're now mimicking what our primal ancestors were doing.

[226] Does that also imply that we should exercise fasted?

[227] Because I was thinking, if I'm thinking about my ancestors, they would have been doing the most physical activity when they hadn't eaten yet.

[228] That's right.

[229] Yeah.

[230] They would have been doing the most physical activity right before they ate.

[231] Yeah.

[232] So really interesting point, and you and I were talking about this in the beginning, is that when you exercise in a fasted state, you're going to get rid of the glucose that's been stored in your muscles.

[233] So as that glucose comes out, because your body needs it to go, you don't work 100 % off of ketones and 100 % off of glucose.

[234] You're needing both of them at different moments of your day.

[235] So when you're exercising in a fasted state, you're getting ketones and your muscles are releasing stored sugar, which is great for anybody who wants to lose weight because now you can lean out those muscles.

[236] Now let's go back to what our primal ancestors did.

[237] When they came home, they ate meat.

[238] They ate protein.

[239] And they stimulated something called mTOR.

[240] MTOR is when you actually create muscle growth.

[241] And what we now know is it takes about 30 grams of protein to trigger these amino acid receptor sites and the muscles to cause them to grow stronger.

[242] So for you, if you work out in a fasted state, you're going to release all those stores.

[243] You're going to have those ketones for performance.

[244] But then you want to follow that up with protein so you can build your muscles strong.

[245] And that is a hack that has worked incredibly well for so many people.

[246] Okay.

[247] Historically, people have thought that fasting is a one -size kind of fits all technique, and there's one kind of fasting, which is you just, I don't know, you might just not eat for a prolonged period of time.

[248] But in your book, and throughout your work, you described these six different types of fasting.

[249] Yeah.

[250] What are the six types of fasting?

[251] And tell me what the difference is in outcome and benefit.

[252] Yeah.

[253] It's a great question.

[254] So, again, fasting is when we switch over.

[255] So now we're in the fat burning.

[256] place.

[257] At about 13 to 15 hours, we start making ketones.

[258] This is intermittent fasting.

[259] That's pretty much what most people, when they say they're intermittent fasting, that's what they're doing.

[260] Okay, they take 12 to 16 hours.

[261] Yeah.

[262] They're making ketones or testosterone's going up, inflammation's coming down.

[263] Hunger might be going away.

[264] They're kind of having this.

[265] They might be, a lot of people lose weight with that.

[266] It's kind of the most common fast.

[267] Does it matter from the window?

[268] Does it matter what time I start and what time I end?

[269] You get to choose.

[270] You choose.

[271] if that window should be.

[272] So I could eat at 3 a .m. You could.

[273] There's a whole other level we can talk about why you don't want to eat in the dark.

[274] What's ideal, an ideal window?

[275] I really like it.

[276] It depends on the time of the year, but in the summer, I really like somewhere, if you're going to do an eight -hour eating window, like 11 to 7 in the summer.

[277] And then in the winter, because it's darker earlier, you would do more like a 10 to 5 kind of eating window.

[278] It's not so hard to do 11 to 7.

[279] Right.

[280] not hard at all not hard at all that's not that's not that's just a slight having a a slightly later breakfast and a slightly earlier dinner yeah but it's it's like being intentional right yeah exactly because you don't want to you got to you got to keep blood sugar low otherwise the minute blood sugar goes up you're going to switch over right so you can't put it you know if you walk past the kitchen and put a grape in your mouth yeah exactly yeah which is you've pulled yourself out yes yes so that's the first type of the six fasting um styles.

[281] The second is, I'm going to try and say this word, aught of oji, aji, autofagy.

[282] It's one way of saying it.

[283] People say, either call it autophagy or autophagy.

[284] People say it different.

[285] You can tell me I said it wrong.

[286] I've kind of landed on atophagy.

[287] I feel like atopathy is the best way to say it.

[288] Autophagy fasting, what's that?

[289] So atophagy fasting is about 17 hours in without, without food.

[290] your cells will turn within and they'll start to heal themselves.

[291] And that was what Dr. Osumi's big discovery was, is that the cells clean themselves up.

[292] So what's interesting on this one, and this is something I really want to get out to the world, is that when you stimulate autophagy, what you're doing is you're turning on the intelligence inside the cell and that intelligence is looking around and it's going, hey, there's a virus, there's a bacteria, get them out.

[293] So let's push these infections out of the cell.

[294] That mitochondria, it's not working well.

[295] We need to repair it.

[296] That endoplasmic retic reticulum inside here, it's lagging.

[297] We need to fix it.

[298] So it literally goes in and fixes everything inside the cell just at 17 hours.

[299] But one of the greatest studies that I've seen in fasting was done during COVID.

[300] And it showed that if a virus comes into a cell that's in a state of autophagy, it can't replicate.

[301] Viruses have to live off of your energy system.

[302] So when viruses go into a cell that's laden with glucose, they have a party in there.

[303] They love that.

[304] They munch on that and then they go out and they start replicating.

[305] If you were in a fasted state when a virus comes in, it can't replicate.

[306] There's nothing inside that cell for that virus to take over and it dies.

[307] Why does that happen?

[308] What's the reason for the, that sort of the CEO within myself looking around and saying, right, let's clean all this stuff up?

[309] Well, because once you've stimulated autophagy, there is one goal for that cell, and that is survival.

[310] So everything in there is on high alert.

[311] Okay.

[312] Everything is going to be in your survival interest.

[313] So a virus is not in your survival interest.

[314] So it pushes it out.

[315] So it's kind of like an emergency signal because there's not been food for a while.

[316] So it's kind of like the last, the last attempt to do everything the body can to help you make it through this period of hunger.

[317] That's right.

[318] That's right.

[319] You've put yourself in this state of extreme healing and it's all based off of this idea that your body wants to stay alive okay so that's you write in your book that's good for balancing sex hormones and preventing colds so yeah with with autophagy it's great for preventing colds what here's what's interesting about autophagy for sex hormones is that the major part of your brain for both men and women that control hormonal all hormonal control is your hypothalamus and pituitary that part of the brain does not have a blood brain barrier so it's very vulnerable to toxins so whenever we have massive toxic exposure that part of the brain starts to malfunction we see this with polycystic ovarian syndrome most common hormonal imbalance for women well a lot of that is this imbalance of testosterone and estrogen and there's a huge toxic piece that has destroyed or or interfered with the part of the brain that controls hormones.

[320] So when we look at atophagy, there are certain parts of our system that are more easily influenced by autophagy than others.

[321] Well, it turns out the hypothalamus and the pituitary are easily influenced by autophagy and can repair themselves when they're in the state of autophagy.

[322] The other interesting cellular makeup that is highly influenced by autophagy are the cells around the testes and the cells around the ovaries.

[323] Those are the cells that are putting out sex hormones.

[324] And if you, that whole system is malfunctioning when you go into a state of autophagy, those cells will respond and become better cells and be better at producing these hormones because of you dipping in and out of the state of autophagy.

[325] That really got me thinking because I've been looking at a lot of companies from an investment standpoint at the moment that are trying to solve for this macro decline in male testosterone you know I had a few guests come on this podcast and tell me that male testosterone has been declining year over year and then kind of paired with that we're becoming more and more sexless our libidos seem to be in decline I've got a lot of close friends of mine that are taking certain hormonal um supplements to try and get their libidos back up yeah and for the first time ever in on a show called dragon's den that I'm in the UK, we had someone come into the den for an investment that was producing a supplement to try and get our sex drives back.

[326] It feels like a big macro conversation that we're not having.

[327] And looking at your work and the work around, you've done about fasting and what you said there, it seems like there could potentially be a link between the two, the ways we're living our life and what we're eating and our decline in testosterone and our libidos.

[328] There's a beautiful book.

[329] I don't know if you've read it called Countdown.

[330] And it's about the sperm counts going down in across the world.

[331] And I actually brought her on to my podcast, the woman who wrote the book.

[332] And she said that there's one chemical that's reducing sperm counts more than any, and it's phallates.

[333] And phallates are in fragrances.

[334] They're in our colognes.

[335] They're in our perfumes.

[336] They're in our laundry detergents.

[337] They're in our air fresheners.

[338] They also are now infiltrated into our water.

[339] So they've infiltrated into, they're now being sprayed on our foods.

[340] Animals that are drinking the water have phallates in them.

[341] So it's the number one toxin that's destroying testosterone levels.

[342] And it's a brilliant book that she wrote.

[343] You talk about in The Reset Factory, your first book from 2016, Chapter 10, you said something which I hadn't quite appreciated.

[344] You said that even the things we put on our skin are absorbed into our body, and then they go directly into our bloodstream and into our kidneys.

[345] I didn't think, when I read that, it got me thinking, because there's so many things that I sort of unconsciously just spray on my body.

[346] body every day.

[347] And I never look at what's in them because I just think it's on the outside and it will wash off.

[348] But now you're saying that.

[349] Yeah.

[350] Your skin is a breathable organ.

[351] So it's going to push toxins out and it's going to take toxins in.

[352] So think about if you've ever like eaten something that didn't react well with you, you might get a rash.

[353] That's your brilliant body trying to push that toxin out.

[354] But the same thing happens when you put something on your skin.

[355] It actually goes into your body.

[356] So good general rule is if you aren't willing to eat it, don't put it on your skin.

[357] And beyond that, if we even look at the microbiome, you have bacteria on your skin that protect you.

[358] And that bacteria are actually talking to the bacteria in our gut.

[359] There's actually a connection between the two bacteria.

[360] So if you start putting things on your skin that destroy that microbiome, you're actually going to ultimately have an adverse effect on the microbiome.

[361] in your gut.

[362] So what you put on your skin is massively important.

[363] And then the smell, we know the hippocampus, which is the seat of Alzheimer's and dementia, is also where the olfactory nerve innervates.

[364] So when we smell something toxic and breathe something toxic in, it goes straight into the hippocampus and starts to create degeneration in those neurons that ultimately can lead to dementia and Alzheimer's.

[365] Toxicity is a huge human problem.

[366] toxicity.

[367] When you say the word toxicity, how are you defining that?

[368] You're saying like toxic chemicals that we introduced into our lives on our skin, consume, inhale, have around us.

[369] Bingo.

[370] And that are in our foods, et cetera.

[371] Yep.

[372] Bingo.

[373] What are some of the most toxic chemicals or foods or products that we consume without thinking that you think we need to stop consuming on a day -to -day basis?

[374] Oh, here's the most, the easiest one is plastics, BPA plastic.

[375] They say that it's that there's, it's not a matter of if you have plastic in your body, it's a matter of how much.

[376] So let's use it in context of something that people are really motivated by, which is weight loss.

[377] What's BPA plastics?

[378] It's a, it's a chemical within plastic that's within our water bottles.

[379] It's on in our Tupperware.

[380] They actually are putting, they're saying that they're now in the microfibers of our, of our clothes.

[381] And that's being washed out to, it gets really depressing.

[382] when you start talking about toxins, gets washed out into our oceans.

[383] So, but for the sake of simplicity, it's, you know, bottles mostly that you see, but you know, we've got plastic containers, we've got plastic plates, we've got plastic everything, and that has BPA in it, and that is a toxin that destroys human health.

[384] And the biggest and most interesting thing that BPA plastics do is there was a study around something called a Nogouti mouse.

[385] And they took this mouse, that had a gene for obesity, and they were twins, they fed them the same food, they gave them the same amount of exercise, but one of the mice got introduced BPA plastic.

[386] And the one that got the BPA plastic all of a sudden started to gain weight, and the hair color started to change.

[387] And that was the only difference between these two mice with the same genetic profile.

[388] And so then when they detoxed the BPA plastic out, the mouse lost weight.

[389] So that was the beginning of us understanding a term called obesogens.

[390] And obesitygens are toxins that actually make us insulin resistant actually cause us to hold on to more weight.

[391] And that's just one category of toxins.

[392] Well, that's terrifying.

[393] It is terrifying.

[394] To be completely, you know, from the center of my heart, this is why we have to educate ourselves.

[395] This is why we have to wake up.

[396] We have to understand that we are.

[397] living in the most toxic time in human history.

