Ep. 143 - Why Fasting Matters in Disease Prevention | Getting your Blood Sugar Under Control | Free Intermittent Fasting Plan for OMAD

Uncategorized Sep 20, 2022

In today’s episode, Dr. Scott and Tommy discuss WHY fasting matters in disease prevention, medications that can raise blood sugar, and why it is so important to get your blood sugar under control and prevent blood sugar-related conditions. Listen in and catch the conversation!

 

Let’s continue the conversation. Click the link below to JOIN the Fasting For Life Community, a group of likeminded, new and experienced fasters! The first two rules of fasting need not apply!

 

Fasting For Life Community - Join HERE

 

New to the podcast and wondering where to start? Head to the website and download our FREE Fast Start Guide, 6 simple steps to put One Meal a Day Fasting (OMAD) into practice!

 

Maybe you are an experienced faster and wondering about your results and IF they could be linked to INSULIN resistance? Head over to the website and download our FREE Insulin Resistance Assessment!

 

Or get both here at our website: 

www.thefastingforlife.com/resources

 

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Reference Articles and Citations:

https://www.levelshealth.com/blog/medications-that-can-raise-blood-sugar/?__s=72dghf497nkahcwgdg5y

https://www.levelshealth.com/blog/leading-causes-of-death-high-blood-sugar/?__s=72dghf497nkahcwgdg5y

 

 

Fasting For Life Ep. 143 Transcript


[Dr. Scott Watier]
Hello. I'm Dr. Scott Dr. Watier.

[Tommy Welling]
And I'm Tommy Welling. And you're listening to the Fasting for Life podcast.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
This podcast is about using fasting as a tool to regain your health, achieve ultimate wellness, and live the life you truly deserve.

[Tommy Welling]
Each episode is a short conversation on a single topic with immediate, actionable steps. We cover everything from fat loss and health and wellness to the science of lifestyle design.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
We started fasting for life because of how fasting has transformed our lives, and we hope to share the tools that we have learned along the way. Hey everyone, welcome to the Fasting for Life podcast. My name is Dr. Scott Water and I'm here as always, and my good friend and colleague, Tommy Welling. Good afternoon to you, sir.

[Tommy Welling]
Hey, Scott, how are you doing?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Fantastic, my friend. Excited for today's episode. We're going to take a little different conversation and angle than we have in quite some time. But I think it's going to be really impactful to shed some light on why, why, why, why we feel fasting is so important and so powerful, especially in today's world when it comes to our health.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So that is the foreshadowing of what today is going to be about. When I welcome all of the new listeners in if you are new to the podcast, you've been searching for a specific topic, you've found us welcome and encourage you to go back to the first couple of episodes and listen to our story of how Tommy and I ended up here with you each and every week, bringing content and conversation and nuance and encouragement and shedding some light on the power of the fasting lifestyle.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And yeah, as a long term listener, we want to thank you for continuing to be on this fasting lifestyle journey. I have seen an adaptation of fasting in all different walks of life lately. It seems to be becoming more mainstream. Some people still think it's a tad bit crazy, but if you give us enough of your attention, if you speed up the episodes and you listen to a little bit, I think you're going to see where we stand and why as we unpack some research and life applications.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And today we're going to talk about the underlying reason as to why it is so important to get your blood sugar under control and prevent blood sugar related conditions.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, absolutely. Because that really is at the heart of the matter, literally because our blood sugar, our levels, our control of it are going to be big time determining factors in so many related morbidities and mortalities that we're going to talk about today. And fasting is such a powerful tool. Maybe the most powerful tool that we can have, that we can start moving these things in the right direction and start, you know, heading in the direction that we'd like to be going as far as our health and our health journey.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. So not getting, you know, heavier, less energy, more sickness, more disease as we get older. Yeah, but actually obtaining health and first and foremost, the article that we're going to talk about today was from Levels Health and it's a Metabolic Insight article was written by Jennifer Brady Marquez and reviewed by Rich Joseph, M.D. It was published on eight 1222 with an update on May 27, and it's about a ten minute read, but it really hit me and that we talk a lot about the fasting lifestyle.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
You know, most people come to fasting because it's the new weight loss thing, right? Oh, the new shiny object. Oh, it was pomegranate juice. And it's this thing and it was the South Beach Diet, it was Atkins and it was all of these different stuff. Right. But the reality was, when I was reading, this is like, oh man, yeah, this is going to be a little bit heavy.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
But the outcome of today's episode is going to be know that you have complete control over this. Okay, you have a choice when it comes to your progression of obtaining health throughout life or just kind of letting it happen to you. And fasting is a very powerful tool physiologically, emotionally, when it comes to connection with food, there's all the different layers in there as well.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And then we also want to have a conversation around medications that can cause unstable blood sugars, which you're in a catch 22. And we're going to unpack what that looks like and hopefully give you some encouragement and some action steps. And this is not medical advice. I'm just going to say this now. Right. And we'll say it again probably a couple more times later.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
If you're on a medication or talk about medications, don't stop taking it without talking to your doctor. Okay. I'll give you some insights about my journey. Your journey. Tell me my dad's journey. Share some of the things in the conversations you've had with some VIP coaching clients along the way as well. But the reality is, is that eight out of the ten leading causes of death in the United States are directly related to high blood sugar.

