Ep. 55 - Intermittent Fasting Research Literature Review: Alternate Day Fasting (ADF) Lowers Insulin, 16:8 Fasting to Lose Fat, IF lowers inflammation in Multiple Sclerosis & Rheumatoid Arthritis | Free OMAD Intermittent Fasting Plan
In this episode, Dr. Scott and Tommy dive into the widely applicable intermittent fasting results from a robust review article published in the New England Journal of Medicine. They discuss the effects of various fasting protocols on a wide scope of outcome measures, including longevity, cardiovascular health, Multiple Sclerosis, Rheumatoid Arthritis, weight, physical fitness, to name a few. Understanding the range of potential benefits that fasting has been shown to induce can be a key factor in getting started or getting comfortable with powerful lifestyle changes.
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Fasting For Life Ep. 55
[00:00:01] Hello, I'm Dr. Scott Watier, and I'm Tommy Welling, and you're listening to the Fasting for Life podcast, and this podcast is about using fasting as a tool to regain your health, achieve ultimate wellness and live the life you truly deserve.
[00:00:15] Each episode is a short conversation on a single topic with immediate, actionable steps. We cover everything from fat loss on health and wellness to the science of lifestyle design.
[00:00:25] 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.
[00:00:40] Hey, everyone, welcome to the Fasting for Life podcast. My name is Dr. Scott Watier. I'm here, as always, a good friend and colleague, me Welling.
[00:00:46] Happy New Year to you, sir. I'm going to continue to say that probably for the next 60 to 90 days. I'm excited. I'm glad you're here. And I cannot wait for today's episode. You guys can't see this, but because we're in an audio medium. But Tommy is laughing on the other side of the Zoome call. So, Tommy, how are you, sir? I'm doing great. How are you? Great, man. I've seen so our funny, funny thing out there, people saying, hey, I've had my free trial of twenty, twenty one. I've had my seven day free trial and I want to turn that in and cancel my subscription. I say forget that because this is going to be, I believe, our best year yet. So I want to instill that for everyone that's listening. Much love and appreciation to you guys for the previous a lot of feedback on the previous episode. You know, it was cool to go back and look at the the strides we made this past year and some of the impact and some of the results. And you were just telling me about a couple of people in your in your private life that have seen just incredible results today via text. And I like stopped in my tracks. I was like, man, like, there's so much happening that we don't know about that we're going to continue to strive to bring better content and put some strategy to what we're going to do this year and how we're going to roll it out. So hopefully you guys will stick with us on this journey. But I'm super excited and today is going to be, I think, a cool place to start, because it's it's going to be almost like a review or an aggregate of eighty different research articles that was posted in the New England Journal of Medicine in twenty nineteen. And there's just so many amazing like we could probably talk about this one thing for for the next three months.
[00:02:31] Yeah. It kind of gets at the fact that whenever somebody asked me about the podcast or about fasting, it's kind of like I'm waiting for for a really specific question, like where should I begin or why should I be fasting or something like that? And it's like there's such a broad net, there's so many sweeping benefits and unknown, just cool things that are happening. And so like a study like this one that we're going to review today, just just going over so many different multifaceted benefits is is really cool and kind of gets to the the just overwhelmingly beneficial nature of what we're talking about.
[00:03:11] Yeah. And in our desire to continue to communicate our story, because that's pretty much what lent us to turn to the microphones on. Right. Like you and I had these conversations and we had these this changes in our life where we were able to get our life back and just completely change the trajectory of our of our health, never mind how we shop for our families and our business and our work and all that kind of stuff. But just on a day to day basis of being a healthy human being that wakes up and has Viðga for for the day, like, I mean, that that's what it was for me. So in the essence of us in our journey, we want to be able to deliver something that is going to continually be encouraging. And one of the biggest things that we hear in terms of feedback over the year in prepping for the previous episodes to launch twenty twenty one, you know, it was just people are grateful for the conversation, for the real live kind of transparency. And we always want to keep that going. So when we talk about what we're going to go over today, this is a review that I said that was posted. There's 80 different studies. So we're talking about everything from and I want to speak to how we try to complicate things and how we want to help you simplify over the next 90 days, six months, 12 months, and look back at twenty, twenty two and go, wow, I am so glad that I stuck with this.
[00:04:29] And, you know, one of the things in the study was that there's so many different intermittent fasting strategies studied. There's so many different windows, there's so many different time, restricted windows and feeding windows and and ten hour windows and six hour windows. And for our windows in two week studies, in eight week studies in rats and humans and elderly and middle aged men. There was a study with two hundred. There's a study with two like. So it was really cool to like start with this for the year. And I know it sounds the opposite of what I'm trying to convey, which is simplicity sounds very complex, but we want to do is really just kind of take the thirty thousand foot approach to what are the things that you can stand on in knowing that your body is doing what it should be doing regardless of the scale on a day to day basis, meaning in the bigger picture over the next 90 days, six months, 12 months. What are these things that are happening that are going to result in a completely different you, you know, three hundred and sixty five days from now?
