Intermittent fasting is the best way of eating you can follow when you’re trying to heal and strengthen your body. By restricting your food intake to a set number of hours a day, your body will look for sustenance from within when you’re not eating. Dr. Mindy Pelz joins me today to talk about intermittent fasting.
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Mindy is a chiropractor and nutritionist, specializing in keto and intermittent fasting for women. It’s a way of eating that is beneficial and supportive for the whole family. She started looking for solutions to her own health when she was 43 and felt she was doing all the right things but still wasn’t at optimal health.
On this episode, we’re talking about the benefits of practicing intermittent fasting every single day. From regulating your blood sugar to weight loss, if you’re following intermittent fasting and eating the right foods, there’s very few people out there that this way of eating wouldn’t benefit. Some people find that they have to experiment with their fasting window to find what works best for them.
Our understanding of food and nutrition has changed over time, with the discovery of epigenetics and ketones. With this new knowledge, scientists and nutritionists have figured out that intermittent fasting, taking into consideration autophagy, is the way forward.
If you’re new to intermittent fasting, the best thing you can do is just to get started and learn what works best for you as you go. It might take some trial and error, but this way of eating is far better for you. It’s also more effective than caloric restriction if you’re trying to lose weight.
Have you thought about practicing intermittent fasting? Do you have health problems or difficulty losing weight? Are you ready to take back the power over your own body?
In This Episode:
- Why intermittent fasting needs to be completed along with a healthy diet
- How you can force your body to find the toxins in it
- How you can start training yourself to practice intermittent fasting
- Why you should find the fasting window that works best for you
- Why ketones are the best fuel for your brain
- Why you need to consider autophagy when you’re fasting
- What the difference between a dry fast and wet fast is
- How epigenetics changed our understanding of nutrition
- What we can learn from a European diet
- Why fasting is a better way to lose weight than caloric restriction
- What fast mimicking is and how you should follow it
Subscribe to Couch Talk w/ Dr. Anna Cabeca on Youtube
Quotes:
“We live in the most toxic time in human history and we really cannot be ignorant anymore, cannot turn our head the other way. We really need to ask ourselves, ‘how do we minimize our toxic load?’ because it’s destroying people’s physical and mental health.” (9:02)
“Ketones are neuroprotective. So the longer you can stay in a state of ketosis, the more healing that is happening, especially in the brain.” (18:13)
“If you cannot go without for food, if you’re struggling to go 10 hours without food, there’s a good chance you’ve got mitochondria that’s got a tremendous amount of dysfunction in it.” (33:57)
Links
Follow Dr. Mandy Pelz on Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube
Join the Resetters group on Facebook
Join the KetoGreen Community on Facebook
Buy The Hormone Fix
Transcript:
Mindy Pelz:
We live in the most toxic time in human history and we really cannot be ignorant anymore. We can't turn our head the other way. We really need to ask ourselves, how do we minimize our toxic load because it's destroying people's physical and mental health.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Hello everyone, welcome to Couch Talk Dr. Anna Cabeca here and today we're going to dig in deep to intermittent fasting. We're going to talk about the science behind fasting and what strategies should be put into place to put safety first and how keto and fasting for women is something that is really specialized and we have to figure out what works for us and what doesn't work for us.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
We'll get into some autophagy and some science too because I have the most amazing doc, Dr. Mindy Pelz, who is just crazy passionate about helping families stay healthy, and she has built one of the largest holistic health clinics in Silicon Valley with patients coming to her from all over the world. She wrote The Reset Factor in 2015 which is a best seller that gives people access to a clear step by step path to creating healthy, vibrant energy filled life free from disease and suffering. She digs in deep and she has this Resetter tribe that is just onboard and on task and really passionate about living the healthiest life and I have met Mindy recently but I feel like we are soul sisters, so you all join us in this conversation and I look forward to it. All right. Hey Mindy, how are you?
Mindy Pelz:
Yeah, thank you. I'm awesome and excited to be here. Thank you for having me.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Well, I am thrilled. Tell us a little bit about how you got into intermittent fasting as part of your protocols in keto.
Mindy Pelz:
Yeah, I think I was like the typical woman going through her 40s where I started to experience unusual hot flashes and insomnia and I started to gain that belly weight where you... and everything I was doing wasn't working and I just was coming up against walls with my health that I was just not okay with. I'm 49 now and it was about when I turned 43 that I started looking for different solutions because I was eating right. I was actually gluten-free at the time and I was eating really well, I was exercising all the time like there was no reason my health should not be anything but optimal in those days and about at that time [crosstalk 00:02:43].
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
You're a chiropractor, right?
Mindy Pelz:
Yes.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
...so alignment is key. Nutrition is key. Holistic approach, so you already have those things dialed in and you were feeling this way.
Mindy Pelz:
Yeah, and I think that's like probably the most eyeopening experience I've had of my 40s is I was already doing everything that the books told us to do and my hormones were still off. I still wasn't feeling my best. That's about the time intermittent fasting started coming out in the research and you know, it's funny, I don't know if you had this experience when you started learning about intermittent fasting. Literally, my first thought was every day you're supposed to intermittent fast like that every day, like when I first read it, I was like, oh, go 13 to 15 hours without food. Yeah, no problem, but then when I saw that people were doing it every day I was a little apprehensive. I'm like, I don't know. I like my breakfast, isn't breakfast the most important meal of the day?