[Tommy Welling]
Wow. We don't even think about blood sugar a lot of times with with a lot of these diseases that we're going to talk about.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. Like do you have diabetes?

[Tommy Welling]
Sure.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
But then is the conversation ever even really hot then? Yeah, it wasn't for my dad.

[Tommy Welling]
Right?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
I can tell you that.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. Like you can get on the track of looking at so many diseases that are that are talked about a lot as like separate and distinct kind of things, but understanding that they all tie in or most of them tie in to what our blood sugar is doing, what our insulin response is doing, how quickly our blood sugar is actually coming down after it does go up, versus how long is it staying elevated.

[Tommy Welling]
That has a direct impact on the progression rate of a lot of these diseases or just the presence or lack thereof within the body, which is just mind boggling.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. And it starts with that, that definition and the responsibility of health. And for, you know, I've seen it in my dad and his friends in his generation a lot is that the responsibility of health is put into the health care system. And if you really look at the definition of health and where that disconnect begins is, in my opinion, that we're defining the word health incorrectly.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. And health is not just the lack of symptom or a lack of check engine light being on, but the World Health Organization defines it as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. Yeah. So you've got a blood work number that's off. You've got a cholesterol number that's off.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Do you have congestive heart failure at that point? No. Do you have cardiovascular disease potentially, depending on the type of tests that have been run or how long you've been experiencing it, but that is like the first sign that there is an imbalance. Are you chronically fatigued? Do you have numbness and tingling? Do you have, you know.

[Tommy Welling]
Unexplainable pain in certain? Yeah, it's.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Just something going on where you're like, man, I just don't feel right. Right. So, yeah, when we look at the definition of health and the system that we have, the system is very specific about looking at one condition, one symptom, and treating that one issue right. It's a mechanistic, reductionistic type system where the healing component of the body is that your body is a self-regulating, self harmonizing organism.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
There's this entire thing called homeostasis. You've got two sides of your immune system. They're supposed to balance out to protect you and keep you healthy. And when we start getting off from balance, then we start seeing symptomatology and then we are unwell or unhealthy. And the system that we have in terms of life saving situations, I mean, my goodness, do we have the best technology on the planet?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
But what we're talking about today with these eight out of ten conditions is going to be the lifestyle induced 70 to 80% of our disease in this country. We're not talking about the rare genetic conditions or the disorders. Right. Right. Okay. You've got the gene that mutates. No, we're talking about the 70 to 80% of the lifestyle conditions in this country and eight out of ten, 80% of those are related to blood sugar imbalances, specifically diabetes.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So while you may have diabetes going, okay, what do I do? You may never want to get it right. But the reality is the why is a lot greater than just because I don't want diabetes and have to go on medication.

[Tommy Welling]
Sure.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
It's the risk factor for all of these other conditions go through the roof and I'm just going to read them out and then we'll hit some highlights.

[Tommy Welling]
Wow. Okay. Right. Yeah. Quick point. One was that we oftentimes think about these diseases as like yes or no on or off or like, did the doctor check the box on my chart? Right. But most of these things happen as a progression and that's kind of the slippery slope, right? Where where we could find ourselves almost like like a frog in a boiling pot of of water as it kind of turns up.

[Tommy Welling]
So we need to understand how these are connected so that we can be aware that as the problem starts to kind of rear its head, we can do something about it. Or even better, we can prevent before we get to that point. And the other one was just the contrast between that word health, which has heal in it versus the word diet.

