Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - BITESIZE | The Benefits of Fasting for Weight Loss, Health and Longevity | Dr Pradip Jamnadas #333

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today's Bite Size episode is brought to you by AG1, a science-driven daily health drink with over 70 essential nutrients to support your overall health. It includes vitamin C and zinc, which helps support a healthy immune system, something that is really important at this time of year. It also contains prebiotics and digestive enzymes that help support your gut health. It's really tasty and has been in my own life for over five years. Until the end of January, AG1 are giving a limited time offer. Usually they offer my listeners a one-year supply of vitamin D and K2 and five free travel packs with their first order. But until the end of January, they are doubling the five free travel packs to

Starting point is 00:00:51 10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office, or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Welcome to Feel Better Live More Bite Size, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 236 of the podcast with Dr. Pradeep Jamnadas, a Florida-based consultant cardiologist and a clinical assistant professor. It's not just what we eat that's important for our health and longevity, but also when we eat and how much. In this short clip, Dr. Jamnadas shares a beginner's guide to fasting and describes

Starting point is 00:01:45 some of the dramatic and restorative processes that take place in our bodies when we start to take periodic breaks from food. Please note, the advice in this episode may not be suitable if you are suffering from or recovering from an eating disorder. What are the key benefits of fasting that you have seen in your patients? Traumatic. You know, I've been a cardiologist for 30 years and I've tried everything. But when I tried fasting, I started seeing changes. People began to lose weight. People's blood pressures came down. Diabetes got reversed. The progression of coronary artery disease went down. Patients mentally also seem to be doing better. Joints seem to get better. Bowel symptoms seem to get better.

Starting point is 00:02:38 Patients look better. But now there's data showing that these patients live longer, But now there's data showing that these patients live longer, less cancer as well. And we know about the chemistry that is induced, which one of them is called autophagy, where the cells actually recycle all the inner parts to become more efficient. And mitochondria recycle as well, which is called mitophagy. mitochondria recycle as well which go mitophagy so these autophagy and mitophagy which is recycling your your biochemistry of your cells does not occur in a fed state it's that one thing fasting that's hitting so many different things isn't it it's reducing your insulin it's encouraging autophagy, stem cell production, growth hormone, so many different things are being activated. And actually, if we could get a drug to do any

Starting point is 00:03:32 one of those, we'd be sort of shouting about it. But this one thing does all of them. What we're trying to do is support the body's natural defences. We're trying to support that body's own natural resilience that's there. If we and modern life kind of gets out of the way, we're getting in the way and actually stopping this stuff from working. And what I'd love to do, because I think you do it so well, is really go through what happens in the body biochemically, physiologically, when we start fasting. Because I think for many people, they're going to need that knowledge and that science to convince them that, actually, you know what, maybe I should give this a go.

Starting point is 00:04:13 Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, what fasting does, it allows your body to do what it was made to do. You see, we eat, eat, eat. Insulin comes in, puts everything into storage, so you build up some fat. And then you're supposed to live. So when you live, you now start utilizing your calories and you start burning the sugar. When that goes out after maybe about four hours or five hours, then the glycogen stores in your liver and your muscles start breaking down, start giving you the calories that you really need to burn so you can run, do your day-to-day activities and all that. And when you run out of that by, let's say, about 18 hours or 20 hours, and then the body

Starting point is 00:04:50 says, hmm, I need to start burning fat now. That's what you're supposed to do. That's why you put on fat in the first place. That's why we have fat. It's a storage. And then you start burning that fat. And therefore, you start burning that fat. So the fat comes out, comes into your liver, gets converted to some ketones perhaps. And now you're making ketones

Starting point is 00:05:08 and the ketones are being utilized for energy. And then you go for your next meal again. So the body was made to do this. It was not made to just pile on, pile on, pile on all the time. Because that results in increased fat stores, which you'll never break down. So the important thing is that when you eat and you're taking calories, your insulin level obviously goes up. Why? Because insulin has to get that sugar out of the bloodstream. Blood sugar must always come down because otherwise you get damaged from that high glucose

