Hey there, welcome back to another short clip with dr. Jason Funk. Today. We're going to unpack the physiology of fasting and this is just a segment from our last in-person interview in Toronto. He's the author of many great books. As you know, including the most recent book life in the fasting Lane. Now the purpose of this short clip that we're going to get to very soon is to really clear the waters when it comes to fasting physiology because many people out on the internet, you know on Instagram and YouTube and all this they'll say things like see fasting is dangerous because it elevates cortisol or at all.
Elevates adrenaline. So if you have adrenal fatigue, you should not fast. Now. We need to understand the difference between chronic and persistent elevations or alterations in hormone levels from chronic unrelenting stress from watching the news from staying up late from circadian rhythm disruptions versus a transient that is a short-term periodic increase in a hormone for example cortisol or adrenaline that happens when you fast so there is a difference but this gets the nuances in the
The context of this somehow gets ignored in Lay press and amongst people on the internet. So I wanted to share this clip that I thought was really succinctly the point and will help you better understand what happens when you fast and how that those hormonal shifts are directly responsible for the beneficial effects of your fast, including the upregulation of a table as you we know adrenaline and cortisol impact at off Aegina favorable manner. So that's where we're going and then towards the end of this clip which is
is I don't know about seven minutes into it. I'll share with you some additional science and some natural products that might be able to increase or facilitate your fast including exercise and and things that impact blood sugar and blood glucose like berberine hydrochloride, which is a natural compound and I'll share with you some additional resources. So here we go with. Dr. Jason Funk and then towards the end. We're going to get into some more practical ways to kick-start your
fast.
Jamie's known for 50 years insulin stops you from burning fat why because insulin is telling your body to gain fat so you don't want to burn fat and gain fat at the same time. So we say insulin inhibits lipolysis. So if insulin is high, but you're only taking 1200 calories. You have no access to your fat stores, right? Because it blocks lipolysis insulin is high. You can't burn fat. So all you have coming in is 1200 calories. All you can burn is 1200 calories.
Your metabolic rate must slow down in order for you to survive because you don't want to die. Mmm what happens now if you allow your insulin to drop say you go on a seven-day fast.
And so you have zero calories coming in for seven days, and I choose this not because I recommend it it's pretty it's fairly extreme in some cases. But if you have insulin resistance, at least I know your insulin will fall. So as your insulin Falls, then you're going to switch from burning food to burning fat. That's what's supposed to happen. So if your body now sees, okay, I'm burning body fat.
There's like tons of this stuff. Yeah, why do I need to slow down my metabolism? In fact, if you look at the physiology of fasting it actually maintains the metabolic rate because as insulin Falls you get a counter regulatory hormones Surge. And again, this is sort of basic physiology insulin Falls the body increases sympathetic tone. So the sympathetic nervous system adrenaline and noradrenaline.
Len growth hormone and cortisol. We know that that's pretty basic because that's trying to get the glucose back out from the liver into the blood and those hormones the sympathetic nervous system. Adrenaline cortisol growth hormone are trying to push the glucose out. Well, what do you think adrenaline does that's not slowing your metabolic rate, right? It's pumping it up and why does growth hormone go up but growth hormone.
Is there because you have a period of gluconeogenesis at around 24 hours? If you look at the physiology of fasting the glycogen stores which are chains of glucose in your liver. That's the first sort of stuff you go to when you burn through your glycogen and last for 24 hours at 24 to 36 hours. Roughly you're going to burn protein and that's where everybody says. Oh, you're burning muscle know you're burning Protein. That's not necessarily muscle. There's a lot of excess connective tissue. There's a lot of excess fat that
You should burn if you look at those, you know documentaries of people whose weight. They have all this excess skin. Yeah. Well that needs to be burned and you want to burn that that's not bad thing. That's a good thing. You want to get rid of that same thing with the top Edge you want to get rid of this protein, but if you keep getting rid of protein and never putting it back in that's not good either. So what does a body do the body's not that stupid? What it does is it pumps up growth hormone? Like you can't believe it goes up like three to five fold on a
Five-day fast. Wow and what it means is that when you eat again, you're going to rebuild that protein but not the protein that you didn't need that excess skin that you didn't need the stuff that you do need and same thing for a tapa G same thing for cancer cells same thing for Alzheimer's plaque and so on you actually have the ability to break down this protein that you don't want and that's why a lot of these people there's a lot of research going on into a tapa G caloric.