[Tommy Welling]
Our favorite D word that has the word die in it. Right? Health versus diet, heal versus die. That dichotomy there, it just hits me in the face.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And this. Right. So disease, disease, unease in the body. Right. So right. Yeah. That's a really cool point. I hadn't thought of it that way in a while. And this conversation almost seems like potentially out of place on a fasting podcast. You're like, wait a minute. Y Well, okay, because fasting is a super like superpower, superpower when it comes to balancing your blood sugar and getting your blood sugars under control.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
I'll tell a little bit about my dad's story in a couple of points along the way. And then the medication component that we're going to talk about later is just to know that if you are on these medications, we're going to encourage you to have a conversation with your doc about how to manage your lifestyle with this, because if you're on them, then you're absolutely going to have to make better lifestyle choices or you get stuck in a Catch 22 one.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Unpack that in a minute. It's that slow progression thing where you're going to be treating that one symptom and then in essence creating a bigger problem on the back, right?

[Tommy Welling]
So yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
When we look at the total overall numbers, 3.3 million people passed away in 2022, according to the National Center for Health. In eight of those diseases accounted for more than half of the deaths in 2022. Right now, we're not talking about COVID, but we will talk about pneumonia here in just a minute. So when we look at the conditions in themselves, we're going to be looking at things like cardiovascular disease, which was number one in 2020 cancers, stroke, chronic lower respiratory diseases like COPD, Alzheimer's disease, also now being referenced, type three diabetes.

[Tommy Welling]
Right.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Diabetes itself ranks number eight, right. Directly related to diabetes, not the complications from diabetes, influenza or pneumonia. And kidney disease. So there's also a conversation here about COVID, which became the number three leading cause, which prior to 2019 was renamed to COVID when it's actually in the family of pneumonia. So it was literally like part of this, even though they separated it off for this conversation, because obviously what we just went through never became more clear that we're sick in the high risk categories diabetes, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, all of that.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Your life was at risk because your body was in such a state that it could not fight the infection properly. So when we look at this, I mean, some of you don't know, man, this is this is a fun episode, right? Well, again, we're going to go back to insulin, right? Glycogen and glucose and blood sugar balance.

[Tommy Welling]
Okay. Yeah, because as we can exert more control on those main levers, then we can start to reverse what we've been inducing. Right. If we've been on the gaining weight or the declining health kind of journey before and we want to reverse the trajectory of that or if we want to prevent these things, because maybe there's a family history that I'm concerned about, like I have in mind, I have cancer, family history.

[Tommy Welling]
So I'm very aware, very cognizant of these kind of things going like, if I need a screening, I'm going to do it a few years before I might hear the recommendation for. But I also want to be cognizant that these things are very related and I want to protect the health that I have because I want to grow wisdom over time, but not be faced with a body that's on the decline over that same time.

[Tommy Welling]
I want to be enjoying life for a long term, right?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. If you're new to the podcast, Tommy and his journey, me and Tommy, I never know how to say that properly. Grammar police out there. Give me some grace. Give me science. Give me x rays. Any, you know, arthritic conditions. I'm good. Okay. But when it comes to the grammar on that nerves, that wire together, fire together, and that one is just wired in there.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So it's funny because somebody commented one day and every time I say it now, moving forward, I'm like, Man, is that, you know what? Never mind. So yeah, to be clear about the taboo, what I was talking about earlier, the pneumonia is before 2019, it was named coronavirus infected pneumonia, novel coronavirus infected pneumonia and then Nippy. And then it was changed to COVID 19 in 2019.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So it falls into the category of one of these conditions, which was never more evident, like I mentioned. So I just want to be clear and not misspeak on that. So we go back to these conditions and we're talking about cardiovascular disease, high blood glucose levels caused by diabetes, trigger specific pathways and chemical reactions. Right. And these pathways in turn induce oxidative stress and the wear and tear on the cardiovascular system and the large and small blood vessels by deteriorating that inner lining or that and it's helium.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So high levels of anabolic hormone insulin compound the effect. So when you have high levels of insulin because you have imbalanced blood sugar, then you are going to be compounding that effect on your cardiovascular system, which is going to be increasing the chance of strokes and cardiovascular disease. So now there's a key component here. Insulin also drives LDL cholesterol, which chronic inflammation then turns into plaques.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So if you are a diabetic that's on insulin, do you see the catch 22?

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
You're taking the insulin to bring your blood sugar down. But you then promoting the proliferation of the disease that you potentially already have because of the metabolic syndrome in which type two diabetes is a part of.

