Fasting For Survival Lecture by Dr Pradip Jamnadas

Today's talk is very controversial. Okay, you're not going to get a cardiologist talking about not eating and fasting. So this is a little unusual, but this is breaking ground because we're always looking for new ways to treat old diseases. Treating diseases for illness, nature has to build something in there. People got better, people got ill, people got better. Some people, of course, died, but there must be mechanisms built into the body that make you better. And what I'm trying to do here is to tap into nature to see if there's anything in fasting. First, I heard about it going through medical school. I said, fasting can't be, fasting can't work. Fasting obviously does nothing. People don't eat because they didn't have food. They fasted because the priests told them not to fast. They were fasting because they had seven children and food for only five. But the more I studied it and looking at the biochemistry, being a scientist, I got to substantiate a lot of the things that I say. And if I'm going to look at the mechanisms, I can't just come up with them. I gotta look at the biochemistry behind it. So what I've done here is I've made a summary, pretty much. And I have no slides today because I was in surgery right until late afternoon. I never got a chance to finish off my slides, but I promise you all that just like the last two ones, this is being recorded and we'll put the slides in later on, maybe in the next week, and then we'll put it up as a proper slide presentation with the lecture in the background. So it'll be just like the previous ones. I hope you all enjoyed the previous two that are already on YouTube. Yeah, thank you. [Applause]

So, so with fasting, if we look back in history, we've been fasting all along. And Socrates was asked why he fasted, and he fasted for mental clarity. So, do you get mental clarity when you fast? Well, he's certainly good. And yet the prevailing wisdom is that when you fast, oh, I'm going to get sleepy, I'm going to get tired, I need energy. And you, this energy bars, there's those little drinks, energy drinks. And when you drink that, you're supposed to get energy. And it's not true. When you go and take a candy or an energy bar, you suddenly feel great. That's because you're a junkie. You just got your high. You just took a shot that boosted your, your brain's dopamine levels, and you went to the reward center, and that's how you felt better because you are a sugar junkie. That's why you felt good because biochemically, there's no parameter that is measured in that patient to say that, yup, he's lacking energy and now he took the shot, whatever it was, whether it's those energy shots or energy bar, and now he feels great. So something's changed. None of this has been shown in animals, in human beings. Clearly, there's no biochemical change going on. None whatsoever. It's all in here. It's mental. So what happens is that when you're a sugar junkie, whenever you eat sugar or simple carbohydrates and you get that high, it goes to the dopamine center in the brain, produces all that dopamine, reward center, and you get addicted to it. And then you need it, and then you feel better when you take it. So when you are fasting also and you're feeling tired and fatigued, and or it's, there are reasons for that. But taking another shot of sugar or taking another candy is not the solution. It's nothing to do with that. It's the reward center. And eventually, after a few days, you will come out of that habit. Just like you take an alcoholic and stick him in a room, and he can't drink anymore. After a few days, you won't crave anymore. It's your craving. It's your craving. So one thing is a biochemical craving. The second thing is your Pavlovian reflexes where it's 12 o'clock, you've got to go down to the doctor's lounge, and you've got to eat. Are you hungry? No, I'm not hungry, but I gotta eat. It's time to eat. Um, it's evening, I have to eat. I'm not hungry, but I have to eat. So a lot of our behavior is incongruent with physiology. Our brain has interfered, our mind has interfered with our body, and we stopped listening to our body. Why did we stop listening to the body? Because you were told to stop listening to your body. By who were you told? The press, the media, people around you, maybe your parents, maybe your friends, that you got to eat five times a day, five times a day, maybe six times a day. You're gonna eat. This knowledge is totally false. You don't have to eat six times a day. You don't need to have that calorie input all the time. This is not right. Well, breakfast is the best and most important meal of the day. It's not. It's not the most nutritious meal of the day. It's the meal that you have. Yeah, that's it. End our story. But if you want to create a special breakfast meal, you're going to develop a cereal and you're going to say, this is special breakfast food. Almost sounds like dog food, right? Create this food for the dogs. Now you got a special food for breakfast. You don't need a special breakfast food, especially one that's full of calories and sugar and it's totally processed, completely.