Shin in terms of longevity, I mean there's a whole calorie notion which is not really physiologic but it's the same thing you really want to burn off this excess Protein. That's not making good because the if you don't ever let your body break down this protein, you can't actually build new protein because it's like if you have
a bathroom that you want to renovate the first thing you got to do is pull out that sort of avocado green tub. That was sitting from the 1970s. If you don't pull out that top you can't put in a nice new clawfoot tub. You have to get rid of it first. Yeah, and that's the way the body works. If you look at turnover of bone, there's osteoclasts and osteoblasts. The first thing you do when you remodel bone is chew up the old bone then
Lay down new bone and that's healthier than keeping the old crappy bone there. Just like that old avocado green
top. So let's unpack this a little bit further and hopefully you found those analogies and that story from dr. Jason Funk helpful and you can help to maybe educate other people because there's so much confusion about this again. We need to separate chronic elevations in cortisol chronic elevations in the stress response and disentangle that from acute changes that are necessary and important.
Aunt for the physiologic adaptations that are occurring during fasting again these adaptations involved but are not limited to elevations in a table G degradation of protein aggregated proteins specifically in the brain that we're worried about when it comes to things like neurodegenerative diseases Parkinson's Alzheimer's dementia a mild cognitive impairment. We know that at Ava G dysfunction and accumulation of aggregated proteins is problematic and involved.
The clinical pathophysiology of those diseases in the etiology of those diseases. So thereby, you know periodic energy restriction periodic fasting and a transient not persistent but a transient increase in a table, which is helpful in those clinical situations. And this is why you know, a lot of people are recommending in your intermittent fasting time after defeating exercise. By the way. These are all modalities and strategies that increase a table G and just a small plug we have a
Great course that goes into this in much more depth ensures with you the science and the Practical applications over on our website courses dot high-intensity health.com. This is called the ottava G enhancer master class because I think some of you know this maybe some of you don't but I have an elevated tumor biomarker. It's called alpha-fetoprotein which is why for the last five years, maybe four and a half years. I've been really interested in fasting as a means to get out in front of whatever is causing this biomarker to be elevated because
I've had full body MRIs. I've done other, you know, tumor tracking cancer tracking test and I can't figure out what's going on. So I'm like, you know what I might as well get out in front of it and do everything. I can from a preventative standpoint. So if for whatever reason there is some sort of you know tumorigenesis going on that I can really slow or ameliorate whatever is happening again, so I don't recommend just willy-nilly testing tumor biomarkers unless you're prepared to
Figure out exactly what's going on because this you know as complete as I thought I was you know as comprehensive as I thought I was doing some labs and I thought oh alpha-fetoprotein. Yeah, let's throw that on ca-125 CI 19 and alpha-fetoprotein was really high and it come I come to I have come to learn that that test is only run once you have diagnosed cancer. And so anyway, sometimes more labs are not better, but I digress what
What the tools that I want to share with you today is what I found to be very effective when it comes to initiating a fast is suppressing your glucose early. And so this is where if you're trying to get the most benefits from your fast make sure that your last meal is low in carbohydrates because it has to do with the physiology that dr. Jason Fung was alluding to and that's this reduction in glucose. And then as you burn through your hepatic or liver glycogen, that's
Going to initiate the the initial responses in the hormonal changes associated with the fast including but not limited to the elevations in glucagon because again, once you start to deplete your liver glycogen, the the messages sent hormonal ER. Oh my gosh. We need to get some glucose going so lets, you know increase glucagon okay to increase gluconeogenesis, then you're going to get you know, the adrenaline and noradrenaline and then the increase in growth hormone and the growth hormone as you just heard from. Dr. Jason Funk, sir.
Kind of two purposes to help spare or prevent the catabolism of skeletal muscle because your muscle although it's needed to you know, obviously move your body and things like that. It's also a repository of gluconeogenesis amino acid so you can break down glutamine and and alanine things like that that can be utilized to make glucose. And so we don't really want to start stripping down a ton of muscle when we're fasting, you know, the body is smart and has
through natural selection Evolution intelligent design, wherever you stand on that sort of develop developmental trajectory of how we became you know, who we are as humans right now. We know that growth we need muscle to forage for food to hunt for food to track an animal to to, you know, keep moving in the case of bad weather or starvation or famine right to find more food. So stripping down muscle to make immediate glucose.
