Habits and Hustle - Episode 105: Dr. Will Cole – Leading Functional Medicine Expert and Bestselling Author of Ketotarian

Episode Date: March 2, 2021

Dr. Will Cole is a Leading Functional Medicine Expert and Bestselling Author of “Ketotarian.” A wealth of functional health and wellness information Dr. Cole dispels the unease of many of the seemingly newest “hacks” and “fads.” Attempting to shed light on how terms and routines like “fasting” or “intuitive eating” can be so easily misconstrued while also validating them and giving the background and steps to pursue a healthier mental and physical state through them, Dr. Cole keeps the community accountable for misinformation and under-information. Jen and Dr. Cole talk about his work relationship with Gwenyth Paltrow and Goop, why he thinks physical and mental health cannot be separated, how your gut is your second brain, and so much more. If you’re looking for someone to cut through the fads and explain true, proper health, or you are looking for a health professional to finally speak plainly and give concrete steps and reasons for why things work or don’t, look no further. Youtube Link to This Episode Dr. Will Cole’s Website Dr. Will Cole’s Instagram ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Did you learn something from tuning in today? Please pay it forward and write us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. 📧If you have feedback for the show, please email [e-mail]  📙Get yourself a copy of Jennifer Cohen’s newest book from Habit Nest, Badass Body Goals Journal. ℹ️Habits & Hustle Website 📚Habit Nest Website 📱Follow Jennifer – Instagram – Facebook – Twitter – Jennifer’s Website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Get grilling at Whole Foods Market Terms Apply. When there's a penalty on the field, referees are there to sort it out. When there's an accident on the road, that's where USAA steps in. We help make the claims process easy, so drivers can get back on the road fast. Making the right calls. That's what we're made for. Membership eligibility and product restrictions apply in our subject to change. USAA means United Services Automobile Association and its affiliates.

San Antonio, Texas. Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins, you're listening to Habits and Hustle, Crescent. Hello and welcome to Habits and Hustle, and today we have Dr. Will Cole joining us. He is a leading functional medicine expert. He consults people around the world via webcam, and he specializes in clinically investigating the underlining factors of chronic disease. Such as thyroid issues, brain issues, digestive disorders, hormonal dysfunctions. He was named when the top 50 functional medicine and integrative doctors in the nation. And he's a health expert and course instructor for the world's largest brands including my

body green and goop. His newest book is called Intuitive Fasting, and it's already a number one bestseller. He talks about how fasting can recharge your metabolism and renew your health. Please listen to this episode. I am sure you will find it very interesting and you will find some practical information

that will help you with your health. Enjoy. I mean, I'm curious. How did you get involved with Goop? Because I know that you, I mean, Gwyneth wrote your foreword and I know you're always on their side and I know that that's kind of like given you so much traction and it's great for you. How did that whole connection happen?

Because usually, you know, you don't live so close, you know what I mean? You're kind of far away. So, well, I mean, I started one of the first functional medicine telehealth centers in the world over a decade ago. So, I think that's a part of it is that the world's always been small for me as far as functional medicine is concerned. So I have only seen patients via webcam and I think that just connected me to different doctors and different people in the space. So I met Gwen and through Alejandro Younger, who is a cardiologist who also

has known her for years. So yeah, so that's how it came to be. So can you tell, I mean, I guess I was going to start, I guess, I'll do a proper intro later. I just have like, I have a ton of questions. So you can come up with it. So like a functional medicine doctor. Could you call yourself a functional medicine practitioner? You don't call yourself a doctor. Is that not like a natural pass?

I'm Canadian. We call them natural pass where I'm from. I'm really L.A. now. But you know, yeah, yeah. First of all, Canadians are like some of the nicest people in the world So thank you love Canada Thank you people say that all the time so I like that true what province are you from? I'm actually originally I grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Have you have you ever even heard of that before?

Yes, I have of course. Yeah, you have okay, and then I then I moved to Toronto, and I went to school in Toronto, and I worked in Toronto for many years, and then I moved here, like, eons ago. But, yeah. So, by the way, it's also the same for Pittsburgh. I mean, when I heard you were, when I saw it, I read, and I heard that you weren't from here, I'm like, oh, okay. Like, it kind of, yes, everything kind of all comes together so nicely in the pretty little bow, you know.

Thank you. Yeah. So, I am a doctor. I'm a functional, an Institute for Functional Medicine certified practitioner. I'm a doctor of natural medicine and have a doctorate in chiropractic as well. So I, the reason why I use the word functional medicine practitioner is that is what the Institute for Functional Medicine calls us. So the Cleveland Clinic's Functional Medicine Center, they're all trained all from the

Institute for Functional Medicine, or IFM, and that's used training myself and my team. So that's just the proper terminology for it. I am a doctor that practices functional medicine, but the answer to your question, natural paths, not all natural paths are trained in functional medicine, but there are many natural paths that are trained in functional medicine. There's such an overlap because there's a lot of commonalities, right? But functional medicine is a very specific school within integrative thought, integrative healthcare, because there are MDs that are functional medicine practitioners,

there's DCs, there's acupuncturists, there's oriental medicines, there's DOs, and there's naturopaths too. And there's nurse practitioners too, but I didn't say that. So there's a whole field of conventionally, or they're trained in healthcare to some degree, and then they go to post-doctoral education

to be trained through the Institute for Functional Medicine. So that's all IFMCP is. That's what I am. Oh, okay. So then what is a functional medicine person do versus a regular MD? Well, yeah. And just to reiterate something I said to, is that most of my colleagues are MNDs as well.

But they, so most Institute for Mectoral Medicine certified practitioners, IFMCPs, are MNDs, with the majority of them aren't. So the difference is that there's a few things. One, we interpret labs using a thinner reference range. So anybody that's out there that's listening will know, hey, when I get my labs done, I go, I'm a doctor, I get my labs done, and I am this number, and my biomarker, all the labs in my lab,

are compared to this reference range. Well, we get that reference range from a statistical bell curve average of the people who go to that lab. So people that predominantly go to labs Sadly are people with health problems so yeah, there are a lot of people especially women that know intuitively something's off here I don't feel right and they go to their doctor and the doctor says they run the labs and everything's quote-unquote normal and They're told you're just depressed here's an anti-depressant right and press ant or you're just getting older

You're a new mom. That's an antidepressant, or you're just getting older, you're a new mom, that's all that it is. Or moms, or yes. It's like these blanket things, which are well-intentioned. I mean, they're trying to give reasons as to how this person could be having these symptoms despite these quote unquote normal labs. But what they're unintentionally telling them is they're a lot like the other people with health problems that they're being compared to.

So we're looking at a functional range, that's a thinner range within that larger reference range. So that's where fiber and wellness resides. So we're standardizing optimal health range, and that's what we all use within functional medicine. And then we run more comprehensive labs. So the training in the inner model of care, which certainly has its place, there's nothing wrong with it, but they're trained to diagnose a disease and match it with a medication. So that serves many people, and there's some people that need to be on medication.

But there's a lot of things that fall through the cracks of that system, because health and health problems exist on a spectrum. So when we realize we're ultimately no one's sick from a medication deficiency, so let's find out actually what's driving these problems. So we're running more comprehensive labs, you get multiple labs perspective. It doesn't change the conventional treatment model.