So, so really, there have been a lot of myths about this. So going back in history, man only. So first of all, I want to tell you that you are all very old. All of you, extremely old. And how old are you really? Well, you're about two and a half million years old. That's, that's pretty old. And about 12,000 years ago, you changed and you started going into agriculture. So until then, you are a Paleolithic being. When you eat mostly meat, some vegetables that you found, and drank lots of water. And when you are a Paleolithic being, none of you is such fantastic hunters that you could hunt and eat and kill every three hours. So for all those years, millions of years, right? You generated a genetics. That genetics is what you still have now because it was evolved over two and a half million years. So in the last 12,000 years, you became more intelligent and started agriculture. So now your food changed. So when you went to agriculture, did your genetics keep up with your two and a half million years of genetic change? Hardly, because it takes another two and a half million years to develop a new genetic package. You did not change genetically as your diet changed. But to continue to be an agricultural society, because the population grew and was harder and harder. So agriculture is easy and easier. And then in the last 200 years, you changed your diet again. Now you are industrialized and now you start eating processed foods, vegetable seed oils. I told you about that before in a previous lecture. Totally processed. You need massive factories to produce vegetable seed oils. It is so processed. And yet now we consume that like it's going out of style. All of you consume vegetable seed oils, whether you like it or not, because it's in all processed foods. And yet that food, if you look at your entire evolution as 24 hours, that food only came to you in the last 10 milliseconds. How do you expect your body to respond genetically and hormonally to that food that you only just introduced to your genetics? So before you put anything new in your mouth, you've got to decide that is this in keeping with my genetics? So really, this is very thought-provoking. Even agricultural products, very thought-provoking. Agricultural products are fine, but what did we do with them? In the year 1880, we invented the steel mill and we made the flour. And when we made flour, we changed the glycemic index of the food completely, completely. And that was a study that I talked to you all about before also. So we've changed as we've moved along. So our diets have completely changed. The Paleolithic being ate maybe once a day, and he ate during the daytime, by the way, because if we try to eat at nighttime with the carcasses outside, the hyenas or some other animal will want to share that with you, probably make you their meal as well. So at nighttime, you have to crawl into your cage, I mean, into your cave, you gotta crawl into your cave and stay there and don't come out to drink water either. But no, we take the bottle of water with us to bed. So our body is made to fast and is made to. And I will convince you tonight that you should be fasting and feasting as well. Because if there was no food around and if your sugar just went down, down, down, down, down, your energy level went down, down, down, you'll be dead in 24 hours because you're going to your cave and you're just crawling and you, you're just going to get terrible because nature doesn't give you any way to come back. Or there's been no food for 24 hours. I'm just gonna crawl here. I have no energy. I have no nothing. I'm just going to crawl and die. But no, that does not happen to you. Fasting doesn't kill people. I mean, in fact, I asked you to fast all the time and ask you to come for a stress test. You don't come on the stresses and die. So, so this, we are used to fasting and we do it. And when you're sick, you fast, don't you? When you have the flu, you don't eat. When your pets are sick, they don't eat. You don't see a dog running and eating his food when he's sick. He stays in the corner and he does not eat. There's a wisdom in that. And that wisdom is the physiology because the physiology of the body is saying that, hey, look, you know, eating is dangerous. Eating takes up a lot of energy. Eating takes up, if you put in about 100 calories of food into your body, it takes about 60 to 70 calories of your body is an energy consuming activity. But most of us don't think of it like that. You just need a role that eating it's going to go right in and do me all that good. A lot of energy that goes into it. Eating is dangerous. It's true. Eating is dangerous. So once in a while, when you donate, nature has put into a biochemistry. So let's, let's just dive right into that biochemistry a little bit. So the first thing that's going to happen is that you, you stop eating. In the first 12 hours, your body is going to say, hmm, no food coming on. It's going to wipe up all the glycogen that is in your liver and in your muscles. That's a normal process. It's going to use glycogen. So your sugar level or your glucose level will be maintained. What about protein? You've got plenty protein in your body. What about vitamins? You got at least a month's worth of vitamins in your body. What about energy? How much fat do I have? Do you know that I have enough fat in my body to last me at least 40 days? So I have plenty energy in me. I have about 50,000 calories stored inside me, which can be used. But I need to unlock those calories in the form of fat. So you eat, you store in the form of fat, and that fat should be utilized now. So for the first 12 hours, I'm not going to use the fat. I'm going to use up my glycogen stores. How am I going to feel? I'm going to feel okay, unless I'm a junkie, then I'm going to want to eat. You know that's junkiness because your sugar will never drop. I'm going to say that again. Your sugar will never drop. You can fast for seven days. Your blood sugar will come down, but you will not become hypoglycemic and have an attack unless you're on insulin or you're taking diabetes medications. So how does the body keep the sugar up? But I told you that in the first 12 hours, you get glycogen. After 12 hours, what happens? You get gluconeogenesis. That means new glucose is being made. Gluconeogenesis. Where does that glucose come from? That comes into the bloodstream. Where does it come from? Comes from protein. But it's not the protein in the muscles. Protein is always being turned over in your body. But this time, the protein that's normally going to turn over turns into glucose. So your glucose level is maintained for another 12 hours or so. I think this next 12 hours is a small increase in ketosis. So let me explain ketosis to you. Where does that come from? So what happens is that the body senses that you have very little food coming in. And I'm going to explain to you how that happens. How does the body know that there's no food? It's not just the sugar. I want to explain this to you. It's not sugar. So what happens is that now fats in your body say, okay, we are here, utilize us. The only way fat can come into utilization is the insulin levels must drop. So the insulin levels are now low because you're not eating. When your insulin level is high, you store energy. When your insulin levels are low, pull energy out of the fats. So now through the hormonal action of, you know, hormone-sensitive lipase and the action of LPL, what happens? If fat stores open up because your insulin level is low. So the fats start being devoured. The fat gets converted to triglycerides and fatty acids. The fatty acids flood the bloodstream. You can utilize fatty acids. So they go to your liver, and in the liver, your fatty acids get converted to ketones. These two ketones, beta-hydroxybutyric acid and acetoacetic acid. These two ketones now go up. Ketones can be utilized by the body. And this is the great breakthrough that I want to tell you, that ketones can be utilized by every cell of your body, including your brain. You are told that the brain is an obligate glucose utilizer, can only utilize glucose. It's absolutely wrong. There was a study done in Britain where what they did is that they brought the blood sugar down to 30, but they pumped the patient full of ketones, and they were all sitting and talking and having fun, and not a sweat. The only one that was sweating was the doctors. The blood sugar, you should be having convulsions. The brain can utilize ketones. After a seven-day fast, 70 up to 70% of the energy utilization of the brain is through ketones. And the brain likes it. And there's even studies to show that when the brain utilizes the ketones, it actually is a cleaner burn. It burns more cleanly. So what happens is there's a slow increase in the ketones, which actually starts around 18 hours and gradually goes up, up, up, up, up, up. So by 24 hours, you have some ketones, maybe 10, 15% of your entire energy source is now going to be ketones. How are you going to feel with ketones? Just fine. No problem. You feel, you feel okay because ketones are giving you all the energy that you need. Then let's say another 12 hours go by. So you're now at the 35 hours, let's say. Now the ketones go even higher and higher and higher. And by three days, your ketone levels are really beginning to get even better and even higher. So by the fifth day of fasting, you will have a lot of ketones. Now you can measure your ketones in your urine. So you get a little dipstick, and you can buy this, by the way, it only costs a few dollars, and you just test your urine to see when you become ketogenic. And you can test it now. If you've been on a low-carb diet, low-sugar diet, you will go into ketogenesis earlier than somebody who eats a lot of sugar because he's got a whole bunch of glycogen in his liver because you got to remember, go through the glycogen first before you start burning ketones. So someone who's on a very low-carb diet, you're going to ketogenesis much faster. So it's the ketones, and the ketones will keep getting utilized. The fats will keep burning. So now you're doing the right arithmetic. That, okay, fine, I've used up my current account, so I'm going to my deposit account now and I'm drawing money from my deposit account. Now, what, what prevents us all from utilizing my deposit account? It's insulin. Because I told you, insulin holds the key to opening up the fat stores. So you want to utilize your fat stores, you have to drop your insulin level. Now, how am I going to drop your, your insulin levels? Right now, there's only one way for me to drop your insulin levels, and that's to put you on a fasting program. So now you choose which fasting program you want to be on. Do you want to do alternative fasting? Do you want to do 18-hour fast? Do you want to do three-day fast? I mean, how do you want to do this? And that's something we'll talk about and see what kind. But what am I saying here? What's the trigger here? Which is, which is the hormone in the body that's the elephant in the room? It's insulin. Just like my last talk, I told you about, do you see how it's all coming together? The fats, the sugar, the weight, the fasting, it's all insulin. It's all about insulin.

