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Intermittent Fasting Is BAD For Longevity
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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.
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Check out the first volume in the How to Actually Live Longer book series on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4dDXjxc
How to Actually Live Longer 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.
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Transcript
Why Intermittent Fasting Isn't Recommended
00:00:51
Speaker
Hi, Christian Yordanov here. Today I'm going to talk to you about why i do not recommend intermittent fasting to anybody, especially my clients.
00:01:02
Speaker
So um I have a whole chapter on it in my book, How to Actually Live Longer, Volume 1. And it's, relatively speaking, it's um it's quite quite long.
00:01:14
Speaker
It's like a fifth of the book. So it's an important topic because now everybody's like, oh my God, fasting is going to increase your lifespan. Look, let me break it down very quickly for you. The reason research on caloric restriction and fasting shows benefits, a lot of that research is done in rats and like you know laboratory animals up to monkeys.
00:01:43
Speaker
So the reason the reason it shows benefits, I'll tell you right now, for the most part, is because if you go online and type in standard lab chow, for example, just get the a breakdown of the ingredients of what these lab animals eat. And it's pretty much the same stuff for all animals.
00:02:04
Speaker
It's basically like wheat, meal, corn meal, corn oil, just rancid fish oil, ah ground up rocks for minerals, just the cheapest, crappiest forms of minerals and vitamins that they could add.
00:02:20
Speaker
And it's very high in polyunsaturated fats. okay So if you have an animal eating less of this toxic slop, as I call it in the book, yeah, it's likely that it's going to do better than the animal eating more poison.
Problems with Fasting Research
00:02:36
Speaker
ah So that really destroys that research. And um I talk about a monkey study in rhesus monkeys where they did show...
00:02:48
Speaker
um some increase in lifespan in terms of the the caloric restriction group of monkeys. But another study with rhesus monkeys where they fed fed them a much closer to their natural diet type diet didn't really show any significant difference.
00:03:07
Speaker
There you go. So ah if if they do real research, like with real food, with conditions more... ah approximating the the conditions in the wild for a lot of these animals. I think some of these animals that they do experiments with, you know, they're nocturnal, for example, right?
00:03:27
Speaker
you don't You don't think the researchers are going to be there at night doing stuff. A lot of the time they're not, you know. And then these animals are getting blasted with um fluorescent lights and they're indoors, maybe not no i'm not getting any like actual daylight in many cases. So,
00:03:44
Speaker
A lot of this research is bullshit. Then at the end of the day, on top of it all, rather, they feed them this toxic slop. If you feed a human, of course, they're going to develop any disease you can think of.
00:03:57
Speaker
So and that invalidates all of the research on fasting and caloric restriction. Basically invalidates or almost all of it.
00:04:08
Speaker
I mean, surely they they they've learned some stuff from it, like like that eating less poison, you will live longer. And that's the other thing. If you take a person that's on a standard American diet and you put them on a fasting regimen or if you cut their calories by 20%, 30%, especially if they're overweight, yeah they're going to do better. They're going to do better because a lot of a lot of the standard American diet is...
00:04:36
Speaker
just empty calories or worse, ah harmful calories like seed oils. Because if you eat a standard takeout meal,
00:04:46
Speaker
you could be getting 20, 30 grams of of seed oil, of omega-6s in that meal. Now, compound that over two or three meals a day. Some people are easily getting 60, 70, 80, 90 grams of seed oils per day.
00:05:02
Speaker
Yeah, if they eat less of that or they fast, they're going to feel better. However, if you take a healthy person, relatively healthy, that cares about their longevity, listens to Christian's podcast, maybe gets Christian's book,
00:05:15
Speaker
how to actually live long live longer volume one, get the
Personalized Longevity Protocols
00:05:18
Speaker
hardcover. Very nice. um Or maybe even becomes Christian's so christian's client and takes their longevity to the next level and the levels above and beyond with with customized protocols,
00:05:32
Speaker
um advanced lab testing so we can identify imbalances that you never even think you had that could be causing minor minor things to be out of whack that can compound over decades, 20, 30 years, right?