[Tommy Welling]
Wow. Trying to make one better and then making the other one worse at the same time. Right.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So have you had that conversation with your doctor?

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So then we could talk about the fact that if we look at the medication side of things, right? So the list of medications that can raise blood sugars include statins. Okay. Well, so now you have the increased LDL because of the insulin, let's say you're not on insulin, but your insulin is raised over the years. Sure. So you're in the abnormal range of a fasting insulin target and your insulin is up insulin controls the processing of your blood sugar.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. So now your insulin is high, your blood sugars are high, you're trying to control them. Your LDL goes up because of the increased insulin. Now you're put on a statin and statin is believed to increase the amount of cholesterol entering the body's beta cells. Right. So that interferes with the ability to transport glucose across the cell membrane, which is where your body tries to put the energy needs to be used by a cell stored in skeletal muscle or in the liver and it also reduces the activity of Coenzyme A, which is the antioxidant coke you ten, right?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So if you're not on coke, you ten and you're on a statin, talk to your doc. It's probably a good thing to do, but that also affects the insulin secretion process. So in 2012, the FDA was like, we need to put some safety label changes on here that include increased blood sugar. So you're on a statin, your insulin's high, you're not a diabetic yet you try to prevent cardiovascular disease, but the increased LDL, and then you've got the liver over here and then you're pushing and pulling.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So in this situation, then one of the best things you can do or one of the things you absolutely have to do is have a conversation about getting off the mat. Yeah, but then you need to make a necessary lifestyle change.

[Tommy Welling]
Well, you just described a lot of levers and buttons and and pulleys and gadgets, and I just I just saw, like, monkeys going into the cockpit, you know, and just start, like, just start knocking around on stuff because you don't even know what kind of anarchy is starting to happen. When I introduce all of these variables, I'm trying to control this one over here, but then this other one starts to go haywire over here.

[Tommy Welling]
And at the same time, if if I even understand that that statin may be raising my blood sugar and I asked my doc about it by doc is likely to say, well, that's just the risk that we need to take because we need to protect your cardiovascular system at this point. And so even if it does raise the blood sugar, then we'll deal with that if and when it happens.

[Tommy Welling]
Right, because that's not assuming that I'm willing to make any lifestyle change or that I that I understand that I could do something differently. Right? Yeah. And now I'm starting to get painted a dark corner here.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
It even said that the drugs benefits outweigh such risks.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Well, as a diabetic, if you're going to go to steroid injection and they tell you to make sure you're monitoring your blood sugar because it's going to go haywire. Right? Right. So it's like, okay, well, so you need to have the conversation. But the problem is that is lifestyle change. Well, how do I make lifestyle change? Right. Well, man, it ain't easy, especially if you're older habits.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
I don't like change. I'm 40 my 40 or 41. I don't know how old I am. And it's like I'm 40. I'll be 41 this year, so I'm not good with timelines and calendars. But all right, it's like, okay, so what do I do now? Well, don't go on Doctor Google and ask the best way to lose weight, right?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So a lot of people are like, all right, well, I'll start fasting. Great. Fasting is a way to like hack the system into getting you into a deficit, decreasing your insulin. But now you're on a medication scenario. What do I do? Do I take limit? Do I not? That's the conversation I need to have and feel confident that you can make the lifestyle change.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And that's where the diabetes research shows that if you go low carb at the two year mark, you're 816 back to where it was. And you've regained all the weight.

[Tommy Welling]
Because your weight's back to where it was.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Because your weight back to where it was. Right, exactly.

[Tommy Welling]
So and the lifestyle is where it was.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Exactly. Because you're restricting and committing so low calorie deficit. Right, Tommy, if we break that calorie deficit. So you want to lose weight, right? Calories matter, hormones matter. Sugar calories matter. Insulin matters, calories matter. Hunger hormones matter, thyroid matter where you are in your pre menopause, perimenopause, menopause. Are you still in childbearing years? Are you you know, like there's a lot of factors.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So now you're sitting there going, okay, if we're going to do 500 calorie deficit to lose weight, but then you break that the remaining calories over three meals and snacks.