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Absolutely, and that's the key thing. That's the key thing that we have to recognize is that breaking fast is key, but like... listen Mindy I'm from that camp that we've got to eat by six o'clock, right. Definitely by 7:00 and allow our time to digest over... our food to digest before we get to bed, right?
Mindy Pelz:
Absolutely.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
So, yeah, let's keep going. Keep going.
Mindy Pelz:
Yeah, so you know, but then more science kept coming out and more people were doing intermittent fasting and about that time the ketogenic diet was starting to appear. It's just was the research and the evidence and the experiences people were having was so profound that I honestly just said, okay, let's jump in. Let me try this on myself first. I don't know if you do this, but I'm always like, well, let me try it on me or a family member first before I decide if I want to even roll it out to my patient base.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Always.
Mindy Pelz:
The intermittent-
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Almost always unless it requires... unless it's painful then I'm no way.
Mindy Pelz:
Right, there you go. You're right. It depends on how much pain is involved. Then I select the family member very closely.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Exactly right, so prejudice there, no-
Mindy Pelz:
No, not at all, but here's what happened and I think this is what happens to a lot of women is once I started doing intermittent fasting, I stopped becoming hypoglycemic which is shocking. In fact, I laugh because my older sister has remained in that camp of I need to eat breakfast, I need to eat six meals a day and when she spent last summer with me, we spent two weeks together in a cabin and after about a week and a half, she looked at me and she said, you have always been the type of person that needs to eat all day long and now you're not eating till like 2:00, three o'clock in the afternoon, what the heck has happened?
Mindy Pelz:
I think that is so counterintuitive for people. They don't realize that one of the ways to fix your blood sugar imbalance is through intermittent fasting.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
You know that's huge because actually I did a radio show yesterday and they'd been pinging me on questions regarding like, well, if someone's really hypoglycemic, should they intermittent fast? I'm like, absolutely. Just make sure you've loaded up with healthy fats, right?
Mindy Pelz:
That's right.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
You've got good quality healthy fats at your prior meal. Fats and fiber, right? That's fiber protein, the fiber being lots of greens as well. We are incorporating that, men, two to three meals a day is easy, is [inaudible 00:06:14] none of this and then, oh my gosh, let's talk about, so if you're talking, a fast that's anywhere 13, 15 or 16 hours with an eating window, I have run across people that's like eating window gives them permission to eat all during that window.
Mindy Pelz:
Whatever they want. We'll get questions from people who ask us, can I drink Diet Coke during my fast? Right, and we're like, uh, no, no, no. Wait, wait, wait. We missed the point here because it's... should be combined with a healthy life, so-
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Yeah, so many people don't realize like diet soda was the treacherous creation of the '70s. It was with Fanta and [inaudible 00:06:57]. It has created an insulin resistance obese population and it's something that breaks my heart because my mom, who was diabetic, she's like diet soda all the time, which worsened her diabetes. People need to understand that if you get nothing else, honestly from this talk today, note that diet soda's artificial sweeteners increase your cravings, increase your hunger, increase your weight overall, so [crosstalk 00:07:23]-
Mindy Pelz:
There's a great article that I recently posted for my Resetters in PubMed. If you just type in toxins and diabetes, it shows that they're now believing both type one and type two diabetes is coming from very specific toxins. Pesticides arsenic, glyphosate, and they're proving that that is so damaging to the cell that it's causing insulin resistance. Here you are over here trying to do keto and fasting, but if you're toxifying yourself when you actually eat or you're eating all the time, it's a harder journey. You're not going to get that result that you want to get.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Right. Absolutely, and now with the immunology research and things coming out about plant stem cells, [inaudible 00:08:09] and peptides and all that fascinating stuff, we're looking at adjuvants, right, like what is attacking our immune system and it can be from anything foreign chemical instigating into our body from what we put on our skin, even breast implants, right, we know that that's an issue creating autoimmune diseases as well. I mean, I think it was 30%... somewhere between 11 to 30% increased risk of rheumatoid issues.
Mindy Pelz:
With breast implants?
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Breast implants.
Mindy Pelz:
Yeah, that's a new one. I'm seeing a lot in very sick people and it's a tough one. I hope you're out there talking about it because that's a really tough one. That's not... I mean, we talk a lot about the dangers of the dental care and getting your teeth fixed to try to solve your toxic problem is one thing, but breast implants are a whole nother level, so.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Yes.
Mindy Pelz:
Yeah. One of the mantras I say over and over again is that we live in the most toxic time in human history and we really cannot be ignorant anymore. We can't turn our head the other way. We really need to ask ourselves, how do we minimize our toxic load because it's destroying people's physical and mental health.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Generationally.
Mindy Pelz:
Yes.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
We know that it's passed down now.
