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Fasting Is a TERRIBLE "Longevity" Strategy
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Transcript
Intro
Introduction to Prolonged Fasting
00:00:46
chrisyzen
Hi, Christian Jordonov here. Today I will talk about why fasting or water fasting, prolonged fasting, is not something I recommend a person that cares about their health and longevity should ever do. Ever. pretty much ever but never say never so similarly to intermittent fasting which I already I just recorded that that episode so um while it's all fresh in my mind I'm just gonna knock this one out because
00:01:22
chrisyzen
People think it's a there's a difference and there is a difference.
Stress and Metabolic Impacts of Fasting
00:01:25
chrisyzen
The difference is just that water fasting is even more stressful than intermittent fasting. Okay. And the the bullet points, if you want the bullet point list, here they are. So fasting or starvation, as it should be called, voluntary starvation signals scarcity to the body.
00:01:51
chrisyzen
That's very stressful and it literally causes stress hormones to rise. So that and what and why are stress hormones bad to have elevated chronically? It's because they're designed for short term bursts of activity that help to ensure our survival, running away, maybe fighting off a predator or an attacker, this kind of stuff. But the way they do that is by sacrificing
00:02:23
chrisyzen
long-term stuff right because the body doesn't know it if it will be around next year to you know frolic tip toe through the tulips or whatever frolic in and in the meadows it all it knows is there's a an emergency going on right now and and it needs to deal with that and the way it deals with that it needs to muster an energetic response So the role of cortisol in that respect is to break down our lean tissue. And I've said this before and I'm going to keep saying it ad nauseam.
00:03:03
chrisyzen
Chronic stress, chronic elevation of cortisol will degenerate your bones, your muscles, your joints, your skin, ah parts of your organs like your thymus gland, which is important for immunity. That's why when you're stressed, people that are under a lot of stress, they get sick more often and so on, right? So that's one thing. So scarcity is bad because also the body, will lower its metabolic rate because imagine imagine you're in a famine and your yourre but let's say you're but ah your metabolic rate is let's say 3000 calories with everything with physical activity everything resting energy expenditure and whatnot
00:03:46
chrisyzen
If your body, let's say you don't eat for two days, if your body were to continue revving at 3000 calories, well, you will very quickly eat yourself up and die. So the the human bodies, well, all mammals, I think all animals really, we're so well-designed that we're able to survive um by very quickly lowering the metabolic rate, right? So you're consuming less of yourself to survive. But that's that's not a good
Survival Mechanisms and Health Consequences
00:04:19
chrisyzen
thing. it's ah It's a survival thing. And again, survival makes the trade-off of long-term cool stuff, like having hair on our head, having, you know, high libido, of being fertile,
00:04:34
chrisyzen
um being in a good mood. Because I don't i don't know if you've tried fasting. But you feel like absolute shit fasting. And at one point, you might feel some elation and stuff like that. But that's that's the honestly, I personally believe that is a mild form of psychosis. Because the stress hormones like cortisol, serotonin and even estrogen can sort of cause that kind of
00:05:07
chrisyzen
sort of what do you call it psychological they have this sort of psychological manifestation cortisol can cause psychosis uh you you can even see in the in the literature there is um a steroid induced psychosis like when people take uh steroids like glucocorticoids which are cortisol mimicking chemicals that's been documented psychosis like i think it was the person had rheumatoid arthritis and they were put on this glucocorticoid and then they went back to to the doctor and they were like psychotic. it's it It would be funnier if if it wasn't you know hor horrifying that this is the pinnacle of medicine. um We think that we are at the pinnacle of medicine science and whatever else.
00:06:04
chrisyzen
So what what else what else? What else? What else? So fasting. Why you don't want to fast? ah so Okay, so when you go on a fast, the first two, three days you are still largely running on glucose and that glucose comes, where can it come from, from your lean tissue being broken down. So a lot of your lean tissue gets broken down. Then three days and onwards you start producing ketones. So people are made to believe that um
00:06:40
chrisyzen
key you you You go into ketosis and all is well, right? You just start cleaning out and whatever else. But the thing is that ketones can only provide something like 60 to 70% of the energy required to continue surviving on on the starvation regimen. So you're still going to be producing significant amounts of glucose. So you will continue to break down your body. Your body will continue to dismantle tissues that are not 100% necessary for survival. So the heart and the brain.
00:07:18
chrisyzen
ah Obviously they'll get spared the nervous system the central nervous system But muscle bone joint skin a lot of there's a lot of collagen in skin a lot of protein collagen is protein There's a lot of collagen in bone like 35% by by weight So there's a lot of amino acids there that can be turned into energy basically glucose and or fuel glucose and and ketones Okay. So do you really want to be in that state? Because you will continue for as long as you go fast and you continue breaking yourself down. It's not like you, you somehow at any point in time, you're like, Oh, uh, but the body's like running super efficiently on ketones and you can go at infinite and add infinitum or whatever you continue to degenerate yourself. So what is the point? Now you might have heard the word autophagy,
Autophagy Myths and Realities
00:08:14
chrisyzen
right? So.