So if somebody is taking insulin, how does that affect you? Doomed. Aye. So somebody who's taking insulin, show me somebody who takes insulin every day and, oh yeah, I can lose weight just like that. They can't lose weight. Yeah, they cannot. I've done it. I've given insulin for 25 years to my patients, and I yelled at them, and nothing happens. So long as their insulin levels are high, they cannot lose weight. And let me tell you something else. The mortality is also higher. Now, don't talk about type 2 diabetics, okay? Not type 1 diabetics. Not type 1 diabetics are insulin deficient and they need the insulin replacement. But type 2 diabetics already have a high insulin level and they have insulin resistance. So the insulin levels are already high, and now you're giving them more insulin, and that is only going to hurt the patient even more. But your A1C will look better, and your glucose will be lower. But show me the data that your survival is going to be better. Show me that you're going to get less Alzheimer's. Show me that you're going to get less inflammation in your body, coronary artery, stroke rates. It's all about the insulin, guys. It's all about the insulin. So you got to, you know, chronic set. Now, when you're in the hospital and you're having DK or some other medical problems, and you're having surgery, and you're getting on steroids, and your sugar levels are high, I'll give you insulin. But that's a temporary thing to bring it down because I want your sugar levels to be ideal while I'm doing surgery on you because high sugar levels mean poorer recovery. So I want your ideal sugar levels. But that's a different story. I am talking about people who have high insulin levels because I have insulin resistance. And you cannot give them more insulin. So you must get your insulin level down. I don't have a drug to give you to bring your insulin level down. But fasting will bring your insulin level down because if you don't eat, you're not going to make insulin. Now, what's going to happen is that as your insulin level drops, and it's nice and low, your body will become sensitive to the insulin. Just like when any level goes down, becomes sensitive. And there's too much of it, your receptors down-regulate. I'm not going to respond to this. So after you eat, in a normal state, you produce a lot of insulin. Let's say now that you've been down for a good period of time, let's say I'm going to give an example, 24 hours. Your insulin levels have been low. Now you eat that next meal, you're only going to make this much insulin. You're going to make a much less amount of insulin. So your body is going to deal with that meal differently than had you eaten in a fed state. So eating after a fast is metabolized totally different than eating in a fed state. It's much more forgiving to you. And what's going to happen is that you'll produce less and less insulin even in the next few days after you've fasted one day. Look at the rewards I'm telling you about. You ought to diet at least one day where you don't eat anything because it'll give you a sustained benefit for days because your insulin sensitivity is going to be improved. So what happens here is that insulin stays nice and low, your body becomes more sensitive to the insulin, produces less insulin. So you, you're not locking the fat stores and you keep burning fat, which is what you want to do. So here's a reason to fast. If you're overweight, you want to get rid of the fat. Fine. This is the way to do it. Well, why don't you just do caloric restriction? So you still eat five times a day, but it's small amounts. You cannot do that. You lose a little bit, but you lose much more muscle and you lose some fat. You will feel miserable. Your metabolic rate will go down, and your body resets itself, and you'll gain all that weight right back again because that's not natural. Because when you were a Paleolithic being, you didn't just go and nibble at the carcass and say, okay, I'll come back here, I need five times this little cut. No, you don't do that. It's just totally unnatural to do that. And the body's physiology is in keeping with that. So the biochemistry is telling me the same thing that, yeah, you're not supposed to do that. So you're supposed to eat it when the food is available, which is usually once a day. Let's say.

What other benefit am I going to get besides the insulin and utilizing the fat? Well, the body says that, okay, this poor person hasn't had a kill today. So he's crawled into his cage. Well, I got to get him out of there. Can I get him out by decreasing his metabolic rate? No, I increase his metabolic rate. How do I do that? After a fast or during that fast, especially after 18 hours, your epinephrine levels increase, your adrenal levels go up, your cortisol levels go up, your metabolic rate goes up. You start feeling better, more bushy-tailed, bright-eyed because you're looking for your next kill. Because if you walk out there with your eyes half droopy, you are going to see the kill. The deer will walk right by you, and you won't have any energy to chase it. But now you're full of, you're pumped up, your metabolic rate is high, you're more alert, you're awake, and you will get your kill. There's another thing that happens when you're fast. You produce a stuff called brain-derived neurotrophic factor. So what happens is that the body starts producing a whole that goes to your brain and tells your brain, switch on. And you actually make new brain cells. You actually make new brain cells. Show me a drug that's going to make new brain cells. So in a fasting stage, you actually make new brain cells because nature wants to teach you that this is how you got into this situation. Learn from it, remember it, and now get out and get another kill. You see, it makes you better. It makes your brain better. What else does fasting do? Growth hormone. So do you know how much growth hormone costs? A small 0.1 injection is about $400. 0.1, 0.1 is $400. It's so expensive, right? But did you know that if you fast just a one and a half to two days, there's a two-day fast in the study, a two-day fast produced a 2,000% increase in your growth hormone production in a man and 1,300 in a woman. So it is the best way to boost your growth hormone level. Now, why would I want growth hormone? Because growth hormone is the hormone that keeps you young. It's a growth hormone that makes your skin better, that replaces the dead parts better, and your muscles grow. So your muscles actually grow. So you, you do 10 reps, you're going to put on more muscle than if your growth hormone is low. Growth hormone is low, you could be pumping iron all day long, and you'll just get achy muscles, but you will not grow muscles. It goes along. You want to stay younger, you need growth hormone. Now, there is a condition called adult growth hormone deficiency, and of course, children have it too, and they have short stature and slow growth, etc. And in adults, there's a similar one, and it manifests itself as an elderly person who's just his muscles are all wasted, he's got no energy, he's, he's got a blank in his in his eye all the time, he's just can't think, and he's very weak, and he's just sitting it out. Your message, growth hormone level, it's very low. You give him some growth hormone, he feels a lot better. But the problem with exogenous growth hormone is has a lot of side effects. So that's why right now, it's not approved by the FDA for me to give people growth hormone. But the best way to give yourself growth hormone is do one fast. Do one fast, and your growth hormones will go up.

What else happens when you're fasting? So growth hormone, I told you about 24 to 48 hours. If you really want to get the full benefit of growth hormone. Now, there is a condition called autophagy. I'm going to explain to you what autophagy is. Autophagy starts actually at about 18 hours and then gradually increases and its maximum at three days. Sounds terrible. It's not fair. But you know what? Even if I get some autophagy after 24 hours, I'll be very, very, very happy. But if I want to maximize my autophagy, I'll go for a three-day fast. So let me explain what autophagy is. Autophagy, the Nobel Prize winner got it two years ago, got the prize on autophagy. So what happens in autophagy is that when you are nutrient deficient like this, the body senses that there's no nutrients coming in, and there's a thing called mTOR. mTOR levels go really, really low. This is a protein kinase in the body, and it goes really, really low, and that turns on autophagy. What turns off autophagy is mTOR levels are high. What causes mTOR levels to go high is eating, mostly proteins. So let's come back again to the top of two. So what autophagy does is that it takes your cells, and the cell has a lipoprotein membrane around it, and there's all the intracellular organelles in it. But in the course of time, those cells, the intracellular organelles, some of them become redundant. There's protein lying around. This whenever there's work, there's going to be garbage. So they are old intracellular organelles and some proteinaceous materials that are just lying around in the cytoplasm. So the body says, I need energy, recycle. I need to recycle. So the first thing it does, the cell stays alive, and it takes those intracellular organelles, breaks them down, packages them into the lysosome, and digests it, breaks it down into its pieces. So whether it's a sarcoplasmic reticulum or other intracellular organelles, breaks them all down and exports it out of the cell. Once it's exported from the cell into the bloodstream, the bloodstream says, aha, I've got some new building blocks now, and the body reutilizes that. Okay? So the body now starts utilizing your intracellular organelles. So you're recycling yourself. So your cell is, doesn't die, it goes into a state of recycling, and you recycle your mitochondria as well. So mitochondrial parts, because there's a lot of oxidative stress going on in the mitochondria. So what happens is that that cell is now going to be deplete of its old, non-functional parts, and then when you do eat, guess what? It gets repaired first. All those organelles. So you basically rejuvenate your cells. Now, if you're constantly eating, you will not rejuvenate those cells. And the biochemistry is so beautiful that these cells now are functioning better, they're younger, and they are going to last longer. They're more resilient also to disease. I'll come to that in a minute. So autophagy makes your cells better, younger, restoration. It's like, it's like a reset switch. So how do those organelles redo themselves? Well, they rebuild themselves because when you then eat, because you've had autophagy, a signal goes from those cells to the bone marrow to say, hey, listen, I used up my intracellular organelles. When you get new ones, new supplies, send them to me. So the bone marrow, when you eat, makes stem cells. Have you heard of stem cells? That'll cost you a million dollars. Just go out and get some. It costs you a whole lot of money, and it won't work because when you inject stem cells from the outside, the residency rates are wrong because they didn't get the message of where to go to. It's all artificial. So it doesn't know. So the brain, look, I injected stem cells in the heart when patients of myocardial infarctions. I was here doing the study upstairs, and what was the residency rate? Residency, it is how many of the stem cells actually ended up in the muscle where I wanted it to stay and repair the heart. Less than 0.1%. Did the ejection fractions go up? No change in ejection fraction. So injecting stem cells from the outside does nothing for you. It was good to study stem cells, and it still is for the reason that you need to harness nature's way of giving you stem cells. You want a stem cell transplant? Right now, you're going to fast. It's the fastest way to increase your stem cells. So these stem cells come out of the bone marrow, it's called refeeding reward, and they go into the organs and replenish cells that have died and change the machinery in those cells as well. So there's a whole rejuvenation process. You are a younger, better, more resilient person than you were before. And this has all been documented over and over again. But there's no industry that's going to support me because there's no financial gain if you get better and younger and live longer because there's no one there to make money out of. No one makes money when you fast. They lose money. So boost your growth hormone, boost your, boost your, your stem cells. This has been very well documented, not only in humans, in animals too, well documented over and over again. It's just that nobody's ever heard of it. Everyone thinks that, oh, fasting is just, fasting is starvation, it's not good. But there's so much science behind this.