00:05:47
Speaker
And we can catch that with the really fun advanced lab testing that we do with clients. And sky's the limit here. We can go very far as as far as you want to take it like no no no client has yet met me where i can take them if you know what i mean like we some clients will run like two thousand dollars worth of lab testing at the outset but we could go way deeper you know so anyway uh that short commercial break is now over so let's get back to to what happened Okay, so intermittent fasting. I want to find the study. It's in the book, right?
00:06:22
Speaker
So here we go. one of the I think it's the largest group of study participants. It was published, I think, in 2021. um So check this out. This is what they said.
00:06:37
Speaker
they said or before i even Before I even start there, let me just tell you what ChatGPT summarized the chapter on my book at. So summary of reasons why I do not recommend intermittent fasting.
00:06:51
Speaker
Number one, it signals scarcity. Signals scarcity to the body. And we'll we'll get into why that's bad. Additional stress. It adds further stress. to the body which may already be very burdened with stress or or disease or or like ah some kind of imbalances.
00:07:07
Speaker
It reduces the metabolic rate and that means that you are less healthy. A lower metabolic rate means you are less healthy, right? You're more susceptible to like infections, um you are just more susceptible like to low mood, to weight gain,
00:07:23
Speaker
to just your are You are working at a lower RPM. Now, think about a car. It has it has like a good um ah range of RPM where it will perform the best. Obviously, too much is not good. It will burn itself out.
00:07:39
Speaker
But too low, the car, you know you can't even... you know, get going or get over a hill or just get into the right gear to go go as fast as you can. So low metabolic rate, bad. Like look at a so a creature with a low metabolic rate, like a turtle or a tortoise.
00:07:55
Speaker
You want to be a tortoise? Or do you want to be like a bird, like, um you know, those macaws in the South American jungle. they can They outlive like multiple owners.
00:08:08
Speaker
They can live to like 80, 100 years, maybe more, 120 years.
00:08:12
Speaker
For a parrot, high metabolic rate, or bats, look at a bat,
Fasting's Impact on Metabolic Rate and Body Composition
00:08:16
Speaker
they live like 20 years, they have a you know high metabolic rate, whereas creatures similar to them, like a squirrel or a rat, but they're very similar, except for certain features, like maybe the squirrel has a furry tail or whatever, and the bat has wings, ah but those creatures will only live like a couple of years.
00:08:38
Speaker
And in the wild, sometimes even less because there's a lot of other variables there unaccounted for. So you want a higher metabolic rate, not a lower metabolic rate.
00:08:49
Speaker
We'll probably do a whole episode on that whole thing about the low metabolic or the the rate of living theory, which is like 100 years old. I think a guy that the guy that came up with it was a priest.
00:09:02
Speaker
Yeah. So it's a straight up, you have to like have a religious belief to believe that, right? So that's what fasting and calorie restriction and low carb diets do. They lower your metabolic rate and that's not a good thing.
00:09:15
Speaker
Okay. Loss of muscle mass. or get into that in a little second and it lowers your protective hormones whilst increasing your stress hormones.
00:09:27
Speaker
Okay. so there was a So, in terms of the loss of muscle mass, let's talk about it, right? So, there was a study that I just mentioned a second ago.
00:09:41
Speaker
So, they concluded, think it was like 700-800 participants there doing intermittent fasting regimes. 16-8, I think it was. 16 fasting, 8-hour feeding window.
00:09:53
Speaker
eight hour feeding window and The authors concluded, the decrease in resting energy expenditure after intermittent fasting indicates the possibility of an increase in weight during intermittent fasting if caloric intake is not adjusted.
00:10:13
Speaker
And i so I cited that in in the in the book in my book and I said, all right, so I have to reduce my calorie intake on the intermittent fasting regime. Otherwise, I risk gaining weight in the long term.
00:10:26
Speaker
That makes sense. Sign me up. Did I mention this decrease only took two weeks? Yes, it took two weeks. And the researchers estimated that the median decrease in resting energy rest resting energy expenditure was about 59 calories per day.