So that's a perfluous from their standpoint. They're still going to give you the antidepressant or the statin drug or the diabetic medication or thyroid, whatever the case may be. We want to ask, okay, what's upstream for this? Why is this problem here in the first place? It's based off of a health history, but it's just more thorough labs. And then we realize we're all created differently. So there's not a cookie cutter. One size fits all approach to getting healthy. So it's tailored to the individual. So that's what functional medicine is compared to conventional.

So then when you do like all your telemedicine webcam weight, your business is like you said, the first to ever do this around the world, how do you get a good idea and understanding of someone, you're not really, you're testing them differently. Is it the questions you're asking them and then you send them the tests or how does that work? Yeah, it's a good question.

So, and I think, just doing this 10 years ago and for the past decade, people didn't get it as much because they were like, I thought you'd have to be there for that. We're not replacing someone's primary care physician. We're not replacing someone's GP. Physical exams obviously still need to be done locally. We are not replacing that. There's, I think, because of the pandemic right now now people understand it that doctors had to learn overnight that well

We actually didn't have to be in person for all this right and we take a very very comprehensive health history We ask a lot of questions and we spend I mean depending on the doctor's talking about but an hour hour and a half two hours The initial visit really digging into a case thoroughly. Before you see them, you have to prepare for this to get prepped so you're not wasting their time just catching up on the case. So I do prepped and then I spend an hour and a half with them on top of that. So it's very thorough. It's like a clinical Sherlock Holmes because these are people, my people are people with

autoimmune issues, metabolic issues, these really complex mystery things that they've gone to many brilliant conventional doctors and many brilliant alternative doctors. So I can't be showing up to the party lay. I need to be on point and hold space for them and do my due diligence and give them the thoughtfulness and the fresh perspective that they deserve.

So I don't have to be with them personally physically. We drop shared labs to them. We coordinate all their labs. Like if it's a blood lab, we find a local facility that we arrest our kids. So we either FedEx or UPS, they ship them to the labs. So you can be anywhere. We have patients all around the world.

Well, what I thought was amazing. I wonder on your website, and I did two things. I did your inflammation quiz to see if I had much inflammation I had, or if I have any, which I want to talk to you about. And then secondly, I did the, the fast, I wasn't the metabolic, flexible quiz.

What I couldn't believe, I swear, I was answering these questions and it's like next page and another laundry list of questions. And it was like next page. I'm like, there was literally like 100 questions, even on this, I thought it was gonna be like this like dinky little quiz that you have to always do. You had to ask you like, are you this?

Are you that? It's like the small nothing quiz. But it was like even that was extensive. I was impressed by that. Yeah, that that was quizzes. All of them are adapted from questions that I asked patients. So they're not like just for people to just like know if they're with personality type they are. Yeah, right. Deeper things are like which golden girl you are. type they are. Deeper things are like which golden girl you are. I'm dorsi by the way, but or Sophia, but it's fine that you said that show because it was like my favorite show growing up. It's so funny. It's the best show ever. And it was also like you know you asked a question I never heard before in terms was it the inflammation thing about if your eyebrow?

Can you say that because I never saw before? Yeah, yeah, so the outer third of your eyebrow if that's thinning that's a clinical hallmark sign that there could be a thyroid problem Does it mean it automatically is as other causes for it too? But it's these larger, these myriad of different pieces of the puzzle that we put things into context. So, from a health history, we could see, okay, what labs are the most relevant? Because one of the critiques that we get in functional medicine is that we run too many labs.

And, yeah, that's why a health history is so important important so we don't have to do that. Look, any lab beyond the basic lab is too much for some people with a conventional mind. So that's that judgment by itself doesn't hold water in to me because we want to be comprehensive but we want to be comprehensive without being excessive. So questions like that will show us, okay, we need to run a thorough thyroid panel to see if it's an issue or not. It'll rule it out. It may not be. A lot of these things do mimic other things, but we have to do it. How did that ever come to be something with the thyroid? Yeah, the thyroid every cell of our body has a thyroid receptor site. So it is

governed so much of our life, but normally that's one of the first things or the most common things that can happen because it's not just the outer third of your eyebrows, but it can happen all over your head as well. But that's just a very telltale side of that specific thing, but people can lose even more than that. That's just one aspect of it. Can you say, can you give me a couple other things that like just, that people have never really heard of or been asked when they've gone to see somebody like that? Because to

me, that's like so like in the weeds that that like I was blown away when I saw that as a question. Yeah. For that. Yeah. Let me think of some other ones. One is when you get up quickly, do you get dizzy? Oftentimes people will say to me, oh, that does happen to me all the time, I didn't even think about it. The eyebrow I get that a lot too, is that they'll be like,

oh my gosh, I had looked in the mirror and I realized, that is me, or my kids always comment about it, but I never really thought about it. So, orthostatic hypertension, basically getting up, getting a little bit dizzy, that could be a sign of a hypothelemic pituitary adrenal axis, problem or HPA axis. It's basically some sort of hormonal imbalance. We have to run lapses to substantiate the specifics of it, but some problem with cortisol, some possible problem as well with some electrolyte

issues and other hormones could be interplaying with that. Another one would be craving salty foods, and then you'd have to bring context to that too, because they may say, oh, it's just potato chips, and it's not this. And I love them, right. And there's no treatment. But I have to ask questions, if you do follow-ups. So like, okay, well, what are we talking about? Some people are like, I could literally like lick an assault block. Like I just need this to like get through the day.

So that could be a sign of an HPA access issue to a cortisol stress hormone. So yeah, those are some, but there's a lot. I mean, honestly, we ask hundreds of questions. There's a hundreds of them. So like, let's get to like, okay, so you mean, honestly, we ask hundreds of questions. There's a hundreds of them. So let's get to, like, OK, so one of the books that I know you've written a few, but one of them is the Implemation Spectrum Book, which I thought was very, very good.

And I think you talk with all the time about how, like, at the core of every root of every problem is inflammation. So that's why I took that quiz and everything else, how do you even go about? Besides, if I didn't look at that quiz, how do you even go about knowing where you are on a spectrum like this and what the spectrum is?

And then another, I guess, part B to the question would be how that also affects such things as like mental health. People don't never correlate anything together. They just think there's a disconnect between all of these things. Yeah. So inflammation is quite a nebulous term for some people that they know it's not right, but they don't really know that it's specific to what we're referring to.

