Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Summary: Why I DO NOT Recommend Intermittent Fasting to My Clients
90 Plays1 year ago
Are you following health trends that actually harm your body? In my eye-opening masterclass "The 7 Popular But Deadly Health Fads," I reveal how common health practices promoted by influencers and gurus might be ravaging your gut, accelerating disease, and shaving years off your life.
Discover which popular diets, supplements, and health rituals are secretly sabotaging your health and learn what to do instead. I explain why these seemingly healthy habits are damaging your body and provide actionable alternatives for true longevity.
Register for free access to this essential health information at https://www.livelongerformula.com
-------------
Check out the first volume in the How to Actually Live Longer book series on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4dDXjxc
The Live Longer Formula is your go-to podcast for cutting through the noise and discovering practical, science-backed strategies to not just add years to your life, but to add life to your years. Hosted by longevity author and functional health practitioner Christian Yordanov, this podcast dives deep into the truths (and myths) behind longevity, health optimization, and addressing chronic health problems.
Each episode offers actionable insights drawn from the host's own research, clinical practice, and personal journey, helping you make informed decisions to restore and enhance your health. Whether you're interested in reducing stress, boosting your energy and mental performance, improving your gut health, or simply looking to optimize your diet and lifestyle, this podcast delivers the tools you need to live a healthier, longer life.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Intermittent Fasting Concerns
00:00:01
chrisyzen
Here is a summary of why I do not recommend intermittent fasting. First of all, it signals scarcity to your body. So when you're fasting, when you're not eating, the body gets a signal that there is lack.
00:00:18
chrisyzen
And when this signal is given to the body on a long-term basis, it starts to down-regulate non-vital for survival functions.
Metabolic Impact of Intermittent Fasting
00:00:30
chrisyzen
Which brings me to the second point, is intermittent fasting actually lowers your metabolic rate. That means that you basically burn less calories, even though nothing has really changed. right And there's one study that um I mentioned in my longevity book, how to actually live longer volume one.
00:00:56
chrisyzen
is after two weeks only of an intermittent fasting regimen, the ah resting energy expenditure of the study participants decreased by, ah um I think the average was 59 calories per day, which if nothing else changes over the course of a year, that 59 calories per day equates to about um three kilograms or about 6.15 pounds of fat gain. But that's only if the metabolic rate doesn't continue to drop, which it very likely would because you if you're giving the signal of starvation or or scarcity to your body over a long enough period, it will continue to reduce its metabolic rate to conserve resources.
Studies on Lean Mass and Caloric Effectiveness
00:01:48
chrisyzen
um Then the other the other reason I do not
00:01:52
chrisyzen
recommend intermittent fasting is there was one study in published in 2020 in the journal JAMA Journal of the American Medical Association. That's what JAMA stands for. JAMA internal medicine and there they um reported that the intermittent fasting group lost ah they lost some weight But 65% of that weight was lean mass. A lot of it was appendicular lean mass, so up and in the appendages, so arms, legs, and appendicular lean mass loss has been correlated with with weight regain. And then what they also
00:02:39
chrisyzen
ah concluded in that paper was that intermittent fasting, or they were calling it time restricted eating, in the absence of other interventions was not more effective than eating normally throughout the day. Which means that intermittent fasting only works for weight loss If you also cut calories and the reason intermittent fasting works, some people lose weight is because it's hard to eat your full three meals and a snack or two in an eight hour period. So that's the magic of it. You're just restricting how much food you can shovel into yourself in an eight hour period and people lose weight. Well, it's not that's not exactly magic. Right. um But the the problem with muscle mass loss.
00:03:28
chrisyzen
and the metabolic rate reduction is that if you continue to eat the same amount of food that you did, over time you will actually start to gain weight on this ah after this metabolic ah rate reduction and the loss of muscle mass.
Hormonal Effects of Intermittent Fasting
00:03:45
chrisyzen
Now the other thing that was found in the research is that intermittent fasting lowers testosterone levels in both men and women which can result in a lot of problems. You see the the thing with when you do intermittent fasting, your cortisol level has to go up to compensate for no fuel coming into your body, right? So you become the fuel. You start to degenerate your body, your lean tissue, your muscles, your bones, because there's a lot of protein in bones, ah your joints, your skin.
00:04:17
chrisyzen
ah cartilage, cartilaginous tissues, even parts of your organs, they can all be basically disintegrated so that they can be turned into glucose and other things, of course. um So that's what cortisol does. And it's very well known that cortisol has an oppositional effect to testosterone. In fact, there was a study where they um gave men the drug hydrocortisone, which is like ah an anti-inflammatory drug, which is a cortisol-mimicking chemical, and that actually
00:04:52
chrisyzen
lower their testosterone. And then the in the same study, they gave them insulin and what insulin does is it clears your bloodstream of glucose and then the response is because your blood sugar drops, the response is a spike in cortisol because cortisol's main job is to keep your blood sugar high when it drops in a stressful situation. So in both those instances,
00:05:15
chrisyzen
the increase in cortisol, whether endogenous or exogenous, caused a reduction in testosterone. And actually there was two or three studies that I cited in my book, how to actually live longer volume one, where after two months of intermittent fasting, the men's testosterone dropped quite a lot. It was something like 20%.
00:05:36
chrisyzen
And there you go. what ah is that is that a So far, is this a beneficial trade-off, right? So you're you're reading, you're starving yourself, that's stressful, that lowers your metabolic rate, causes you to lose lean muscle, lean mass, which can include muscle. It lowers your testosterone. And it also, if you're already stressed, psychologically or physiologically, it doesn't really matter.
00:06:06
chrisyzen
If you're already stressed, intermittent fasting, because of the spike in cortisol that maintains your blood sugar by disintegrating your body, if you're already stressed, it places an additional stress on an already burdened system.
Stress, Aging, and Conclusion
00:06:21
chrisyzen
And you know what the end result is?
00:06:23
chrisyzen
accelerated aging. And actually in chapter one of my book, I talk about some studies um where they looked at people at the lower their cortisol level, the lower their perceived age was. And there was another study in twins where the older the The bigger the difference in how they looked age-wise that the twins had, the higher the likelihood that the older-looking twin would die sooner in the in that study. So what what we know very well is that cortisol or stress ages us prematurely and it's it's elevated in almost any disease or condition that you can think of.
00:07:07
chrisyzen
So things like intermittent fasting, low carb diets, cold plunges, too much exercise, these dieting, these things stress the body and stress accelerates aging and disease processes. So that is my little very quick summary of why I do not recommend intermittent fasting.