So the next benefit, of course, is stem cell mobilization that occurs. And to get the maximum benefit of that, you can't just do, you know, overnight fast. No, you, you really need to fast because for the bone marrow to say, I'm going to come in and replace, you've got to really have reached that point of replacement. So you can't, you can't speed it up either. So the question is, can I do a three-day fast? Of course, I can do a three-day fast. You got to prepare yourself mentally, you got to prepare yourself physically for the environment, make sure that, you know, you're not, you, you, you're with your best friends, it's an environment, and you got to have water so that you don't get dehydrated. So you can do it. All of us can do it. So you can fast for different reasons. So when would I want autophagy? I would want autophagy one, just to live longer. Number two, let me tell you something. If you do a seven-day water fast, the studies done in Boston at the University show that your lifetime probability of getting cancer is reduced by more than 70%. Some studies even higher because the cells that are going to die off in the state of the fast are going to be your cancer cells. Because your cancer cells, look, if I want to do a PET scan on you, I'm going to give you a radioactive material. It's got glucose in it. Oh, excuse me, the glucose is really low, and the insulin level is really low. So the nutrients that the cancer cells want are not there. Cancer cells do die off. So let's talk about cancer for a second. So the studies have been done that if you fast a person only for 36 hours, that's it, and then give them chemotherapy in that state, they're going to tolerate the chemotherapy better. They're going to have less side effects from the chemotherapy. It's going to be death of cancer cells, and your normal cells are more resilient. And you're going to get less death of your normal cells. Do you understand what I'm saying? So what happens when you're fasting, your normal cells become more resilient. So when you give the chemo, only the weak guys die, which is the cancer cells, because you've strengthened through this fasting process your normal cells. So I wanted to do this protocol upstairs in the bone marrow unit where we do a lot of chemotherapy on these patients. But no, nobody said, okay, we want to do this project. They said it would be inhumane to tell our patients to fast before we give them chemotherapy. So what we do, we feed them, then they get nauseated, then they vomit. So we give them Zofran, and then we, then they were stood down to that. So then we'll put TPN on them because we've all been indoctrinated that we have to feed, feed, feed. I'm just telling you all right now, if any of you get on my kind of fashion, you get admitted to the hospital, I'm making your NPO. I'll put IV fluids on you, but I'll give you, I'll meet you NPO. So even if you do vomit, you're not going to aspirate. You know how much aspiration you see in the hospital over here, and pneumonia and all that from aspiration is terrible because I'm force-feeding you in a sense. Wait a second, your body is not hungry, don't eat. But no, the trays get brought to you, you have to eat. You don't have to. If you, there's a reason why you have anorexia when you're sick. Pay attention to your body. Your body's telling you, don't eat. Then don't eat. You won't die. You might die from eating. So cancer, I predict that in the next five to ten years, there's going to be major cancer treatments associated with adjunctive fasting, and that's coming, definitely. It's on its way.

What else can be used for autoimmune diseases? There's numerous studies to say that you have inflammatory bowel disease, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, any of these conditions, and you get a flare-up of it. Fast for three days. It's the most potent thing you can do as an anti-inflammatory because first and foremost, your bowels are totally quiet. There's no energy being used for digestion. Your body's energy resources will be utilized to repair yourself. A lot of autoimmune diseases start from your gut as well. Gives your gut a chance to heal so that you get less leaky gut syndrome. So that, that fast actually heals. It gives your gut a chance to heal as well. Autoimmune diseases get better. And what about diabetes? Diabetes definitely gets better because I just told you, the insulin resistance gets better. So that gets better. What about Alzheimer's? Oh, yeah. You know, poor Granny, we can't pull the tray away from her. But sometimes that's the best thing you could actually do. Give a lot of liquids and don't feed Granny for three days. If she's got dementia, social services will be after you. It could be anybody, not just the Granny. But, but don't feed her for three days. Just give her lots of water. I promise you, neurologically, she'll start waking up. The fog will go away. The confusion will get better. It can get better, and it should get better. And there's no harm in trying because you won't die in three days. So three-day water fast. So what do I mean by the water fast? Three-day water fast. I think you can only drink water for three days. So drink lots of water. Now, why do you need to drink so much water? Because all reactions are getting water. And secondly, you appear a lot when you're fasting because I'm not drinking that much, I'm not eating. And how come I'm peeing so much? It's because when your insulin levels go down, insulin holds on to water. Now there's no more insulin, so that water gets diuresed out of your body. So you will notice that you pee a lot. So you need to drink more when you're fasting. That's number one. Now, what about electrolytes? Well, electrolytes will be conserved by your kidneys. Your kidneys are very good at holding onto electrolytes. So there's plenty of electrolytes in the body. Do you know that if I have sodium, if I don't take in sodium, the last molecule of sodium will be reabsorbed by my kidneys? Not a single molecule will be in my urine. That's how good it is. So kidneys will take care of everything. Kidneys will not allow you to lose sodium or potassium. Now, if you're already starting out with a half-empty plate, yeah, you may get some depletion. But you can get that tested. And on refeeding, I'll give you some clues on how to improve that when you refeed yourself. But unusual to get electrolyte imbalance. But if you do get it, take a pinch of salt in the water, and you'll find that your cramps get better, and your dizziness gets better, and your headaches get better. So these are complaints that a lot of patients have that, oh, you know, I was fasting, but mine, after about 15 hours, I had a bad headache. I would go and drink more water with a little bit of salt in it, and put Himalayan salt because that also has some magnesium and other things in it, and you'll feel a lot better. Dizziness is usually due to low blood pressure because your blood pressure comes down. So you get dizzy when you're fasting. It's not because your sugar's down, it's because your blood pressure is lower. Drink water. And cramps, some patients get cramps. Put the salt again. And also in the evening, put yourself in a tub of of Epsom salts, or you can get some magnesium, and there's, there's a liquid magnesium you can just put on your skin, you can spray it, and that'll give you magnesium. And that's what it's all about. So give yourself salt, some magnesium, you'll start feeling better. Patients say that, oh, I get so hungry. Well, hunger comes and goes. There's a ghrelin increase and decrease according to the circadian cycle. So all you have to do is pay attention. Yes, I'm hungry. All right, drink some water, expand your stomach, and you'll feel better. Half an hour later, the hunger's gone. Keep your mind busy, get going, do something, have your chores, get, get them done. Your hunger will go away. Patients don't continue to be hungry all day long. It just doesn't happen. If they are craving, it's again, like I told you, the Pavlovian reflex, or they've become a junkie. So hunger comes, hunger goes. Most patients find the second day the hardest, and then from the third day onward, they actually feel good. And the third and fourth day of fasting, fourth day, they feel phenomenal. On the fifth day, they want to go running, they want to go to the gym, they feel wonderful. So you got to get over that hump if you really want to do that type of a fast. You have to know that I'm going to face a problem on the second day. It's going to be hardest. Third, fourth, fifth day, I'll do better.