[Tommy Welling]
The insulin the insulin spikes were so high that that calorie deficit may not even matter at that point because the insulin stayed so high that there's no there's no tapping into those fat stores that that's just how the body works. So we're going to have to do something to get those insulin levels down. But if I'm supplementing insulin because my my diabetes, my blood sugar is so out of control now I have another factor working against me right there.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So before we go to a couple of others, we're not going to go through the entire list, but the metabolic syndrome component of this. Right? So abdominal obesity, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high serum triglycerides and low HDL. Right. So that is associated with the risk of developing cardiovascular disease and type two diabetes. It's all related insulin, by the way.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
We keep saying the word insulin, key player in a lot of this, right? Yeah. So then if we're going to look at, you know, things like beta blockers, right, things that are supposed to lower blood pressure by blocking the hormone adrenaline. Right. And noradrenaline from binding to the nerves, beta receptors. Well, they directly have evidence that beta blockers reduce insulin sensitivity.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Insulin sensitivity is the opposite of insulin resistance. We want our sensitivity to be good because we want it to clear the elevated glucose. Well, what can you control in this situation? While you can control that, you need to increase your salt intake and you need to decrease your carbohydrate intake. And I'm not saying all carbs refined, processed carbohydrates mainly.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. And to bring your blood sugars down, your spikes down, and you bring your blood pressure down naturally not removing salt, but adding salt. Right. So there was a big study that they looked at subjects taking beta blockers, 20% increase in risk of type two diabetes. Wow. I mean, again, okay, we're trying to fix this, but now we're doing this and now.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So what's the key here? Insulin.

[Tommy Welling]
Blood sugar.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Insulin, blood sugar. How do we tap into that? Well, fasting is one of the easiest ways to restore that balance as quickly as possible.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, we've got to get better at our fasting, right? If we're going to if we're going to make any any dent, any progress on these things right here. And like you just mentioned, the calorie deficit right there with like like a 500 calorie deficit, let's say. But I'm not going to be able to do reverse like a pre-diabetic or a diabetic condition or, you know, needing to be on these medications by just like adding in a few veggies or dropping my calories a little bit and maintaining most of my same lifestyle that that got me to that spot.

[Tommy Welling]
Like, I'm going to have to do something that really starts to move the needle here, right?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. So just to highlight a couple of the others, just to make sure that we're mentioning them and then you can obviously click on the links, but we talk about cardiovascular disease. Now, let me finish up with the medication excuse me, the beta blockers, corticosteroid dri again, steroids, my journey with severe asthma. Advair, right, Tommy? The purple disc.

[Tommy Welling]
The little disc. Yep. 2000 times. Yep.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Uh huh. It's either. And albuterol combined with a with a steroid, right? So decreasing inflammation in the lungs. Flonase Open Airways.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. Yeah. You know.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So a lot of the corticosteroids are prescribed for, you know, IBD, rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, allergies. That's where it came in with me. Started to throw off my beta cell function.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
This started in the pancreas as well as immune function.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
With corticosteroids. Yeah. Okay. So 27% increase in post-meal glucose on a 30 milligram of pred nasal own excuse me, an oral steroid once per day for two weeks. I took multiple doses of those.

[Tommy Welling]
Oh yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
I was a snack aholic as a kid. Chronic asthma don't have asthma anymore.

[Tommy Welling]
Me too.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So treating one, creating another. By the way, I mentioned arthritis, asthma, all that other kind of stuff, right? So then we have our narcotics, antibiotics again, every little cough, cold or flu, antibiotic, antibiotic, antibiotic. Okay. Well, we're promoting short chain fatty acids and that's going to increase the hormone GLP one, which you know, can help with blood glucose and insulin secretion sensitivity.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So the connection between these two is a little bit more sparse. But I can tell you personally that when I was taking my antibiotic post-surgery, my cravings were crazy. Like, I don't know how else to put it. And I didn't want to end up like Rob Gronkowski with four surgeries on a forearm because his plate got infected. So I was like, okay, I'm going to do the surgery.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
I don't even have a pharmacy. I don't like taking medication, not my thing.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And I was like, okay, fine, I'll take it. But my goodness, I mean, I took my blood sugar a couple of times. One handed, right? Yeah. Arm was in a sling and I'm like, okay, yeah. My blood sugars were like, I was waking up in the one sixties in the morning. Hypoglycemia. Yeah. Blood sugar swings, cravings, fatigue, brain fog.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Granted, I was feeling like crap anyway, so I just had a surgery. But then, you know, over-the-counter decongestants, right? So weighing the benefits and risk to land the plane on the medication piece is, you know, having that conversation, empowering you to know what you're going to choose when you consume during your eating window.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. How how easy is it to to, like, walk into a, like a ready clinic kind of place or your doctor's office and and kind of almost, almost have maybe it's not the sniffles, but maybe it's like the equivalent of almost like the sniffles and say, hey, here's some steroids, right? Like, here's a dose pack or here's here's a round of antibiotics, right?