00:10:43
Speaker
So over the course of a year, that equals about 21,500 calories or about three kilograms of body fat, which is more like six and a half pounds or more.
00:10:56
Speaker
So let me make sure I understand this. If I go on an intermittent fasting regime, it quickly drops my metabolic rate. And now I have to decrease my food intake in order to not gain weight.
00:11:09
Speaker
If I don't, I will gain in the order of three kilograms of body fat in a year. Perfect. But at least I live longer, right? Guys, guys, you there?
00:11:20
Speaker
So then what else did they say?
00:11:30
Speaker
Okay, so this is another study. Sorry, this is my bad. So that that was a separate study. So the one that they did, um there was about 700-800 participants. It was a paper...
00:11:42
Speaker
in JAMA Internal Medicine, so the Journal of the medical American Medical Association. It was a 2020 paper, but not 2021. Sorry about that.
00:11:53
Speaker
It's been a while since I looked at the book. um So here's what they stated. Time-restricted eating. So, okay, so the first study I just shared, that they discovered that in two weeks it drops your metabolic rate, by ah your resting energy expenditure by about 59 calories.
00:12:12
Speaker
This other paper concluded that or they stated time-restricted eating in the absence of other interventions is not more effective in weight loss than eating throughout the day.
00:12:24
Speaker
Okay. So intermittent fasting does not help you lose weight. It's the fact that you cannot muscle in three full meals and a snack or two and some beverages in an eight hour window.
00:12:44
Speaker
It's just too damn hard physiologically. Okay. So the reason people lose weight on intermittent fasting regimes is because they eat less.
00:12:57
Speaker
right And it's similar with the keto diet. We'll cover that in a separate episode. But with the keto diet, it's a high-fat diet. Fat increases satiety and kind of slows gastric emptying and the absorption, assimilation of food.
00:13:11
Speaker
So that satiety effect allows people to eat less. And they also eat less processed garbage and and grains and carbohydrates in that form with a lot of poison and and um ah toxic ah stuff in them like glyphosate or whatever.
00:13:27
Speaker
So people eat just more real foods on a keto diet and lo and behold, they lose weight. Imagine eating less and eating more real food. Imagine you you feel better and you lose weight. Oh my God.
00:13:40
Speaker
It's absolutely absolutely groundbreaking. So back to this study. So they they also reported that the time they called it in this case, they called TRE, time-restricted eating, which is kind of the same as intermittent fasting, although intermittent fasting can also mean you fast for a full day and then you eat normally and then you fast for a full day, which is crazy crazier even.
00:14:04
Speaker
so they also So they reported that the TRE, the time-restricted eating group, the TRE group lost lean mass, in their trunk and limbs while the normal diet group did not.
00:14:17
Speaker
The researchers, or perhaps their editors, wrote, there was also significant difference in appendicular lean mass index between groups, minus 0.16 kilograms per meter squared, 95% confidence interval, minus 2.7 to 0.05 the p-value of 0.005.
00:14:34
Speaker
All right, ah ah point zero five and the pval of zero ah point zero zero five so Most people reading that, you you won't really um you't you won't really understand what the hell they're talking about.
00:14:53
Speaker
So you have to actually dig into the paper and here's what they say later on in the paper. In analysis of secondary outcomes, we found a significant reduction in lean mass in the time-restricted eating group, TRE group,
00:15:11
Speaker
the ah In the in-person cohort, so they had a cohort of people that were kind of coming in for various measurements and and other things, but it was a much wider group that people could participate with um you know remotely or whatever and report in their results.
00:15:27
Speaker
And so in the group that they were kind of monitoring, The average weight loss in the TRE group was 1.7 kilograms. Of this, get this, of this, 1.1 kilograms or about 65% of the weight lost was lean mass.
00:15:50
Speaker
And only ah basically half a kilogram of it all was fat mass. So 65% mass was lost. lean mass was lost
00:16:02
Speaker
And they say that loss of lean mass during weight loss typically accounts for 20 to 30% of total weight loss. So yes, it's normal to lose lean mass when you lose weight, but it's usually in in kind of the range of 20 to 30%, whereas these folks lost around 65%.