Mindy Pelz:
Agreed.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
It can take even generations to clear from our symptoms. We have to be very conscientious at that. All right, back to intermittent fasting. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about what intermittent fasting does, how we get into autophagy. If you want to bring up mTOR of course, I'd love that stuff but we'll get into it, and then talking about specific ways to break a fast when [inaudible 00:09:44] the different types of fasting.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Let's get into that too because I'm not exactly sure when I'm releasing this podcast, but right now I'm in the time period of Lent, so I've been fasting regularly, extended fast is always... extending fast is. Extending fast on Sundays always and then, you know, in the Catholic culture, no meat on Wednesdays and Fridays and really conscientious about that so there's that benefit. I think too through history traditional cultures have incorporated fasting into their lifestyle because there are health benefits to us. It brings us clearer. It makes us better people. It does. It makes me a better person. I will tell you-
Mindy Pelz:
Absolutely.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
...that when I have to make a serious decision, I am fasting. I am fasting before I make a serious decision any time. I won't tell you about all my bad decisions that I made [inaudible 00:10:33].
Mindy Pelz:
Okay. Well, I also want to know if you're... are you measuring your blood sugar, your ketones, your alkalinity this week because I think that is so... what I find about my Resetter group is when you start measuring the little things like that, you start to see the magic of where fasting is really helping you.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Yes. Absolutely.
Mindy Pelz:
I've come up with what I call seven different fast because I think one of the big misnomers is that people believe you just stop eating and it's really... there's more to it than that and there's more ways you can manipulate it than that. I don't like the word manipulation, but it really is true that you are biohacking, would probably be the best, the most common term right now. You're actually hacking into your body's own internal wisdom, so basics beginners fast, 13 to 15 hours without food. That was the study that was done on a... where autophagy became popular.
Mindy Pelz:
It was by Dr. Ohsumi over in Japan and he found that if we removed food for 13 to 15 hours that the cell would find food within itself and it finds it within the toxins. You force your body to go find those toxins and detoxify and I think the majority of the research out there right now is on intermittent fasting and it's just ridiculous how much research now is showing something as simple as keeping food away for 13 to 15 hours has a neuroprotective effect on your brain. It curbs hunger and it is a way of self detoxing.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more, so 13 to 15 hours is typically what I recommend women to start doing periodic extended fast, but also the research in breast cancer clients, right. That research that was published in JAMA in 2016 JAMA Oncology and it looked at women with breast cancer and when they had at least 12.5 to 13 hours between dinner and breakfast, I mean heck you're sleeping most of that time, they had a significantly decreased risk of occurrence, morbidity, and mortality.
Mindy Pelz:
It was like 70%. It was huge.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
It was huge.
Mindy Pelz:
And it was only in... I think they said 13 hours. It was only like something as little as 13 hours.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Right.
Mindy Pelz:
I absolutely like... I think every woman should start practicing intermittent fasting and really the easiest way to jump into that if you start to calculate and you're like, well I'm only at 10 hours. To me the easiest is push breakfast back an hour and just kind of get used to that and then after you get comfortable there, push it back two hours until you start to get into that 13 to 15-hour window.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
I'm definitely from the camp of pushing dinner up.
Mindy Pelz:
Oh yeah, there you go.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Because like there's an old middle Eastern saying... Arabic saying it's breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper and there's a reason like when we break fast... that's a good meal to break fast. Like it is healthy, right, is good for [inaudible 00:13:40] the protein's very low carb, but you know, to maintain our physiology throughout the day, but it's that like at night we've got to rest and digest. We as Americans have made dinner such a huge meal, but that's why anti-acids, the purple pill Nexium and all these other and anti-inflammatories are the number one and two drugs OTCs in the nation as well as the reasons for the number one reason for ER admissions. Right?
Mindy Pelz:
Crazy.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
We've got to like think, okay, well just like let's... When I lecture to physicians, we have to practice medicine that makes sense. We have to live a lifestyle that makes sense because if we eat this meal, what is that energy for? It's going to go into storage mode and research shows, and I know you know this, but it just emphasizing this point that after 7:00 PM like our insulin, if we eat the same meal after 7:00 PM as we eat before 7:00 PM apparently, I'm sure there's a gradient there, but apparently we excrete up to 50 to 70% more insulin.
Mindy Pelz:
More insulin.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
That's going into storage.
Mindy Pelz:
Interesting.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Because you're sitting with that overnight when you should be resting. You should be resting, restoring rejuvenating. Sleep is our best anti-aging drug, let's just call it that and it's restorative. If we consider that and move dinner up, I think we're... I mean that's another concept too, so we can try maybe we can't... we have dinner, we have social lives. I mean I love to feast and party, right, so there's times... always cycling, cycling in cycling out, creating that metabolic flexibility that's so important, but on a regular basis to acknowledge what's happening in our bodies and then also like, okay, well I feel really good when I do this. All right, so that's your one type of fasting?
Mindy Pelz:
Yeah and just to make a point on that. I think that's the one thing I would encourage people to do is find your eating window. Find your fasting window that works for you, because you're absolutely right. It doesn't always have to be that you skip breakfast even though that's like what you hear is the typical, it could be skip dinner. I had an interesting conversation with Jason Fung about... I asked him if he had ever seen fasting and low-carb not unstick somebody from weight loss. Like have you ever seen it not work for somebody? And he said, nope, I've never seen it not work. What sometimes happens is that people have to constantly change their eating window and their fasting window. If they're eating dinner all the time and skipping breakfast and they've got stuck, then they need to switch it and they need to start eating breakfast and skipping dinner.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Metabolic flexibility. I 100% agree that's the whole thing. You know, like I would say there's fasting and then 80% keto-green. Like my program that I talked about... which I do see my book on your bookshelf. Thank you so much [crosstalk 00:16:40].