But inherently, actually, inflammation is not a problem. It's a product of our immune system. So in balance, in check, inflammation fights out viruses, fights out bacteria, heals, wounds. There's nothing inherently wrong with measure, an appropriate response, inflammatory issue, inflammatory cascades. The problem is when inflammation is thrown out of balance. So it's subject to this Goldilocks principle in the body. You don't want it too high, you don't want it too low, you want it just right at the right

time. And that applies to our hormones. You don't want excess hormones, you don't want deficiencies. It applies to our gut microbiome, you don't want bacterial or yeast overgrowth, you want right colonies, but you don't want deficiency of them either. So it's really about this homeostasis that we're looking out with inflammation. So inflammation too high for too long, chronic inflammation is this commonality. And I think that's the kind of the specifics that I like to bring about on this topic is

this commonality, thought, the causation of everything, because only if that's the question, what's even causing the inflammation? So, commonality, yes, it can cause symptoms for sure, but ultimately, it's not the most upstream core of this because something's driving the chronic inflammation. So, that's my job in functional medicine to run labs to not only understand inflammation,

which is certainly the byproduct of some disturbance in the body, but it's we want to look at what's causing it as well. So inflammation is a product of the immune system, when it says forest fire that's burning in perpetuity, that's the issue. So that is linked to autoimmune conditions, to anxiety, to metabolic issues, type 2 diabetes, depression, hormone problems, heart disease, I mean, cancer. I mean, you're absolutely right. And as I have been talking about inflammation spectrum

in the past year or so, we like to separate mental health from physical health, but that is not accurate. I mean, mental health is physical health. Our brain is part of our bodies. So to somehow separate it as a separate thing, that anxiety and depression and fatigue and brain fog and ADD, ADHD, autism, all these things are just separate than our physical health. No, I mean, there's tons of research are exploring this. It's known in some studies, it's known as the cytokine model of cognitive

function. Cytokines are pro-inflammatory cells, so it's researchers looking at how inflammation is impacting our brain, how is inflammation impacting mental health? So that is definitely something that I explore because I see a lot of people with anxiety, depression, and fatigue, and brain fog. And there of course are mental, emotional, situational components to that from many cases,

but that's the bi-directional relationship between our thoughts and emotions and our physiology. Our thoughts and emotions, like if someone's feeding themselves with shame or stress or living out trauma or unhealthy relationship, that stuff raises inflammation levels, but conversely underlying gut issues, hormonal problems, metabolic issues, those things impact your thoughts and emotions. They double your risk for anxiety and depression. So we have to look at both sides of that coin. With hard those to understand where one begins

and one ends, right? Because you can have a combination of both, right? Yeah, and they typically are. Yeah, you have to do with both sides. You have to. And some people will tell you, my life is great. Like, I have no problem. And they truly, for all intents and purposes, that's true for that name. There may be some past trauma going on. And they don't even know it. But for the most part, there are some people that will tell you, my life is great. I have no stress, I have, like, I just lose stress.

It was for the rest of my life. Yeah, right, there's a few people. But that's like very frustrating for those people because they're like, I literally don't even know what's going on in my body, but I have runaway anxiety. I have runaway depression. I have runaway, I don't even know what's going on. Why am I getting panic attacks?

I'm not even stressed about anything. It's that physiological component of things like anxiety and depression that we have to explore. Blazing deals, boundless options. It's Hot Grill Summer at Whole Foods Market from June 14th through July 4th. Fire up the grill with quality cuts at the best prices. We're talking animal welfare certified meat. Check out the sales on Bonin, ribeye, beef kabobs, and New York strip steak.

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with who they want to be in the future. FX is the bear. All episodes now streaming only on Hulu. And is it as simple as I know, and we're going to get into your new book about, uh, into a detasting, but is it really about just, uh, ducking diet alone really help and how you diet really change the level of inflammation in someone's body alone?

Like have you ever seen someone go from being on all these meds, like real meds, to then tweak in their diet and actually being, you know, antidepressant free or anxiety free or is it just like more of a degree, you know, maybe from 100% you're down to like 80%. It depends on the case. You know, my job is to say, we're not anti-medication at all. I mean, there's something to be on medication. We just ask the question, what is your most effective option that causes you the least amount of side effects?

And when you talk about things like anxiety, depression, just use that as an example. It depends on the case. Like my job is to move the needle in the most powerful way as much as that person's body will allow. For some people, it's 100%. I would say many people, it's 100% resolved to functional medicine. But there's some people who are absolutely right. It'll be like 50% resolved or 60% resolved. There's 70% resolved.

No, those people, some of them still have to remain on those medications, but we're dramatically improving their health. Because oftentimes, the people that we're seeing, they're on all the medications. They are viewing all the things their doctors telling them to do, but they're still struggling and they've exhausted all the options within the conventional setting. So at that point, what do they do? What do they do? Tell me what you do. What do you put them on? What do you do with them? Well, we have to really explore the case.

And that's the thing with, I mean, if we can keep using that example, anxiety, depression, or thyroid issues, I mean, whatever we're talking about here, those are like check engine lights for me. Like, I know the check engine lights on, but why? So, to kind of go back to my further statement of what's driving the inflammation, I could have 100 people with anxiety, and I'd have close to 100 different answers, at least a comfortable, combating in a different things, where there are bigger pieces and smaller pieces, but it's normally a confluence of factors.

It's a perfect storm of variables that need to be explored, externally trauma, stress, not getting enough sleep, toxic work environment, unhealthy marriage, whatever, that kind of stuff, but then there's so much physiological stuff oftentimes too. So I'll give you one random example that we see quite often. It's not so random in our world, but random from a conventional thinking. Your gut is formed from the same fetal tissue.

Babies growing in their mom's womb, the gut and brain are formed from the same fetal tissue and they're inextricably linked for the rest of our lives through what's known in the research as the gut brain acts as the connection between the gut and the brain. 95% of serotonin you're happening in a retransmitter is made in the gut, stored in the gut. So we have to look at dysbiosis, people, I mean there's many studies that show different bacterial imbalances, bacterial overgrowth, gut inflammation can drive anxiety and depression and actually has been shown in certain studies, the neurological changes that people can see, the causative factor is the underlying gut issue, the second brain that's going on there.

Antidepressants, anti-exited medications are not going to change that. So they may get their head above water, which has its play somewhat against people being on those medications, but people know intuitively, well, this doesn't really take the edge off, but not fully, or it doesn't help me out at all, or it helped for a little bit, and there was a honeymoon period, but then it quit working. So at that point, we had to keep digging, like, what is going on here? So I've seen countless of cases where they've got that got healthy, they really dealt with that underlying upstream driver of neuroinflammation or brain inflammation

and it completely resolved their symptoms. That's not every case, but the point is, we see the check engine lights on, what going on, that's gonna be different from person to person. How about inflammation and cancer? There's a correlation there too, right? Yeah, it's the immune system out of control.

So it's this unfettered inflammatory response that can trigger and be a part of the pathophysiology of some cancers. So absolutely, you want to have a healthy, measured, modulated immune response. And based on someone's genetics or something they're exposed to, that can manifest different for different people.

But look, researchers estimate that our genetics have been changed in 10,000 years. Why are we seeing an up-democratic rise of chronic health problems like never before? Better diagnostics plays a part of that, like it explains part of that. But in the health space, both conventional and otherwise, we'll tell you that it's entirely due to better diagnostics. We know more people are getting sick with these issues, whether it's heart disease or cancer, autoimmune conditions, or mental health issues, or metabolic issues. This is not just due to

better diagnostics. This is a serious problem, and there's a genetic and epigenetic mismatch that researchers are exploring. I'm not exploring. I'm just one reading the research and applying in people's lives. The researchers and the scientific journals are looking at this evolutionary mismatch between our DNA, which has remained unchanged for 10,000 years. But these genetic predispositions for things like cancer and heart disease and autoimmune conditions and diabetes are being triggered like never before because of this genetic, abby, genetic mismatch, the way that we live our life now. I mean, and also, this is a great segue

into your new book, Intuitive Fasting, because I feel like fasting has become, or intermittent fasting has become a very mainstream, fat like thing to do, right? When people are, they're like, oh, I'm intermittent, and I mean people are like, oh yeah, I'm doing intermittent fasting or I'm doing this. And is it, you know, for all it, and I know you're going

to, you're going to yell at me, but, you know, I always felt like it was just a way to control your calories, right? Like, you know, if you have a window to eat, then you won't overeat for weight loss. I'm talking, we can talk about the health, but I want to talk about the health benefits and all the other stuff. But, you know, is it became such a it became such a Fad right so what is what is it mean when you call your book intuitive fasting because is it like it because intuitive eating is also a fan

Isn't it a little bit I've heard that a lot too. Yeah, no, I would call them fads and But and that's not necessarily a bad thing because everything in healthcare like I've been in I've been a health Junkie in my own life personally since I was like a little kid I was an odd kid that like spent my money like going to the health food store to like buy random places like a 14 year old So Since the 80s and 90s for me was just a part of my life So you see over the course of the decades that there's a lot of zeitgeists,

there's a lot of bubbles that happen. But look, I'm not concerned so much with the bubble. I think it's good because more people are aware of the things and it matters people's lives. It educates people, hopefully. It's a lot of noise oftentimes. The way that headlines go and confusion goes with Dr. Google.