00:16:23
Speaker
Okay. And they even stated that the the authors of the paper stated the proportion of lean mass lost in the study far exceeds the normal range of 20 to 30%.
00:16:36
Speaker
okay And they also state appendicular lean mass, which is like in the appendages, so your arms, legs, ah is correlated with nutritional and physical status and reduced appendicular lean mass can lead to weakness, disability, and impaired quality of life.
00:16:57
Speaker
This serves as a caution for patient populations at risk for sarcopenia because time-restricted eating could exacerbate muscle loss. Could exacerbate muscle loss.
00:17:10
Speaker
So if you're a woman in your 50s, 60s, or if you're fairly lean guy,
00:17:23
Speaker
intermittent fasting,
00:17:26
Speaker
um it's very likely to erode away your precious lean tissue and not just muscle, right? Not just muscle, but bone as well. And bone is not visible, right? It's not visible.
00:17:40
Speaker
I have a client. She told me she she does um bone density scans and stuff, which is amazing, you know? But I've not had any other clients yet to tell me that they do that. So very few people do that. So very few people out there are gonna catch this early on and actually be able to save themselves and do something about it. A lot of people,
00:18:05
Speaker
We'll catch it when they freaking break a hip or you know fracture a spinal vertebrae. and not Not a good situation to be in, right? um I'll tell you, yeah you know, actually I'll say that for another time.
00:18:18
Speaker
So finally, one last quote from that paper is, the extent of lean mass loss during weight loss has been positively correlated with weight gain.
00:18:29
Speaker
Right. And there I conclude. There you have it. Intermittent fasting can lead to muscle loss in your limbs, which can lead to weakness, disability and reduced quality of life.
The Influence of Health Advice
00:18:39
Speaker
And because losing muscle, which is metabolically active tissue, lowers your metabolism or your metabolic rate,
00:18:45
Speaker
you're at risk of regaining the weight. So your metabolic rate being lowered means you're, quote-unquote, burning less calories, right? So easy to gain weight. um And, you know, if you go on the Wikipedia page for intermittent fasting, at least the last time I checked when I was publishing the book, you don't see the study there, right? It was a pretty big study.
00:19:07
Speaker
And, oh, and apparently the doctor that conducted this trial immediately stopped his intermittent fasting regime after seeing the data and told his patients to do the same.
00:19:20
Speaker
In a CNBC article, he said, just losing weight alone doesn't mean good things are happening for your health. And it was very funny, but back in November, 2023, when I accessed that article, when you finish reading the article, at the bottom, there was a video, you know, this kind of click next video, whatever.
00:19:41
Speaker
And the video title was how this how this CEO lost 80 pounds with intermittent fasting. It's like ridiculous to see that on on that article where the doctor that ran the trial was like, oh my God, let's all stop intermittent fasting. This was stupid.
00:19:57
Speaker
I think he was doing for years. And the good that so it's good to get data like that and then immediately make good decisions for your for his patients and for himself, his health. and Because a lot of people, once you kind of dig your heels into the sand, you it's very difficult to change your mind, especially if you have a business or a practice.
00:20:21
Speaker
um or maybe a book or whatever that it goes against. Then you're kind of a little bit, it's difficult to maneuver out of those situations, but I think the best policy is just honesty.
00:20:35
Speaker
And I know I can see some some influencers on YouTube ah big health influencers, they're backtracking a little bit from the keto and the low-carb and the fasting and whatever. Now they're like, oh, you just need to use it once in a while. You get the benefits. And there's benefits to like being in a high-carb state or being in a fed state more. and um you know it's they're kind of They're doing their best because they have empires that not that they'll crumble, but there'll be major, there'll be a lot of pissed off people because the problem is, here is the problem, is what really kind of grinds my gears, is let's say an influencer has like millions of people they influence and let's say even like a million out of 10 million, for them, once they learn that information from that person they love,
00:21:28
Speaker
that's them they're like okay i know everything i know now i'm just gonna you know go on my merry way they might stop tuning into that person and like i'm just gonna eat plants now for the rest of my life or i'm not i'm i'm just gonna be a pescatarian or i'm just gonna do low carb now because this is optimal sugar is a poison and the problem with that is that they're screwed then because that person might change their mind and say something on, you know, in a new book or a new video and those people
Fasting's Effect on Hormones
00:21:56
Speaker
might don't catch it. So it's it's it's hard being, it's hard being in a place like that where you're influencing people, right?