[398] And it doesn't, it's not just mental stress.

[399] It's not just social media.

[400] It's a barrage of all of that that is pulling us off course.

[401] And I can tell you that I have sat with some of the most brilliant doctors who are generally so concerned on the direction of humanity and where we're going because of the abundance of these toxins.

[402] As you said that, I could see a sadness in your face.

[403] What does that come from?

[404] I think it's really easy when you hear a podcast like this and what I'm saying to reject what I'm saying because it's too overwhelming to understand what the evolutionary mismatch we're in right now.

[405] So many people are suffering, whether it's physical or mentally, and they don't realize that it's everything from the food to their shampoos, to the plastic water bottles, it's so vast.

[406] And yet nobody's doing anything about it.

[407] And that's where my heart hurts.

[408] It's like people are suffering that don't need to be suffering.

[409] And if they understood that the modern world we're living in has taken us so off course with our health.

[410] And we've got to start to one by one figure out how to bring it back on course.

[411] And, you know, yesterday I sat with Dr. Dale Bredesen and interviewed him on my podcast.

[412] He wrote a book called The End of Alzheimer's.

[413] And he laid out seven things that we need to do to stop Alzheimer's.

[414] And he strongly feels that Alzheimer's is optional.

[415] You don't have to, you don't have to get that.

[416] And those seven things are so intense.

[417] It's like it's everything from detoxing to metabolically switching, to prioritizing sleep, to human connection, to understanding, you know, what the best exercise is for you.

[418] And it's easy for humans to look at those seven things and go, I'm out.

[419] I can't do all that.

[420] But if we want to exist on this planet, we're going to have to do that.

[421] That's the new level of health we're in right now.

[422] And I love being the cheerleader.

[423] I want to be the one that's like, come on, we can do it.

[424] But I also need people to understand that where we're living as humans right now is a very, very dangerous place.

[425] And it's just in the existence of moving in and out of grocery stores and restaurants and, you know, and the drugstore.

[426] Everything has a toxic insult on us.

[427] And it's overwhelming.

[428] It's overwhelming.

[429] Drastic action, because we're so drastically far away from where we're supposed to be.

[430] Where our ancestors were.

[431] We've built up this society that's full of plastics and toxins and alcohol and drugs and sugar everywhere.

[432] And I can't move in bloody New York City, which is where we are now, without someone offering me, you know, every block is, almost every block is really bad food.

[433] Horrible.

[434] But food that tempts the certain part of my brain that maybe is looking to help me stay alive and to survive, whether it's pizza or sweets or.

[435] whatever it might be yeah um so it's it is difficult and i have a great deal of empathy for anyone that's struggling yeah with it me too me too it's it's it's it's it's we've hit a point where the door out of poor health is multifaceted it's not just one door and if you're healthy and you're just like you know someone like you just wants to get in better shape then the path is a little bit easier but what do we do for the for the person that gets the cancer diagnosed What do we do for the woman who's suicidal in going through her menopause years?

[436] Like, where are we helping her?

[437] How are we getting to them?

[438] And each time they walk into their doctor's office, they're typically getting a pill and not being taught how to live a life that works with their body in this modern world.

[439] That's where we have to get to.

[440] You told me about the first two stars of fasting.

[441] The first one was intimate fasting, which is 12 to 16 hours, which is good for weight loss.

[442] brain fog, that kind of thing.

[443] The second is autography.

[444] What did I say?

[445] Autography, but I like it.

[446] I said autophagy.

[447] I said autophagy.

[448] We can play that back.

[449] I definitely said autophagy.

[450] And if I didn't, we'll fix it with AI.

[451] Autophagy fasting, which is 17 to 72 hours.

[452] Good for balancing sex hormones and preventing illness.

[453] Yeah.

[454] Yeah.

[455] Number three, we haven't spoken about gut reset fast.

[456] Yeah.

[457] What's that?

[458] Yeah.

[459] So that's based off a study that came out at MIT.

[460] that showed 24 hours without food and your intestinal stem cells inside your gut actually start to reboot themselves.

[461] Now, a stem cell is a cell that can go to anywhere in the body and repair itself.

[462] But at 24 hours, you get a plethora of them in your gut.

[463] And in the gut, we've got a damaged microbiome from everything that we've just been talking about.

[464] So what I discovered in this 24 -hour fast is I could take women that have been on birth control pill for years, people that have been on multiple rounds of antibiotics, people who had been eating horrible food.

[465] And I could actually put them through a 24 -hour fast once a week, once every couple of weeks.

[466] And these stem cells would come in there and they would start to repair.

[467] And so now if I teach that person how to eat right, their food is actually starting to build a better microbiome in the gut.

[468] So that 24 -hour fast became this go -to in my clinic where I could take all these gut challenges and I could start to unwind them just because I knew the body had this capability of making these intestinal stem cells.

[469] And it was crazy.

[470] Like we got people off supplements.

[471] We got people that weren't making serotonin, which affects moods comes from the gut.

[472] All of a sudden it started to become happier.

[473] People who hadn't had bowel movements in like three days, all of a sudden we started to put in this gut reset.

[474] And it was like a miracle.

[475] It was incredible.

[476] Number four, fat burner fast.

[477] So the fat burner fast is probably my favorite for those people who want to lose weight.

[478] The research was done that 36 hours without food, followed by 12 hours of eating, and then another 30, they actually did it over a 30 day period, but we've been using it in our community, just dosing it in.

[479] That at 36 hours, what happens is that's enough time where the blood sugars come down, where all of a sudden, sudden the body, it's so smart, it goes, okay, blood sugar's not common.

[480] We've been in this fasted state.

[481] We've triggered autophagy.

[482] We've brought inflammation down.

[483] We've made you ketones.

[484] We're trying to go find food.

[485] But this extra weight, it's not serving you.

[486] Because remember, you've got to go find food.

[487] So it drops weight.

[488] And it's the most beautiful way to get a person to unstick any kind of weight loss resistance.

[489] But most importantly, you know where it dropped the most amount of weight from.

[490] Where does everybody want to lose weight?

[491] Belly.

[492] Yep.

[493] So it is the, I probably should have called it the fat burning, belly fat burning.

[494] Yeah, the belly fat.

[495] Yeah, that would have banged.

[496] Yeah.

[497] But yeah.

[498] And so that's what they showed is that actually a 36 hour fast started to unstick weight loss and it was started with weight around the belly.

[499] Compelling.

[500] Number five, the dopamine reset fast.

[501] Yeah.

[502] So number five, I've found some research shows.

[503] knowing that when people go without food for 48 hours, the whole dopamine system will be rebooted.

[504] So what's important to know about the dopamine system is it is our molecule of happiness.

[505] It is the thing that it's actually a motivation molecule.

[506] And it's a neurotransmitter that allows thoughts, happy thoughts, to go across from neuron to neuron.

[507] And so what happens, and I'm sure you've talked about this on your podcast, that we're so dopamine saturated right now.

[508] But specifically, people who are overeaters, they actually are finding the study I quote in the book is that they found that people who had food addiction, people who had extra weight, like obese situations, they were not getting as much happiness out of their food because their dopamine receptor sites were saturated.

[509] So they had to eat more food to get more happiness.

[510] And food is a state changer.

[511] It does make us happy.

[512] So what they found is if they put them into a 48 -hour fast, that they actually rebooted the whole dopamine system and new dopamine receptor sites appeared so that when they brought food back in to the equation, they actually got more enjoyment out of food with less food.

[513] This kind of got me thinking about a conversation I was having yesterday with some of my team here.

[514] We were talking about how it almost feels like sometimes if I've eaten sugar, I can go into a bit of a sugar cycle.

[515] And what I mean by that is I'll have some sugar and then like a couple of hours.

[516] later I'll have another craving for sugar and then a couple of hours later I'll have another craving for sugar but then at other time specifically for example when I did keto I was I did the keto diet for about eight months eight weeks bloody eight months I wish um eight weeks and throughout that period I didn't have any cravings for sugar yep I would we had some chocolate come into the studio and I walked over to the chocolate I smelled it yep and I didn't want any of it yeah it had gone yeah but then when I'm in my what I call like the sugar cycle I'm eating sugar maybe you know once or twice the day and I'm getting like the craving for it where which I just can't seem to resist yep well dopamine's the molecule of more it's not the molecule of enough so what it does is when you get sugar you get this dopamine rush and the brain goes who love that give me more of that and so you can't you it's it's endless you will never be fully satisfied it constantly wants you to come back for more and more and more so when you start to go off the ketogenic energy system you're getting the same euphoria you probably felt the same high, the same mental clarity, but you've totally taken this molecule more out of the picture.

[517] In fact, dopamine will actually, you know, you get those receptor sites that will be repaired, but you're not getting a big dopamine buzz when you're in a ketogenic state.

[518] You're getting ketones.

[519] I was mulling it with my team how long I had to stay away from sugar to kind of get out of that vicious, give me more cycle.

[520] Yeah.

[521] My experience has been it's about three days.

[522] Three days.

[523] That's what I thought.

[524] I think I said four or five, but it's just from experience as well.

[525] If I haven't had sugar for three or four days, I mean like a chocolate, but something significant in terms of sugar, then after three or four days, the craving for it seems to vanish.

[526] Yeah.

[527] It's not, if you think about that, it's not hard if you're trying to overcome a sugar addiction.

[528] Yeah.

[529] Like just bear it for three days.

[530] And then that dopamine stops barking at you.

[531] And then if you attack fasting on to it, now, you're not.

[532] you're getting ketones and so you're not needing that as much ketones kill hunger and they make you so mentally mentally clear they give you this euphoric feeling so you don't have that urge to go for the sugar and the ketones come from fasting yeah which is when your body switches metabolic state go ahead the last and final fasting style immune reset fast yeah so immune reset was built off of dr walter longo's work and he did a study on people who had cancer and we're going through chemotherapy.

[533] And one of the challenges we know about chemotherapy is that it wipes out the whole immune system.

[534] And so he wanted to see, well, what if I put somebody in a fasted state as they went through chemotherapy, would there be a difference?

[535] And what he found is after three days of fasting, the white blood cells in our system actually reboot themselves.

[536] So what they do is all old white blood cells are sloughed away and new white blood cells emerge.

[537] So people were able to come out of that chemotherapy experience and have a stronger immune system as opposed to what we were seeing was that it was wiping the immune system out.

[538] So that launched the whole three -day water fast sort of craze, at least here in America, we're seeing a lot of people that are just going after three -day water fast to prime their immune system.

[539] But you also, also at three days, get stem cells, full systemic stem cells.

[540] So all of a sudden, your body's got surging with stem cells.

[541] And I was going to all parts of the body repairing it.

[542] The great example I always use on this one was I had an Achilles tendon injury and nothing was, nothing was helping it.

[543] So I threw a five -day water fast at it.

[544] On the fourth day, I felt this buzz in my Achilles tendon.

[545] I was like, oh, I wonder what that is.

[546] And it stayed all the way through.

[547] I went five full days.

[548] And about the fifth and sixth day, so six day I was entering food back in, all the the pain completely went away and it never came back i tried everything i tried everything and that was the only thing that repaired it it does make again evolutionary sense that if our body senses we're injured because we're not eating or you know some other signal that we are on a course to not survive to put it nicely it does make sense that it might set about to repair whatever needs to be repaired you're getting it you know because like if i was a wounded human back in on the savannahs of i don't know africa or wherever we came from um and i'm laid there and i'm not eating my body should probably go okay steve might need something fixed so he can get back to hunting so you're getting it so survival that is the number one priority of the body so when you go without food you amplify every resource it has to keep you alive and if repair carrying my Achilles means I can now go hunt for food.

[549] It's going to do that.

[550] It's going to make me stronger.

[551] And in the book, I stumbled when I was writing the book, I stumbled upon a really cool hypothesis that's called the Thrifty Gene Hypothesis.

[552] And it said that what it's, it's a theory, obviously it's a hypothesis.

[553] It's a theory that the people, the humans that evolved out of the primal days had a very specific genotype.

[554] And this genotype allowed us to metabolically flex and be stronger in a fasted state because we had to survive.