Mindy Pelz:
It's behind me. We've got several copies and we've been sharing the love with all of our clients, so yeah, love your book.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Thank you, so again 10% fasting, 80% keto-green and then 10% feasting. That's kind of like my... that works for me.
Mindy Pelz:
Yeah.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Of course, I promote what works for me for the most part.
Mindy Pelz:
Well, I think though that combination works for most women. The key that you said there is feasting. I think that we have to remind ourselves that even though the principles of fasting are amazing, even though keto is incredible, if you do those two things all the time, which I see a lot of women do, you may get stuck and the goal is not to be in ketosis all the time. The goal is to do what you just said, to be metabolically flexible. Can you go in, can you come out like you want to be able to have that ability to go and enjoy a social event with somebody and then the next day you just click right back into keto. That's what we're looking for.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Absolutely I agree. Okay, so in other types of fasting.
Mindy Pelz:
Usually, once somebody has mastered intermittent fasting, then I will go to increasing them to a 24 hour fast. I think this serves a couple of purposes. There's a lot of people out there that call the one meal a day, so the [Omad 00:18:00]... people who follow Jason Fung or a lot of people are... love the one meal a day. It's very convenient, especially once you've learned to go without food and I think it accomplishes two things. Ketones are neuroprotective, so the longer you can stay in a state of ketosis, the more healing that is happening, especially in the brain. I loved what you said about how whenever you want to have your brain work right, you don't eat. That is a huge shift.
Mindy Pelz:
I hear so many women or people in general that eat because they've got something and they want to have fuel for their brain. There is no better fuel for your brain than a ketone. One meal a day allows people to get deeper into ketosis and then I think with the weight loss people, this is where I see the idea that the longer you stay in a fasted state, the more you force your body to go and find the stored glucose, the stored insulin, like where it's stored, sugar and fat and it'll release it from there. I've seen people with liver issues that will heal where it's like the body has to go find what it had stored years ago. How cool is... that we were designed like that.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
I love it and first describe keto to tell people what a ketone is.
Mindy Pelz:
When your blood sugar stays low enough for a significant period of time, your body has to find another fuel source. It will switch from being the most... simple way to say this is it'll switch from being a sugar burner to a fat burner. The liver produces something called ketones. This is what everybody is measuring. When you measure your ketones and you see that ketones are on the rise, it typically is a sign that the liver is now in fat burning mode. It's a sign that our body has made that shift. What I think is the most interesting thing about that process is if we are truly primal. If you go back and you look at how we were designed, in the cavewoman days we were meant to go long periods without food but if we got lethargic and foggy in our brain were we going to be able to go and find food? No, we wouldn't be able to do that. We would be like passed out in the cave and eventually we would die.
Mindy Pelz:
Everything in our body is programmed for survival. What happens with ketones is once your body makes this shift, you become more mentally alert, you become less hungry, you get more energy because now your body's designed to go out and hunt. It's designed to go out and find food and I think that is what is so miraculous about this idea, is that your body will make this shift and ketones are a sign that it's done that.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
I love it. Yeah, absolutely and I think that's great to tie it back into how we were designed and also over age 50 right, over age 40, 50 you know, past the reproductive years. I mean, we're the ones that we're starving the most. Everyone else eats, the hunters, the kids, the reproductive age, and then we are more restricted. We're making sure everyone else eats first and I think that's just part of our design. It's even more important by design as we grow older-
Mindy Pelz:
That's it I love that.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Oh my God, Mindy, if I haven't [crosstalk 00:21:24]-
Mindy Pelz:
I hadn't thought about that but you're right. You're absolutely right because-
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
And the wise woman of the tribe, right?
Mindy Pelz:
Yeah.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Fasting, fasting, fasting.
Mindy Pelz:
Love that. I love that and I think when we go back, what I love about fasting and even just the ketogenic world in general, is that it's helping people get a belief in their bodies again. We've never been taught how to use this tool we live in all day long and there are so many incredible ways in which our body heals and as we start to learn like how a woman's body is designed and what we need, if we can condition our lifestyle or build a lifestyle around that, you will see that abundant energy, keeping weight off, keeping those hormones balanced, sleeping, mental clarity, all of that is really at your disposal because you were designed to be like that. Like you say, we're not designed to suffer through menopause.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
No.
Mindy Pelz:
If that's happening, then how do you hack into your design?
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Exactly, and now so with the fasting, the different types of fasting, let's go into that just some other... and everyone can do the 13 to 15 hour fast. That is so doable and as you said, you're not going to have hypoglycemia. Don't worry, just make sure you're getting enough healthy fats and protein [inaudible 00:22:42]to following some of the recipes like that are in my book. Mindy, let people know how to get ahold of you.