[00:05:31] Yeah. Really taking the emphasis off of that search for the Holy Grail, right. I think that's what you're getting at too. Like that. You don't have to find there's. There's not a perfect fasting solution or a fasting interval that you need right this second today to regain your health and to get going on the right path for health and wellness and just your day to day life. And I think that's that's what a study like this is is really giving really good evidence for, because across the gamut of all those different, you know, fasting intervals that you mentioned and all the different benefits that we see, it's just it's amazing how how broad that is.
[00:06:14] So in full transparency, again, peek behind the curtain in the fasting for life, montera mindset, direction, whatever we're trying to do here and make an impact, deliver the message to the world that you do have a choice, that if what you've been doing isn't working, that maybe this is going to work for you. And we hope that it does the way it worked for us. When we when we look at the specifics of it, you know, if you if you do some form of delaying a meal or removing a meal or shortening your eating window, so to speak, if you're new to fasting, we're talking about the time that you're actually consuming food and consuming calories during that eating window. And then you're your fasting window is the time that you don't consume calories. If you fall anywhere between, like the 10:00 hour eating window down to like the one meal a day. This review is for you. So that's what we're talking about. We went. To the level of trying to customize each individual plan for each individual person, Tommy, right. And how did that work out?
[00:07:17] Yeah, depends.
[00:07:18] Depends on the person. Depends on the day. Yeah. It was a crapshoot beyond what was variable. Yeah. Yeah, it was a crap shoot.
[00:07:25] It was like, OK, so what are the principles here that we can stand on that will work. And if you fall anywhere in the intermittent to Omed window, what are the benefits that you're going to see? Because we've realized that customization is is is really difficult and it's it's how you started and how I started. We're different. How, you know, Sandy, who is one of our first implementors to this, just recently posted on one of our Facebook groups about Lois, what she's been and what I don't remember how many years for decades or something like this one off off a bunch of stuff, like just crushing it. And she stuck with it. And it's been 16, 18 months maybe, but completely life changing. And no, it hasn't been perfect. It hasn't been the same as what you did and what I did and what everybody else that we've taken through the one hundred and thirty one hundred forty people we took through the challenges last year. It's it's really that, you know, global principle or global understanding or just generalization that you got to try some things and you got to figure out what works.
[00:08:30] So what are we talking about in terms of benefits from the periods of fasting versus the periods of eating and sleeping? And that was a parallel that you really liked on me?
[00:08:41] Yeah, I did, because the body is really focused at certain times. And when we when we remove the food input, which we all we all normally do for for some period of time. But when we start. Yeah. Or even even between even if you are accustomed to three meals a day and multiple snacks a day, you still have a few hours there in between eating opportunities where the body is is focused on digestion. And then once it's kind of finishing up with that, it starts to move on to other important processes. But as we keep bringing in the food, it doesn't have very much of an opportunity to to rebuild and grow and repair. A lot of cool processes start once. It doesn't have to worry about the food so much anymore. And so that's that's what this study is starting to get out as well, kind of showing you where those where those lines are and what the body's able to to focus on at different times.
[00:09:41] So let's compare some of the biggest things I love. There's one thing about exercise here. We just we just touched on the sleep part, but some of the the overall long term adaptation is what we want. So the Yo-Yo dieting, the I'm on my exercise or eating plan, aka diet, low and slow calorie caloric deficit over months to years. You know that those that long term yoga wing or or resistance that build or it seems to get harder and harder to lose those six to eight pounds the later the decades tick tick up. Right. We want to look at the long term adaptations of long term outcomes, of the review of these 80 different studies and then kind of work back. Through some of the see-saw, so I want you guys to envision one of those old scales in your chemistry class or maybe a seesaw, right, where as me being the heavy kid, I would always have to have two kids on the other side of the seesaw growing up for it to actually balance out. Right. Funny visual. It's OK. It's fine. I can take it. One of my nicknames at one point in my life was lunchmeat.
[00:10:54] And I was I was never really overweight, like Fluffy, so to speak. I was always just big, right. Big, strong, solid. So I would be the guy on the side of the seesaw that would need extra people on the other side to kind of balance it out. So I want you to envision that balance where you've got equal weight distribution on each side of one of those old chemistry scales, like I mentioned. And we look at the periods of intermittent fasting versus the periods of eating and recovery. And some of the really cool things that take place are your body switches from a glucose based system, which is a quick, fast acting energy supply to a ketone or a hydroxybutyrate fueled system, which is where you really get into the fat burning mechanism of the body. And this can only take place after your glycogen stores have been cleared out and it allows your body. Now, there's a short term dump of fatty acids into the bloodstream and then those slowly get converted into ketones. And then you get almost to the state of ueber efficiency, like you get this energy boost.
[00:12:01] And one of the cool things that I was reading about that was where it was another study that was linked to this was talking about, you know, working out makes you hungrier where it's actually the opposite that takes place due to the chemical messenger adrenaline.