But other than that, like education, that's how people are educated sometimes. It's like they're hearing things they've never heard before. But I, look, even when FADS come and go, if it's solid science and solid clinical application, that's what I get to see on an hourly basis consulting people online. So, yeah, they fast things up FAD, but this isn't mean, it's not legitimate. That's what I get to see on an hourly basis consulting people online. Yeah.

The alley fasting is a fad, but this isn't mean, it's not legitimate. Humans have been doing it for thousands of thousands of years. Well, and people have had amazing effects, but you know, I remember, because like you, I'm similar to that point, like we're always been really obsessed and like curious and fascinating about this. And do you remember, not that well, it used to be that you should be eating five, six little meals a day to keep your metabolism repping, right? That was one of the things. To eat breakfast first thing, to get your metabolism going. All of these ways of living,

to be healthy, and to be more fit, and whatever else, have now been kind of like abolish basically. And all the now the new research and I read this in your book was that eating two meals a day versus eating five meals a day has been way more effective in weight loss and health and all these others, other things. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And there's a lot of things that we were told growing up.

It's not necessarily the truth, but the truth. Where do they come from? Where those things come from then? Well, look, it's relatively true, but not absolutely true. So that advice example, like five to six small meals a day, that's relatively true when your body's metabolically inflexible. So if your body is metabolically inflexible, you're in a sugar burning mode and you're living on kindling, which is sugar for fuel, that advice is actually understandable because you're like, yeah, that person needs kindling to get through

the day. If you take off that fifth kindling, they're going to be handier and irritable and bite your head off. Awful. And that's an example of it. I honestly, like, when I was really like, seriously, I'm like, this is me, this is me, this is me. Like, if I don't eat a meal, I like, I like, you don't want to be around me. Like, I get shaky and mad and angry and it's a nightmare. And so, we talk about this whole metabolic and flexible. How does one become this? What is it to find it for people? Yeah. And to your point, too, I think it's important for me to maybe mention this is that there's quite a difference between chronic caloric restriction

and intermittent fasting. There are fasting techniques and fasting mimicking techniques that temporarily lower calories for a time to mimic fasting, but it's not chronically doing it and refeeding is just as important as the fast or the fasting mimicking protocol. But time restricted feeding, the specific type of subset of intermittent fasting, and I'm exploring and intuitive fasting, is not, doesn't have anything to do with the caloric

restriction. You're just planning on specific windows of eating to leverage these amazing health benefits. So that's to be clear on that. But there are some studies that show, and I cite them in the book, that they're ended up being a slight chlorideficit sometimes for the deeper time restricted feeding windows. And that does have some benefits to it. It's like chlorideficit. It's not massive reduction, but that certainly is a fringe benefit of fasting.

But many studies have been done because we had to know, and as far as research is concerned, does fasting, is it because of the calorie deficit? Is it because of the way that people change the foods that they eat or was it the actual time? So studies have been done to look at the calories, they were controlled for calories. So the same amount of calories, ones eaten all day long, and one has a tighter eating window. The tighter eating window, same amount of calories, saw improved benefits. So we know that is a-

But are the benefits. Tell us the benefits. Yeah, so I'll give you the short-winded and the long-winded version. The short-winded is Paraselsis, one of the fathers of modern medicine that I quoted in the book. He was known as the father of toxicology or the Martin Luther of medicine because he was reforming medicine in the late 1400s, early 1500s in Switzerland.

He called fasting the physician within, which I think to me everything I'm about to say is summarized with that. Like this inner doctor that up regulates and activates and repairs and renews and restores and does all these really cool stuff. So it is up regulating so many cool pathways that we all have, we all are operating to some degree or we'd be dead, but they're very sluggish because of modernity. They're really sluggish because of this genetic epigenetic mismatch. So fasting, from an ancestral health perspective, fasting is actually coded in our DNA. So we would have evolved over those thousands and thousands of years to spend times because of food scarcity in times of fasting. And then we know on top of that spiritually and early medicine, hypocrite, paracels, it's all used fasting, not because they had randomized controlled trials,

but because they saw it improve people's health. And now research is just catching up with antiquity that we have with the mechanisms and we know the benefits of it. But it shifts your body into this metabolic state known as nutritional ketosis, which the ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting and fasting all do that. So ketogenic diet in many ways is a fasting mimicking way of eating, and that's why I pair the Intuitive Fasting Protocol with ketotaryin, which is what I talked about in my first

book, but it's just a deeper dive in this book. How do we mimic fasting and fast to leverage these benefits? Because it puts this body into the state of nutritional ketosis, which is known in the research as the fourth macronutrient ketones are. So we have protein, fats, carbs, and ketones. So it's a way to burn fat. So you get the kindling off of the fire for a little bit. That's the sugar for fuel.

And you get a log in the fire. It's being fat adapted and that's more slow burning, more sustainable. You have energy. That's why people have increased energy levels and fat burning. But there's a time and place for clean carbs cycling and the kindling on the fire and we talk about that in the book

is nothing inherently wrong with that. It's the best fire, the best light, the best energy is kindling analog. So I don't think you have to pick one or the other and say, well, it sugars the best. So that's the best, I think both have their place depending on the person and say, well, the sugar is the best. So that's the best. I think both have their place, depending on the person and what their goals are.

But it's not just a way to burn fat. Like, I'm so much more excited about, I mean, me back up a little bit. I think the people that have to, they're struggling with weight loss resistance. I don't want to de-legitimize it. That's exciting for them. But from a functional medicine standpoint,

I'm actually more excited about the anti-inflammatory benefit. It's a way to down-regulate all these pro-inflammatory cytokines. All these people are going through these chronic inflammatory problems that I mentioned earlier. This is a natural anti-inflammatory you can tap into and up-regulate these antioxidant pathways. And also something called autophagy or cellular recycling. It's sort of this anti-accelerated aging pathway, this procellular renewal pathway.

It increases mitochondrial biogenesis, actually making you mitochondria, improves BDNF, brain drive, and an ultrropic factor encouraging your brain to make new neurons and neuroplasticity. So many cool things. I could speak for hours about it, but it's just allowing your body to do it. It's that physician within the parisosis talked about me. Which is, like, whatever happened, is it like, do you have to be pretty, not, do you have to know what you're doing

or follow a program because whenever happened to, remember that whole starvation mode, you don't eat for you know if you wait too long to eat then your body is going to go into starvation mode it's going to hold on to those calories and that's how you're going to gain weight. Is that just a myth altogether or you have to be careful or know what you're doing when you're doing fasting? That's relatively true again but not absolutely true. If someone's not fat adapted and they're lower their calories for long periods of time, that's not a good thing.