Doesn't necessarily serve us, you know, at least initially during the fast and food deprivation. So that's why you see this increase in this the pulsatile secretions and this is what we talked about in the course a lot in a lot more depth. It's understanding some of this physiology. So I think it's important and this is what I found over the years of interviewing people that embarked on intermittent fasting periodic extended fast is a generally look younger. I know this is very subjective.
It's hard to quantify from a you know, kind of biomedical standpoint, but just skin quality texture, you know hair, you know again, these are very subjective. But but you know, I think we can all benefit from a little bit of increased pulsatile secretions of growth hormone. So that's another physiologic change their so, okay now that you understand the physiology and I don't have any notes here. I'm just going to go in shooting off the hip to help you. What are some things that you can do we talked about
Eating a low carb meal so that you can help to hasten the glycogen depletion in your liver. Another thing that can be helpful is fast and exercise. And so we've talked about this at length with dr. Ben bickman over the years on this particular podcast. So you can just search or go to our website and we've unpacked exactly how to Kickstart your fast with exercise. So this is I don't want to say old news because it could be news to some of you and I don't want to be you know, critical or anything like that, but we've shared this
Length, so if you want to go back and check that out do that so fast and exercise. So this could be a brisk walk in the morning. It doesn't take much to quickly, you know burn through so to speak your hepatic or liver glycogen in a fasted state. So this could be 20 minutes at 25 minutes. This could be something that is a little bit of a higher intensity sort of session, but it need not be hours long. Okay, particularly in the fastest it you can burn through that liver glycogen and
Again, what we're trying to do is is hasten or increase the body's ability to then start to Pivot into making glucose from a new so increasing glucagon, and then increasing the adrenaline and noradrenaline. Now remember these are transient periodic increases. So this is we want these counter regulatory hormones and from a circadian rhythm standpoint. These are normally increased in the morning. Anyway, so doing fasted exercise first thing in the morning can be a great way to kick start your day, and then maybe you
Start feeding, you know late morning or early afternoon and then you cut the feeding window off and stop eating when the Sun is setting. This is a very simple way to implement time assisted feeding into your lifestyle. Now some other things that can be helpful is berberine hydrochloride. I've been super impressed with this and I didn't really realize let me just back up. This is a natural compound. There's a lot of different sources on this but usually it comes from from different routes and Barbary others.
I believe it's from Oregon grape and get the berberine. So this is a natural compound. That's actually really poorly absorbed but it works. Mostly it's purported scientists have kind of figured out that it's working via the gut microbiome and and thereby exerting the systemic effects in glucose production and triglyceride production and affecting mitochondria and so on so it's very similar in its mechanism of action.
Ian to a widely used and recognized drug called metformin and as many of you know metformin is being looked at for longevity issues metformin users had a reduction in hospitalization compared to age-matched non metformin users when it comes to covid-19 and coronavirus. So it's really interesting, you know some of the data that's emerging on Metformin but berberine functions very similar to that but just like metformin it's very poorly absorbed now that that don't confuse.
at with non-effective because just because it's poorly absorbed does it mean that it's not exerting its effects on the gut in the gut microbiota and and changing physiology that way and so there has been some pretty interesting studies looking at favorable changes within the gut microbiota including increases in fecal bacteria imprisoned in CI which is a very favorable bacterial species and increase also inaccurate minzy emits an affiliate, which is another favorable species and these are kind of
keystone species that we've talked about on various podcast over the years lipping Zhou from China is one researcher that we took a deeper dive into this analogy of these keystone species within the gut. Okay, so I'm getting off track here explaining all this backstory when you just want to know what to do. So taking Birdbrain or metformin can really help you kick start your fast because and again, I think I figured this out about it was 2015 when
I started dabbling with this and wearing continuous glucose monitors testing my ketones and all that and this to me it blew my mind what it was able to see is when I was taking berberine when I was started my fast like first thing in the morning, I would take 500 to a thousand milligrams. So they normally come and 500 milligram tablets capsules and what I noticed almost a near a media, especially if I did exercise if I did exercise then took it was like a next total acceleration.