00:08:16
chrisyzen
Autophagy is basically selling so um there's a a company out there that's kind of run allegedly not for profit by a person that's written a book on longevity that has done research with rats with um In with the the fasting mimicking diet, which is just a very low calorie diet over four or five days where you eat a tiny amount of food and they They promote this basically processed food like soup in a powdered soup and like crackers and just kind of nuts and Whatever meals so you can buy the meal to do the fasting mimicking diet over five days
00:09:06
chrisyzen
and it just really processed crap in a box honest in my personal opinion but on the website they call autophagy, cellular rejuvenation that is the key to your vibrance, performance, healthy aging and longevity. And then they say that autophagy won the Nobel Prize. Right? Well, obviously it cannot win the prize, but that's how they said it, that autophagy won the Nobel Prize. So that should impress you. Are you impressed? Better be impressed. So,
00:09:46
chrisyzen
in my book I also state that well the guy that came up with the lobotomy procedure also got a Nobel Prize so let's not get too excited so here's the thing what is autophagy? Autophagy is so auto means self phagos comes from Greek ah which means to eat so you're self eating eating yourself okay and that the thing is you have two different kinds of a thought well there's many different kinds of autophagy you know you have mitophagy lysophagy erophagy or ibophagy these are these are cellular organelles you have your mitochondria lysosomes endoplasmic reticulum and a bunch of other stuff and these
00:10:37
chrisyzen
can be targeted specifically. If they're damaged, they can be consumed, I think in the lysosomes, um and they can be broken down and their constituents can be used to you know rebuild other stuff in the cell. That's called selective autophagy. And that is good, but that's running in your body all the time. In fact, even like glucose, I think, ah certain carbohydrates can upregulate that autophagy exercise can there's a lot of things that can upregulate autophagy selective or non-selective and non-selective
00:11:18
chrisyzen
is this is now this is a ah a quote from a paper I cite in my book how to actually live live live longer autophagy is a process that targets very various intracellular elements for degradation autophagy can be non-selective associated with the indiscriminate engulfment of cytosolic components occurring in response to nutrient starvation and is commonly referred to as bulk autophagy. And then they have, you know, they talk about the selective autophagy. So check this out. Check this out.
00:11:58
chrisyzen
Non, ah was it non-selective autophagy occurs in response to nutrient starvation. non-selective. So healthy parts of the cell are gonna get degraded. Why? Because again cortisol signals cells to break down. um a lot of A major reason is because you know We need to to to something to turn into glucose, so you don't need all your muscles if you if you're fasting, you don't need all your bones to be super dense and hard and strong, resilient. You don't need all that collagen in your skin.
00:12:42
chrisyzen
what what what Why do you need a nice healthy skin if you're gonna die like in a week? There's no point or your joints, right? Because you're very unlikely to be up and about running and lifting things. and Well, I mean nowadays people do stupid stuff like exercise while fasting which is just I don't know how many levels beyond deranged, but it's not not that I'm faulting the people, it's just how we've been manipulated with all this sort of pseudoscientific stuff ah ah thrown around in the health space. And everybody, I think a lot of, especially men, that they their ego plays a part in who can take the most pain and punishment. and
Fertility and Hormonal Concerns
00:13:20
chrisyzen
you know i i I do fast deadlifts, you know, on a keto diet and then I do a cold plunge and then, you know, somebody electroshocks my balls ah while I'm in the water. And, you know, like, why, man? And look, I'm not judging. It just we we all do stupid things when we're young, but you have to be young to be able to take all of that punishment the older you get i think people are like at one point like you know screw this i'm not doing this i'm gonna go for a walk and listen to the bird sing or maybe listen to a podcast and take it freaking easy and that is very smart so autophagy
00:14:03
chrisyzen
is active in all cells and can be upregulated in response to stress or nutrient deprivation. That's a quote from a different paper where they talk about autophagy.
00:14:19
chrisyzen
And from the same paper, they say, it is generally accepted that autophagy functions as a mechanism to survive cellular stresses like nutrient deprivation. So let me let me see.
00:14:36
chrisyzen
Let me see. I have a little a really good slogan, a marketing slogan for autophagy I made up for the book.