Starting point is 00:05:42 level in your bloodstream. That's why we treat diabetes, right? Because the blood sugar or the glucose rather attaches itself to proteins, glycation end products, and therefore these proteins become dysfunctional. So insulin says, I'm going to take the glucose out, put it down into the storage. First place it puts it into is the liver. When the liver stores are full, then it spills over into the pancreas. More calories come in, there's more glucose, then it goes into the muscles and it stores everything from there into the skin. And that's the way it was supposed to be. But now when we continue to do that, we just keep piling it on,

Starting point is 00:06:21 piling it on. We never get a chance to burn it down. And we're supposed to burn it down. So the biochemistry of the body was made for feeding, fasting cycles. This is the way the bioengineering of our body was, but we became dysfunctional because as food became more available, we just kept piling it on and on and on and on. And that's the problem that we have today. It's exactly what you said, excessive calories too frequently. So our insulin levels stay high all the time. And because your insulin doesn't come back down again, you're always in a storage mode. This high insulin is the problem we've hormonally changed because we're eating too frequently. We're not designed

Starting point is 00:07:03 to eat that frequently. Insulin is supposed to go up, then come back down again. When I brought that insulin levels down on these patients through fasting, blood pressure has just plummeted, and I had to actually take patients off blood pressure medications. So that's a huge thing that I found with insulin. So fasting seemed to me the best way to really make the patient's blood pressures come down. And I found that their weights came down.

Starting point is 00:07:33 The question is, why did the weight come down? Well, insulin, the bottom line for all your listeners, insulin just is a storage molecule. It puts everything in storage. So when the insulin levels come down, the storage padlocks are taken off. So your fat can now be mobilized. In terms of getting really practical for people, if we compare fasting to let's say, movements, right? So people, if they want to move more, they know they could start off with a 15 minute walk around the block. You know, they want to do a bit more, they make it 30-40 walk around the block. They want to do a bit more. They make it 30, 40 minutes

Starting point is 00:08:05 around the block. Then they might start jogging. Some people might want to do a 5K walk or even a run, a 10K. Some people want to do a marathon. There's different grades of movement. What are the different grades of fasting? Where can people start? Super know, super, super simple. What are the benefits of that level? And then how can people progress up depending on their state of health, depending on their goals? You know, I think that would be quite a useful way at looking at fasting and making it really practical for people. Great question. So my general advice in my office and all my nurse practitioners do the same thing with our patients is, look, the first thing you need to do is cut out all the sugars.

Starting point is 00:08:48 Because if you're going to a fasting with your regular diet pattern, you're going to have a very nasty experience. You're going to go through withdrawal from sugar. You're going to feel terribly hungry, sweaty. You may even actually have worse symptoms. So the first thing I tell my patients is, look, you need to get rid of all artificial foods. You need to cut out all sugar, all processed foods, processed foods. Anything that is made in a factory, anything that has a barcode on it is suspect. Anything that's been pulverized, anything that has been made into a powder, get rid of everything.

Starting point is 00:09:21 You need to eat foods in their natural whole form. I said, when you look at the food in your plate, you need to be able to recognize it. Yes, this is what this is. This is what this is. And they said, what about meat and chicken and fish? I said, no problem. As long as it is grass-finished meat, organic chicken, organic eggs, and you can have some turkey, but you must have vegetables in their normal, natural state. I want you to eat a natural diet. So eat as much as you want, but of the right food. And I want you to do that for approximately two to three weeks. No fasting right now. So that way, they get used to that idea that I'm going to first just change my diet. And then after two to