Mindy Pelz:
Yeah, the easiest way to get ahold of me. You can either go to my website, Dr. Mindy Pelz, my community the Resetters on Facebook is so much of where my heart is because we fast every month together and they're just people on a journey trying to learn. You can go to Facebook and just type in Resetters and you'll see us there and then I've put all of my fasting and keto videos on YouTube so people can find me on YouTube as well.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Okay, excellent. I know we're going to do some keto-green fasting on your Resetter try.
Mindy Pelz:
Yes. That is one of the... once I want to test and then what I want to do is, I think I have your strips here. I want to test alkalinity throughout the week. One of the fast that I came up with, I call it autophagy fasting. I learned some of the principles from Naomi Whittel and her idea was that when you break a fast you should break it with fat and a lot of people love that. We ran a whole autophagy fasting, which is you go about 17 hours without food. When you break your fast, you break it with fat so that you don't spike your blood sugar.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
For example, what-
Mindy Pelz:
Like an avocado, nut butter, some ghee. Some people just do ghee. My new favorite product is ketomanna. I don't know if you've tried that. It's like MCT oil with some cocoa powder in it and it comes in these little packs so you can eat it on the go, but just something to not spike your blood sugar but to keep your blood sugars even so you stay in autophagy and it's a good way to get people to these extended fasts. My point in telling you this, I want to create another fast where we break it with greens. I think that's a beautiful idea and what would that look like, and could people break it with greens and then you don't really eat another meal for a couple of hours afterward. It's a good way to see what greens and fiber do for you and you can test your blood sugar with it.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Yeah. Greens, fat, and fiber. And so that... I think one of the things in my philosophy around that too is like as we're in autophagy we're releasing toxins and how do we support phase two detoxification? It's through the micronutrients, right, and the antioxidants to help encapsulate those toxins and help us eliminate them and if we're not adding those, are we actually... we're creating free radicals. Are we actually doing... like what are we doing there? And so my philosophy is that, and so let's talk about different ways we break fast because... so this is one of my things, I'll tell you what I've been doing for fasting.
Mindy Pelz:
I was going to say... are you going to disclose your-
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
I'll disclose them and talk about how we break fast. This is holy week and refer whatever time you guys are listening, but this is holy week for me and so starting palm Sunday I started fasting and I decided Sunday night to go ahead and dry fast and so not like, listen, I know there are many people opposed to dry fasting and there's good reason. I have been fasting and intermittent fasting and detoxing for 15 years now, so do not try this, but [crosstalk 00:25:50].
Mindy Pelz:
Yeah, agree.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
...for those biohackers that are out there that want to push it in a 24 hour dry fast, we're going to do what we can do in a three-day water fast, pretty much and according to... even Jason Fung says that, but he is against dry fasting. I've read some of the Russian literature with help and translation. I've read some of the work. There's another practitioner in Australia that's been doing this for quite a while now and very skeptically, did it myself and so just 24 hours actually did a 48 hour dry fast, and so broke my fast with herbs and bone broth and broke it that way, and then now just intermittent fasting for one meal a day and then I'll do another two day dry fast or water fast.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Haven't quite decided on that one yet but it's fascinating the energy level and also because of that whole metabolic flexibility is, it takes for me, it's challenging to get into ketosis even though I've been doing this now for a while, but it is challenging for me to get into ketosis so when I went and brought[inaudible 00:26:53] myself right back into ketosis, I will extend my fast in order to do so for the most part and then maintain it and keep lacking. That's what I've done but in the mornings now, I would typically normally would do a water or bone broth or keta-green shakes throughout the day just type of... those different types of fasting, pseudo fasting to empower detoxification, elimination of toxin's really key to heal the digestive lining, and to empower my energy, get into that keto-green state as quickly as possible for that clarity.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
I found through these years of intermittent fasting, if I'm even just doing a 13 hour to 15 hour fast, when I wake up in the morning and one thing I do, Mindy in my programs I recommend is if women have nocturia, they're getting up one, two, three times in the middle of the night to use the bathroom after dinner nothing more than a hot tea [inaudible 00:27:49] ounces, right, because why is where, you know, number one, it dilutes our digestive enzymes and we need to digest our food with our digestive enzymes. If we're diluting them, we're diluting that process and then we're not going to get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
That helps us get better restorative sleep, so that's the one thing, and then when you wake up drink that tall glass of alkaline water with lemon juice and I've used Mighty Maca and I always get that question from my audience. Well is Mighty Maca technically breaking your fast? And I'm not sure if... I mean it's hard to test mTOR. Is it or isn't it? But I know this that I feel more energized throughout the day and I'm adding these alkalinizes, these detoxifiers into my system to help quickly flush out any toxins that have been released in this process, right, and for me that makes a difference. What are your thoughts on my... where we'll be fasting?
Mindy Pelz:
Let me kind of go through each piece of what you said. The first thing I would say is I think for somebody who's new to the ketogenic diet, I think that the very first step is to understand if you do 13 to 15 hours of fasting and you do keep your carbs down, can you get into ketosis? Because if you can, and can you go without food where you're not suffering? If you can, then I think that's like the base we all should launch from. From there I say you can trick it out in any way you want to. When I heard you talk, I'm like, you're absolutely right. You are metabolically flexible.