[555] And the people that didn't make it from that time period didn't have that gene.

[556] But think about this for this moment.

[557] So they think we all have this gene inside of us right now, this thrifty gene, where we can go long periods without food and we can survive.

[558] So what happens when we're eating all day?

[559] What happens when we're ignoring and we're not actually activating that genetic profile.

[560] So what they are now believing is that diabetes, metabolic syndrome, all of that is largely happening because we are going against the genetic profile that we are now seeing in humans.

[561] We're like on the opposite end of this spectrum.

[562] We're overloading our bodies.

[563] Yeah.

[564] Which is meaning that the survival gene you reference there is not being activated to help us.

[565] That's right.

[566] That's right.

[567] That's right.

[568] Interesting.

[569] What about coffee?

[570] You know, if I'm going to fast for, I know people are so addicted to coffee, so I feel like I have to ask a question as they're representative.

[571] If I'm going to fast, do any of these six fasts that you just mentioned, does coffee break that fast?

[572] Yeah.

[573] It does break it.

[574] No, well, it depends.

[575] Okay.

[576] So this is this, I'm just laughing.

[577] I mean a yes or no. I can't give you a yes or no on it.

[578] I'm going to give you most likely.

[579] Okay.

[580] No, let me give you most likely it's okay.

[581] Okay.

[582] most likely it's okay yes there's not a high degree of uncertainty and conviction there no let me let me explain myself okay so when you drink a cup of coffee it shouldn't spike your blood sugar it shouldn't should not it doesn't so if it does it shouldn't so if you have black coffee and your blood sugar doesn't spike and you're you're trying to metabolically switch over into your fasting window you're good you're golden drink that black coffee okay okay now i'm gonna add some sugar to it Okay, now you're not switched.

[583] Now you've pulled yourself out of a fasted state.

[584] Okay, so no sugar, just a plain coffee with no milk or sugar in it.

[585] Is most likely going to keep you in a fasted state.

[586] Most likely?

[587] Well, I've seen a few occasions where it didn't.

[588] Okay.

[589] This is why we have people test their blood sugar.

[590] Like, it's unique to you.

[591] So you can test your blood sugar, have the cup of coffee, half an hour or later, check your blood sugar again.

[592] Those numbers should be equal.

[593] Okay, so for most people, coffee should be fine when they're fasting.

[594] But there's a couple of anomalies who, their blood sugar does spike.

[595] Yes.

[596] Which means that they're not going to switch over to the fasted state.

[597] Yes.

[598] Yes, exactly.

[599] And, you know, coffee mate, creamers, those can be a little more problematic.

[600] But some people put full fat cream in there with no sugar.

[601] Some people put MCT oil in there.

[602] You know, the buttered coffee became very common.

[603] and that was because of the fasting movement.

[604] So the reason they did that was because when you put a fat in your coffee, you stabilize your blood sugar.

[605] And so you were able to stay in the fasted state and switch over.

[606] I had glucose goddess on the podcast who, Jesse, she talks a lot about glucose spikes.

[607] It was the first time my eyes were really open to the consequence of living a life where your glucose levels are spiking and crashing and spiking and crashing.

[608] And I've invested in this company called Zoe where they give you a glucose monitor, which I attached to my own for 14 days as part of the initial test.

[609] And then they give me this big sort of nutrition plan and profile.

[610] And that was the first time I got to see.

[611] You know, I was in America at the time.

[612] I was in L .A. for a couple of months.

[613] And in L .A., I mean, I pulled up at a gas station.

[614] And I was, it's funny, I was walking through this gas station and everything in there was sugar.

[615] Because now I was looking.

[616] Right.

[617] Now I had my eyes open because I'm wearing this bloody monitor.

[618] So I'm about to see the impact within minutes that it has on my body.

[619] And I was just looking around thinking, oh, my God.

[620] the only thing that I can see in this whole store that I can eat without spiking my glucose is water so is it a monitor where you can see it you can scan it yeah yeah so they've got two game changer yeah so they've got two one of them you scan the new one they've got it's automatic yeah by Bluetooth so it just keeps constantly updating on your phone I honestly think we could dramatically change the health of the world if everybody put one of those on amen amen Because then what you would do is you would just go, because, you know, this is like coffee.

[621] Like, you should, it should be so simple for me just to say, yes, drink your coffee, you're fine.

[622] But your microbiome in your gut is going to determine what it does with whatever hits that.

[623] So it's going to determine your blood sugar levels.

[624] Your microbiome, my microbiome, completely different.

[625] So food no longer is a one -size -fits -all.

[626] There's an individual approach.

[627] So you have to know what your blood sugar is doing.

[628] You know, like when I eat, believe it or not, when I eat a grass -fed steak, my blood sugar goes down it's amazing wow so whereas other people eat a steak and their blood sugar goes super high and so then again you go to a thread of this conversation which is how do we help humanity yeah and humanity wants the one -size fits all i can't give you that yeah you're gonna have to learn your own you got to learn you and something like that teaches you you but you're gonna have to become very curious about you like you are.

[629] And what's really fun to me when you put one those things on, it's my favorite thing to do with patients is I say, just eat normal.

[630] Just eat everything.

[631] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[632] And then every day I have them send me their readings and we just talk it through.

[633] I just did this with a beautiful patient that I've been working with who has a long history of eating disorders.

[634] And she was counting calories and really wanted the control of being able to keep her weight where she was, where it needed to be.

[635] And I said, okay, you can count calories if you want, but I just want you to stick this monitor on.

[636] And let's just eat and let's see what you're doing.

[637] And she was vegan.

[638] And this isn't an anti -vegan conversation.

[639] But her spikes were up and down and up and down.

[640] Like there was like eight of them a day.

[641] And her moods followed those spikes too.

[642] And so then we started to go, okay, well, let's add a protein here.

[643] Could we add fat here?

[644] Could we add some more fiber here?

[645] And she got to watch for herself.

[646] And within four weeks, she was free of any food control.

[647] And she was off teaching everybody else.

[648] It was so beautiful to watch.

[649] About calorie counting point, though, there's a big school of thought that in order to lose weight and be healthy, all you've got to do is count those calories.

[650] Yeah.

[651] You know, there's something called a set point.

[652] Have you heard about the set point?

[653] Yeah, which is the amount of calories that I need to consume in order to hit my that's right so we all have a set point if you're going to go down the calorie path you have to understand you have a set point and the set point is there's a how much calories coming in and how much calories going out what's the delta of that and that will keep you at whatever weight you want to be so let's use an example you eat 1500 calories a day you exercise 500 you have a delta of a thousand so if you want to keep your weight where it's at you always have to do a thousand calories every single day yeah okay well what happens on the days you decide not to work out so now you have 500 extra calories that your body's not used to and so what does it do with those calories stores it so then you all of a sudden start noticing your gaining weight and you don't really understand why so you're like well let me count i need to restrict calories yeah so then you start eating maybe i mean i have 500 less yeah and then you bring the set point down well that's your new that's your new set point you're going to have to stay at that set point now if you don't ever want to gain another pound you see the game oh okay so my set point is moving the crafty it moves because as you restrict and you if as food restriction goes down and energy output goes up your set point goes down and now you're like i feel great but you can't leave from that set point you're going to always have to make sure that that set point is a thousand calories or 800 calories So I was told, I mean, this is the school of thought, that I have to have, for me as a male that has my weight, 2 ,000 calories a day, and then if I'm under 2 ,000 calories a day, then I'll lose weight.

[654] That's what I was told.

[655] Yeah.

[656] So you go, now you go to 1 ,500 calories.

[657] You drop weight.

[658] Yeah, to lose the weight.

[659] Yep.

[660] You go back up to 2 ,000, and for most people, they start to gain weight again.

[661] Ah, because my set point has moved.

[662] So now it's 1 ,500 to maintain my weight.

[663] Yeah.

[664] Which is why, if you think about it, have we ever seen a calorie restriction diet work long term?

[665] No. Right.

[666] I haven't.

[667] Long term being the key word there.

[668] Yeah.

[669] It's short term.

[670] It works great.

[671] But this is why I'm such a fan of metabolic switching.

[672] How about we watch blood sugar?

[673] We put a monitor like you're talking.

[674] Let's put a monitor on so that you keep your blood sugar spikes minimal.

[675] It's like what I did with this woman.

[676] Because I was like, let's have, can we have two spikes in a day, not eight?

[677] And we just keep your blood sugar.

[678] sugar at a at a at a low level so that when you're not eating you can switch over and now you can burn fat in the fat burning energy system so metabolic switching is where you're keeping your blood sugar at a stable place it's not got all these spikes all over the place so that when it starts to go down the body is going to want to switch over and it can start to burn fat in the in and use that other energy system what do you think our relationship should be with sugar well you know there's only 12 % of Americans that are metabolically healthy.

[679] That means that they have the right blood pressure, the right cholesterol, that their hemoglobin A1C, their insulin, all those metabolic markers are in balance.

[680] Only 12 % of Americans have that right.

[681] That is a huge problem.

[682] And that is largely because we're addicted to sugar.

[683] So what's the consequence?

[684] of poor metabolic health.

[685] Obesity, cancer, heart disease, mental health challenges.

[686] I mean, you name it, every chronic disease on the planet at the root has a metabolic thread.

[687] Now, I hate to bring back a really traumatic topic, but during COVID, when we looked at the people that fell prey to COVID, this is no disrespect.

[688] metabolically unhealthy.

[689] And the people that had less COVID symptoms were the ones that were more metabolically healthy in general.

[690] So, and largely because the virus could really replicate if you had a lot of glucose in your system.

[691] So the consequence is huge.

[692] And the health care consequence, the amount of money we pay trying to help everybody put their health back together because they're metabolically unhealthy, if we just started with metabolic health, we would change everything.

[693] And metabolic health, people think of metabolic health often as being, you know, I'm in good superficial shape, I'd like to think.

[694] But that's not metabolic health.

[695] You could be, I'm guessing you can be metabolically unhealthy, but also have abs.

[696] Oh, oh yeah.

[697] This woman I was telling you about with all the spikes, she's actually a model and an actress.

[698] Oh, wow.

[699] That, that is beautiful.

[700] And And we had to go back in and really work with getting her metabolically healthy.

[701] So, yeah, we call it skinny fat.

[702] You look skinny on the outside, but you're dealing with excess sugar on the inside that is putting fat around your liver, putting fat in other areas.

[703] I think a lot of people can relate to that skinny fat concept.

[704] So it's a major, major issue.

[705] And, you know, we can look at different things like hemoglobin A1C.

[706] It's a marker in the blood.

[707] everybody gets it tested every year when they go to their doctor it should be under five if it's not under five what's happening is all that extra sugar is is going around your red blood cells and your red blood cells carry oxygen to your body so they're gummed up with sugar so they can't deliver oxygen to the brain to your eyes to your muscle so you're not getting oxygenated because of the sugar just gumming up these red blood cells in chapter one of your book you talk about this public health crisis in great detail.

[708] You share some stats, which I pulled out, which I thought were terrifying.

[709] It's page four of your book.

[710] You say, according to the CDC, 41 % of women and 21 and older are obese.

[711] 45 % have high blood pressure.

[712] One out of two will develop cancer in their lifetimes.

[713] One out of five will develop Alzheimer's.

[714] One out of nine will get type two diabetes.

[715] One out of eight will develop a thyroid problem.

[716] And 80 % of all autoimmune conditions occur in women.

[717] Why is that, that last one, 80 % of all autoimmune conditions occur in women?

[718] Yeah, so autoimmunity is a really interesting one.

[719] And if you look at what an autoimmune condition is, it's the body attacking itself.

[720] And so when we look at where toxins go, we're back of the toxins, Hashimoto's.

[721] Why is the body attacking the thyroid?

[722] there's something there that needs to get out.

[723] So it's usually a toxic issue.

[724] So the body's attacking the thyroid.

[725] When we look at RA and joints, there's toxins in their bodies attacking that.

[726] So it's happening more to women largely because, well, this could go dark real fast, but largely because we have so many influences that are affecting our hormones.