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. It's so easy. It's so readily prescribed. And I mean, it's great to have access to that kind of medicine, you know, like when you need it for sure, there's going to be something that I'm probably going to need to undo. That's just going to add to, like a little bit of fuel on the fire. Right. And if I can understand that, that's tipping the scales every time I do something like that.

[Tommy Welling]
Now I can understand where lifestyle choices really matter. And it it doesn't have to feel so difficult or like, why would I do that? Why is it worth it? You know?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. And that's part of it too, is like, all right, if you have to take this for some reason, right in a life saving situation, well, then know that your blood sugar is going to change. So know that your lifestyle is going to be affected. Know that your fasting lifestyle has to adapt to that situation. Great. Now, if you're on these things long term, okay, how do we get you off of them?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Well, we got to get the weight off the weight in itself is a metabolically active, signaling, living, breathing thing. Right. That you have to undo as well. So just to talk about my dad's story, he was on 120 units of insulin, 100 120 units of insulin multiple times a day on 17 medications at one point. And they just flew back.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Now, they've been here for a couple of weeks and he's lost 60 plus pounds. His blood sugar numbers in the mornings are no longer diabetic. His A-1 C on 17 medications by all in this category of stuff we're talking about. Yeah. Okay. Metabolic syndrome, high cholesterol, beta blocker, blood pressure stuff, blood pressure, all of it. Right. Multiple statins.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Multiple diabetes medications, right? Yeah. Metformin and Trulicity and of short.

[Tommy Welling]
Acting long. Acting short.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. Mitigating, right. Yeah. So his A-1 C's were always between eight and nine. Wow. On the medication.

[Tommy Welling]
Wow.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
His most recent control. His most recent test, 6.6.

[Tommy Welling]
Wow, that's incredible.

[Dr. Scott Watier]

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So what are we going to do? Yeah, my blood sugar numbers low. Okay. How do we do that? Fasting, right? I got it. And he hook, line and sinker. Man, I am so happy to this day that he did it because then he was able to not take his meds on the day that he fasted. Yeah, and that's a conversation you have.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
How do I get off of these things? We never hear people, like, get my blood pressure medication. Yeah, I plan on coming off on this in ten years. Right. I'm going to retire from my blood pressure medication in ten years.

[Tommy Welling]
And here's the plan. I got it all down now.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
I mean, the system isn't have that training docs don't have that type of training.

[Tommy Welling]
Sure. Yeah. It's so cool to hear those stories because you know, like if you're getting told that, you may need one of these medications. You know, one of our first questions is, well, how long will I have to be on it for? And usually it's like, well, until the problem goes away. Most patients are on it for the long haul or forever.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, right. Yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And what's the alternative? Well, lifestyle change. Okay, well, how do I do that or lose some weight? Oh, okay.

[Tommy Welling]
I don't do that.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
I've tried that my whole life.

[Tommy Welling]
Right.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. So it's not working. Exactly. So just to hit a couple of the other ones that are on this list, as we wrap up today's conversation and we're going to go over some action steps for you as a new faster in the prevention world versus a, I'm already in this situation because tell me, what does that an ounce of what's the phrase?