And my Ketone shot right up so that that led me to speculate and we don't have randomized placebo-controlled studies to verify this and but you know through our other business myo, science, we've had a lot of customers report this that you see this increase in ketones in a simultaneous production and glucose. So that that says to me that it's working somehow on this this pivoting from, you know, primarily glucose utilization to Fat oxidation. So this can be just another tool that
I can help you. Now. I recommend this for people that have trouble going through a fast and avoiding food because a lot of people are like, I'm hungry. I'm not like I'm really hungry. I want to eat. It seems that you know, these ketones have some sort of appetite suppressing effect. So this can help if you tried intermittent fasting or time restricted feeding and didn't get yeah the appetite suppression feel like gosh I really need to eat. I'm so hungry what's going on? I
This to be helpful, so you can give that a try again. We understand the conflicts of interest here. We own a supplement company, but I'm offering these tools that are very clean third-party tested made in TGA and NSF certified facilities FDA audited and all that. There's a lot of crap on Amazon. So that's why we created this product line is to help you find really high quality and reputable sources of natural compounds that over the years of being in this industry. I found to be effective so you can go over to our website myo, science with an x.com. That's MI.
Xci Ence.com berberine hydrochloride, we have two different versions one with alpha lipoic acid and biotin. I generally recommend people start with that first because a la and biotin can be helpful in a lot of people can have a biotin deficiency and not really know what so start with that. Then we have a pure burning 500 and both of these come in 500 milligrams per dose really affordable in again. This is not something that you would necessarily want to be using every single day, but it can be something that you can utilize particularly kick-starting your more.
Prolonged fast if you're doing a 24 or 48-hour fast or if you're new to time restricted feeding or intermittent fasting and you just want a little I want to call it an accelerant or a crutch you can start with that. So you can use the coupon code podcast at checkout and as always friends. Hopefully you found this helpful. Sorry for my small little sidebar rants where I was explaining all these backstories you probably didn't care about but again just to summarize where what we talked about.
Number one transient changes in hormones are not the same with chronic persistent changes in hormones. Okay watching the news 24/7 7 days a week is going to be stressful that is going to cause adrenal HPA axis issues worrying about everything problematic. Okay. So that is not the same as periodic timer started feeding or intermittent fasting. Okay. Now I will say that calorie restriction in and of itself leads to changes in.
Cortisol, so people that are embarking on calorie restriction for longevity science has shown that they have a reduction in thyroid hormone and an increase in cortisol. Now, you might say, oh my gosh, that's bad. Well, if you look at their epigenetic age, it's it's decelerated compared to age-matched controls who aren't restricting their calorie. So there is something physiologically beneficial to a small reduction in thyroid hormone and an increase in cortisol.
And to throw that out there because I know there's a lot of people that are like you must have ideal utopian picture-perfect levels of thyroid. Well, and I'm not saying that's bad. But we do know that if you are embarking on intermittent fasting time-shifted feeding or calorie restriction, you will notice some sort of probably of thyroid hormone suppression. Now, you gotta weigh this into your clinical, you know, your goals your health goals. Where are you trying to go with regards?
It's to your health. What's a more immediate? And what's your more long-term Health priority? Is it a picture? Perfect utopian thyroid hormone level. Where are you searching for longevity and preventing age-related diseases. That's that's up to you to sort of figure that out. So I do want you to know that. Okay, so we talked about the transient versus chronic transient good changes in hormones chronic bat. Okay, we know that exercise increases, you know counter regulatory hormones and stress hormones that
I
mean exercise is bad. Okay, we talked about kind of a key strategy to accelerating The Beneficial physiologic effects of fasting is depleting liver. Glycogen hepatic glycogen depletion this can occur from eating a low carb diet this can occur from from doing some sort of exercise in this can be a brisk walking walking up a hill. This could be interval training. This could be weight lifting in the morning. Okay. So that's a way to kind of blow and burn through your glycogen and but
because that sends the hormonal signals to increase the concomitant rise in beneficial hormones that are that the sort of pivot your body into the fat-burning physiologic State including glucagon adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol. Okay, then we talked about more. I want to say pharmaceutical but you know ways that we can affect our physiology from natural products or Pharmaceuticals like metformin or berberine hydrochloride one.
Is a prescription drug you need to get from your doctor that is metformin berberine hydrochloride is something you can get widely. I would recommend wedding a company making sure they're doing third-party testing looking for heavy metals, you know, not using, you know Benzene and toluene to extract the biochemicals because the some of these solvents can be utilized and they end up in the finished product and you don't want that. Okay. So those are kind of the four things we talked about. Hopefully you found that helpful. Thanks for tuning in. If you liked this episode, please let me know my
Males might get high intensity Health. You can also leave us a little bit of feedback overnight Tunes. Thanks for supporting our Show sponsored miles science, and thanks for tuning in. It's great to connect with you and hopefully and if you want to check out that full version of the interview, check out the show notes below and we will catch you on a future video down the road. Thanks guys. Catch you later.