So who should do the long fast and who should just do intermittent fasting? So first and foremost, if you just want to be healthy, eat once a day at the most twice a day in a six to eight hour window period. So that's called time-restricted feeding. So if you just want general maintenance, you want to lose a little bit of weight, you want to stay healthy, you don't want to become a diabetic, you don't want the diseases of modern man, then start eating less frequently. Start learning how to eat once a day or twice a day in a six-hour window period. So if you're going to have lunch at one o'clock, you should have dinner at six or seven o'clock, and that's it. No snacking in between because every snack will increase your insulin levels and it breaks your fast and your ketogenesis as well. So on a daily basis, you, it will give you a little bit of autophagy, will give you a little bit of ketosis, and you'll burn fat. You will, your body will learn how to take food in when you're eating, and then burn the glycogen, and then for about four hours or so, it will pull out some from the fat. So it was, there's a nice cycle there. Then once a week, you can extend that further by just skipping the evening meal also. So instead of a 24-hour fast, it becomes a 36-hour fast once a week. That will give you a huge boost in your immunity. You'll find you won't get the flu. [Music] The immunity will get better because your immunocytes are now new because your stem cells have kicked in. 36 hours is a magic number, and it's doable. To tell everybody to do a three-day fast is kind of tough. For a five-day fast, but people have done this. Some of my patients have done seven-day fasts because some people with whom I communicate with my iPhone all the time, 14-day fast, but they're doing it because they have severe diseases. So they have a lot of chronic disease that they want to get rid of, and they do it. And they do it. Don't do it a lot. They'll do a seven-day fast every six months. That's it. You don't have to. Now, the rest of the time, they're doing time-restricted feeding because they have these chronic diseases of Alzheimer's or diabetes, or they get, they've had two cancers already, or they want to just lose a lot of weight, and they want to get rid of that high insulin level. So eating in a time-restrictive period, that's good for all of us. I think that our life revolves around eating too much, and we've been, we've been bamboozled by by industry and by by just all sorts of nonsense out there. And there's a growing community that understands this.

So I just want to give you a little bit of chemistry. I want to tickle you with some chemistry. So how does the body know that you do need? Because all of you think, oh, it's chicken, my sugar level go down. That's how my body knew that I didn't eat, right? I did nothing to do that. Your body knows what you ate. How did you know what you ate? How much protein, how much fat, how much sugar? It's very complicated. But one of the things is your NAD, which is your, one of those little molecules inside your cells, and it looks at the ratio of NAD to NADH. And that is determined a lot by how much fat metabolism is going on in your cell, which occurs in the mitochondria, and how much glycolysis is occurring in your cytosol. Long and short of it, you don't need to know all that. All you need to know is your body knows what you ate. When you are in a fasting state, they mobilize a bunch of enzymes or proteins called the SIRT-1 molecules. S-A-R-T-1 molecules. They go up in your body in a fasting state. And in that state, it binds to acetyl groups. Now, what's so important about that? So when the SIRT is up, it binds with acetyl groups on your histones, which are on your DNA. So you all know this is just follow me on this because this is really, it's exciting because if you know the knowledge behind this, you'll get excited about it and you'll want to do it. Yeah. So your whole, your, your DNA, you have your full set of DNA, of which you only express a fraction, less than one percent. All the rest of your DNA is all covered up with the histones. Histones are like a spring that's over your DNA and doesn't expose it. So what the SIRT does, it binds to their star groups and it untwists histones in certain parts of your DNA so that that part of the DNA can start making proteins. So it's called expression. Your genetic expression changes because now you're making new proteins. So you see how your diet affects which genes are now going to be expressed, and those genes make proteins, and that's how they carry out the effect in your body. So the SIRT-1 actually activates a gene called the FOXO3 gene, and this FOXO3 gene activates many other genes. And this is what those genes do. It's very exciting.

It activates all the antioxidant genes in your body naturally. Naturally, so you don't need to go and buy vitamin C and vitamin E and all these things. And yeah, so what activates FoxO3? Also, turmeric does that. You think turmeric is an antioxidant? It is, but through the mechanism, it turns on a certain gene in itself. It has no antioxidant properties.

Why? Why am I doing vitamin D3 levels on everybody in my office? Because one of the most important environments involved with gene expression is vitamin D. If you're vitamin D deficient, your gene expression is handicapped. So when things happen to you, or when you're not eating, or when you get sick, your body's genetic material cannot reveal itself in a normal way that you're supposed to do. You just want to say about vitamin D, you're handicapping yourself in your own ability to repair your body because you're vitamin D deficient. And I can tell you right now, 90% of you are in this room vitamin D deficient. Ninety percent of you are vitamin D deficient. I can, I can tell you that for sure. That's all of you have to get your vitamin D levels done, and you need to be taking vitamin D3 if you are low. And you need to be sitting in the sun for 10 minutes every day. You gotta do this. You cannot guess what your vitamin D level is. You need to check it.