That's going to put the body in this prolonged state of stress while not even fully, depending what they're eating, they're not going to even be in ketosis. Probably they're going to be, because they're eating like, baby, lots of refined sugars and stuff, they're just restricting their calories. So it's kind of this metabolic purgatory in that way, whether it's neither in heaven or hell. And that's why most dieting fails, is because you get the kindling off the fire,

you've never got a log in the fire, and then you just like this sucks, and you give up on it. And that could definitely put stress hormones up too high and make it really difficult to lose weight. So there's the yen and the yen. There's the fasting and the feasting. You need both of them. And it's not about like one is better. Like they're both important and that's going back to that that Goldilocks principle that I mentioned earlier because you'll logically, they both are amazing.

It's let's leverage the benefits of both without falling prey of the potential pitfalls of doing one too much. So it's just the synergies somewhere in the middle and that's what I'm exploring in the book. So it's basically you have to get your body to be fat adapted where you get where then you see all the health benefits, right? So yeah, in part and that's not going to happen overnight. Right?

It's not going to happen overnight. Depending on the eating, it's not going to happen overnight. That's why this is a lifestyle change. But yes, that is the goal. I the analogy that I use in the book, you know, this is Reddit, but for people that haven't, like I call this proverbial yoga class, your metabolism, and you're stretching, contracting, metabolism, depending on when you're starting out on your journey, like, what's your baseline? It's going to take some time,

and for some people they'll get it faster, and how they eat will definitely either speed up or slow down that metabolic flexibility transition, getting that log in the fire, because if they're eating lots of carbohydrates and junk food, that's, first of all, not, I wouldn't advocate that anyways, I don't run fast in your way out of a poor diet,

that's like not cool. But at the same time, you can see some health benefits of fasting because you're giving your body a break from a little junk at that point. So it has fringe benefits, but that's not the point of this year. It's actually to really take your health to the next level. That's that, like you mentioned earlier like Intuitive eating and you hear that on social media and that's like big conversation that I have in the book is that Look there is a certain subset of people that have great health. They feel great

They have no blood sugar problems and intuitive eating comes naturally to them and I'm not judging anyone So that that works for you great But what I'm saying is if you look at the statistics of 50% of the United States has a blood sugar problem, 50 million Americans have an autoimmune condition, millions are struggling with weight loss resistance and hormonal problems. That's that proverbial noise that's going on in the body and it's going to be hard to discern what's your intuition and what's your hangariness or what's your intuition or hormone imbalance or what's your intuition or blood sugar imbalance.

So by calming that noise at the beginning fasting will not be intuitive. So I call the book Intuitive fasting. It will seem paradoxical at the at the at the end of it because it is. You're you're addicted to the gendling. So you're not going to have fun with fasting, but that's why I'm starting off gently. Like I'm starting that yoga class. I suck at yoga when I first started, and I still kind of suck at it because I don't do it enough. But if I shock yoga class, it doesn't mean yoga is not for me. Like what the heck? It's I'm not flexible, and I have

the gain metabolic flexibility and keep showing up. That's the same thing that's going on with fasting. You have to gain flexibility on the other end of. That's the same thing that's going on with fasting. You have to gain flexibility on the other end of it. When you have a log in the fire, you fasting will be intuitive. Because you'll be able to have proper satiety signals, your blood sugar will be balanced. You'll be able to go longer without eating because you have created this firm foundation for authentic intuitive eating. And that's what metabolic flexibility is.

That's a great analogy by the way. People with fitness, they want to be, they want to go from zero to 60. They're like, well, I want to have a six pack. Well, you have to at least go to the gym and you start have to have a clean diet. And it doesn't, it takes some time to kind of like get there, but consistency is what it is. And what I, in your program, in your book, you talk about the four weeks flexible, the four week, uh, uh, uh, flexible, flexible program. And you, you do, you ease people into it. It's not like just like, okay, now we're going to go for 22 hours. But, um, so can people, in the first week, you do 12 hours. That's how you break, you don't do a 12 hour feeding time and 12 hour fasting time. If people just,

I'm curious, if people just stay with the 12, 12 and don't, you know, kind of go any further, do they still get the health benefits? Yeah, especially the way that they're, I advocate eating, because they're eating a ketotarian diet, which is a plant centric, sort of a Mediterranean ketogenic diet. It's very clean, very rich with polyphenols and antioxidants and beneficial fats and fiber. All of the stuff you need to be healthy. I mean, you have it there. So if you did that, and just a 12-12, and I actually mentioned this in the book in passing, and probably it was like a sentence or two, but if you needed to repeat week one, and do it three weeks, do that. Like there's no reason why you need

to rush it. Meet your body where it's at, and certainly I could see week one being repeated two or three times, or if you want to do as long as you need. Yeah, 10, right. Take it easy. So it's like, you're very one. You're the one who's going to go.

So, first day at week one for as long as you can, basically. I mean, this is, I want to integrate feeling great in your life. And sometimes people have to be in the right head space, in the heart space to be there. And if that's forever and indefinitely just doing that and do that, because you're allowing a couple hours to happen before bed without eating, you're allowing your body to fast. You're eliminating the late night snacking, and you're mimicking some of the benefits of fasting with your food.

So, yeah, if you did not dig even any deeper over the subsequent three weeks in the plan, that certainly would have amazing merits. Well, because I also think you're also developing healthy habits going forward, right? With a lot, because every, I mean, listen, this is not the fact that people should, this is not rocket science, about like not eating late before you go to bed or all these other things that people, yes, because you're going to be going to sleep with, you know, sugar and all these other calories and whatever. So, do you notice that when people do the full, when you do that, when you start it, well, how long have you

been doing your fasting for? You yourself, you personally. I was a weird kid. I was a teenager. You were doing the fasting back then too. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I read a book called Patient Heal I Self, but from Jordan Rubin, who started during the life and then he sold it. And then he's with ancient nutrition now with Josh Axe.

And these are good guys that I now know them. But I was like a 14-year year old kid reading Jordan Rubin's book about how he healed his Crohn's disease or also to play this with some inflammatory bowel issue and use fasting and use these things to get healthy. Yeah, I was doing water fasts and green juice fasts very as a teenager. Would you think of those? Would you think of the water fast and the green juice fast and all those things? They have their place. I think they have a definitely other place.

I don't, that's not what I'm exploring intuitive fasting. I want you to be this to be a sustainable thing for people to do. Yeah. The ample amounts of food. But I think longer fast is something that I definitely explore with patients where it's clinically appropriate Some people that have very out of control immune systems their hyper inflammatory state their bodies reacting to everything Or they're going through some really serious health issues those fast can be Life saving as far as the quality of life and you just I mean if you know clubhouse have you been on yeah?

Of course, yes, not good at it. So I've, like, on the face. That's neither of my. And I need another, you know, social media application, like a hole in the head, right? Like, not enough already with everything else. Yeah, I literally have done nothing on it. But the point of saying is, like, I'm just used

to seeing my patients, but I was in a fasting group on clubhouse the other day. And I was hearing the amount of people that do these longer fasts on their own, and they're just like this change their life. So it was cool to hear that, because I'm used to being a part of that, but just hearing other people's stories is really cool.