[727] So the best way I can explain this is something I call the hormonal high, hierarchy where our sex hormones are going to be completely thrown off by insulin.

[728] So when you get insulin resistant, your sex hormones are off.

[729] And insulin is going to be so impacted by cortisol.

[730] So when you're stressed all the time, you're going to be insulin resistant.

[731] And when you're insulin resistant, you're going to have trouble balancing estrogen, progesterone and testosterone.

[732] But at the top of the hierarchy is oxytocin.

[733] And oxytocin is that we're getting oxytocin right now just from connecting with each other.

[734] And it'll calm, start to calm cortisol down.

[735] And then when it calms cortisol down, you can be more insulin sensitive.

[736] And when you can be more insulin sensitive, now your sex hormones can balance better.

[737] So we need that hierarchy as women to be in balance in order for our bodies to be in balance.

[738] But what do we have women doing right now?

[739] We have poor diet, lots of stress, and our sex hormones are way off.

[740] And sugar.

[741] And sugar.

[742] You're going after the sugar.

[743] So women are perishing within this modern world more than men.

[744] So we've got to help a woman bring back more insulin sensitivity.

[745] We've got to get her doing better stress management.

[746] And when we do that, now the immune system can regulate.

[747] Now the immune system can calm down and stop being so hyperactive attacking all the toxins that are in the body.

[748] So it's very complex.

[749] Does that imply that women and men have a different relationship with stress?

[750] Oh, yeah.

[751] Yeah.

[752] Yeah, for sure.

[753] We're not, okay, so I'm going to, I'm going to be as bold as to say this.

[754] And I know all my, my feminist women out there are not going to like this.

[755] And I was raised by a strong woman.

[756] I am a strong woman.

[757] I've raised another strong woman.

[758] and I have to tell you that we are not meant to handle the stress loads as well as men.

[759] And that's largely because of two hormones.

[760] So estrogen makes us very outward, makes us very much an extrovert, and we can handle a lot of stress when estrogen is present in our body.

[761] But progestrone, she can't handle stress at all.

[762] So progesterone will start to diminish as cortisol goes up.

[763] I always say when cortisol goes high, progesterone becomes shy.

[764] So now, I mean, the number of women since Fast Like a Girl came out that I have heard from, the 20 and 30 -year -olds that have no cycle, none.

[765] That is because they're insulin resistant, they're more stressed, progesterone's not making her appearance, so there's no shed of the uterine lining.

[766] That is absolutely a stress issue.

[767] And not having a period for a woman is a major problem because that's how we detox.

[768] That's how we get these hormones out of us.

[769] So if you're not having a cycle, you're not getting rid of estrogen.

[770] You're not getting rid of so many toxins and it's just staying inside of you.

[771] That's a major problem.

[772] Controversial idea, but it rings true for a lot of people.

[773] And I know this because I've had women very close to me in my life talk to me about this exact thing.

[774] And specifically not having their menstrual cycle and then focusing on the stresses in their life and then their menstrual cycle coming back people very very close to me in fact that I've I've struggled with because of this exact challenge it is a controversial idea though isn't it it's slightly problematic as an idea is there any scientific basis for that idea well we know based off science that when cortisol goes up progester goes down cortisol is the stress hormone yeah so when you're under stress cortisol goes up and so if you're let's say it's the week before your period that's when you're supposed to have the most amount of progestone if it doesn't matter if you're trying to run a marathon doesn't matter if you have a work deadline doesn't matter if you're skimping on sleep as long as cortisol is going up progesterone's not going to make her appearance and if she doesn't make her appearance then the uterine lining won't shed that's that's been proven over and over every hormone expert would agree multiple studies but women don't realize that.

[775] So we, if there's ever a time to mind your stress, it's the week before your period, which is why you don't fast the week before your period because that's a bit of a stressor.

[776] It's why you shouldn't train for, you know, a big Spartan race or a cross -fitting event or run a marathon.

[777] You should be doing more yoga and recovery the week before your period.

[778] This is why we should prioritize sleep the week before our periods because we don't want cortisol up.

[779] So in an interesting world, this is sort of the vision I have for women right now, is what if there is this moment where the week before our period, we have the capability of maybe not working as hard.

[780] Like Spain, they're giving a three -day menstrual leave to women.

[781] They, with no questions asked.

[782] Before the period.

[783] Well, it's no questions asked.

[784] They anticipated it that women would use it the first three days of her period.

[785] But a woman can use it any time.

[786] I say use it the three days before your cycle is supposed to come.

[787] Interesting.

[788] Have you shared this idea before publicly?

[789] On several podcasts, I've talked about it.

[790] I had a great interview with Kate Northrop on my podcast, and she's an entrepreneur, and she actually maps her whole business cycle around her menstrual cycle.

[791] And so we had a beautiful conversation about this, and she said that she doesn't do as many Zoom calls.

[792] She tells her team that she's going to get off work a little bit earlier on those days.

[793] She slows everything down.

[794] Her workload goes dramatically down.

[795] And she said what ended up happening is that when her period started, her productivity went up.

[796] So see, when estrogen comes in on starting day one, day two of our menstrual cycles, estrogen makes us really mentally clear, makes us very verbal.

[797] Estrogen is an incredible hormone for productivity.

[798] but if you aren't minding that back half of your cycle and you're not slowing down then then you're coming into your period and you're having you hear so many women who are like oh i'm cramping i'm bleeding a lot it's really painful that's because you didn't mind the back half of your cycle and what's the sort of evolutionary basis for all of this why is the body doing this why is the body um not going to give us our periods i mean listen i don't have a period but um well i have a version of it right i'm sure men have some kind of you guys you guys have a you work off a 24 -hour cycle okay so every 15 minutes you get testosterone okay you know we joke about that right what do you say you joke behind our backs kind of what do you say the joke is like if you don't like what your husband's saying just ask them in 15 minutes you might say something different that's what you've been saying just letting you in on what might be going on behind the scenes okay so what is the evolutionary basis for why why that is true So think about, yeah, let's go back to our primal days.

[799] So, you know, testosterone is meant to have you go out and hunt.

[800] It's some very motivating you get it every 15 minutes.

[801] So, you know, God, this sounds, as I'm saying it, sounds so sexist.

[802] But when we look at the body, this is actually how we're built.

[803] So your body was driven to go hunt and go find and go achieve.

[804] That's the number one hormone that it works off of.

[805] for the women what we are meant to be more outgoing before ovulation okay why is that oh we need to connect we need to start to feel that that mental clarity you know estrogen makes your hair really like full and your skin really glow and it starts to make us more beautiful all leaning up to to ovulation once ovulation hits now we have estrogen at her peak we have a little bit of testosterone, and we have a little bit of progesterone.

[806] Okay, well, why is that?

[807] Because now our libido's up.

[808] We're motivated to reproduce.

[809] We're looking beautiful because we have so much estrogen going through our body.

[810] We're verbal.

[811] We can connect, and we have progesterone to keep us calm.

[812] So we're supposed to reproduce when ovulation hits.

[813] And then the back half, technically, we would be have a fertilized egg and we would be winding down.

[814] And if we didn't get a fertilized egg, then we're supposed to relax so we can go back and do the extroverted piece of ourselves in the front half of our cycle.

[815] So it's all based off of reproduction.

[816] So I need some advice then because I'm in a relationship and I want to understand, I guess this goes both ways.

[817] I want my girlfriend to understand how hormones are influencing my behavior.

[818] And I want to know how hormones are influencing her behavior.

[819] Yeah.

[820] What advice have you got for me?

[821] Well, the first is do you know her cycle?

[822] Moving on, we're going to talk about sugar again.

[823] No, no, this is too good.

[824] So sugar, it's really bad, isn't it?

[825] Who's to blame?

[826] No, seriously, no. Tell me about your childhood.

[827] No, get to know her cycle.

[828] I'm going to give you, I'm going to give you gold right now.

[829] Let me give you gold.

[830] Okay, so day one of her cycle, day one to day 10, she's building estrogen.

[831] First couple of days of her cycle, just let her be.

[832] Like she, you know, that she's transitioning out of the back half of her cycle.

[833] She might be having some heavier bleeding.

[834] You know, she's moving into that extroverted place.

[835] So the first two days, give her some space.

[836] Now day three, estrogen's starting to build.

[837] So you're going to notice she's more verbal.

[838] She's going to be more present.

[839] She might feel more outgoing.

[840] She's going to feel like she wants to connect with you.

[841] That's going to go all the way through ovulation, like in the middle of ovulation, which is about day 12, day 13, where all of a sudden estrogen's at its peak if you have any conflict you want to resolve with her do it between like day two and day 12 of her cycle she's going to be so ready to handle any conflict with you between so let me write that down day day day two and day 12 day two like literally i've picked my battles i had a i had a dad come to me and tell me that he was struggling to understand his teenage daughter and i said well do you know her cycle and he's like no i don't I said, well, you would never, ever bring a conflict to her on day 18 or 19 of her cycle.

[842] Bring it to her on day 10.

[843] And now she's going to talk to you.

[844] I'm going to say something which is really embarrassing here.

[845] I know nothing about menstrual cycles.

[846] At no point in my life did anybody teach me about menstrual cycles.

[847] The only insight I have in my life to what a menstrual cycle is is overhearing my sister when I was younger talking about it.

[848] And when I say overhearing, I mean maybe a sentence.

[849] And then maybe my girlfriend, once in a while, she'll say, oh, I'm coming into my cycle or whatever.

[850] She'll say, I'm on my period.

[851] That's for most men, that's, in fact, the extent of the education we have about the female reproductive menstrual cycles.

[852] So talk to me like I'm an idiot about the menstrual cycle.

[853] Yeah.

[854] How long is it?

[855] Oh, I love this.

[856] And do you know that most women don't know?

[857] Oh, really?

[858] So, I mean, most women are ignorant to their own cycles.

[859] So it's 28 days, anywhere from 28 days to 32, every woman has a different length.

[860] Okay.

[861] And what day does the period come on?

[862] Day one.

[863] So day one is the first day she bleeds.

[864] Okay.

[865] Then how long?

[866] That lasts for what?

[867] Seven days?

[868] Everyone's different.

[869] Anywhere from three to seven days.

[870] Okay.

[871] So day, you said day between day two and 12 is when to pick my battles?

[872] Yeah.

[873] So day two, you're going to start to see her emerge a little more gregarious.

[874] She may be a little more outgoing.

[875] So, I mean, as she get closer to day 12, you want to go party with her.

[876] You want to take her out, make her feel good.

[877] Like that's the time.

[878] time to whine and dine her.

[879] Okay, cool.

[880] We'll put all the dates then and all the fights.

[881] And then after day 12, what am I doing?

[882] Then after day 12, okay, so day 12 is right when she's ovulating.

[883] So you're going to have to choose your battle there.

[884] But ovulation occurs for most women between day 10 and day 15.

[885] There's a small little five -day window there.

[886] That's if this is a, once I figure this out, I was like, why don't, why don't men know this?

[887] That's when she's going to be, her libido is going to be the highest.

[888] Okay, so we're having sex.

[889] Yes.

[890] So if you want to have sex with her.

[891] I'm just writing this down.

[892] Yes.

[893] Have sex with her around that time.

[894] Around that time.

[895] If she's willing.

[896] Yeah.

[897] She's going to be more motivated because she has testosterone.

[898] She's going to feel more like it.

[899] Okay.

[900] Then after she finishes ovulating after day 15.

[901] Yeah.

[902] So then there's going to be a crash of hormones.

[903] You might see a change in her personality.

[904] She might feel a little low.

[905] Go stay in a hotel.

[906] But you could ask.

[907] You know, like if she's having a bummer day, like a low day, ask her.

[908] Do you know what day of your cycle are you on?

[909] Be really nice.

[910] Be really nice.

[911] Really nice.

[912] And then here's the gold.

[913] Here's gold.

[914] This is so good.

[915] You're going to have to report back to me how this works.

[916] Okay.

[917] Around day 17 or 18, progesterons coming in.

[918] This is where you got to give her foot rubs.

[919] You got to be extra special and cater her like, like, she's the queen that she deserves to be.

[920] Okay.

