Transcription
Getting back to fasting, people they want to try to fast. I and they want us to start. First question for you. I've heard about this 36-hour fast. Is there a magic towards that? What does it do?
I love 36-hour fasts. So, there is magic to it. Yes, there is. Because see, for the average person, after you fasted for about 12 hours, the glycogen stores are all gone from your muscles and from your liver. So, then you start getting some gluconegenesis. But the ketones will not kick in for about 20 hours, 24 hours. So if that's the case, if I want some degree of ketogenesis, and you can test for this simply by taking those ketone sticks and just testing your urine, say, "Oh my gosh, I'm making some ketones over here. This is fantastic." You will make ketones after 24 hours. Now you make a little bit before 24 hours, but that's not going to help you as much as becoming really ketoic, really producing. So 36 hours. So the average person will make good quantities of the ketones at 36 hours. Now what's even better than 36 hours is 48. And what's better than 48 is 72.
Most of my patients will notice that at around 32 to 34 hours, they're actually feeling great and then they break their fast. And I tell them, look, if you're feeling great, just keep going because you want more ketones. So 36 hours is a magic point. But if you really want to make a dent on your metabolism, if you really want to get rid of insulin resistance because as long as your insulin is high, you'll never lose an ounce in weight. You cannot lose weight if your insulin level is high because insulin's job is to put everything into storage. You want to get that insulin level down, you have to fast more. And everybody's metabolically not as adaptable. Some are adaptable very easily. Like for example, I only eat once a day. So I know I make ketones by about 14 hours. I'm already spilling ketones. Other people, they're going to have to fast for 36 hours before they make ketones. But the more often they do that, then the earlier they're going to start making ketones.
See, but once you get into ketones, you really feel good because ketones are a clean energy source that can be used by the brain as well. And then by 72 hours about 60 to 70% of the energy even in your brain is being utilized by these ketones from these ketones. So I say that if you really want to get the benefit depending what your goals are of course then the longer the fasting you do the better. So the more inflamed you are, meaning that you got coronary artery disease, you have a fatty liver, you're overweight, your insulin levels are really high, more toxic you are, the more gut symptoms you have, the more fasting, the longer the fasting you really need to do. Now, I never advise people to do prolonged fasting if they are pregnant or they already have terminal illnesses. They're extremely thin and they're emaciated. Of course, that's very different, but for most patients, you can easily do a 72-hour fast and you feel better. Once the ketones kick in, the hunger seems to be better. Energy level seems to be higher. Your your your brain is on fire. You can think more clearly and and and you don't feel fatigued and you even sleep better. You even sleep better. So I think that 36 hours is magic. 72 is really a very good sweet point. And of course my personal experiences with my patients go even further. I mean, I had one patient that fasted 183 days, but that patient went from a weight of 440 lb to 200 lb. Diabetes gone, high blood pressure gone, joint pains gone. And when you fast this way, the skin also retracts at the same time, unlike when you just purely go on other modalities of weight loss. And the guy looked like a million bucks. He looked so good. So we do that under supervision.
So what I do is of course I see them, I check the electrolytes and I give them clues on how to do prolonged fasting and I help them get through this, especially the ones who are in the beginning phases. Like I give them electrolytes to drink. I might give them MCT oil. Um I'll tell them how much water to drink. Um black tea, black coffee. Uh even sometimes bone broth if I really have to, even though that does break your fast a little bit. But if I really want them to do more prolonged fasting and get used to it, um it's it's amazing. And of course, you know, it does also get rid of your psychological addiction to food because remember now we eat a lot often times not because our body is hungry and wants it. It's just because you're addicted. You're addicted because these carbs go to that dopamine center in the brain, the reward center. So you keep craving those carbs. So you want to eat again. And secondly, you have your Pavlovian reflex where you want to eat because it's 1:00, you got to eat now. You psychologically, you just have to eat. So when you do this fasting, it breaks your addiction cycle.
See, there's so many benefits to fasting. So people talk about the psychological part. I said, "Look, you fast. It's just like taking an alcoholic and putting him in a room and taking away all his bottles and for 3 days, he's not going to have any alcohol and then he's going to walk out of the room ready to go and and solve the world's mysteries. He's so good. He's back to his normal self." So, same way we got to do with us. We are junkies. All of us. We've become junkies because we're addicted to our carbs. We're addicted to this lifestyle. I got to eat now. Uh and and we it's a vicious cycle. We got to break out of it. You got to have metabolic flexibility. You got to have mental flexibility too. We cannot be slaves to this and this indoctrination from from advertising and lifestyle. You got to break away from this. This is not what we were supposed to do. You know, one day you you find food, the next day you're not going to find the food. We got to be flexible. We got to get back to that.
So, it's interesting when you talk about fasting because people talk about 16:8, 18:6. I can easily do an 18-hour fast. I've never done um what is it, 3-day water fast, which you also say just drinking water during those three days. So, your biggest success story with your patient was 100 days, 108 days. You wouldn't advocate for people just to do that. How would somebody just start this if they're thinking, "Oh my god, this doctor is saying do this. I can't do it." How do you just start to even get to this 36 hours?