[Tommy Welling]
Oh, yeah. Like an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, for sure, right? At least, if not £100.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Undoing it is harder than never getting it right for sure. So we talked about cardiovascular disease and the relationship between ends and blood sugar. One of the big categories, the number two on this list was cancer. Right. And the reality is, is I've done a lot of conversations and a lot of talks throughout the years in churches and corporate wellness and in private practice, where you're doing a health talk and you ask the question like, okay, somebody ask a question about cancer, like, okay, well, who knows someone in this room that's had cancer and like damn near everybody in the room raises their hand.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right, right. So we know that when we look at the blood sugar relationships, there is an inflammatory component from hypoglycemia, meaning your blood sugar being high. And that causes several ways that cancer cells can thrive. Now, each cancer is different. The environment, the type, the nutrient density that it has, you know, some cancers feed directly on glucose, right?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Which pulls that away from the immune system, which can cause your immune system to come down oxygenation, alkaline versus acidic environments. Right. So what we do know that chronic low grade inflammation can accelerate metastasis and we know that hyperinsulinemia is also increase. So hyper insulin, right. Is increased cancer risk. So we know that there are multiple connections here with blood sugar.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So what do we do? We need to get our blood sugar down. Same thing we already talked about. Stroke, chronic, lower risk for disease, COPD, again, inflammation related, blood sugar related, glucose related Alzheimer's. Same thing. This is a big one. I want to touch on that just a little bit more diabetes, right. Is number eight on this list?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And then I want to touch on just the pneumonia component. So when it comes to the the Alzheimer's component, you know, I watched three of my my grandparents go through literally like declining through cognitive disease, through Alzheimer's. And I'm like I'm already seeing some of the signs in my dad and me and I'm like, Oh, goodness gracious. Well, I was on the prediabetes train.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, right. So it's like we know that there's blood glucose associations with a greater risk of dementia and Alzheimer's. So there's research coming out, right. You know, the earlier that type two diabetes is diagnosed, the greater risk of developing the disease later on.

[Tommy Welling]
Sure.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So the neurons are literally resistant to insulin. Yeah. So how do we do that? While we we decrease the demand for the glucose need, we start getting into ketosis through fasting. Right. And you can undo some of that starvation mode, mitochondria starvation in terms of the plaque formation and the proliferation of the dementia, Alzheimer's. So there's a big component of, you know, huge increased risk of of if you're diagnosed with a blood sugar condition that you're going to end up with the dementia Alzheimer's condition as well.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, well, what I just heard there was you mentioned two things that really stuck out to me. One was some of those cancer cells and then the other one was the the nervous system cells, those neurons and peripheral nerves. I mean, the blood sugar sitting at uncontrolled high levels for long periods of time are both feeding cancer cells that are looking to grow.

[Tommy Welling]
And they're also damaging nervous system cells. It matters what the solution is that they're sitting in right there. And so as as elevated blood sugar stays high and as is uncontrolled, it's damaging on one side that the cells that we need to protect and it's potentially feeding cells that we would never want to be there in the first place.

[Tommy Welling]
So if that's not a reason to say, okay, well, what what do I do about it? I don't know what is right.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And with diabetes, too, 90 to 94% of the diabetes cases are largely preventable and reversible.

[Tommy Welling]
Sure. Yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
If that's not my stat. Right. Like that. Yeah. Those are real statistics, right? So it's like 34 million people have diabetes and other 85 million approximately are undiagnosed with pre-diabetes or some type of blood sugar related condition. So yeah, I mean, we're worried about like the next little thing, but the reality is, is that we have to take control over this.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And the easiest way to do that is to control when you are stimulating that insulin production. We want to bring the blood sugar levels down. We want to bring the insulin down. We want to bring the inflammation down. We want to help balance out those cravings and give the body the opportunity to heal, prevent, restore, rather than continually just feeding the machine.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right? Throwing coal on the fire. So when we're talking about actionable things for fasting, we want this conversation to be more of a Yeah, this kind of sucks because nobody is really talking about it when you go to your doctor's office. So it's up to you. It's up to you to find people in your health corner and find a doctor that's willing to work with you on fasting or just make the decision yourself that I'm going to make the changes that are necessary because the statistics don't lie.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And that's the reality I want you to my dad, I watched my grandparents and I was on that path. Thank God I'm not any more Dr. Fong's books and the research and now the fasting lifestyle. So I want to give a couple of action steps, Tommy, and things that we can do tangibly, a day to day basis to make sure that we are restricting our intake and really working on that.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
That time. We don't say we omit, we delay, we delay. Don't deny this. We're just trying to go. Okay, yeah, I was working. I working in real time there. So my brain. Yeah, yeah, I.

[Tommy Welling]
I love that phrase. It's a good one. And so, like, if I'm sitting here and I'm hearing all these things and I want to get that ounce of prevention and I or I want to start moving in a different direction. Well, I need to start getting better at, at my fast and or starting to develop some of those boundaries that start to encompass a fasting lifestyle or lifestyle change improvement that's actually going to move the needle here.

[Tommy Welling]
So I need to get started. I need to start somewhere. And so if you think about it like just your your first overnight fast. So like, like creating the time gap between when is it that I'm eating dinner or the last time I'm eating during the day and I go, okay, well now through the overnight time, which is my, my highest potential insulin spike if I don't have good boundaries there.