[921] So all my compliments, that's where I pull out the notepad.

[922] But what you need to know is she's probably going to be like, if you're like, oh, you look so beautiful today, she might at that time be like, no, I feel horrible.

[923] I'm bloated.

[924] I'm, I'm, I'm.

[925] I don't feel beautiful, but you...

[926] And I should disagree.

[927] I should say, no, you don't.

[928] You look amazing.

[929] Okay, cool.

[930] And you do that until she bleeds.

[931] And you can take amazing care of her in the week before her period.

[932] And you will get kudos like you, you can't even imagine.

[933] And then start it all over again.

[934] And then start it all over again.

[935] Got you.

[936] Yeah, I mean, just once you understand our patterns.

[937] And then it also helps you understand that we're going to be more outgoing in the front half of our cycle.

[938] We're going to be more introverted in the back half.

[939] What about men?

[940] you guys every 15 minutes you're pretty you're pretty black and white really yeah you're pretty straightforward so if she was asking you the same question about me would you say anything to her about my hormone cycles at all you'd you just say what it really depends on the issue at hand so if it's a a mismatch of libido then the best time to have sex with a woman is during ovulation okay because she has the most amount of testosterone day 10 to 15 of her cycle yeah yeah it would be really handy, wouldn't it, just to have a little menstrual cycle chart on the wall at home.

[941] I know that sounds a bit strange, but just so I know what's going on inside her body.

[942] The first time I discovered this, I started using an app called the Clue app.

[943] Yeah.

[944] And it shows you in a circle.

[945] It kind of shows a little cloud, and then it shows you where a PMS clicks in.

[946] And it actually has a button that you can share it with people in your life.

[947] And I thought, not only does my husband need this, but my staff needs this.

[948] they need to understand where I'm going and what if all the women on my on my team actually shared it with each other and we could see where each other was at in the menstrual cycle we would understand why a woman's moods can be so up and down it's really you know because of these three hormones our moods are much more volatile than yours you guys are pretty steady Eddie we're a I mean this is general you know this is I hate to be sexist in this conversation but this is a hormones than the way they work it's actually really helpful to know this because without this insight it's very easy to fall into the trap of just assuming your partner is moody or that they are they have like mood swings or that they're you know people say things like they're too emotional or whatever it might be but with this i actually think it creates a ton of empathy yeah that's certainly the reaction that i get from hearing that there's a there's significant hormone fluctuations in my partner and they happen at certain periods it actually now would change my behavior the way that I receive certain times where I come home or I'm I noticed that my my partner's just different yep and it's almost it catches me off guard sometimes so actually we've spoken a lot about this and we're very open we're very much the same person in terms of our willingness to talk about everything and very difficult things as well yeah and there will be times where I come home or we go through a patch where just a week, you know, things are making her upset, which wouldn't normally make her upset, just tiny things that I'm doing.

[949] And I go, I go, what?

[950] That's it.

[951] Yeah, you know.

[952] So see if you can track that to a certain part of her cycle.

[953] Oh, I'm going to.

[954] So like the week before our period, we're pretty, we're irritable.

[955] And every time I say that, men go, well, you said it.

[956] I didn't say it.

[957] Well, but that's because progesterone, you know, we're meant to be more inner.

[958] We're meant to sit on the couch.

[959] We're also meant, believe it or not, glucose goes higher the week before our period.

[960] So we crave carbs.

[961] There's a reason we crave carbs because we need to bring glucose up to be able to make progester.

[962] So we crave carbs.

[963] We're irritable.

[964] We don't want a lot of cortisol.

[965] So generally, we're a little bit slower.

[966] We don't want to, you know, we don't have the desire to push through stress and push through exercise.

[967] And so we're going to be, we're a little, we're different that week.

[968] So if you come up and you just put your hand on our shoulder and you're like I love you you're amazing I'm here if you need anything that's all you got to do but if you're trying to resolve a big conflict or you're trying to come out us in too aggressive away we will shut down the week before our periods so interesting whereas if you have something you want to resolve with us make sure estrogen's there because estrogen makes us great great verbal our verbal skills are incredible when estrogen's around ask any menopausal woman and she'll tell you what it's like when she loses estrogen.

[969] And I have to say this is because, you know, women have this incredible power to create life that us men don't have.

[970] It's like women are superheroes for being able to carry a baby for significant amounts of time and then give birth to this baby.

[971] It's just the most magical thing that I can think of in existence.

[972] And women have that superpower.

[973] And with that comes this cycle.

[974] Yeah.

[975] So it's a wonderful thing.

[976] it's beautiful and in in the book i called it the manifestation phase ovulation because when all of those hormones come in we can manifest anything we want but it's not just a baby this is a great time ovulation's an amazing time to start a new business project interesting it's a great time like as an author like i'm going to write during those five days because my creativity is going to be at it's peak.

[977] So we're highly creative.

[978] If you want to like, you know, talk about something about life and how to create something with us, do it during ovulation.

[979] Your husband is behind that wall here in my home.

[980] And is he aware of your menstrual cycle?

[981] He is until I started to lose it.

[982] I'm 53.

[983] So I'm starting to go.

[984] But yeah, we talk like this all the time.

[985] And the way I like to, I like to ownership over my hormonal moods so I will say to him after a long day of work I will say hey it's been a testosterone driven day for me I don't feel like I have a lot of estrogen right now I can't handle a lot of stress I'm gonna need to just take some time to myself we literally talk like that we um losing the menstrual cycle we the first time I started as a young man that hasn't been exposed to that at any point in my sort of, you know, in the education system or other, the first time I started to understand what menopause was and premenopause and perimenopause, all these things, was from guests that have come here.

[986] And it's such a big, it was such a big light bulb moment for me because I have women in my life that are going through that phase of life.

[987] And I feel like they are so misunderstood in so many ways.

[988] Thank you.

[989] And I love hearing about it now because it's going to help me relate to those women in a better way and have and understand how I can be a partner with them through that phase of life like you know certain members of my family that are going through that phase of life what do what do we need to know as men but also as women about menopause perimenopause and all those things yeah thank you thank you for asking I think that we're the most misunderstood um age group of women and with the 45 to 55 year old in that decade is the most common time for women to commit suicide.

[990] Really?

[991] Yeah.

[992] This is why my next book I'm writing right now is on the mental health of menopausal women because we're struggling.

[993] And so the first thing you have to know is that after 40, our sex hormones start to decline.

[994] So estrogen goes up and down.

[995] So one day you're going to experience, if you live with a 43 -year -old woman, you're going to experience she's great.

[996] Next day, you're going to be like, who are you?

[997] That's because her estrogen is on a roller coaster ride.

[998] So that's the first thing to know.

[999] Second thing is that progestrone is plummeting after 40.

[1000] They actually say now at 35, progesterone is starting to go down.

[1001] So as progesterone goes down, we are less stress resilient.

[1002] So little things are going to irritate us like they've never irritated us before.

[1003] And you might be the recipient of that.

[1004] So if you find we're very triggerable, it's because we're losing progesterone.

[1005] So we just need to have more breaks.

[1006] We need more nurturing, like I explained in the menstrual cycle.

[1007] We need to have more love brought our way because we just can't handle stress the same way.

[1008] And then as ultimately estrogen finally goes into a place where she's non -existent once a woman doesn't have her cycle, we can't hold on to information the same way we used to be able to.

[1009] We forget things.

[1010] and it's really frustrating to us and so when people around us like I went through this with my team when I was trying to get my menopausal hormones in check they would say well you already told us that yes you reminded us of that and I started finding I was repeating myself and then I realized oh I'm at a new level of low of estrogen and then I worked you know getting I working with some bioidenticals working with some lifestyle to bring my estrogen up but from 40 till about 55, that is about a 10 to 15 year period where the woman's brain has to recalibrate to these loss of hormones.

[1011] And so our moods are all over the place during that time.

[1012] So understanding where we're at, having more compassion for us, not taking us on, and just helping us understand ourselves, which is largely what I'm trying to do through my books, is will be so helpful.

[1013] But we don't even understand our own selves.

[1014] Menopausal moods are treacherous.

[1015] It's an extreme sport.

[1016] It literally is an extreme sport.

[1017] What about after 45?

[1018] She's had 40 to 45.

[1019] Yeah.

[1020] So once we actually go a whole year without a period, we actually do better.

[1021] So the brain is used to the less hormones.

[1022] So when we get on the other side postmenopausal, we actually are great.

[1023] We're women that once they go to that side of the hormonal process tend to actually be, you know, we have so much wisdom, I'd like to think.

[1024] We actually tend to be the opposite of everything I just said.

[1025] We tend to be more stress, we can handle stress better.

[1026] We tend to be more gregarious.

[1027] Our libido goes back up.

[1028] As our brain starts to recalibrate, we become a better version of ourselves.

[1029] And that's that first phase, that 40 to 45 phase, what's that phase called?

[1030] Is that the...

[1031] That's perimenopause.

[1032] And then menopause is beyond 45.

[1033] Yeah, the average age for menopause right now is about 52, although a lot of women are going in around 45, sometimes earlier.

[1034] Okay.

[1035] But I think that, if there was one thing I want, I could help the world understand, is that we're trying to understand ourselves during that time.

[1036] So be patient with us.

[1037] because we may not we may react much different than you've ever seen us react before so we have to get to know ourselves from a new lens that's the gift that menopause actually gives us and if you allow us to do that when we make it through to the postmenopausal years you're going to have a beautiful wise wonderful woman on the other side of that it's just that transition into perimenopause is really a treacherous one it's so interesting it's so it's so it's so it's I find it staggering that no one told me this at any point in my life.

[1038] Agreed.

[1039] Because irrespective of whether you are a woman or not, and you're going to go through that, you're going to, your relationships with women are going to be integral to your life, unavoidably, your mother, your grandmother, your partner.

[1040] So having the insight gives me the empathy.

[1041] I love it.

[1042] You know, and that's what I'm so fortunate from having this conversation.

[1043] It was Gabby Logan, who came on this podcast, Davina McCall, who wrote a book about menopause in the end.

[1044] and you that I've really helped to open my eyes about that.

[1045] And it's interesting.

[1046] I don't know what it is.

[1047] I think growing up, like, men just don't want to talk about periods and menstrual cycles and all of these kinds of things.

[1048] They're almost taboo in a weird way.

[1049] I call it in the new book I'm writing, I'm calling it the cultural hush.

[1050] Yeah.

[1051] I think we have a cultural hush around the menstrual cycle, around menopause.

[1052] I can't tell you the number of men since Fast Like a Girl that has come out that read that book and they go to the chat.

[1053] on women and hormones, and then they come and find me and say, I finally understand my wife.

[1054] Yeah.

[1055] I finally understand my daughter.

[1056] Why aren't we talking about that?

[1057] And then how many women we don't talk about like the fact that I'm suffering because I don't have as much estrogen.

[1058] It would, we don't have a culture or a society that allows us to talk like that.

[1059] And that's what I think is shifting right now.

[1060] So many menopause books are coming out.

[1061] Big people, you know, Oprah's starting to do a whole thing on.

[1062] on menopause, like the conversation's opening up, but it's going to take bravery from women to step up.

[1063] I mean, I'm a very, very capable woman who has a beautiful family and a great business.

[1064] It's really hard for me to say, I can't do one more Zoom call.

[1065] My brain can't do it.

[1066] That feels like failure.

[1067] And then we have the other side of this, which is we have the men that are like, why are you being a bitch today?

[1068] It's like, because I don't have the hormone to stop me from being a bitch today.

[1069] So those kind of conversations are not happening, but if we did it with more empathy, if we could express ourselves like, hey, I just need a break right now is just a lot on my hormones.

[1070] Give me 30 minutes.

[1071] Give me an hour.

[1072] I can come back and be a better version.

[1073] I just need to take care of myself now.

[1074] Someone's going to be listening to this and they're going to think, it's not a problem.

[1075] You can just go get the hormones.

[1076] You can just go get some HRT.

[1077] It's called HRT, right?

[1078] HRT, yeah.

[1079] You can go get some HRT.

[1080] throw that at the problem, then you'll have your hormones back.