Mindy Pelz:
If you do bone broth or you do Mighty Maca, there's a good chance it's going to keep you in autophagy, it's going to keep you in a ketogenic state because your mitochondria are healthy. You've put a lot of work into your health overall in your life. For someone like you, it may work. For somebody who is really, has a tremendous amount of mitochondrial dysfunction and is really struggling to lose weight, sometimes those little pieces like drinking bone broth or doing the Mighty Maca may not be the best scenario to help their mitochondria repair and get unstuck from that dysfunctional place. That's what I've noticed.
Mindy Pelz:
Now, here's the way you test. This is the easiest way because you're right, we cannot test autophagy and somebody's going to come up with a way to test autophagy and they'll make $1 million at it because it would really help us all. On my YouTube channel, we talk... oh my God, there are so many discussions about when autophagy kicks in and everybody thinks they understand it, but I'm going to go to the point that we're all unique, but here's how you test it.
Mindy Pelz:
You test your blood sugar. Like on a reader, see what it's at, drink the drinks. Drink, Mighty Maca, do the bone broth and then a half hour later test your blood sugar again. If your blood sugar stays the same, if it drops, you're going to be fine. I tested Mighty Maca. I was so excited when you sent me all those wonderful treats, thank you and most of my busy days in my clinic I don't eat until I come home, and so as the Mighty Maca was sitting there and I'm like, I looked immediately at the ingredients and I was like, I wonder if this will kick me out.
Mindy Pelz:
Sure enough, does not and it's been a great thing to drink in the afternoon when I know I'm going 24 hours in a fasted state. For me and probably for you, it's a really nice thing to reach for when you're trying to extend that fast. Just like bone broth can be that way too.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
You told me about that, so I checked my blood sugar with Mighty Maca and it actually goes down. Was fascinating because I'll drink it in the morning break... like I don't call it breaking fast because I like my breakfast to be my keto-green smoothie, but alkalinizing, hydrating, getting Mighty Maca in, and so I don't consider it breaking fast and to prove like what is it doing for my body? What's the physiology versus the ideology.
Mindy Pelz:
Right.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
And then I was watching and my blood sugar dipped a little bit and I was like, how cool is that? I love that. That's a way that to look at it, to gauge it, and how was it... because everyone's different. How is it responding to you? Because mitochondrial damage is really key. Talk about that Mindy. Like how does someone know if they've got mitochondrial damage?
Mindy Pelz:
Yeah. What I think is so cool about what we're learning about being metabolically flexible is that for years we thought that the dysfunction was always in the nucleus. It was always in our genes and much of medicine still thinks this way. You walk in, you're told you have a diagnosis of cancer. The typical question would be why, and the doctor says, it's just in your genetics. Well, epigenetics changed all of that and wonderful researchers like Thomas Seyfried have us looking at maybe there's another part of the cell that has a dysfunctional state to it here that we need to be addressing. Terry Wahls is a great example of... I love her story because she really, with her MS realized it was not a genetic thing that she could have a lot of control over the mitochondria.
Mindy Pelz:
I love how obsessed the nutritional and the functional medicine world is with mitochondria. I think we should be obsessed with it. Now, how do you... to answer your question of how do we know if our mitochondria are not working well, I think the most... the easiest way to tell is if you cannot go without food. If you cannot go without food and I learned this from Dr. Nasha Winters who you should have on your podcast as well. She calls herself a thriver of cancer. She had cancer years ago and she's a naturopathic doctor and discovered that if all she did was repair the mitochondria, that it actually made her cancer go away and she's in remission now. This is like a decade. She was one of those people that got a short sentence and now here she has decades later still alive.
Mindy Pelz:
What she said, and I would agree, is that if you cannot go without food, if you're struggling to go 10 hours without food, there's a good chance you've got a mitochondria that's got a tremendous amount of dysfunction in it.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
So good. That is so good. That's a great, great point and so the first steps to increasing that is that short intermittent fast, right?
Mindy Pelz:
That's right.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Can do that short intermittent fast and then start with these principles.
Mindy Pelz:
To make a point on that that I think people need to know is that when you first start to fast and your mitochondria of your cells are not healthy, it's not really comfortable. That transition into the longer fast may be uncomfortable, but guess what? If you just look at everything in life, like if you get to a point in life where things are really tough, what happens out of that is you grow and you become a stronger person. You learn new strategies, right? Well, the body does the same thing when you force it into adaptation when you put it to its edge, you may not feel good in that moment, but what it's going to do is it's going to repair and the more you do that, the easier this gets.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
No pain, no gain is that what you're saying.
Mindy Pelz:
Yeah a little bit, but again I'm going to say take it with love because you don't have to suffer through the process, but if you hang in there, 13 hours may seem daunting right now but if you hang in there, I promise you there'll come a time like what happens to most of us where you go 18, 19 hours you don't even realize that you haven't eaten.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Right, and again it's a muscle. Fasting is a muscle that you exercise. The first time I did fasting. It was like, oh my God, I was obsessed with food and to know ghrelin our hunger hormone peaks at 48 hours, so that day two is really, really hard, but then you get through that and you're like, okay, I can do this but it's an exercise. You work up to it because... and if we should. We should go to the uncomfortable. Push our bodies into the uncomfortable. We are way too comfortable as a society right now too.