00:14:45
chrisyzen
do you see where oh wait hold on so autophagy starve yourself to upregulate the process that is caused by starving yourself pretty catchy right so why do you want to why do you want to increase your autophagy
00:15:05
chrisyzen
You want to starve yourself to upregulate the process that is caused by starving yourself. That's got to be good for you. But, but yours, it's the, it's the, I swear to God, this was on their website. Very scientific, right? Autophagy is the cellular rejuvenation that is the key to your vibrant performance, healthy aging and longevity. right i'm not sure if if my if i'm fasting and my autophagy is up regulated and i'm high on cortisol and my break down my tissue my lean muscle tissues i'm not sure that's gonna be um i'm not gonna be feeling very vibrant
00:15:53
chrisyzen
healthy and ah my performance I don't think would be very good because I've tried doing stuff fasting or intermittent fasting like writing books ah you know writing recording reading walking exercising I've tried doing all of those things and it's not fun like it's not fun friggin doing mental work when you're fasting it's really not fun because your brain runs on glucose unless you're in ketosis then some some ketones will be used for the brain but still are gonna be using glucose right what else now this is for the gentleman in the audience
00:16:43
chrisyzen
What was it? There was a study here. ah yeah yeah So the section in the book is called fasting will shrink your balls. And this is from a quote from ah citing me reading from my book. Are your testicles or those of your partner the size of tennis balls? Gross! Are you sick of everyone constantly staring and not being able to find pants that fit comfortably? Well, worry no more, you freak, because we have just the intervention you need to shrink those pesky wearables back down to a more manageable size. Fasting!
00:17:26
chrisyzen
Do you like my marketing? um My marketing um copy. It's pretty good. A paper titled Eight days of water only fasting promotes favorable changes in the functioning of the urogenital system of middle aged healthy men. Or that's the paper title, or as I believe it should have been titled, how to castrate men without actually castrating them. um So they reported that after eight days of water only fasting, the men's total testicular volume decreased significantly, about 17%. Along with decreases in total and free testosterone,
00:18:12
chrisyzen
and dehydroepiendrosterone, DHEA, while sex hormone binding globulin increased significantly. And get this, they had the goal to conclude that, quote, there is these results indicate that eight days of water only fasting improved lower urinary tract functions without negative health effects end quote and then I continue are you having a laugh who was running the study dr. Mengele from the depopulation department wait I should have said that shit dr. Mengele from the depopulation department
00:18:52
chrisyzen
No offense to any, I don't even know what kind of people I'm offending here. But um yeah, shrinking testicles and reductions in the protective hormones, testosterone and DHEA are extremely negative health effects. It just takes time for them to manifest as outward symptoms. That's it. There you go. Because again, you're fasting. You don't need your testicles to be nice, full and plump.
00:19:21
chrisyzen
apologies to any ladies in the in the Audience that were grossed out by that but um, you know for You don't need to be fertile if You were about to die of starvation. That's what the body like seven eight days into a fast the body thinks it's dying it's gonna sacrifice anything and everything to continue surviving and um ah Being fertile takes quite there is quite a lot of energy required to to to be fertile, right? That's why I honestly believe a big reason why a lot of couples cannot conceive nowadays, why so many men especially or have become infertile.
00:20:08
chrisyzen
or their their fertility fertility is really low is because a lot of guys, young guys are brainwashed into all this exercise, which is another stress that can also lower your metabolic rate to cause a lot of this um reductions in these things like fertility and nice to have nice to have functions. And a lot of women, you know on the they're kind of brainwashed by the plant-based movement. they're not getting in out enough of the fat soluble vitamins nutrients the low carb movement so that's another thing that oh um all genders should I say all or both which is should I say all genders or both genders I think let's just say all genders just just to be on the safe side
Understanding Nutrition and Physiology
00:20:57
chrisyzen
ah What the hell was I talking about? Oh, yeah, so ah the the low-carb stuff that's infiltrated both genders and That's also doing damage and the thing is There was a lot of there's a lot of also toxins in the environment and other stuff that's he plays a role but man like the younger people are they just don't seem to be as resilient as the older people. Like I'll tell you, our freaking neighbors down down below us, ah the guy told me he's 75, his wife looks probably maybe even older. And and like, she's like, until I wrote, they're because they're French, I had to write them a letter and Google translated and you know give them give it to them to explain. This woman was like,
00:21:50
chrisyzen
every time i used to see her she'd have a freaking they used to live in the neighborhood you know they just moved under us so a while ago so every time i'd see her in the neighborhood she'd have a freaking bottle of glyphosate of Roundup in her hand like spraying the shit out of all all the plants and tending to her garden and then when they moved in the like sprinkling all this blue crap like probably like to to napalm the ants And whatever else and I that's the the letter was about, you know, like please don't spray this garbage this poison here We have a small kid. We have a dog and for all of our health, but the dude
00:22:28
chrisyzen
Now, 75 years old, that's really good. So they moved they they bought the apartment under us. And she was away in in France. and And this guy, God bless him, he painted the entire apartment. There's the balcony, the the little garden, everything. He painted that thing. And then he proceeded to just fucking live in there for like weeks and weeks. And then she came. She came back from her Spanish sort of ah her friends holiday or whatever. And they just continued living. They didn't that place. I mean, they were probably they had the windows open during the day to air it out.