But yeah, that definitely has its place. Yeah. I mean, yeah, there's been so many reports and resources about backing the fasting evolution or whatever you want to call it. But, you know, in your program, the four-week program, can someone do four weeks and then go off for a month or two and come back, can you stagger, can you go back and forth and be flexible that way? Or is it ruined all the benefits that you've had already?

You know, I want, this is the intuitive part of it, is A, as you get metabolic flexibility, you will grow in intuition. And what I mean by that, you'll physiological, foundational stuff like proper blood sugar balance, gut brain access communication, blood, the satiety signaling, all that stuff will create a clear signaling for you to hear intuition, a proper knowingness about your body loves. But we also bring some mindful eating into this four weeks and just acts of stillness to grow the mental emotional side of things too and renegotiate or grow in awareness

around your relationship with food and your body. So there's gonna be a lot of shifts and growth and awareness over this four weeks. So they're gonna know, oh, like I did better with more of this, I'm gonna do more of this and lots of this. And they're gonna be able to evolve that protocol to work with them. And that's certainly fine for people to find,

like in towards the end of the book, I talk about finding your carb sweet spot and like getting a baseline, like what sustainable for you. you? Let's do something that you can do every day. They are going to be able to discover that. Some people that discover it in the four weeks, I think most people would do better to re-evaluate after four weeks, retake that quiz. It's in the book that I adapted from questions at Aspercians, and then cycle through another four weeks.

Because I think after two or three cycles of four, they will have gained so much health and awareness about their body that they'll be able to readjust this and create their like everyday protocol. They will have intuitively built it for themselves. So that's bio individuality. That's the heart of what functional medicine is. We're all different. So not everybody has to do the deeper fast all the time. They can do it periodically.

Many people would do better with these fascinating intermittent cycl, cyclical fasts throughout their month. Whether you're doing a dance to your favorite artist in the office parking lot, or being guided into Warrior I in the break room before your shift, whether you're running on your Peloton tread at your mom's house while she watches the baby, or counting your breaths on the subway. We're inhaling and long exhale. Peloton is for all of us. Wherever we are, whenever we need it, download the free Peloton app today.

Peloton app available through free tier or paid to description starting at 12.99 per month. And what happens with people who are like really active, like people who work out a lot, like work out hard? How does this work your program, how does fasting work with people like that? Like, is there, I guess, until you get to that energy, you're saying like eventually people get to that fat,

adapt to place where they have a lot more energy and they're less brain fog. Is it, so even with that, do you recommend people not exercising hard when they start? Obviously, when I'm talking to patients, I can like, I'm with them, like, via webcam for like weeks on end. So I can adjust it accordingly. So I can, you know where someone's at and adjust it and make it really personalize.

But for the book, what I said was, if you've never done CrossFit, I don't think like starting this protocol and doing CrossFit would be the right thing. But if you have your normal activity level, do it. Stick with your activity level because you're not restricting calories. And there's a time and place for fasted workouts, which has its place. And I'll thank everybody else to do it all the time, but it's definitely some to explore and see how you feel. There are many people that really thrive on some intermittent fasted workouts and they

should experiment with it for that over the course of the four weeks. So then I want to ask you because there's always a debate in the fitness space, right? Like, do you do cardio on, you do cardio on an empty stomach? Do you eat? So you would obviously say the best way to burn fat is to do cardio on an empty stomach. Well, it depends, right? Because the context matters,

because that person, what are they going through? I guess is the question. Are they going through chronic stress? Are they not sleeping well at night? What are their hormones look like? What's their blood sugar look like? You know what I mean? Like it's like some people they don't know. Come on, give me something. I want to have like, I want you to say, you know, eat breakfast and then go workout. No, I'm just kidding. I want you to tell me because this is like the debate of my brain. Do I eat first? Do I go do? Do you have anything to do? Do both and see how you feel.

Because you're going to get different answers depending on who you're talking to. Some people thrive off that cardio that's fasted, they thrive on it, and then some people are like, I can't give as much. I'm really like puttering out. I can't do as much cardio when I'm in a fasted state. And what's true for you now will not necessarily be what's true for you, months down the road when you've changed your health. So I would say meet your body where it's at,

experiment with both, and that's where I advocate in the book, try a fasted, try a non-fasted workout, and see where you're at. And then as you get a metabolic flexibility, you will find that what is true for you now, is it necessarily what you were dealing with back then? No, I agree.

And I also will say to that point, I think once everything is hard at the beginning, but you adapt, right? Like I never thought in a million years I would be able to like work out without eating, but I have, knowing that you were coming on the podcast, I tried to do that a little bit, and I will tell you say now I don't want to eat breakfast before I work out. I pushed my, listen, I'm not, I'm not great at it, but I pushed my, my breakfast like three hours. I mean, it's a start, right? Absolutely. Yes. I mean, you've got, if you did, let's just say 11 and yeah, that's a 17 hour fast if you do like 11 to six. I mean, that's week two. You've already done week two. No, I have not I've been like trying to do like

Seven or eight o'clock until like 10 or 11 I mean like listen and it's hard not every day. It's like random. I'm not doing any program But you were knowing that like I said that you're gonna be on the podcast I was like I'm gonna try to do this and I've done better than I've done in the past So I mean like I said it's all baby steps here. Yeah. You know what? Week three is the deepest fast. Well, look, I mean, you have Trunage in behind you. Yeah. I talk about NAD in the books, shout out to Trunage and I mean, nicotine on my Rhyroside, these types of B vitamins support NAD. Well, fasting can increase support NAD levels too. So Trinijin plus deeper fast, two ways increased.

I love that you said that. So that I'm like, that's my body over there. I take that every single day and I work, and that's what I do in the morning. I take the Trinijin. I drink some coffee, I'm sorry, no oral grade for me. I have some water, and then I jump on the treadmill, because by the way, we usually do this on a treadmill. I don't know if you know this, this podcast, but because of everything happening with everything, with the COVID, everything's gone this way. But hopefully one day, I mean, I'm digressing here,

but hopefully next time we can go on the treadmill when you're, if you're ever in LA We can do it properly But so you are a big fan of NAD then too. I was gonna ask you all Tell us about so you are you what supplements? Are you a believer in why tell us about NAD because I think still Even though I talk about it a lot of people don't really Understand the importance of it and what it is. Yeah, so an idea is needed for cellular energy and repair and it depletes as we age and there's promising studies and the people at Trinidadian are legitimate. I mean, they're

really serious about the science about it, but the fact that we can support NAD levels, cellular energy, which we need for just healthy aging, a long, healthy life in the continuum, I grab a side of this type of B vitamin can help support NAD levels, fasting can do the same. So I love true nitrogen, I take it. You do? I love it. Yeah. That's a big thing.

Yeah, I do. I like, I don't have any, like, they're sweet people, and I've done certain, like, educational stuff for them. But they, I also like the mind-body greens and R-plus. That's, that's, like, another nircan-time, or R-B-side. There's other ones out there, it depends on what you want to do.

I love chennage, andide and my supplements that I take, we typically just do like the foundational stuff because it's just, I use food as medicine. I don't think you should try to supplement your way out of a poor diet. I think that if you're really working on your density, food is first, fasting, second and supplements are after that. So vitamin D though, how about vitamin D? Second and Supplements are after that. So Vitamin D though. How about vitamin D people say that's very good for Human hormone regulation or just for daily immune system health. Do you believe in that one? Oh?