00:22:03
Speaker
So you have to really, i think, it's it's There's a great deal of responsibility and I realized that myself, you know. And even with my first book on autism, ah but I've gone back and I've changed some things in there that I no longer believe were are correct, you know.
00:22:22
Speaker
And I've updated things and I'll probably at one point continue to make updates in there because... yeah I think what you put out has to match what you're doing and what your beliefs are currently. And I think some some folks out there just are too scared to do that.
00:22:39
Speaker
And I guess I would be a lot more scared if I had a much bigger audience and readership. So I guess I'm lucky that I kind of figured out a few things before I started putting out putting myself more out there.
00:22:53
Speaker
So... um What else? What else? Okay, so that other, that like let me just see how many minutes I'm talking here. I don't want i don't want to bore you to death here. So 22 minutes. Okay, a couple more minutes, right?
00:23:07
Speaker
um What the hell? I just clicked the wrong thing here. So, sorry about this.
00:23:15
Speaker
if ah If I had a bigger audience, you know maybe my my my shit would be better produced. So you know if you if you become a client, maybe I'll i'll be able to afford um you know hiring an assistant.
00:23:30
Speaker
Okay, so one last thing. Intermittent fasting lowers testosterone in men and women. Now, testosterone is super important for women. It's not just a male hormone. It's a protective hormone.
00:23:46
Speaker
And intermittent fasting, by virtue of raising cortisol, because that is, at the end of the day, that period where you are not eating, you still need glucose.
00:23:59
Speaker
And that glue glucose has to get produced. And it gets produced... to a great extent by a process called gluconeogenesis which happens in the liver which turns various things including amino acids from protein into glucose and a source of that can be your diet the problem is that a hundred grams of protein not a hundred grams of steak
00:24:29
Speaker
100 grams of protein that's ah let's say a steak has 20 grams of protein like a beef steak that's 500 grams or more than a pound to net 100 grams of actual protein. So a pound of meat or 500 grams of meat will get you about 100 grams of protein.
00:24:52
Speaker
That 100 grams of precious protein, that you could because that's that much steak is going to cost you, you know, don't know, 20, 30 bucks, if it's decent, grass-fed, whatever. So that 100 grams to get converted to glucose, you know how much glucose you get out of that?
00:25:11
Speaker
50 grams. right and in the process of deaminating those amino acids because amino acids they kind of when they get deaminated we create ammonia through that process which is toxic um we have to detoxify it we have to metabolize it and deal with it so it's an expensive process in terms of That protein could be serve a much better purpose in the body, obviously, as structural and rebuilding, regeneration type ah roles and and and processes.
00:25:44
Speaker
But also the ammonia has to then be dealt with, which requires energy and nutrients, right? And it does put a burden on you. that earth Again, that energy that could be diverted in different areas that could be more beneficial, like keeping your hair on your head or not developing...
00:26:00
Speaker
um age spots or you know dealing with toxins, other toxins that you're already being exposed to by touching plastics all day long and driving in in traffic and whatever else. right so um Man, this segway getting longer and longer. I really apologize.
00:26:17
Speaker
There was a study, what was it was a review of it was though it was aue not not Not a single study. it was a review of human trials on the effects of intermittent fasting on reproductive hormone levels in females and males showed that testosterone was lowered in both.
00:26:37
Speaker
the ah The authors of that review stated, as for men, intermittent fasting reduced testosterone levels in lean, physically active young males, but it did not affect SHBG, sex hormone binding globulin concentrations.