[1081] Yeah.

[1082] So this is the big thing is that just because you take a hormone, it doesn't mean your cells are going to use it.

[1083] So if you take it, let's use, let's use thyroid.

[1084] It's a perfect example because so many women specifically take thyroid medication and they don't see any change in their thyroid symptoms.

[1085] It's called an exogenous hormone.

[1086] You bring it into your body.

[1087] The body registers that it's there, the gut and the liver have to still break that hormone down into a usable form.

[1088] So if your gut is off or your liver is overloaded, you're not going to break that hormone down.

[1089] Once that hormone's broken down, the cell has to be able to receive it.

[1090] If that cell is inflamed with a lot of toxic oils and endocrine disruptors, there's no way to get the hormone into the cell.

[1091] So there are three very pivotal pieces.

[1092] There has to be production of the hormone, there has to be breaking down in the hormone and there has to be receiving of the hormone.

[1093] So when you take HRT, you're only handling one of those things.

[1094] And lifestyle, and lifestyle, this is why I'm so passionate about lifestyle, lifestyle can handle the other two.

[1095] They can take care of the gut and the liver.

[1096] They can open up the cell so it can receive HRT.

[1097] I've been, I wrote a book called The Menopause Reset and it'll come out and we're reissuing it in June.

[1098] And one of the things in there is I mapped out five lifestyle changes that women should do after 40.

[1099] And in that book, I lived that.

[1100] I did that through my whole 40s.

[1101] I didn't start doing bioidenticals till like 52.

[1102] But I had my lifestyle dialed in first, and now bioidenticals are working well.

[1103] People are sat there going, five lifestyle changes?

[1104] They want to know what they are?

[1105] They're going to buy the book as well, aren't we?

[1106] We're going to buy the book and we're going to find out right now.

[1107] Yes.

[1108] Okay.

[1109] Well, what do you think the first one is?

[1110] Fasting.

[1111] Yes, there you go.

[1112] The first one's fasting.

[1113] So it actually fast like a girl came after the menopause reset because all the women asked me, well, what if I have a site?

[1114] You know, what if I'm in my 30s?

[1115] What if I'm in my 20s?

[1116] How should I fast?

[1117] So that's, you know, that was sort of the birth of that book.

[1118] So fasting.

[1119] Second one is you have to learn to cycle your food.

[1120] So ketogenic diet works really well at certain times.

[1121] Cycle your food.

[1122] Cycle your food styles.

[1123] What does that mean?

[1124] So if in the front half, if you have a menstrual cycle, in the front half when estrogen's coming in, go keto.

[1125] Keep carbs low.

[1126] Keep glucose low.

[1127] You're great.

[1128] Back half of your cycle, when progesterone's coming in, raise glucose.

[1129] So don't go keto.

[1130] But do nature's carbs.

[1131] Do more fruits.

[1132] Do more squashes, potatoes.

[1133] That's going to help with building progestron.

[1134] So the perimenopausal woman has to learn that there's times to bring carbs down and there's times to bring carbs up, and that's what I explain in that.

[1135] I called it keto variations in that book.

[1136] So that's step two.

[1137] Step three, microbiome.

[1138] You got to pay attention to your microbiome.

[1139] Too many women have been on birth control for decades.

[1140] They go screaming into their perimenopausal years and their microbiomes and is completely off.

[1141] We have a whole set of bacteria in our gut called the ostrobelome, which is the bacteria that break estrogen down.

[1142] So you need to be eating more leafy green vegetables, more nuts and seeds, all.

[1143] olives, chocolate even, is great for the microbiome.

[1144] So I list all those foods out in there.

[1145] And then number, go ahead.

[1146] And that's for stage two of the three steps to actually these hormone replacement therapies actually working, which is being able to metabolize the hormone, break it down.

[1147] Yes, you got it.

[1148] Okay.

[1149] Yeah.

[1150] Step four.

[1151] You got it.

[1152] You're going to be a hormone expert after this.

[1153] Well, you know, not just a pretty face.

[1154] Yeah.

[1155] So then the fourth one is to watch your toxic load.

[1156] So we talked about that.

[1157] And then step five is my favorite.

[1158] And it's stop being a rushing woman.

[1159] Yeah, I know, as I tell you from a rushing lifestyle.

[1160] We need more, as we go through perimenopause, we need more downtime.

[1161] You got to schedule more downtime.

[1162] You need to let that nervous system come down.

[1163] You can't go through your perimenopausal years and thrive if you are go, go, go, go all the time.

[1164] It will catch up with you.

[1165] And so you've got to bring in more mindfulness, more meditation, more yoga, more, more vacations, more nose.

[1166] That's got to be a part of your repertoire.

[1167] You might have gotten away with it at 35, but you won't get away with it at 45.

[1168] I was thinking then as you're speaking.

[1169] I was thinking about how I kind of summarize all of these points into how we should be living our lives as men and women.

[1170] Because obviously we've got dragged into a consumerist, workaholic, sugar overloaded, toxin -ridden life because of, because we've been unconscious.

[1171] Yeah.

[1172] You know, so that's the way that corporations and media narrative and social media algorithms have taken us.

[1173] So I was thinking if we could just pause for a second and we could rewrite the blueprint of what it is to be a human and how to live, let's try and rewrite that.

[1174] So how would I work as a man and a woman?

[1175] What would be the differences?

[1176] How many days a week?

[1177] If you were in charge now rewriting that, which you might be one day.

[1178] I'd like to be.

[1179] You'd like to be?

[1180] Okay, so you're taking on the responsibility.

[1181] So how would men and women work?

[1182] And you mean from a business?

[1183] Yeah, like a professional standpoint.

[1184] Okay, well, let's start with a man. Yeah.

[1185] So, well, both men and women, we have two nervous systems.

[1186] One that speeds us up, one that relax, that slows us down.

[1187] So you could be in a speed up mode most of the time.

[1188] I would say you just need to make sure.

[1189] I mean, it really actually, I just thought about this right now.

[1190] the patriarchal work week works really well for men Monday through Friday work your fanny off Saturdays Sunday take it off now you're you're moving in and out of your parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system and you're giving both of them a break you are not meant to be working 24 seven seven days a week you know like you're not meant to be working all the time and and never taking a break what would you make the work hours for man well I'm I'm a big fan of working in the daylight and resting.

[1191] We're supposed to rest when it's dark.

[1192] Okay.

[1193] So winter, you would work less, summer you would work more.

[1194] Okay.

[1195] We do the opposite, right?

[1196] We take more vacation in the summer.

[1197] Women?

[1198] So women, we would design our whole work week around our menstrual cycle.

[1199] So we could go full tilt all the way till day 19, day 20, and then we would take a week off.

[1200] And we would bow out.

[1201] So instead of doing it in.

[1202] in a weekly amount like you guys would be doing, we'd be doing it in a monthly amount.

[1203] And how long would you bow out for?

[1204] Well, ideally, it depends on each woman's gonna be a little different, but I would say anywhere from, I wanna say seven days if it worked for a schedule until you bleed.

[1205] So day 20 till, you know, if day 21 till day 28, you would do it for a week.

[1206] Bowing out might also look like, I just am not gonna take on the high low that I normally do the rest of the month.

[1207] Maybe I'll cut it in half.

[1208] Maybe work from home.

[1209] Yeah.

[1210] Maybe I work from home.

[1211] Maybe I can't do my workload and my extreme exercise and go socialize with my friends during that week.

[1212] I just need to start to slow everything down.

[1213] So that's what I want to say about bowing out.

[1214] Is that it's just you're putting yourself first and you're slowing everything down.

[1215] Now eating.

[1216] Men and women eating.

[1217] Yeah.

[1218] So men.

[1219] I think as far as food, I agree with just keeping blood sugar stable is great.

[1220] I think you guys really work well off of a meat -based, an animal diet.

[1221] I don't think you have more testosterone, which means you have more muscle.

[1222] The way that we build muscle and keep muscle strong is through amino acids, and you get that meat.

[1223] So for men, I feel like that primal diet, the paleo diet, was meat and vegetables and fruit is amazing.

[1224] I think that's perfect.

[1225] I don't think refined flowers and sugars that we are exposed to.

[1226] I think that in an overabundance, they'll hurt men too.

[1227] And we're seeing that with metabolic syndrome.

[1228] Women, we do well with meats.

[1229] I think we need less of it because we have less testosterone.

[1230] So we may need less of it, although it is important.

[1231] Protein is important, especially as we age.

[1232] So I don't want to lose sight on that.

[1233] But we also need to bring glucose up.

[1234] So we need more fruits.

[1235] We're going to need more squashes.

[1236] We're going to need more potatoes.

[1237] And that's, you know, all built around your menstrual cycle.

[1238] And eating times?

[1239] I'm not a fan of eating when it's dark out because when melatonin goes up, insulin, you become more insulin resistant.

[1240] So I'm a fan of...

[1241] Which means what?

[1242] It means so your body won't process the glucose from that meal as efficiently when it's dark out.

[1243] It won't take away in store.

[1244] Yeah.

[1245] Exactly.

[1246] Exactly.

[1247] It will store it as fat or something?

[1248] Yeah.

[1249] It's going to store it as fat.

[1250] If insulin can't drive it into the cell for energy, it'll store it as fat.

[1251] So the meal you eat at 930 is going to be stored more as fat than if you have that same meal at 5 .30.

[1252] I know.

[1253] So 90s aren't doing themselves any favors?

[1254] No. So we go back to our primal friends, right?

[1255] Like let's go back and use that if people get lost in these theories.

[1256] So they didn't have electricity.

[1257] They sat around the fire.

[1258] so most likely they ate during light hours and then the women what did the women do if we go back and look at cultures around our period we were actually that's the whole red tent ideas we were sequestered off into another part of the of the tribe we didn't have to do as many chores we went more into an introverted place you go back and you study what we did in those days it was very much along those lines and we're just not doing that now what about supplements?

[1259] What supplements would you have men and women consuming?

[1260] Well, for women, the most important supplement she could ever take is magnesium.

[1261] Magnesium makes every single hormone in your body.

[1262] For men, I would say the most important supplement.

[1263] I mean, there's a lot of them, but for hormones is zinc, because zinc makes testosterone.

[1264] Outside of that, for both men and women, the other supplement and the other measurement that we all need to be looking at are vitamin D levels.

[1265] Yeah, I've learned this from guests in this podcast.

[1266] I've started taking vitamin D supplements.

[1267] Yeah, if your vitamin D is under 30, you are in a critically depressed immune state.

[1268] Yeah, so you've got to get it definitely over 30.

[1269] For hormonal health, we need to see it more up in about 60 -70 to have your hormones be working at their best.

[1270] So this goes back to like the HRT thing.

[1271] If we're taking HRT, but our vitamin D is 20, that HRT isn't going to be as effective as compared to the woman who has an HRT of like 55 or 60, or vitamin D of 55 or 60, that HRT will work better.

[1272] Interesting.

[1273] And vitamin D comes from sunlight, doesn't it?

[1274] Sunlight and sardines.

[1275] Sardines.

[1276] The food sources are really bad.

[1277] This is why everybody's low in it.

[1278] the food sources are it's sardines it's like really fatty fishes um and sunlight and we spend most of our time indoors that's right we can't get it from this kind of light no no no and you have to be outside with your like skin exposed at the high point of the day of the sun like 12 1 o 'clock to get the most vitamin d and if you're in a city where there's more air pollution study is shown that that you're not going to the rays that come in that turn uh that will hit your skin and turn it into vitamin D or less because air pollution blocks it, which is why so many people are low in vitamin D, which is why taking vitamin D is a smart thing.

[1279] Is that why people are doing these like infrared saunas and stuff now?

[1280] Does that produce vitamin D or is that something else?

[1281] It's more detox.

[1282] It's pushing infrared sauna.

[1283] What it does is it simulates a fever.

[1284] So it burns things out from the inside of the cell out, which is why it's a really good detoxer.

[1285] There was a few things you said when I was watching some of your YouTube videos that I wrote down that I found really compelling.

[1286] One of them was you said about the importance of opening up our detox pathways.