So vitamin D is involved in over 300 different reactions, and most of them have to do with gene expression. Heck, I want to know that because I want to express my genes to the best of their ability and make them responsive to everything that's going on. So the FoxO3 gene is a really important antioxidant gene. Then the next gene is DNA repair. So it activates my DNA repair mechanisms because my DNA is bombarded every day by radiation, by toxins, by, by food also. And my DNA crumbles every day. That's why I get old. So that's no good. So it makes you younger. So FoxO3 repairs your DNA, makes your telomeres less short, so they stay nice and long. And you know that telomeres are very important, right? Because the longer they are, the longer you're going to live. Apoptosis, apoptosis is programmed cell death of the cells. So it controls that clearance of senescent cells. That's, that's autophagy, getting rid of old cells because you don't want old cells hanging on in your system. So old cells get cleared away as well.

Then protein structure and maintenance. This is Alzheimer's disease. What is Alzheimer's? Alzheimer's, brain cells don't work very good. Why don't they work very good? Because there's a proteinaceous material that is built up inside it, and that kind of hurts the mechanisms of your brain cells. That's amyloid, amyloid deposition. This is involved with that too. And then stem cell mobilization, brain-derived neurotrophic factor. All these things I already mentioned, they're all through the FoxO3 mechanism. You want to get good FoxO3, you need to have vitamin D in your system, and you need to be eating the right food. And the right food means no processed foods, everything that was there two and a half million years ago, vegetables, some fruit. About, I want to talk about fruits. Overrated.

So what happens is that at the end of the summer and fall, the fruit is bearing there, and you're supposed to eat the fruit with all the fructose to get you through winter. But winter never comes. So you keep eating throughout the year, and you keep gaining weight. So fruits are good for you, but you associate one fruit a day, that's it. And choose the most colorful fruit you can, and mix it up a little bit. But please don't, don't eat five, six fruits a day. I mean, that's just, this is crazy. And eat fruit that have a low glycemic index. High glycemic index fruits are watermelon, all the melons that you have, all the stuff that they give you when you order a fruit plate in the, in the restaurant, that's all that bad stuff, all of it. The kiwi fruit in it is bad, the, the grapes are bad. Bananas are 50/50. But the best things are apples, peaches, plums, apricots. Those are very healthy for you, right? Because a lot of fiber and also low glycemic index. So there you go. Pears, pears are very good.

So now, what other agent helps you to express your third one better? Omega-3. Now you know why I'm so anal about omega-3 levels. They need to. So again, I can promise you, not 95%, 90%, I think 95% of you in this room are probably omega-3 deficient. Now, it's not may not be an absolute deficiency, but the ratio of your omega-3 to omega-6 is off. It should be ideally one to one, but I bet you most of you are about 20 to 1. Because omega-6 is found in all the vegetable seed oils. So what happens is that this ratio is because what happens is three and six compete for the same substrate. So you can be taking fish oil, but if you're also using vegetable oil, you'll just defeat the purpose. So omega-3 also lengthens your telomeres, as that's vitamin D. See, simple measures, simple things.

What else lengthens your telomeres and helps with your, with your DNA? Meditation. Meditation actually has been shown to increase your, your telomeres. And lack of sleep shortens them. And melatonin. I want to say something about melatonin. Melatonin prevents cancer, but it also turns on FoxO3. So if you're not getting melatonin, you're not getting sleep at night, you're not getting rejuvenation. Now you know the mechanism of why you get so old because you're only sleeping three hours a night or four hours a night, or worse still, you're doing night shift, or all those things are there for your sleep is totally dysfunctional. But very, very important.

Okay, so now you know that the body actually is very intelligent. What you eat immediately starts changing your genetic expression. Did you ever think about that? Yes, I never thought about that until I did all this research and started researching all this about five, six years ago. By diet, I always thought that I, I'll just change my hormones, my, my psychologist, my insulin. My genetic expression changes with every meal that I eat. Yes, it does. It's very empowering to know that. Don't forget it and pass it on.

So when you eat proteins, you produce a stuff called insulin-like growth factor one. Now, this is a warning to all of you, okay? Too much protein will produce too much IGF-1, insulin-like growth factor one. That turns on mTOR. I mentioned them to earlier on, and these are protein kinases. And what this does, it stimulates your ribosomal production to make more protein, which is good. So when you eat protein, you make more muscles, that's fine. But you also have cell proliferation. And what that does, it increases your risk of cancer. Now, there's absolutely no doubt that a high protein diet increases the risk of cancer. I think that data is unequivocal. It's been shown in animals and also in some human studies. Now, the mTOR also decreases autophagy. So if you are on a high protein diet and you think that you're getting autophagy, you've just turned it off because of mTOR. Because I mentioned that earlier on in my talk, it turns off mTOR.

So how much protein should you have? Well, not a lot. How much is not a lot? Well, you're not growing, you're not lactating, you've all passed puberty, um, you're not bodybuilders. 0.35 per pound. That's it. Grams per pound. So I weigh 150, so 50 grams of protein, that's all I need. And I'm going to get enough of that in my regular diet. Taking protein powder, not a good idea. Not a good idea. Cut it out. We did it. We all did it. I did it for a while. You'll notice your sugar levels go up because it stimulates your insulin production as well, and it's got a lot of glucose in it, and it will cause IGF-1 levels to go up, and it increases protein synthesis, risk of cancer, and decreases autophagy. Now, I just told that autophagy is so important, and here this thing turns it off. Don't do protein bars, for goodness sake. You don't need it. And nature doesn't give you protein on its own. It gives it to you. You want some protein? Go eat the chicken or the fish, and make sure it's nice and lean and not fed on corn, because then you'll get too much omega-6 as well. So there you go.

Now, there's a, so insulin growth, insulin-like growth, it's just like growth hormone. So there's a group of people out there in Ecuador, and they, they have Laron syndrome, which is a gene mutation. I got to tell you about this. What that means is that they, the growth hormone receptor has a mutation, so it doesn't work very well. So these people are very short, they're real short, they're real stubby as well, but they live to be a hundred, 110. And they have no cancer and no high blood pressure. And it's all to do with that growth hormone receptor mutation. That is why we're saying that, listen, if you want that type of physiology, you need to cut down on the amount of protein. You know, it's overrated because you go to a restaurant and you order a salad, and what's the first question? Protein? No, I don't need any protein in my salad, thank you. But they'll always ask you for that. It's overrated. I'm not saying that you shouldn't add some grilled chicken to your salad or something. You can do that, but take it in the context of how much protein you're eating during the day. And please don't supplement even more unless you have illness, unless you have GI problems and you can't otherwise eat and you're wasting away and your teeth are really bad and, and you're sick, you might need some protein. Most of us don't need it. 99% of us don't need it. So in those patients, they have very low insulin levels, very low insulin-like growth factor levels. And there you go. So you'll have less diabetes, less cancer in those patients.

So different diets turn these genes on and off. When you eat sugar, you turn on a gene called Ras-PKA. It's crazy. So this is a protein kinase as well. And what does that do? Again, it turns off autophagy, increases the production of your insulin, and basically makes you more inflammatory because it turns off all those things. So you become inflammatory. Sugar causes inflammation in the body. Fructose causes insulin resistance in the liver. I went over that with you all before. So sugar is very, very bad for you. Sugar is a poison. Sugar is not natural. Sugar was never found in nature. It's a totally processed food. It's processed. It's as processed food as all the other processed foods that you eat. Just desperate, but people think sugar, it's just, it's natural sugar, you know, it's sugar. Well, it's not sugar. It's processed. It's totally processed. There's no such thing as sugar. It's totally processed.