00:26:55
Speaker
Interestingly, muscle mass and muscular strength were not negatively affected by these reductions in testosterone. And that is a big problem. Because if you do an intervention, like like like let's say, Let's say you go on the internet and your favorite influencer, let's say Dr. Gundry, for example, or something like that, some lovable old geezer with a cute suit that sounds like he knows what he's talking about and he has all these credentials and whatever.
00:27:23
Speaker
He tells you that banging your head against the wall is really good for you, right? it It has similar effects to autophagy, which is apparently the best thing since... sliced cheese.
00:27:34
Speaker
So you start banging your head against the wall. If you feel the pain which you should on the first bang against the wall, that is an immediate signal, okay, this this was not a good idea. Maybe Dr. Gundry doesn't know what he's talking about.
00:27:47
Speaker
that So, okay, okay that that's probably a good thing, that immediate feedback. However, if you go and If you go and bang your head against the wall and the first time you don't feel anything, you're like, okay, cool, I can do this. You do that 20 times and you don't feel any pain. Well, let's say it takes 100 times or 2,000 times for you to start feeling the negative effects and the pain from the head banging.
00:28:12
Speaker
The problem with this is you could be getting this negative effect of head banging your head against the wall for a very long time before you notice that effect. So you will not correlate it to the activity that for all this all these other head bangs, which which could have taken you weeks or months to...
00:28:32
Speaker
to um accumulate, you wouldn' you know you felt the same or or better even, right? It's like the the plant-based diet. You feel great for three months or the keto diet. You feel great for three to six months because you stopped eating a lot of, well, not you, but you know just a person, a hypothetical person on a Western standard American diet.
00:28:52
Speaker
They start um eating better, cleaner foods, more real foods and whatever else. meat, fruit, vegetables, and they feel better. So they're like, oh, it must be the keto diet. And then they start deteriorating.
00:29:07
Speaker
And then it's like, oh, it's probably maybe I have toxins, I need to detox more, or maybe or it's EMFs, or it's maybe I have ah parasites. So they cannot correlate the plant-based diet or the keto diet that that is probably causing them issues, which it will.
00:29:23
Speaker
Sooner or later, both of these diets... will cause a person issues. If they stick to them strictly for long enough, they will cause them issues. So that's the problem when an intervention lowers your, let's say, your protective hormones like testosterone or whatever else, or has like or like it does something like it raises inflammation, but you don't feel it, or other markers that are more commonly tested, they don't get out of range.
00:29:52
Speaker
That's the problem because then that that that will allow it to it will allow the person to continue doing it thinking it's doing them good where it's actually causing them problems.
00:30:04
Speaker
What else? And then, you know what?
00:30:10
Speaker
I'll just do one more here. So there was one more study here, a paper titled...
00:30:17
Speaker
um Yeah, no no, this just corroborates the previous point. So so basically...
00:30:26
Speaker
there was a research group and they published a 12-month study. The paper was titled 12 Months of Time-Restricted Eating and Resistance Training Improves Inflammatory Markers and Cardiometabolic Risk Factors.
00:30:43
Speaker
So, they... In the abstract, they say, our results suggest that long-term time-restricted eating combined with a resistance training program is feasible, safe, and effective in reducing inflammatory markers and risk factors related to cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.
00:31:02
Speaker
And so I dug through that paper and checked this out.
00:31:09
Speaker
The TRE group saw a staggering drop of 17% in their total testosterone by the end of the 12 months. And the same research group published a similar trial, but this was an eight-week trial of time-restricted eating.
00:31:25
Speaker
And there was a similar drop in testosterone. So it kind of indicates that this is a feature of intermittent fasting. This drop in protective ah steroid hormones is a feature, not an anomaly in one study.
00:31:41
Speaker
And the thing is here, they were fairly young and they were you know fairly young men. But if you're... ah So women, because of the whole sort of um role of...
00:31:52
Speaker
the the menstrual cycle and just in general, the the fact that they could potentially have a higher estrogenic tone than men, they're much more risk with these interventions, whether or not they're menstruating, right? Whether or not they're pre or post-menopausal.