Mindy Pelz:
Yeah. I mean, think about, we eat... we have access to food all day long. We eat all day long but that's not how our bodies were designed.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
It is not. One of the things I learned when I was in France, part of my world journey 2006, 2007, we did a home exchange. We stayed in a southern French area near Toulouse. What I noticed, I mean like we went, I've got the kids, we're late doing whatever, getting up and we go to have breakfast, well, I'm sorry it's closed from such and such an hour. If you're not there for the petit déjeuner times a little... for breakfast times or lunch times there's no dinner time. There's no food in between. You can't get food, yes can have a [inaudible 00:36:43] for something, but you cannot give... no, we are not cooking for you. You know what you need, and so that's no snacks and then the other thing, and this is something we noticed in Holland and many places in Europe, you don't get water at the table. You don't get free refills.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
I mean destroy... I just did a blog. I don't know if I've released it yet, but free refills destroy our digestive track.
Mindy Pelz:
Interesting. I love that idea. That's so true, and you know what also happens in Europe. What do people... most people have a cup of coffee in the morning and then they don't eat until later in the day. I think that's also... I mean, and in some sense, they're staying in a fasted state and they have one big meal a day. There's like one meal where they sit down and have it all together.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Yeah. In different cultures, different experiences but that like again, the longevity culture is community. What we're establishing here. Now, one thing I wanted to ask you was this is something that always gets asked, will fasting destroy your metabolism?
Mindy Pelz:
Yes.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Let's talk about that.
Mindy Pelz:
Yeah. Okay. I love this question because I get asked it all the time. I think you have to ask yourself, where does metabolism come... what part of the cell controls metabolism? And we know we're back at the mitochondria. The first thing I would say is that the ketogenic and fasting lifestyle will repair the mitochondria like we said and most of the time people will find that it actually speeds up their metabolism. The opposite happens which again is so counterintuitive to what we've been taught. The only place I've ever seen it really affects people is with a couple of things.
Mindy Pelz:
One, if all they do is keto and fasting day after day after day, they don't have the green variety. They're not feasting, the best way I can explain that is it would be like stocking your fireplace with firewood and you look at all the firewood you have and you're like, this is amazing I'm just going to burn fires every day and then one day you look at your firewood selection and you're like, oh, I'm kind of low. I think I'll slow down on how much I burn my fires. The same thing can happen in the human body when we're in deprivation for too long with too much fasting, too much keto is that it can slow down because it doesn't know more as coming. That's why you throw a feast day in there every once in a while.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Exactly.
Mindy Pelz:
The way I recommend is that [crosstalk 00:39:18].
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Maybe a little too frequently, but okay.
Mindy Pelz:
Yeah, right, but you can do that once you're metabolically flexible, you can go on vacation and eat whatever you want and then come back and click into a keto fasting life but I think five days a week, you know, do keto five days a week with intermittent fasting. I think that's great. I think one day a week you take and you try to push your fast a little bit longer, you try to experience that and then I think one day a week you feast-
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
And I love it.
Mindy Pelz:
You don't fast, you just enjoy yourself. For me, that Sunday where we get together as a family and it's freeing to not think about it on that day.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Yep and that you've prepared your body. What I found interesting was the science, and this blew my mind too when I looked at it. Fasting won't decrease our metabolism but caloric restriction will.
Mindy Pelz:
Right.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
That's counterintuitive, right, and so that makes it easier to fast for me knowing this. Let's talk about that because fasting, not eating anything, water fasting or even... but when we're doing just low caloric restriction, I'm not exactly sure how many calories there, but when we're caloric restriction, our body is like, okay, I'm getting used to this and I am going to slow down my metabolism just like your wood burning analogy which I love, caloric restriction for the long run that's why the yo-yo dieting.
Mindy Pelz:
That's right.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Years and decades of yo-yo dieting that we've experienced. Fasting over low-calorie restriction which brings into the longevity diet Valter Longo, that's a caloric restriction diet. The fasting mimicking... is that like how... that's one thing I haven't dug into. I'm interested in but I want your opinion because that seems like that's a caloric restriction. Will that destroy our metabolism?
Mindy Pelz:
I'll talk about fast mimicking in a moment. Let me talk about the caloric restriction really briefly. It changes your set point and I think Dr. Fung was really the one that brought that to our attention that when you lower calories and you hop on the treadmill and you increase your output, what happens is you start to change your set point, so now when you go off of that calorie restricted diet or you're not on the treadmill for hours a day, then your body has this new set point. That's not fasting and the ketogenic diet, we're not calorie restricting, we're just changing your eating window. When you eat, eat, and this is where your keto-greens is awesome because eat a lot of greens, eat a lot of vegetables, like eat, but then when you fast you fast. It's just a change of how we're approaching this weight loss problem that so many people have.
Mindy Pelz:
Okay. Having said that, fast mimicking. I love fast mimicking, it is also a study that has... his studies proved it to create stem cells, really impressive research. He showed that with calorie restriction, with protein restriction, those were his two main variables that you could... he could actually see pancreatic cells regrow when you did it five days in a row and he did once a month, five days week for three months, saw these cell regrow in type one and type two diabetics.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Wow.