Um, so if you don't want cancer, heart disease, diabetes, degenerative joint disease, inflammatory conditions of the bowels, then don't get old. Don't get old. Now, why did I say that? Because there's a lot of truth to what I'm going to say here, okay? So all these conditions are conditions that occur in aging. If you can slow down aging, you won't get those conditions. So what is the best way to stay young? Your genetic material. And for you to constantly stay young, but I told you already how to do that. Fasting, keep your weight down, eat the right foods. Your genetic material stays young, you stay younger. You're not going to get those five conditions. If you get prematurely old, and by the way, we're getting old fastest. 30-year-olds, and not even 20-year-olds, coming to my office. They're already 50 years old because of the lifestyle, what they're eating, their lifestyle, their sleep patterns, their stress patterns. So don't get old. So everything that I'm saying is also anti-aging.

So now, does that mean I'm an anti-aging doctor? I am. But there's a lot of other people out there also doing anti-aging. But I'm a different anti-aging kind of doctor. I do more naturally, and I know the science behind it. So I'm not going to tell you to go and, you know, take the special cream and put it on you and eat the special concoction because how natural is all that? Just how natural is that? I mean, if you want to be natural, then you don't walk away from from one of those providers with a bag load of drugs and creams and, and other things. I mean, how natural is that? I have nothing to sell you. I got nothing. I have vitamin D in my office. I got vitamin K2. By the way, all should be on vitamin K2 as well. What is vitamin K2? Vitamin K2 takes the calcium, takes it out of the arteries, out of your tissues, and puts it back into the bone where it belongs. So how come you got vitamin K2 deficiency? Because you're on that low-fat diet, right? So it's absorbed through fat. You don't have fat, you're not going to absorb vitamin K. You don't have fat, you're not going to absorb vitamin D. How do you think you're vitamin D deficient? Because we went on the slow-fat craze, low-fatness, low-fat diet. So it compounded your nutritional deficiency. When you went on a high-carb diet, which is what the government told us to do, because what we did, we went on a low-fat diet and substituted it all with carbs, you also became nutritionally a desert because you didn't get all the good things. Look, when you eat natural fats in natural ways, like let's say you eat a piece of fish, or you eat meat, or you're eating vegetables, it comes with everything in it. So your ADEK will get absorbed with the natural fat. You need it. You need it. And that's how it's going to get absorbed because that's how it was two and a half million years ago. Who are you to try to change this in the last millisecond of your life in your evolution?

Okay, so let's talk about that. How many generations will be for you? Because that will be an eye-opener for you. I haven't written down here somewhere in my notes. How many generations have gone by? And it's a real eye-opener. Oh man, where did I write it? Oh, yes. Oh, yeah, here it goes. So in the two and a half million years, there were a hundred thousand generations. And each generation improves on these genetic materials. 100,000 generations. And then they produced the Homo sapien. How many generations have been in the agricultural time since the agricultural thing happened? Only 600 generations. So 600 generations have been eating the, the benefits of the agricultural revolution. And what about the industrial revolution, which changed it even more? Because remember, much of the agricultural was okay, actually, because the grains were kind of whole. But in the industrial revolution, how many generations have gone by? Only 10. Only ten. You have no chance of survival because your genetic material has another chance to eventually. There's only been 10 generations. So you drastically change the way you live, you drastically change your diet, and you expect 10 generations to drastically change your genetic material. Now, if you're lucky and you procreate wisely, there may be another thousand generations from now. Your kids will adapt to this new diet. But right now, you stand on a chance. Do you see what I'm saying? Keep, stay on this diet, stay on this lifestyle. And after another thousand, maybe two thousand, three thousand generations, the new human being will have adapted to today's food. He wants to have a chance. So there you go.

All right, so how much more time do I have? I have a little bit more time. So I want to give you a few more, a few more hints over here on, on, um, on fasting and, and things to say about fasting. So I already talked about the biochemical changes and I told you how. So the first thing you need to do if you want anyone wants to start a fasting program is to cut down on your carbohydrates. You cannot jump into a fasting program with a regular diet. You have to first be carb conditioned. You need to cut down on no processed foods, no processed foods, nothing unnatural, anything that's refined, no sugar, no drinks except for water and tea and coffee. And by the way, when you're fasting, you can have tea and coffee and all that, but without the miracle cream. You can add a little bit of coconut if you want, coconut oil, that is, um, or MCT oil because that will, that will give you some satisfaction and take away your hunger for a while. So that's very important.

Um, I want to say, oh, yes, I want to say this. Refeeding syndrome. Let's say you, one of you did decide to do a three-day or four-day fast. I warn you that when you start eating again, you may have a problem. Because what will happen is that if you have phosphate deficient, because you're nutritionally already eating the standard American diet, the SAD diet, then you don't have enough phosphate in your body. And your bones are the biggest storage of phosphate. And most of us have osteopenia. How come we have so much osteopenia? These 30-year-old women that come to my office say, I have osteopenia. How come? It's terrible. Living in Florida, osteopenia. It's terrible. So obviously, when she does her refeeding, she's going to get phosphate deficiency. Because what happens? All of a sudden, stem cells going, they need building blocks. And one of the building blocks is phosphate to replace the cells that have died. And so if you get phosphate, so you get tremendous muscle weakness and muscle aching. And that's from phosphate deficiency. And that can happen. So when that happens, you need to go and get some bone broth. So all of you should know how to make some bone broth. If you've made it, the Indians have been doing it for years. But you know, just put some bones in there and, and how to cook the bone broth, you should know how to make one. Now, if you're a vegetarian, you can make it out of vegetables too, but it's very, very helpful. And even during a fast, if you absolutely have to do anything, you can have some bone broth. Chewing up fast, okay? Bone broth because it's got a lot of glycine in it, and it's got, um, phosphate, it's got a lot of minerals in it. And that will really help you. Even the magnesium. So it'll help you overcome some of your problems. So learn about bone broth and don't buy ready-made bone broth. Make it yourself. By the way, there's lots of recipes now on the low-carb diet, how to, what kind of breakfast, lunch, or dinner, whatever you want to cook is available. Bone broth, how to make it. My favorite book that I use is Jason Fung's book, right? Jason Fung, F-U-N-G. Uh, he's the, he's a, he's a nephrologist up in Canada, and, and he sees all this really heavy-duty diabetics, and he does amazing work. But you see, he's learned all these tricks to make success. So the potassium can fall, magnesium can fall, and phosphate. So refeeding, just be careful. Use bone broth during that time.