00:32:09
Speaker
Because just the fact is that cortisol, the stress hormones tend to kind of... imbalance a lot of other things in the body. So cortisol and testosterone are ah ah oppositional forces. They kind of...
00:32:25
Speaker
seesaw up and down so if your cortisol is always high because you're intermittent fasting because that glucose has to be created by you breaking down either your lean mass or the protein that you eat or both combination of the bowl of the two so if the cortisol is high testosterone will get lowered you know and and the the same story for progesterone for and this is a bigger issue in women so that is kind of a A little summary, I did say two minutes, ten minutes ago, that is kind of a ah summary of why I do not recommend intermittent fasting.
Survival State and Personal Growth
00:33:03
Speaker
Never mind the fact also so that it just feels like crap. I know some people say they feel better with it, but hey, you know that means? Usually it means their either their diet is inflammatory or they have gut dysbiosis and their diet is feeding the bad bacteria in the gut or the inflammatory opportunistic overgrowth microbes.
00:33:25
Speaker
So yeah, fasting in that sense could provide relief, but there are better ways. I know of much better ways we can address the issue where you can fuel yourself instead of you know, lowering your metabolism and stressing or adding stress to your body, which might already be stressed enough with your lifestyle and work schedules and family demands and so on.
00:33:45
Speaker
And, um, And some people just like to be high on the stress hormones. that That's why we have the runners high, adrenaline junkie.
00:33:56
Speaker
That's why some people, they can't they don't feel well unless they exercise. It's because they're ah addicted to the like the endorphins and the adrenaline that that stress results in.
00:34:08
Speaker
So can't blame you. you know We all have our vices. And the the fact is that some people that are like that, if they're starting normally for a while, it takes it would take them some time to get used to like eating breakfast, for example, because they feel sluggish after breakfast.
00:34:28
Speaker
And why do they feel sluggish? It's because because when you are on cortisone, when you're in stress mode, sympathetic mode, fight or flight mode, you are amped up.
00:34:39
Speaker
Let's do this. Whatever that is, right? but Project at work, whatever, playing with the kids. Let's do this. Come on, let's go. So when then, when you lower that stress, the cor the the cortisol, the adrenaline, you kind of feel a little bit, you know, like that afternoon sort of lull that some people get. Well, in in this is my opinion, but for a lot of people, it could be that maybe they didn't eat breakfast or they had a light breakfast.
00:35:07
Speaker
So by lunchtime, they're kind of ravenous so their cortisol is always high they're they're just their stress hormone milieu is high because it's it's it needs to kick in to make up the glucose deficit because no glucose is coming in right no carbohydrates are for fuel are coming in so your body becomes the fuel you liquefy yourself you degenerate yourself so then when you have your lunch you now, you know, you have the the food coming in, insulin is going to get a bump up and that will cause cortisol and the stress hormones to go down.
00:35:42
Speaker
And that kind of can make you feel somewhat drowsy and sleepy. And I've noticed it myself multiple times in the last few months where if I either have a very light sort of whatever amount of ah carbohydrates in the morning or I don't eat enough,
00:36:01
Speaker
in the morning and where i'm I'm up here recording, doing stuff, working with clients and I don't have time to get like a ah meal or whatever, then if I go and i'm I'm noticeably hungry and starting to get a little bit like, ah, I need to eat, then when I have the meal,
00:36:18
Speaker
I will then feel a little bit like, ah start yawning. Not in a bad way, but where it' it's like, if okay, if my daughter would go for a nap, I would just go go lie down as well and nap for an hour or two if i you know if I didn't have work whatever to do, which is not a bad thing.
00:36:37
Speaker
ah it's actually not it's If you feel like you want to take a nap, I feel like... We should be able to do that. And I'm kind of happy that I'm lucky that I can work from home.
00:36:49
Speaker
I haven't had to do it in a very long time now. But every once in a while, if I wake up too early or whatever, um and I'm working very hard, sometimes I'll just get in the massage chair.