Mindy Pelz:
Type one, let's go... let's just go to them.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Right. You're right because they've been written off right?
Mindy Pelz:
They've been totally written off like, oh, your lifestyle doesn't make a difference but what he showed is that you can actually regrow these damaged cells. Now having said that, fast mimicking is calorie restriction. I do not recommend you do it all the time, nor does his research. His research showed you do five days of fast mimicking in a row once a month.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Wow. Okay, good. Good [crosstalk 00:42:55].
Mindy Pelz:
I love that.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
But that's flexibility again.
Mindy Pelz:
Yeah. You tap in like we're going to do this with the next fast for the Resetters. I'm giving people two different options. They can do five days of fast mimicking or they can do three days of water fasting because both of those have proven to secrete stem cells. We're going to focus in on stem cells, and that's where we'll... gosh, if I have a choice between eating some greens and some veggies for five days or eating nothing for three days, I'll take the greens and veggies for five days I don't know about you but-
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Yeah.
Mindy Pelz:
You should try it and you should try... he has a ProLon, which is his pre-made food. Have you tried that at all?
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
No, not at all. I haven't yet.
Mindy Pelz:
You should try it. We tried it-
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
I have to get him on my podcast too and I'll try it and then get him on my podcast and see what's interesting though, because fasting increases our secretion of stem cells and in that state, like insulin sensitivity improving, that is how only in the state where stem cell therapy works better, right?
Mindy Pelz:
Yep. Absolutely.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
In the fasting state. In those instances that's really a critical component too. It's fascinating what's coming up in the research now and then also again, it is reinforcing traditional wisdom. There's no societies, the Orthodox religion like Greek Orthodox religion fast like I think it's a total of over 200 days a year, like from extended fast to different types of fasting and that's key. Muslims in Ramadan, they're fasting daily. There's a reason this time of year, which is typically coming out of winter when food is scarce anyway until the harvest comes in.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
It's like there's some traditional wisdom to that and then when we're exposed to 24-hour drive-throughs, when it's really hard to resist sometimes and so recognizing we have to honor our bodies design, the intelligent design of our body and give it the time and space to restore itself. Right?
Mindy Pelz:
Yeah. If there's anything I love about the craze that everybody has about fasting right now is that I feel, and I don't know if you see this in your community, I feel like we're moving from a time where we used to give so much wisdom to the pill or to the surgery or to the doctor like there was so much like that's going to be the cure and I'm not saying that that doesn't have a place in time, but what I see is that with things like the keto life and fasting is we start to realize just how smart our bodies are and that we have this internal wisdom that nobody ever taught us how to tap into and sometimes that chronic brain fog you have, that chronic fatigue, that waking, it's not going to come in anything more simple than just fast. Just start fasting and rely and see what your body can do to heal itself. It's like the ultimate doctor within.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Exactly, and so I would just encourage all listeners to take back your power over your body, right?
Mindy Pelz:
Yes, exactly.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Your body, honor its design. Mindy, it is always a pleasure speaking with you.
Mindy Pelz:
Thank you.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
I want to thank you so much for being with us today and for our listeners, drmindypelz.com, D-R-M-I-N-D-Y-P-E-L-Z.com and her Resetters group on Facebook, so search Resetter on Facebook and join her community and she's a wealth of information as well. She has a podcast and she's just tied into the best and the brightest and as you can tell from our conversation, we just love each other.
Mindy Pelz:
We do and hey, I got to tell you, I've been working on my oxytocin. It's awesome. It's such... of all of the hormones to work on it sure is the most fun.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Exactly. It is right in line. Mindy, just to... give us one pearl, if there's one thing that you think everyone listening should do is able to do on a regular basis, what's that one pearl, the next right step for our listeners that you'd like to give?
Mindy Pelz:
I think you should look at creating a fast... what I call a fasting lifestyle. I did a video on the seven different fasts that I recommend. It's on YouTube, but what you eat matters. I think the timing of when you eat and your fasting window matters as well. If you're just learning this for the first time, don't get overwhelmed and just dive in. There's no wrong way. I always say there's no thing as a failed fast. You just jump in and you start working the principles and you will be blown away at what your body can do.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Absolutely. Well, I want to thank you, Dr. Mindy Pelz for joining us today and encourage everyone listening to join her Resetters tribe in her community and check out her website and if you are in Silicon Valley, but she sees patients from all around the world and that is about empowering your body using... tapping into what really works to help improve mitochondrial health. That is our energy, that is our cellular powerhouse and when it comes to disease, that's often where it's beginning.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
I encourage you to get with her and her team of amazing people and I want to thank you guys for listening today. Please share this episode, let your friends know about it and I am always so grateful for your reviews and your feedback and your questions, so thank you for leaving us a review. I read every single one of them and so appreciate it. Makes a difference in and bringing us out into the world and bringing this information into the lives of those you love and creating healthy community all around. Thank you all for joining us today. Thank you Dr. Mindy.
Mindy Pelz:
Thank you. This is awesome, and thank you for the good work you're doing. I mean, I think one of the things we geek out on each other with is just, there's so much great information people need to know about, so you're doing amazing work out there. You're everywhere, by the way. I see you everywhere I turn, so you're doing such a good job.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Thank you. Thank you again.