I already mentioned all the side effects, which are okay. Coffee, tea, I mentioned the tea, um, and black tea. Medicines, yes. When you are, when you're doing fasting, it depends which medicine. Now, if you're taking diabetes medications, and I'm telling you all, if you're taking diabetes medications, they will cause a drop in your sugar level, and it could be a dangerous drop in your sugar level, especially insulin. Should not be taken. And Glyburide, Glipizide, those agents should not be taken. But don't do that without your physician knowing. You've got to involve your physician. If you're a diabetic patient, your physician needs to know about it. If your physician doesn't want to know about it and doesn't approve of you doing fasting, maybe you need to find another one. You see, because, and look, it's not bad. I look, physicians are great, but we're taught to treat illness. Get sick, and I'll know what to do with you. But you want to stay healthy, heck, I don't know. That's the problem we have. It's not that they don't want to help you, it's just that they don't know. They've never been there to handle that kind of situation. I'll tell you what I do with my patients, okay? I stop the insulin right there. No more insulin. And I stop Glyburide or any other agent that drops blood sugar, except for Metformin. I keep them on Metformin. And then I tell them to measure the blood sugars. And for three days or two days, they may have high blood sugar, but that's not going to hurt them. That's not going to hurt them. So if you look at what hurts you the most, it's a high insulin level that hurts you more. If your glucose level is a little bit high, okay, that may glycate some of your proteins, but it's temporary. It's not going to hurt you in the long term. But insulin will hurt you. So that's what I've done. And for most of them, after they're, they're fast, they feel a lot better, and they, they can come off insulin. They should be able to come off insulin. But you gotta, you know, the trouble with physicians is, and myself included, we're so busy. Then ideally, I would like to see you going on a fast, and then I'll see you today because we discussed it. I'd like to see you again in a couple of days, at least. Now, if I'm going to stop your insulin, I might want you to take your blood sugar every day, every day, at least four times, and report to my office, call the office, tell the nurse, my sugar is doing this, that, that, and have a very close follow-up on that. The trouble is that our system is so broken that most physicians can't do that. And if they try to do that, they'll go broke because there's no reimbursement for any of this stuff. It's really terrible. But that's what I'm saying. Keep, find a physician that you can at least talk with frequently. Go and see frequently if you want to come off diabetes medications.

Now, all the other medications, blood pressure medication, you should take everything else. But you measure your blood pressure. You got to take things into your own hands because nobody is going to do it except you. You must take control of your life. We have become a society where we go to the doctor and say, fix me. No, you've got to do it yourself. You must take your blood sugars every day. Get your ketone sticks over there. Get your blood pressure machine. Start taking your blood pressures. If your blood pressure starts going below 100, you call the doctors. And my breakfast is level or destiny to be on beta-blocker? Oh, no. Stop the beta-blocker. Good. Fine. Done. And that's what happens actually. So it's hard to predict who's going to drop the blood pressure and who's not. But generally speaking, you've got to be very vigilant. And you need a doctor that you can quickly approach or a walk-in clinic that you can walk into. That's why I have my walk-in clinic, right? People can walk in and, yeah, the man that might have to wait, but at least they're going to be seen. And if I'm tied up, at least my, my practitioners will take care of the patient. So your blood pressure will drop because you become volume depleted or because of of your, your physiology changing. Physiology has changed. That's where your blood pressure is dropping. So yeah, you can come off. Look, high blood pressure, sugar, high triglycerides, and low HDL are all part of metabolic syndrome. This makes metabolic syndrome better. Therefore, your blood pressure will come down, your sugar will come down, your triglycerides will come down, and your HDL will go up. I told you all before that the lipid abnormalities that you see, very few of them are primary lipid abnormalities. The rest are all reflections of your glucose metabolism that has gone haywire. So the most important things to look for on your lipid panel is not your LDL, it's your triglycerides and HDL and the ratio of HDL to triglycerides. If it's off, you have a sugar problem, even though your sugar is good or your hemoglobin A1c is good. If your triglycerides are high and your HDL low and the ratio is greater than two, you probably have high insulin levels. And that needs to be determined. And the treatment of high insulin levels today is fasting, changing your diet, and doing intermittent. Now, what do I do? Six months down the patient comes to me and says, oh, I've lost all this weight. Look, I feel great now. I'm down on my medications. I'm hardly taking anything now. I will repeat his insulin levels. If they are good, I'll say, you know what, things are much better now. You don't have to be so crazy about your diet anymore. But automatically, most of them still do time-restricted feeding because they love it. They feel so good doing it. So very few go back to eating five days or five times a day, you know? You know. So there you go. So very important that we do this.

I wanted to mention something else too. Yes. So the, you know, studies are very hard in humans. But I wanted to show you one study that was done in monkeys about fasting. Um, so they took the monkeys, the rhesus monkeys, which we're very closely related to them. They deserve more respect, I think. These monkeys. So they took the experimental group, gave them 30% less calories. The standard teaching for, for weight loss, 30% less calories, right? So 30% less calories. And the control group, they gave them milk protein, corn oil, sugar, and unlimited feeding times, pretty much like an American diet. That was the control group. And then what they did is they looked at the outcome at five years in these rhesus monkeys. There was 20. Those who had restricted calories, the 30% restricted calories, they lived 26% more than the control group, 50% less cardiovascular disease, and greater than 90% no diabetes, just by cutting calories down. Our food is so full of calories. The more calories you eat, the more disease you're going to get. There's absolutely no doubt. So now the NIH, they don't want to be outdone. So they did a study. They also did 30% caloric restriction. But in the control group, now watch what they did in the control group. They gave them plant proteins, no animal protein except for a little bit of fish, 5% fat only. So give them some fat, 4% sugar in the diet, and they were only fed twice a day. And what did they find? What do you think? Did they, did that, did those monkeys do better than the 30% caloric restriction? Or do you think it was as good as the caloric restriction? Did it better? Yeah. So, so again, it, it's your diet. So just simply cutting down on 30% calories is not the way to go. It's no longer calories in, calories out. It's how your body reacts to the calories and what calories go in. It's your hormonal response, how you respond hormonally, and how you respond to your genetic expression. So be careful what goes past the tongue, because that's going to determine your future.

And you know, I always like questions and answers. So I'm going to stop right there. But today's main message is, if you want to do a serious fast, talk to somebody who knows a lot about fasting. Do it with somebody. Talk to your doctor if you're on diabetes medications or blood pressure medications. If you want to simply replicate the Paleolithic way, eat once a day or twice a day only. Do it in a time-restricted fashion. All of you can do it. All of you. You don't need medical permission to do that. The only time I'm telling you to seek my help is if you go to a three-day, five-day, or a seven-day water fast, or even more water fast. All right. And there's a lot of books that you all can read, especially Jason Fung's book. And, uh, is there any other questions? By the way, as I said before, this talk, I'll put my slides in there and then post it onto YouTube. Galen Foundation wants to continue doing stuff like this. So my next one, I'm going to talk about all sorts of things, including sleep. I'm going to do a whole topic on sleep and how to improve your sleep because it's so important. So I want to do that. But, you know, Galen needs help, as usual. So any help you all can give Galen Foundation as well. It's a 501(c)(3), and if you know people who, who, who would like to help this type of organization, ask them to help us out as well. And of course, they can come to our talks and our websites as well.