Absolutely. I mean, there's yeah vitamin D is responsible for over two thousand different pathways in the body It is acts as an almost a pro hormone. So every cell of your body has a vitamin D receptor site. No other hormone has that level of importance other than the thyroid. So I call it the thyroid and vitamin D is the queen and the king of all hormones. If your thyroid is not working well, nothing's working well, vitamin D is not working well, nothing's working well. So the optimal range of vitamin D is about 60 to a hundred. You could about 60 to 100. You could say 60 to 80 to be a little bit more moderate there, but a lot of times people with autoimmunity tend to do better with 80-ish, 90-ish vitamin D levels. I pair it with vitamin

K2, which is another fat-soluble vitamin that is deficient just like vitamin D is deficient. And it's hard to get vitamin D from foods. So that's where supplementation really plays a part. Unless I'm like in a loincloth in Miami 12 months a year, I'm not getting sun here in Pittsburgh. It's cold. Well, you got to go get a loincloth then and go to Miami or even L.A. I mean, so people who live in Miami or live in L.A. with the sun, they still can be deficient though in vitamin D, right? Oh, I see it all the time. I see, I mean, I joke about my amy, but I see a lot of patients

in Miami, I see a lot of patients in Arizona, I see a lot of patients in Southern California, they're vitamin D deficient too. So it's not just about, I mean, most of the time people are outside that much anyway, so even if it is sunny outside, people aren't getting

enough direct sunlight and they close on and they're sunscreen, they can block it too. So there's that side of it. And I'm not saying not wearing sunscreen, I'm just saying that it blocks the bottom of the D. So yeah, so it doesn't matter where you live. You should have your vitamin D levels track

because that's modernity, that's that genetic, epigenetic mismatch, our bodies have been adapted to this much inside life that's why we're we're in vitamin D deficient we don't have proper circadian rhythms because we don't have normal natural light we impact sleep impacts our mood impacts our immune system it's so important to get proper daylight exposure and then proper obviously nighttime without having blue lights in our face all the time on screen.

So there's a couple more questions in your book and then we can wrap it. I want to talk about carbs cycling, you talk about cycling a lot in the book. How do you do it properly? Because I feel like it can get very complicated. Yeah, yeah, it can. And I tried it. I like keeping health simple. I don't want to overcomplicate it. I have some patients that have biohackers,

but that's actually not the majority of my patient base. I like, some people thrive off the granular and they want to get super wonky about it, but I don't like it. I think there should be a grace and a ease to wellness. And look, it's going to be a learning curve. At the beginning, maybe it's going to be good to get a little bit granular, so you can at least eyeball and become aware of how your body uses fuel, and where do you feel the best, and track on like a cronometer, or my fitness power, or a diet tracking

out of some sort. But do that a couple of weeks, maybe even one week, you can start to know, okay, this is my basic breakfast lunch in dinner. This is my meals that I do, and people are pretty creatures of habit, and they'll kinda get a rhythm on like, okay, this is what I do, I adjust this, and then this is what I do to feel great.

So clean carps cycling, that's the kindling on the fire. There's a time and place for that. You've got the log in the fire, but you need to put the kindling on too. Women especially will benefit from this. And I should preface this with that all women are different. And I know that people like to pontificate and say, fast things bad for women,

or keto is bad for women. But who is she? Because I've met tons of different women with tons of different health issues and to reduce them to like, women is very unfair to many women. So is she going through PCOS or metabolic issues or weight loss resistance or autoimmune issues

or neurological issues? Fasting will be a completely different story to her. Even deeper fast will be different for her than someone that doesn't have those issues. She maybe has, she's laying in, she's going into a chronic stress time or she's not getting enough sleep, she's a little thyroid issues.

All women fasting will behave differently in their body. But I do think that most women do better with a cyclical approach. And then as they grow an intuition and know about their body, some women will do better with the deeper fast, some women won't. So they're going to find that sweet spot both with fasting and carb moderation, because remember the ketogenic diet mimics fasting. So most women tend to be higher in something called kispeptin, which is signaling molecule that makes a lot of women

more sensitive to prolonged states of fasting or prolonged states of ketosis through fasting or the ketogenic diet. So clean carps cycling is a tool that we can really use to leverage these amazing benefits of being keto adapted, getting that log in the fire without thinking that all you need is a log. I mean, progesterone, the thyroid hormone,

the gut microbiome, and just enjoying food. I think that there's a lot of beauty in clean carb cycling, but you don't have to be super complex. I mean, it's, I mean, A, the meal plan in the book, I took all the guesswork out of it anyways, so if you ate and just followed the plan in the book, and just learned about it, then you'll know after doing it one month, you'll say, okay, that wasn't so hard.

You didn't overcomplicate it. You didn't even need a diet tracking app because I did all the math for you. But if you wanted to track that you could. But once you've done this for a month or so, there should be an intuition on this stuff where you just eyeball foods, and that's going to be enough for most people. Yeah. Can someone do your program without the ketogenic portion and they just regularly eat what they were going to eat anyway, but just a minus, I mean, with reason, I mean not junk food.

Not junk food, but like if they didn't want to do the ketogenic way, but did they want it just to do the four-week and just kind of learn and kind of get better at it? Would they still deem the results? Absolutely. Yeah, I would just say it's amplified doing it the way that I advocate for, but it's not that it's you need one without the other. They're just, they both stand on their own. I'm just saying they're amplified when they're done together because the ketoed tarion way of eating makes

your fast easier. So you'll have a lot more of an effortlessness when it comes to fasting. And then the fast will make you more keto adapted. So it'll make the eating a lot easier as well. They both are synergistic and they both make each other more beneficial. Yeah, and you're not a vegan, right, or a vegetarian. And like, I was surprised. I thought for sure you're going to be like a vegan and you're not. You eat meat. You can vibe off. I don't know. Yeah, you did. You do. I just feel like, but now, but now, like, when I saw that I was like okay, because I I'm not a vegan I so you you're a big propote. Yeah, big but you have no problem with like a carnivore diet or What you take on this whole vegan

Craze as well. I feel like vegan the whole there's also a whole like movement now with veganism. So what do you think dr. Will? also a whole like movement now with veganism. So what do you think, Dr. Will? No. Well, I wrote keto Darian and I pissed people off with my first book. I'm sure. Mostly plant-based ketogenic books. So I pissed off a lot of the vegans

because there was an egg inside an avocado. And I said the word mostly plant-based, because apparently they own the words plant-based. It's like just tribalism is the thing. tribalism. Then I pissed off the ketogenic community too because they have this unhealthy fear of vegetable fiber. So it's like either way, I irritated both sides, but look, the truth is often sometimes in somewhere in the middle and context matters and that's, I'm not just giving my opinion. This is like years of clinical experience

and times of research. And you don't have to pick one or the other that a balance of both being mostly plant-based, a clean ketogenic diet, which is what ketotarynase is, it's more of a Mediterranean way of eating. It's plant-forward, but it's not entirely plant, all entirely plants. So, what I think about the vegans, I think that if you do vegan diet, there's tons of vegan keto options in keto tarion and into a fasting. I mean,

there's a lot. There's a lot. Way too many for my liking, I'm joking. way too many for my liking. And I'm Mark and all this tons of vegans, it's vegetarians, or like clean pescatarian, vegetarian, and then there's the vegetable or section, the grass fed beef and lots of omnivore options too. So I tried to be as inclusive as possible, but what do I think about? I think it's fine if people are led that way. And if their health is great, if what they're doing is working for them, keep doing it. I think I bring up these points in keto tari, you know, with the bioavailability of certain nutrients and launching them against fatty acids and iron and B12. We can talk

about that. But you can supplement with it and mitigate that. I would just say if you can't get all your nutrients from food, is it really the most optimal diet for you? And that's why I recommended a more of a Mediterranean ketogenic way of eating, which still has tons of plans, but it brings in some of these food medicines that you cannot fully mimic in a capsule in a supplement form. So it is really food as medicine. So I don't have a problem with it and I don't have a problem with the carnivore diet too. I mean, Paul Saladino is a great friend of mine and He was on here. I like to