00:23:08
chrisyzen
But the smell of poison and solvents that they were living in and they're still like like they're riding like now it's now it's like I don't know in Fahrenheit what it is, but it's like 30 degrees friggin August heat here and they get up in the morning to get on their bikes to go they go ah they They cycle down to the the local restaurants nearby and they eat a bunch of you know seed oils, whatever whatever that food is. And they're just like plodding along. she She looks really
00:23:45
chrisyzen
like wrinkled up and she looks really bad but she still like has muscle and she looks strong and the dude actually like i couldn't even believe he's 75 when he told me like man you you you're you're BSing me but he is so that's damn resilient you know that's damn damn resilient and like listen if me and my wife if we were like sleeping and living in the freaking painted house with like um so all those disgusting poisonous solvents that are like brain damaging nervous system damaging i i'd be like though we would have taken a hit we'd be like freaking walking around like woozy drunk
00:24:31
chrisyzen
from this, the soul yeah and they're just continuing on. So younger people are not as resilient nowadays. So all of this crazy stuff in the zeitgeist, which I believe a lot of it is being pushed to make people sicker because you make people sicker faster, that that that feeds big, massive, massive industrial complexes like insurance, health, sick care, I shouldn't even say health care, and so on and so forth, right? And then there's less of a burden on the pension system Which is probably being used to like make crazy gambling bets and whatever else to make people rich in the background um So there's a lot of incentive to kind of make people shouldn't shouldn't chuckle. There's a lot of incentive To for that to happen. It's quite it's quite um
00:25:21
chrisyzen
It's quite horrific, you know, ah it's quite horrific. So fasting is a piece of that puzzle. It's a piece of that puzzle that it's kind of been portrayed in the mainstream as one of the fountains of youth. But it is not. It is not. And listen, I i win nothing. I win nothing if you fast or you don't fast. What do you do as ah as an adult, a smart adult, is completely up to yourself.
00:25:57
chrisyzen
All i'm what I'm doing is I'm sharing this with you to help you see a different perspective and the studies you can you can get my book look at the studies if you want to read read up on those but you don't even need you don't even need research you just need to understand a little bit of our our physiology as mammals right when we don't need What, how do we continue to survive? That is all you really need to understand. Okay. I'm not eating for four week. How do I continue to actually like be alive and conscious? How does my heart beat? How do I, how am I able to process things with my eyes, my ears, touch things, you know, walk, stand, sit, how?
00:26:47
chrisyzen
you still need energy and the processes in the body need energy, nutrients, minerals, amino acids, fatty acids, stuff like that. So how do you continue to be alive and survive? You downsize your body. You you just degenerate parts of it that are not super essential right now for survival. And you turn, a lot of those you turn into glucose, or ketones to to kind of burn as fuel. And the little vitamins, minerals in those cells that get broken down, they can then be shuttled towards the heart, you know, minerals, potassium, whatever, magnesium, calcium, you know, zinc, whatever else.
00:27:38
chrisyzen
they They get shuttled to the brain, kidneys, stuff like that, and they're used they're used to maintain those those very basic survival functions. That's it that's what happens, really. And we are made to believe that somehow that will cause just the disease and the the dysfunctional cells and tissues to be broken down. And while some ah while a lot of those will get broken down and used up, you know, that the the whole thing is a ah fairy tale. Really is a fairy tale. They haven't actually done any long term studies like follow up
00:28:25
chrisyzen
Fast people or whatever for however long you want and then follow up five ten fifteen twenty years now Find find me that research. I'd love to see it because I couldn't find any um That's that's that's kind of maybe it maybe it's out there I didn't look very I didn't honestly look very hard on PubMed to find that research but a lot of the research with low carb, keto diet, fasting, intermittent fasting, it's two, three months up to a year for the most part. No, occasionally you might get like a one, two, three year follow up, stuff like that. But you can get, you can show a lot of benefits with the short term intervention.
00:29:18
chrisyzen
So So, I think I'll end it here I Hope that at least makes you kind of think twice the next time you you sort of think about Starving yourself for good health is starving yourself for good health the right thing to do or is getting eating cleaner food and getting the the vitamins minerals and various other nutrients that you need getting good forms of those into your diet through through the diet through supplementation is that going to be better long term for you or is starving yourself i'll let you be the judge and i'll let you decide for yourself thanks for listening and i'll see you on the next episode