00:37:00
Speaker
And the way it whatever it does, it just kind of puts me out. But then it stops after 30 minutes. that's It's programmed to stop after 30 minutes. So I'll just have like a micro nap of like 10, 15 minutes after 20 minutes.
00:37:12
Speaker
And you just feel super fresh after that. Or sometimes i've I've been known to go for like a couple of hours in the afternoon. And there's nothing wrong with that. Because if you feel like you need to take a nap and you have the opportunity, you know unfortunately, not all of us have that opportunity.
00:37:26
Speaker
But if you do have that opportunity, like if you work from home on your business, I actually think... you should not forego that opportunity because if you feel sleepy, the way to kind of get yourself out of that sleepy state is either have a little nap or just a lie down or rev up the stress hormones and that can wake you up and keep you up But that's long term not the best strategy.
00:37:55
Speaker
Once in a while to finish a project, totally fine. But if you're getting that kind of buzz going on, I would probably go with my body's instinct first rather than whatever project has to get done because At the end of the day, you know you know that the mountain of work will never get done and you will always have new ideas and better sort of things to optimize and improve and and check and measure. So the work will always get done.
00:38:25
Speaker
but we probably should try to not wear ourselves out super quickly because it's, again, if if it were a race, it's not a sprint, it's a marathon.
00:38:37
Speaker
But it's not even a it's not even a race. it's a It's a game, you know? So you want to play the game for as long as possible because...
00:38:49
Speaker
Every day is an opportunity to become a fuller, richer, more expanded version of yourself. And the only way to do that is to be in a good state with low stress, low stress hormonal milieu in your body.
Conclusion: Alternatives to Fasting
00:39:02
Speaker
And then you are able to achieve higher states of being because and you cannot be stressed in fight or flight and then experience things like altruism, um higher cognitive sort of capacities, true joy and affinity to others. Because at the end of the day, be in in terms of... Jesus Christ, I'm getting philosophical here now.
00:39:25
Speaker
um In terms of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, if you are in a survival state... And that's what fasting will do.
00:39:36
Speaker
And all the other things that are very stressful that i talk about. But fasting will put you in back to base the base of the the hierarchy. how can you how how can you If you're all you care about is your own survival and at least from the but biological perspective, maybe in your mind it's not like that, but yeah physiologically your body is that like that, then how can you expect to ever reach like levels where you want to, you've you've filled your cup, your family's cup is full, and now, oh, let me give back to the community or the world at large, or whatever tickles your fancy, whatever you want to or maybe express my creativity and
00:40:17
Speaker
Give this gift to the the the world of my art, my music, my writing, whatever that may be. right you The only way to achieve your ultimate potential is to be in this physiological state of low stress,
00:40:37
Speaker
and high, relatively speaking, high levels of these protective hormones and and and the the beneficial neurotransmitters as opposed to kind of the more, the the ones that are more um characteristic of stress stress states, like things like parathyroid hormone, prolactin, estrogen, cortisol, serotonin, stuff like that. You want rather The other stuff to be um in in in good ranges like progesterone, testosterone, DHEA,
00:41:08
Speaker
um dopamine, stuff like that. right So that's kind of why ah no in in the bigger scheme,
00:41:19
Speaker
in the bigger vision why we don't want to do things like intermittent starvation because they just bring us back to this survival state right and we are not living in the world we are we are so lucky to be in these times where at you don't even have to leave your house People bring you stuff, bring you food to your door.
00:41:42
Speaker
um So but why choose to put ourselves in that state if we have the options to not do that? Think about that.
00:41:54
Speaker
um ah Yeah, okay. 40 minutes. I guess this these are going to be around up to 40 minutes. so Hope you found it interesting. ah This has been Christian Yordanoff. Howtoactuallylivelonger.com Howtoactuallylivelonger.com is the website.
00:42:10
Speaker
You can go there and see if you if you're interested in more advanced longevity stuff, lab testing and you know protocols and cleanses and detoxes and hormone balancing and even more advanced stuff.
00:42:24
Speaker
um Yeah, thanks for thanks for tuning in and I'll see you on the next one.