Yeah, he is a genius. I mean, it's a very So smart. I mean listen the guy like is so knowledgeable. I mean, it was I was riveted by everything he was saying and And I like it so knowledgeable. I mean, it was, I was riveted by everything he was saying. And like, he hasn't eaten a vegetable like 20 years now. But. He's a little bit of a freak, but whatever. We love him. He's a little bit of a freak for sure.

Definitely. Oh my God. I don't, I use, I've said this many times before, I use a clean, well formulated carnivore diet for people who need it. I mean, Paul says it before, I use a clean, well-formulated carnivore diet for people who need it. Paul says it differently than I say it, but I use it as an ultimate elimination diet approach for a time. For people that have out-of-control food reactivities, they have histamine intolerance,

have fob and out-of-controlurances, cellulite intolerance, and oxalate intolerance, and their body's reacting to air and ice cubes in a negative way. That carnivore diet is going to be a good tool to do for a time, but then we have to transition them out of it. So I do that all the time with patients that I need to, but one size doesn't fit all. And what you need today isn't necessarily what you need to do forever and ever. So I see a place for all of these things. It's like how we're doing it, who's doing it, and for how long are we doing it?

That's the context that's important. You're very knowledgeable. I just have a quick random question. Why is everybody now giving out these poop tests? You've got to check your stool, I feel, for to get all your information. Is that a new fan in the last couple of years? I feel like it's become very popular with with maybe a dude. Is that because of you? Mate, no, I'm just getting bad. I'm already about microbiome health for a long time,

so probably part of it. Sure. You're to blame. Yeah, well, fast maybe in functional medicine and there, and you know what, it's really all the amazing research coming out of PubMed. I mean, there's thousands of studies over the past 10 years looking at the gut, and then that trickles down to the clinical side of things, me.

And it trickles down to like the drug to consumer labs, too, or people wanting to not even go through a doctor to want to find out about their health. So I like it. I think it's cool. It's informative, but the reality is a lot of times these drastic consumer stool labs, they don't, there's very little, what do I do this with this information? It's like cool, but what is it?

Does it really gonna change my decision-making? Sometimes it does. For many people, I get these lab results from patients and I say, we say it from the clinic, give us your last year of labs, and I'll get these pile of labs. And a lot of times these tests that I won't name them, I mean, I don't have any problem with them personally,

but then persons who are like, the people are like, I don't even know what to do with this information. Like, what's it even mean? And even me, from a functional, that is the same point. Knowing every little bit of colony back forming units of every bacteria, I don't need to know all that information.

At this point, later on, as we learn more about the microbiome, maybe we'll have better clinical, practical, what's this do. But right now, it's just like a lot of data, but not necessarily a lot of action steps. So we run different labs and functional medicine when it comes to gut health. I don't need to know every nuance of every colony for me in a bacteria. But do you do that test? Do you do it at a much more specific poop test with you guys, okay?

And what do you get? What can you tell us? This is what we're looking at differently. And this is, this will determine action steps. To me, it's like, all right, if something's cool information to learn about it, I'm not against it. If someone wants to learn about their body,

let them learn about it. But for me, from a functional medicine standpoint, I only want to run things that are going to change about their body, let them learn about it. But for me, from a functional medicine standpoint, I only want to run things that are going to change what we do to actually do something about it, instead of just looking at labs for the sake of it, because it's like, what's the point of it? If it's not going to actually change what we do, and we can compare and contrast it over time

after we get our baseline, and we implement an intervention. So for patients for their stool test, what we do is we're looking at good bacteria. We're looking for bacterial overgrowth or dysbiosis. So people that have small intestinal bacterial overgrowth or SIBO or SIFO, small intestinal fungal overgrowth, we're looking at those through stool tests and breath tests to look at bacterial and fungal overgrowth.

Those people get IBS, they have inflammatory bowel issues, they have acid reflux, they have bloating, they have type of autoimmune issues a lot of times, that's the need we need to know that. And we also need to know if there's inflammatory markers in the gut, so things like how protect and lactoferin, lysosime. These are inflammatory markers that you can get on a stool test because inflammation in the gut you can use that as a baseline and see that inflammation levels come down as you improve their health. And then same with intestinal permeability or leaky gut syndrome, you can rule that in with a stool test and blood test as well to look at the landscape

of someone that can trigger inflammation levels in the body and digestion and absorption. You want to look at that if their body is actually absorbing nutrients. These are things that you can get pre-imposed and you can actually make action steps on determining a protocol that's appropriate for them. Well, thank you. I'm going to leave it at that. I mean, great question to finish with, you know, but Not in finish our conversation with microbiome poop tests any time. Okay, good If I that's I love that that was my favorite question of all because I was so curious

I feel like everyone in their dog now are like hey I just got my my poop analyze or have you gotten this done or have you to everyone's talking about this test? I mean the last couple years and you know like that, and that's like the benchmark now for someone's health. So I'm like, I'm gonna ask Dr. Will when I have him on and see what he thinks. So, that's, that's the way to, so, okay, the book is called, I don't have a copy, I was reading it on my,

I only got like the electronic version, that's why I would show it, but the book is called Intuitive Fasting. It's February 23rd, yeah? Yeah, from the 23rd. Yeah, it's out of the three books that I've written. It's my favorite book by far to write. I wrote it over, and in 2019, over COVID, 2020 was like,

I was hold up in my house writing this book, so I'm excited that it's out now. Oh my god Amazing and then where do people find you if they want to know more about fasting inflammation Kedotarian poop whatever Everything's a Dr. Wilcole.com. That's drwilcol.com Amazing and social media on media, aren't you? Yeah, at Dr. Will Cole on Instagram,

drwilc.com, e on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, clubhouse. Oh, God. And of course you're on Goop, you could just like go on Goop and let's like a thousand things of you. You're like the house doctor, the house practitioner. And it was so nice to meet you. You're just a doll in such a such a wealth of information.

I mean, you're vocabulary. I mean, you should be an English teacher because you So I love talking about this stuff, so thank you so much. We inspire you. This is your moment. Excuses we in heaven that the habits and hustle podcasts power by happiness This episode is brought to you by the YAP Media Podcast Network. I'm Holla Taha CEO of the award-winning digital media empire YAP Media and host of YAP Young and Profiting Podcast a number one Entrepreneurship and self-improvement podcast where you can listen, learn, and profit. On Young & Profiting Podcast, I interview the brightest minds in the world and I turn their wisdom into actionable advice

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