[Tommy Welling]
So getting a good like evening routine leading from dinner to my fast and then just extending from there can be a great first step if you've never fasted before and that can really create an opportunity for insulin to start getting a little bit lower. And then you can kind of like dial it up from there. And if you've already done more than that, you've been doing 16, 18 hour window or something like that, you're ready to go into more of a one meal a day to drop insulin levels, even a little bit lower, then head on over to the website.

[Tommy Welling]
The fasting for life dot com. Grab the fast start guide, get the mini masterclass is a 20 minutes of videos to kind of help you put one meal a day fasting into your day to day life. And that's a really, really good place to be and to start moving the needle right?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. If you're dabbling hopefully today pushes you towards not fear. Yeah. And woe is me but more of the encouragement that it can be done.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Take action. Take right. And then small action. Right. Well like you just said, build on that action. So those habits that create the lifestyle. So absolutely losing the weight for me if you want to hear the story, 48 and a half pounds in 50 days, time of year. I mean, I don't even know where you're at anymore. You're like maintenance world, right?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
I'm still I've still got some strong man. Visceral, fat belly, too. You know where you got 70, right?

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. Yeah, just short of £70. Yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Losing the initial big chunk wasn't the hardest part. It's been keeping it off, maintaining and figuring out the new identity that comes with the life. Life. So I want to mention two things. One is the why. I'm going to throw that to you in just a second. But the second, because that's where we started the conversation today. Right.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Why is this important? Why does it matter? Well, yeah, you need to anchor to something, right? So I'll bring that to you in a second. If you are trying to reverse diabetes and blood sugar related issues and coming off medications, then I'm going to encourage you that intermittent windows and even oh mad isn't going to be for most people the end result.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
You're going to have to push into those that 30 to 36 hour point and that's when, you know, managing the meds, managing the social, managing the family and friends, the wives, the husbands, the partners. It's the kids, right. Gets tricky. And that's why we have the Facebook community group. That's why we do our challenges. Right. That's why we have the coaching is because those conversations are individualized and it's impossible on a podcast with 1.6 million downloads to have those conversations with all of you.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
That's why we develop those programs. But as you wrap up today, tell me the why component of this, to push you right, to dangle the carrot to bring you to the watering hole. We can't make you drink, but to go get that fast start guy, that y component is so important.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, it really is. Like, you really have to take a few minutes. Think about why one of these things may have resonated with you, or why you want to prevent something that family history from, you know, getting you or getting you out at an early age or, whatever it is that you're trying to prevent. What is that? Why?

[Tommy Welling]
Or is it the energy that I want so I can run around with my kids or my grandkids or live life a little bit differently than I am right now, a little less, you know, concern, frustration, anxiety, fear, a little bit more enjoying life, energy and, you know, just just feeling like I have things more under control and I'm working in the right direction towards health, towards heal and health, not towards right diet and diet.

[Tommy Welling]
Right. Like let me head in the in the right direction here.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. And if you want to you want to see some incredible wins. You want to hear more wins or more stories. Go back to episode 100 where we just talk about as a special episode. We just did all of the messages and the conversations we have and my dad's story, and there's hundreds of them over the last two and a half years.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So Go Back was in episode 100, go to the website, the fasting for life dot com and a resources grab the fast start guide if you've gotten the Fast Start guide previously and you're like, Well, I already have it. Well now you have videos that go with it, right? So I'm talking to you through the steps can reengage, take that action, get that momentum, get the result you're looking for.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And Tommy, as today's episode wraps up a little bit different conversation, a little bit different feel, but knowing that you have options that you you're going to reverse the direction of the top. The top is spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning or you're on the ground and you just take it off, right? So slow it down. Take a couple of small action steps.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Go listen. Episode 100, know that you have a choice. You have you have the ability to do this because there are other people doing it just like you.

[Tommy Welling]
So absolutely.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
As we wrap up today, Tommy, thank you for the conversation, sir. We'll talk soon.

[Tommy Welling]
Thank you. Bye. So you've heard today's episode and you may be wondering, where do I start? Head on over to V Fastening for Life dot com and sign up for our newsletter where you'll receive fasting tips and strategies to maximize results and fit fasting into your day to day life.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
While you're there, download your free fast start guide to get started today. Don't forget to subscribe on iTunes Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Make sure to leave us a five star review and we'll be back next week with another episode of Fasting for Life.

 

 

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