[1287] And you just mentioned detoxing there.

[1288] What do you mean by opening up our detox pathways?

[1289] Yeah.

[1290] So if you look at our lymph system, each the lymph is like, you know, people know lymph nodes because when you get sick, you can feel them.

[1291] Mumps.

[1292] Yeah.

[1293] So the lymph is always carrying toxins out of organs.

[1294] So the liver has a lymph path.

[1295] the gut has lymph nodes in there that are going to pull all the toxins that are in there and move them out of you.

[1296] So we need to keep these lymph pathways open.

[1297] So the gut's a great one.

[1298] You should be having a bowel movement every single day.

[1299] If you're not having a bowel movement every single day, then what the body's trying to get rid of is staying inside of you and it gets congested.

[1300] A thing we teach women about the armpit and actually would work for men too is that you should have a pit not a puff if it's a puff like look in the mirror and if your armpit is a puff then that's stagnant lymph it means that you're not pulling the toxins for women that are coming out of her breasts are not getting out toxins that are coming out from the head down into the uh into the thoracic areas not getting out because it's congested so if your underarm is puffy and not like a pit yeah then you might be storing some of those toxins that's right and they're not moving they're not mobilizing why aren't they are my pathways yeah the pathways blocked so with what well there's the question yeah with i feel like people are going to leave this podcast to be so depressed because there's so many pieces of this but deodorant deodorant clogs that up and so it doesn't mobilize all of the toxins out this was a big thing with breast cancer is a lot of women using toxic deodorants they weren't getting the toxins out of the breast and it was clogging in the armpit because of the toxins from the deodorant that explains why we sweat in that area right because it's a pathway why do we even have hair in that area i don't know you tell me it's a detox it's for detoxing it's to help get those toxins out also the molecules go down the hair yeah yeah and what do women do shave it off that's right so you're saying i i i shave i i'm i just because i don't i can't walk it's just not in my in my nature but i you know what i do is i have a lufa in my shower and i just lufa under my arms at whenever i shower to open up those pathways what's a lufa it's like a little organic sponge okay that scrubs it yeah scrubs it we also have pubic hair we also have pubic hair we are getting toxins out from the ovaries the ovaries are the major area for and testes this is where hormones are being produced and so as they're coming out they are supposed to influence are everything biologically we need them to influence but then they're also supposed to get out of our system and so the hair ends up becoming like this way that we can mobilize the toxins out of us i never want i never knew or asked why i grow hair under my arms and in the pubic region no one ever told me about that no one ever i never questioned it i thought it was slightly inconvenient yes well it is for sure but the body doesn't It doesn't do anything to inconvenience you.

[1301] It does it to increase your chances of survival because I'm the byproduct of millions of years of survival of the fittest and evolution that has made me pruned a sculpted to survive.

[1302] It's funny because we spend so much of our time and this goes back to the conversation around sugar.

[1303] We spend and just weight loss and all these things.

[1304] We live in a world where we think that our body is against us.

[1305] Right.

[1306] It's fighting us.

[1307] It's making me go for the sugar drawer.

[1308] It's stopping me losing weight.

[1309] it's growing all these pubs right inconvenient yeah yeah yeah yeah and we fight it so we shave it off and we you know do all these crazy things to fight against our body but our body is very much it's it's actually it's actually for us and many of the things we're choosing to do are against us we are against ourselves not our bodies our bodies cannot put a foot wrong you got it I mean you got it it's this is what I'm trying to bring back is this this this respect for what the body's trying to do.

[1310] That's what we're missing.

[1311] It's all inconvenient.

[1312] And it's everything from like even like weight gain.

[1313] Why is your body gaining weight?

[1314] Because it's so brilliant that it decided not to put that fat around your organs, it put it around your belly.

[1315] And now you're looking in the mirror and you're villainizing it, but your body was trying to save your life in that moment.

[1316] Like everything the body is always doing for you, not against you, but we continually discredit what it's trying to do and manipulate it, which is why the best thing I can think of is that we're just in an evolutionary mismatch.

[1317] We're just that the modern world does not line up with the human body's design.

[1318] Something really pissed me off this weekend.

[1319] I was walking through New York City, and I saw a poster, and it is for weight loss injections.

[1320] have you seen this no but ozempic is a drug that's really popular right now there's a couple of drugs right now there's there's one my friends are talking about it and we were like there's a diabetes drug i think and then headlines have been that so many people are taking this yeah diabetes drug to lose weight that people with diabetes are struggling um there's another one called seymaglutide yep yep this is this is people injecting things in their body to help them lose weight.

[1321] And the poster, which my friend had sent me, and I'd seen it earlier, and then he'd sent me the poster as well in our group chat, says, one shot a week, lose weight, and it has the little URL.

[1322] Someone, thankfully, had actually ripped the URL off this billboard.

[1323] What's your take on all this stuff?

[1324] Yeah, the new medications that are out there right now are creating a weight loss possibility when we look at the scale and when we look at how people feel when they put on their clothes.

[1325] But it's at the expense of muscle.

[1326] They're actually losing more muscle than they are losing fat.

[1327] So, yes, you feel thinner, but it's not because you lost fat.

[1328] You lost muscle.

[1329] Muscle is the organ of longevity.

[1330] If you lose muscle as you age, you are going to be in a bad situation.

[1331] I mean, we need muscle to get out of a chair.

[1332] Yeah.

[1333] You need muscle to perform daily life functions.

[1334] The other thing people don't realize about muscle is in muscle or insulin receptors.

[1335] So if you lose muscle, you don't have as many insulin receptors, which means you're now putting yourself in a more insulin resistant state, which means you have to stay on the medication forever to be able to stay at the weight you want because you don't have the same insulin sensitivity.

[1336] So again, it's like the calorie in calorie out.

[1337] Short term result, long -term consequence.

[1338] It's not, it's risky.

[1339] It's risky.

[1340] And then, you know, every medication has a side effect.

[1341] But I'm more concerned about the person who thinks they solve their weight loss issue and all they've done is made it worse down the red.

[1342] I've sat here with many a health expert and a fitness expert and nutritional experts and they all agree with what you just said about muscle.

[1343] They all said to me, because I asked a question to, I think it was Tim Spector about, it might have been Giles Yo, asked them a question about, do, does our metabolism fall off a cliff as we age, which is quite a popular thing and a few of them said the same thing to me they go at a certain point further down the line metabolism does change but really the thing that changed is muscle mass and that means that we stop moving as much which means that we gain weight faster so he said the number one thing that you need to do as you age is keep doing resistance training keep your muscle yeah and because I was asking a question about my father I said I went down this really steep cliff in Bali a couple of weekends before and as I was going down those stairs I was thinking my dad couldn't do this anymore and at the bottom of those stairs was our activity for the day.

[1344] We were going white water rafting.

[1345] And as I was walking down those stairs, I want to be my dad's age and be able to go down these stairs so I can do stuff with my kids.

[1346] And getting into a place where I'm a mobile at, you know, in my, by 60, that is a choice.

[1347] That is an unavoid.

[1348] That is a, for most of us, that is a choice.

[1349] And it's one that we can avoid if we keep muscle and we keep, therefore we'll keep fat.

[1350] And what you've said there from what I garnered from it is I will actually, if I take those.

[1351] And if I inject them into my body, I'll lose my muscle mass. And if I lose my muscle mass, I will have a higher chance of weight gain and obesity when I'm older.

[1352] And your functionality.

[1353] Yeah.

[1354] So the great, the perfect example that I always stuck in my head is my dad had a knee surgery.

[1355] And he's 86 years old.

[1356] And I remember trying to help him get around a chair that he was sitting in.

[1357] And he was starting to lose his upper body strength.

[1358] and he literally couldn't push himself up and out of the chair to be able to move into a comfortable position.

[1359] And I thought, oh my gosh, that's where muscle is so important at 86 years old is just being able to get up and out of a chair after recovering from a surgery.

[1360] But if you think about the functionality of a human as we age, if you want to be able to not do as many activities like you're talking about, just make sure you don't have as much muscle.

[1361] Like the minute muscle goes away, your functionality goes away.

[1362] But more importantly, the minute muscle goes away, you're more insulin resistant.

[1363] So you're going to gain weight more down the long haul.

[1364] A lot of other people would say, you know, the way to lose weight is just to do lots of cardio, run a lot.

[1365] Yeah.

[1366] Good idea?

[1367] No. No. So here's another interesting thing.

[1368] And I'm going to give it through a women's perspective because let's go back to women over 40.

[1369] So cortisol goes up with extra cardio.

[1370] calorie set point goes you know you're more calorie output so remember that's also happening and you're changing your set point so I need more calories my calorie set point goes up and my cortisol levels go up yeah okay okay so what ends up happening is that you actually now are tanking all your other hormones so let's follow the trail of progesterone cortisol goes up because you're you're doing so much cardio so progestrone goes down because cortisol goes up, progesterone goes down.

[1371] Well, progesterone keeps estrogen in check.

[1372] So now estrogen can go up, and if you have too much estrogen, eventually what's going to happen is it's going to be stored as fat.

[1373] So that extra hormone will, so long term, that's not a great plan.

[1374] For women?

[1375] For women.

[1376] For men?

[1377] Well, so then the second piece applies to both men and women is if you're doing a lot of cardio, most likely you're breaking down muscle to be able to perform that cardio.

[1378] And a great example is look at a marathon runner versus a tennis player, you know, or a soccer player.

[1379] Like even though soccer players are doing a lot of cardio, it's a lot of start, stop, start, stop.

[1380] But a marathon runner who's done so much cardio is breaking muscle down to be able to do that amount of cardio.

[1381] So it's okay to do just not at the expense of muscle.

[1382] And for women, you can't do it at the expense of progester.

[1383] So it won't help me to lose weight doing cardio.

[1384] You know what's going to help you to lose weight is more weight lifting, build more muscles, you have more insulin receptor sites, fast more so you can get rid of all of the glucose that get stored in muscles, break your fast with protein.

[1385] And yeah, I mean, that's what we saw.

[1386] We see all the time in both my clinic and my online world is those three things will get you in the shape that you want.

[1387] It might not remember, as you build muscle, you're not going to lose the number on the scale.

[1388] might be that much different.

[1389] You know, it might not move, but your whole shape is going to change.

[1390] You're going to look different.

[1391] So is any level of cardio good for weight loss?

[1392] Would you recommend that just for the broader health benefits?

[1393] You know, I think cardio is more of a mental health improvement.

[1394] You know, you get all those endorphins.

[1395] It's so good for your mental health.

[1396] I love to go running.

[1397] It's my favorite thing.

[1398] But I do it for my mental health, not to lose weight.

[1399] Another thing that I saw online, which was very curious that you said, is you were talking about how to undo the oxidative damage from eating too much sugar.

[1400] Yeah.

[1401] What do you mean by that?

[1402] So think about the cell as an ecosystem.

[1403] Right.

[1404] And so inside the cell, there has to be a balance of all the right components.

[1405] So when glucose goes up, which happens when you eat too much sugar, that balance goes off.

[1406] And one of the byproducts of that is that your body puts off these free radicals.

[1407] It creates more oxidative damage within the cell.

[1408] The more of that oxidative damage, the more it's going to destroy mitochondria and the nucleus and all the cellular parts.

[1409] So what you're doing when you're fasting is you're reestablishing balance into the cell.

[1410] And you're allowing to your body to naturally undo the oxidative damage that happened from poor living.

[1411] Got you.

[1412] So it's like a reset.

[1413] It's like a cellular reset.

[1414] People say that there's been a school of thought that fasting breaks down muscle, that I'll lose muscle.

[1415] fast.

[1416] True or false?

[1417] So it appears to break down muscle.

[1418] It depends on how long you're in a fast, but it will appear as if your muscle is shrinking because it's getting rid of the stored sugar.

[1419] But when you now bring in a high protein meal and feed it amino acids, it will grow stronger.

[1420] You'll see more definition because it broke the sugar down, which you don't want in there.

[1421] So it changes the shape of the muscle.

[1422] Makes it more lean, I guess?

[1423] It makes it more lean, but if you follow that up with good eating, you're going to make yourself stronger.