Yeah. So this is what I do. Most people are eating three times a day. So I say, "Okay, can you skip one meal?" Okay, I'm going to skip lunch or breakfast or or dinner. Okay, fine. So you skip one meal a day and do that for about a week, a week and a half. Just just just skip one meal. I don't I don't care about the timings. Just skip one meal. Then after that's done for about 2 weeks, then I say, "Okay, now take these two meals and have two meals but within 6 hours of each other." See if you can squeeze them a little bit closer because when they only eating two meals six sometimes do 12 hours apart. So I say okay just bring that a little bit closer. So maybe you'll go to not 18:6 but you may go to 16:8. So you're still fasting for 16 hours. So the best way to get 16 hours is to actually fast through the night because you're already fasting and then in the morning just skip that breakfast. So many people say, "Well, you shouldn't skip breakfast as the best meal of the day, most important meal of the day." That's not true. That's absolutely not true. U so just wait till the next meal which is going to be at noon time and then have your dinner in the evening. Do that for 2 weeks. Once they've done 16:8 for about 2 to 3 weeks, you see, I don't just jump them into it. You got to do that for 2 to 3 weeks at least. Now the body's getting used to that physiology of 18 hours of fasting. And I bet you they're already beginning to make a little bit more ketones and they're beginning to get out of this addiction as well. The addiction that I just talked about, right? So the cravings are going to go down. Cravings are going to go down. Their compulsive eating is going to go down.
Then I tell them, okay, now this week, two days a week, just skip one of those meals. So you're going to go to what is known as OMAD, which is one meal a day, maybe Tuesday and Thursdays, and choose the days that you know you're going to be very busy. So, I got a really busy schedule. I'm just going to eat one meal a day on these two days. Now, you've done that for another two weeks or so. So, now you've done OMAD two days a week and then the rest of the time you've been eating two meals and you're pretty happy. Then you go to OMAD 5 days a week for two weeks. So, now that's pretty much what I do, right? I I I'm OMAD 5 days a week and then on weekends I'll have two meals. I'll do that. Now, once I've done that for a couple of weeks to then do the 3-day water fast is so much easier. It's so much easier because you don't want to get into this gap.
So, let me explain the gap to you. So, when your glucose is all utilized, let's say by about um 12 hours and you haven't made ketones for 24 hours, in between you can get what is known as keto flu where your body just doesn't have an energy source. It doesn't know how to tap into your fats. Why? Because your insulin levels are still high. See, insulin level has to come down so that the fat stores can be opened up. So, your insulin levels are still high. You can't access the fat. You've used up all your glycogen. You're going to feel lousy. You're not going to have an energy source. And that's exactly what you feel like. You feel really run down. So, we must avoid keto flu. And if I get keto flu, my patients not going to hold on to that fasting program that they're going to fall off the bandwagon and they say, "Forget this. This is not for me." So you got to kind of build up the metabolic flexibility. So my glucose is gone, my fats kick in. And you got to do that gradually. You you have because look, this is years and years of conditioning that you've developed. You got to get out of this years and years of conditioning. So it has to happen gradually. Don't think that, oh yeah, I heard this video and I'm just not going to eat for the next four days because you will go into keto flu. You will feel really lousy and then you of course will be sending me an email that Dr. J, I felt terrible. But look, it's common sense to understand the physiology of this especially when I explain it this way that you got to let your ketones kick in. You got to get that insulin level to come down. You got to let that insulin level come down.
Big benefit is that when you then do it, because your insulin levels went down so low, that next meal that you're going to have would have produced normally a lot of insulin. Well, now you're only going to produce a little because you're insulin sensitive. So, what happens when you're insulin sensitive? You only produce a little bit of insulin for the same meal. Therefore, that same meal which would have made you gain a pound or two, now you don't gain the pound or two. So, it's so forgiving. When you do that 3-day water fast and then go back to eating perhaps perhaps some of the things that you used to do before, you'll notice that you don't gain as much weight as you would have otherwise because that 3-day water fast changed your sensitivity to insulin. That's why the body was more forgiving to you because the insulin levels came down. And the biggest physiological benefit that I see from this type of fasting, three-day water fast, 5-day water fast, 7-day water fast, is your insulin levels come way down. You got to get that insulin level down. Insulin, look, insulin is a bad boy. It'll cause fatty liver. It'll cause weight gain. It'll cause high blood pressure. It'll cause smooth muscle proliferation. It'll promote atherosclerosis. And it can also promote some cancers. I measure insulin levels on just about every patient that walks through my front door.
And the way this happened, I'll just digress a little bit and I'll tell you what happened. These coronary patients were coming to me and I was stenting them and fixing their arteries and they were all come back with more disease. Uh 8 months later or two years later, they got new disease, new blockage. My stents open, but they got new blockages. And I would say why? Why did this happen? And I would measure the hemoglobin A1C and they were normal. But when I started measuring insulin levels, I found a whole new ball game. I found that the insulin levels were really high. And I started doing glucose tolerance tests. And I had a grant from a company that gave me these these strips that I could actually measure these things in my office. And I found that almost all of them had insulin resistance. And it was this silent insulin resistance that was driving atherosclerosis because sugar, insulin, inflammation drives the atherosclerotic process. And the moment I change their diet, their lifestyle, diet and lifestyle, you have to change lifestyle, how often you eat, then exercises. Why bother doing? Well, we did teach them how to do exercises, too. And I have a special special recommendation for exercises. How they sleep. You sleep is so important for atherosclerosis. So how you sleep at night, very important. How you exercise at night, very very important. Right. So it and then more recently, uh I've been talking about what you want to talk about, which is the vagus nerve as well, uh which we can touch upon. So, I touch on all these different things to try to to knock off this inflammation in the body and improve the outcomes.
So, if you really liked and enjoyed this video, then check out this clip because I think you'll find it very helpful. And of course, if you want to see the full video, this is where you'd go. Now, also don't forget to check out my website because there's lots of educational materials and resources there. You'll also find how to contact me or have a consultation with me. So please do check out my website. Thank you.