Starting point is 00:10:07 three weeks, then I bring them back inside and I say, okay, so now you're going to learn to skip meals. So step number two is skip meals. Wake up in the morning. I'm not hungry for breakfast. Skip it. Come around to lunch, have your lunch, have your dinner. Next day, have breakfast, around to lunch, have your lunch, have your dinner. Next day, have breakfast, but skip your lunch. The next day, skip your dinner. So learn to just skip meals. And look, you felt fine. Nothing bad happened. You were perhaps a little hungry. You got over it by drinking a glass of water. Drink lots of water during the daytime. So I do that for another two weeks or so. See, I'm doing it gradually, just like your athlete. You can't go to your 5k right now. You first need to build into it. So for a couple of weeks, I make them just skip meals randomly. Then I sit down with them and say, now, this week, five days a week, I want you to have

Starting point is 00:10:54 only two meals. And these two meals are going to be within six hours of each other. So that you're going to have 18 hours that you're not going to eat at all and only drink water. No calories in those 18 hours whatsoever. You can have water, black tea, black coffee. And they say, oh gosh, that's great. And they do that for about two weeks. So for two weeks, Monday to Friday, two meals within a six-hour window period. So they're 18 hours. They are fasting.

Starting point is 00:11:22 Weekends, I let them have fun because they're with their families. So I say you can have breakfast, you can have lunch, dinner, but no snacks in between. So most you're going to have on weekends is three meals on the weekends. Then they do that for another two weeks. Then I say, okay, now is when you're really going to start your fasting. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I want you to skip that second meal also. Now you're only going to eat one meal on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I want you to skip that second meal also. Now you're only going to eat one meal on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Starting point is 00:11:48 That's it. The rest of the days during the week, you're going to have your two meals. Weekends, you can still have your three meals. So I gradually get them into that. And most of the time, patients are able to do it this way. When I try to make them go to once a day eating or time-restricted feeding within a six-hour window from the get-go, my failure rate is much higher. So I make them do it gradually. And then they self-empower themselves.

Starting point is 00:12:14 Yeah, I mean, I love that. And what I want to be really clear on, someone who feels that they're in good health, they're of a decent weight, they don't have any health problems, is that the approach they should be doing as well? Or are you specifically talking about patients who are already a little bit sick? No, what I'm talking about here applies to just about everybody. You've mentioned all the kind of physical benefits, the biochemical benefits when we have a period of not taking in food, a period of fasting. But there's also something really powerful, isn't there, about what it does for you when you know, oh, I can go 12 hours without food. I can go 18 hours. Well, actually, I can go 24 hours and I

Starting point is 00:13:02 don't actually need to put something in my mouth. I think there's a real freedom, which many people feel that they're in chains, I guess, to the food industry and to their hunger and their stomach. We shouldn't undervalue just what that does for someone. Absolutely, absolutely. And you know, on this journey, they find out something about themselves. I'm talking about what they find out. They find out that I am something beyond my hunger.

Starting point is 00:13:33 I am beyond my body. I'm beyond my habits. I've suddenly realized that I am in charge. And now they're empowering themselves. They realize that there's another part of themselves, a real inner amness, my awareness, the real me, which is beyond my body, beyond my feelings, beyond my sensations, and I have control over it. So what I'm saying is that it empowers them even more because they

Starting point is 00:14:00 realize, yes, I have control. Pretty much everything you're talking about, it's about putting the patient back in control of their health. And I guess I would argue their wider happiness as well. Absolutely. Absolutely. I wonder if right at the end of this conversation, you could share with your decades of experience as a cardiologist with all the patients you've seen, can you share with my listeners, with my viewers, some of your very top tips that they can think about applying into their lives immediately

Starting point is 00:14:35 after this conversation finishes? Number one, eat only natural foods in its natural state. Number two, eat infrequently, only when you are hungry. Number three, sleep at least seven hours a day. Number four, find pleasure in your life and activities so that you don't metabolize bad physiology from bad habits. Find happiness, find pleasure in your life. And if you do these four things, you'll find your health will turn around completely. Hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip.

Starting point is 00:15:23 I hope you have a wonderful weekend. And I'll be back next week with my long-form conversational Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.

Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - BITESIZE | The Benefits of Fasting for Weight Loss, Health and Longevity | Dr Pradip Jamnadas #333

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