[1424] Now, the person who decides to go into a fast breaks down muscle and doesn't follow up with good eating, yeah, you're going to end up with less muscle.

[1425] But if you follow it up with a lot of protein and you build that mTOR back up, now you're actually able to build your muscle even stronger.

[1426] There's two ways to build muscle.

[1427] One is through weights, lifting weights, strength training, and the other is through food, protein.

[1428] so all fasting's doing is leaning it out and does fasting have an impact on my sleep uh it can in a couple ways um sleep for starters if your brain's inflamed you're not going to sleep so fasting brings down inflammation so that would be the first thing um the other thing is that a lot of people wake up especially women two three in the morning and they kind of get the jolt out of out of bed and a lot of times that's because you've maybe had dinner at seven o 'clock glucose is going down and so the body registers that glucose has gone down and so it gives you a cortisol spike and all of a sudden you wake up at two or three in the morning.

[1429] Is that why some people wake up at, I've got a friend of mine that's an elderly male and he always tells me, he goes, oh, I woke up at 3am last night and he's constantly saying it.

[1430] He's like, I woke up in the middle of the night again last night.

[1431] Yep.

[1432] And I've always wondered why and when I'm with him, we do eat dinner particularly late yeah yeah so he's probably getting so he has all that glucose he goes to sleep and now the glucose starts to go down and then there's going to be a point at which the body registers that it hits a new low and then it triggers it and and all the sudden triggers cortisol and releases glucose from other body parts and the the body takes that as we're running from a tiger get up out of bed go yeah and to avoid that what would usually you'd recommend not eating so late yeah not eating so late But the more you fast, the more you're, you stabilize that blood sugar and you don't have those highs and lows as much.

[1433] It's it's a come it's a way of bringing balance back to the whole blood sugar system.

[1434] I have to say, you know, we talk a lot about I mean, we've talked extensively about fasting today.

[1435] And one of the concerns I have about talking about the subject matter is the implications it has for people with eating disorders.

[1436] Yeah.

[1437] Um, because it's quite easy to conflate messages if if if you're not able to fully understand the context of everything yeah and i'm sure that's a topic you've you've thought about i mean you i think you've actually write about it in one of the later chapters in your book in chapter 10 yeah um it's it's it's a common it's one that we thought a lot about when we wrote the book so i i want to say that first that um when the book was put together that was definitely something my agent the publisher everybody was really keen on how can we tread that lightly.

[1438] And here's my stance on it.

[1439] The first is that if you have a severe eating disorder, I'm going to recommend that if you want to learn to fast, you need to bring your therapist into it, you need to bring your doctor into it.

[1440] You need another set of eyes to help you navigate that.

[1441] So that would be the first thing that I would say.

[1442] Second thing, I'm going to go back to this woman that I worked with who had severe eating disorders.

[1443] And she's been very, very public about her eating disorders.

[1444] And I didn't start with fasting.

[1445] I started with food with her.

[1446] So we started by stabilizing her blood sugar first.

[1447] And then once I saw that those spikes on her glucose monitor were in a place I wanted were more steady, then I introduced fasting because she was seeing food as a real healing tool.

[1448] And then I could put patch on fasting as an adjunct to it.

[1449] And she's doing incredible.

[1450] Incredible.

[1451] So it's, it's, there's just a different approach, but I really encourage that you work with your practitioner or your therapist.

[1452] Where do I start?

[1453] I'm sold.

[1454] You've sold me on fasting.

[1455] I'm going to become a faster.

[1456] Where do I start?

[1457] Mindy?

[1458] So the first place to start is you want to think about compressing your food into one eating window.

[1459] So let me start by asking you, what time do you typically finish eating dinner?

[1460] I told you this off camera and I told you not to mention it.

[1461] Sorry.

[1462] Sorry.

[1463] okay on it on a good day on an ideal day so my my issue is um i'm going to be honest because that's the point of this podcast um the issue i have is i wake up in the morning i then begin work and i'll get i'll eat my first meal this is quite shocking in fact i'll eat my first meal around i'm going to say between 2 p .m and 4 p .m depending on how busy my schedule is sometimes there's been days i remember one particular day it's actually when I found out that I do this, I took someone with me for the day.

[1464] They were shadowing me for the day.

[1465] And it got to 7pm and they go, we haven't eaten today.

[1466] Oh, wow.

[1467] And I didn't notice.

[1468] I had no idea that I hadn't eaten that day.

[1469] So I'm a very late eater.

[1470] But then the issue is I will go to the gym, usually in the evening, usually after work, often between 9 p .m. and 11 p .m. And then when I get home from the gym, I go to sleep like a good boy.

[1471] No. This is where you go wrong.

[1472] Yeah, this is where it goes downhill.

[1473] Then I'll eat.

[1474] Then I'll eat something.

[1475] Pretty late at night.

[1476] And that could be midnight.

[1477] So what I heard in that is your eating window is 2 to 12.

[1478] 2 to 12.

[1479] So that you're in a 10 -hour eating window.

[1480] Yeah.

[1481] So in the morning, are you doing coffee?

[1482] Yeah.

[1483] Yeah.

[1484] I do now, mainly because of this podcast.

[1485] But you're not eating anything else in the morning.

[1486] No, not really.

[1487] No. No, I don't eat breakfast.

[1488] There's no days in my life where I eat breakfast, really.

[1489] The earliest time I might eat is midday.

[1490] Okay.

[1491] So if you choose to make two your time that you, I call it opening up your eating window, you're going to start eating.

[1492] So you would go 2 to 12.

[1493] That's 10 -hour eating window.

[1494] And we'll work on your window here in a moment.

[1495] That's leaving 14 hours of fasting.

[1496] About 15 hours, you're going to start to get the testosterone increase.

[1497] So I would say, let's come.

[1498] can we make it a nine or even an eight -hour eating window, especially because you told me your goals and your fitness goals.

[1499] I would think for you an eight -hour eating window would be great.

[1500] So you have an option.

[1501] You can either not eat when you get home from the gym, and now we're at.

[1502] I'm just so hungry.

[1503] Right.

[1504] Or you could push it back to three before or four, you said sometimes, where you don't, where you don't eat.

[1505] What would be ideal?

[1506] Well, you definitely just don't want to eat when it's dark out.

[1507] So ideal would be an eight -hour eating window finishing right now at summer, so finishing at nine.

[1508] And then you would work back.

[1509] Yeah.

[1510] So you would do like one to nine.

[1511] Or 12 to 8.

[1512] Or 12 to 8.

[1513] Yeah.

[1514] Or 11 until 7.

[1515] Right.

[1516] It's not going to happen.

[1517] I'll do the one until 9 that you said.

[1518] Yeah.

[1519] Because I go to the gym often quite late in the UK.

[1520] So that means I can eat after the gym.

[1521] And then here's a little hack is that.

[1522] And I want to make sure that people don't lose sight.

[1523] What I just did with you is customize it to your lifestyle.

[1524] And I think that's really important.

[1525] You just take that eating window and you figure out what's the best where it fits for you.

[1526] I do this with people who have families.

[1527] They want to sit down and eat dinner.

[1528] So don't skip dinner with your kids.

[1529] Like sit and enjoy that.

[1530] You sound like that from a fitness and work level, that's working for you.

[1531] So let's keep it like that.

[1532] Let's not move that around too much.

[1533] But for your fitness goals, one day a week, I'd like to see you elongate your fast.

[1534] Push your fast.

[1535] Like, could you go 20 hours, 24 hours of fasting where you're just having one meal a day?

[1536] Because what you're going to do is you're going to put your body into a little bit of a state of stress where all the things we've talked about are going to start to the healing is going to happen at a much quicker rate.

[1537] You're saying once in a while?

[1538] Yes, once a week for you.

[1539] Once a week.

[1540] So once a week go like 24 hours without eating.

[1541] That's right.

[1542] Or we call it one meal a day.

[1543] Wow.

[1544] Okay.

[1545] Anything else I need to know to get started?

[1546] I mean, coffee can be your friend.

[1547] Putting MCT oil in it can help you get ketones a little bit quicker.

[1548] So I don't know if you ever put oil in your coffee.

[1549] I have MCT oil on my counter at home because I did the keto diet.

[1550] Yeah, so just put it in your coffee.

[1551] It'll switch you over and it'll get those ketones going a little quicker.

[1552] There is something I wrote about in the book called a fasted snack.

[1553] and the fasted snack is pure fat mom they're hard to find it's a fat mom so it's it has no carbs very little protein it's all fat so an example of one might be an avocado is pretty fat dense it has it does have some carbs but the one I love it's something called a keto cup and it's MCT oil with cacao butter and some chocolate just pure chocolate wrapped around it it looks like a little recess peanut butter cups and I you can do those in your fasting window and they'll keep they they won't switch you over because they're pure fat so fasted snacks or it can be really helpful the research shows that you get all the benefits of fasting but you're popping these little keto cups in your mouth all day long what is the most important thing we haven't talked about in your view I you know I think the most important thing is for people to realize that there's not the perfect path.

[1554] There's just your path.

[1555] So take all everything we talked about and find the threads that resonate with you and put those into action.

[1556] And then maybe you come back and listen to the podcast again and you take another thread.

[1557] But we have to stop trying to do our diet like everybody else around us.

[1558] There's your diet.

[1559] And that's really what I'm trying to get is that people build a lifestyle that's unique to them.

[1560] N of one.

[1561] Be your own end of one.

[1562] it's really the most beautiful place to live and of one yeah you know what they'd say in a in a study they always say like the n is how many people were in the study and so they'll say like n of a hundred and of a thousand so and of one is one person was in the study be your own study be your own be your own study your own experiment yeah we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest asks a question for the next guest and the question that's been left in the Diary of a CEO for you is interesting.

[1563] Uh -oh.

[1564] It's actually not that profound or interesting, but it's, I feel like you're the type of person that will interpret a deeper meaning than this question, maybe is alluding to, but really think about this.

[1565] Okay.

[1566] How do you take care of you?

[1567] that's a great question um i could answer that question on a health level like i i have a really strong health routine um i get up in the morning i meditate i have a hyperbaric oxygen chamber at home i pop in my chamber um i read like i the first two hours of my day are for me first before anybody else so i have that part of me but i want to give a better a deeper answer to that.

[1568] I'm really getting to know myself and what my needs are, especially as a 53 -year -old woman who's moving through menopause and really honoring that how I care for myself is more important than anything else.

[1569] And what I mean by that is when I say no to things, not over -scheduling myself, putting my needs before everybody else's.

[1570] These are things I have.

[1571] and done in my life.

[1572] And right now I'm really working on caring for myself first so that I can pour love into the world after that.

[1573] Love me first.

[1574] Why is that important?

[1575] I think for me, I have been in the healing profession for so long.

[1576] I've been a mother, a wife, and I've done everything for everybody else.

[1577] And I stand here at 53 saying, I'm going to start doing things for me now.

[1578] And that feels that feels like self -love and that feels like where health is going to live for me and um i haven't i haven't spent much time doing that in my life so i'm learning to do it for the first time now mindy dr mindy pals that is beautiful thank you so much thank you so much for your wisdom um you're a remarkable engaging captivating storyteller author content creator and a wonderful practitioner and everything you do.

[1579] You've helped so many people with your work.

[1580] And I was so excited when they told me I'd be have the honor of having a conversation with you today.

[1581] This is one of those conversations that genuinely will change people's lives.

[1582] And isn't that an amazing thing?

[1583] It's really cool.

[1584] Isn't that an amazing thing that we can sit here and all the stuff you've shared will have a significant impact on one person's life, millions of people's lives, hundreds of thousands of people's lives, which will mean that they live a more fulfilled existence.

[1585] They can kiss there and hug their kids for longer.

[1586] And that is because of the work you do.

[1587] So on behalf of all of those people who may never get to meet you in person and thank you themselves, thank you.

[1588] Oh, thank you.

[1589] I just really appreciate the opportunity to be here for the thoughtful questions and really allowing me to express what I hope does exactly that.

[1590] And I think the purpose of living a fulfilled life is touching humans you never actually meet.

[1591] Amen.