[00:12:18] When your adrenaline goes up and you're you're exercising and your body adapts to that over about a two week period, you find that you can transition in and out of fasted and fed states and also fasted exercise a lot easier and actually brings your body back towards balance in a quicker and more efficient way than if you were working out in a Fed state or if you were constantly living in that glucose or non ketone energy source environment.
[00:12:49] Yeah, that's a great point, because basically what I'm hearing is our bodies weren't really designed to just stay full of glycogen all the time and doing that, that's what that's what ends up bringing on that those couple of pounds of extra fat each year, year after year after year is because we're we're sitting in a mostly glycogen store full state. So so keeping those keeping those glycogen stores from being full, being able to switch over faster into and out of ketosis means that that that adaptation is where we can do it on a dime. It doesn't take necessarily multiple weeks when we're we're we're we're going through and we're staying in a more ketogenic lifestyle and less of a glycogen store less the more we're talking to for exact specifics here, like if we want to.
[00:13:46] So when we're talking about small changes, right. We're talking about small increases and decreases in blood sugar. So the human body contains about five liters of blood and about four grams of sugar, which is less than a teaspoon. Right. And then and the American Diabetes Association draws the line between healthy versus unhealthy under one hundred milligrams per deciliter of fasting, blood sugar. Right. Anything above that, one hundred to one twenty five is is pre diabetic. We're talking about one teaspoon of sugar. These small changes, less than one teaspoon of sugar excuse me, four grams can change the. You're right. Can can put you into a pre diabetic. Sapers the diabetics right now state now you want to see that come down over, you know, over a two to three hour window.
[00:14:34] And I'm actually wearing a CGM right now, which is a glucose monitor. And I'll be posting some updates on the Facebook page.
[00:14:42] But it's really cool to see, like, those small, tiny little changes like result in ten to twenty point spikes, like a sugar free pump to sugar free pumps and an espresso cause my sugar to spike like twenty points now. Well, and I'm like, what? So these tiny little changes is what we're talking about. The body super smart and we want to get back to that balance.
[00:15:07] So some other things you can see is your mitochondria, the energy producers of your of your cells, which gives your body energy that produce ATP. They actually have an increased resistance to stress. You have an increased level of antioxidant defense. You have increased the DNA. Air rights, these are all things when you're in a fasted state that can take place versus when you're in a Fed state, those are the opposite is going to be happening or you won't see necessarily you won't see a negative effect, but you won't see that that increase.
[00:15:40] Right. And I love some of the specifics that the article mentioned as well. Like one example was doing ADV alternate day fasting for twenty two days and that group showing a fifty seven percent decrease in their fasting insulin levels in just over three weeks. Huge, huge improvement there. And another one was.
[00:16:06] So tell me one point to that. So fasting insulin zero to twenty five is the normal range. So if you're say you go get tested you're at twenty four but your blood sugar is still coming back in the normal or pre diabetic range right on a fast a blood sugar test by three weeks you just said of alternate day fasting. So one day you don't eat, the next day you eat or some, some of the ADF people follow the 500 calories or less on the actual fasting day. Right. Right. So normal. Five hundred or less normal. Five hundred or less or normal. No eating normal. No eating right. Four for twenty one days. Right. So that might be 11 fasting days if you start it or 10 fasted days depending on what day you start. Right. In three weeks. Fifty seven percent. So if you're at twenty five on the insulin scale and you're still within the normal range or just below it at twenty four point nine in three weeks, you can be at half over half, almost 60 percent reduced, which is incredible.
[00:17:08] Yeah, that was amazing. I had no idea it would be that fast. Even, you know, even having having read all the things that we have. Another one that I really liked, as we don't normally see multiple sclerosis being talked about too much and a lot of these studies. But but this one in particular mentioned multiple sclerosis and intermittent fasting, reducing those symptoms within a two month period of just time, restricted eating. So not going for long periods of time without eating, but but doing more of a 16 eight or an 18 six type of regimen and that decreasing decrease decreasing inflammatory symptoms that had to do with multiple sclerosis as well as rheumatoid arthritis. And some other things, too.
[00:17:54] There's some really cool studies out there about Aaargh!
[00:17:56] And the fast mimicking diet and doing 48 hour fast and getting away from, you know, high protein or meat based diet in shutting down those autoimmune inflammatory pathways and really cool stuff.
[00:18:15] When we're looking at the comparison again, between just picture that scar on your head, the periods of fasting versus the periods of recovery, when it's eating and sleeping, there's a pathway called the mTOR pathway, which is like the grow and divide, grow and divide pathway. And then there's an app pathway, which is like the brake pedal to the metal or pathway. And there's a cool thing that happens when you go from a fasted state to a Fed state. In the fasted state, your growing divide stops and it's more like heal and repair, right? So they increase DNA repair, the autophagy, the decreased insulin rate, the decreased protein synthesis, so decrease in the muscle building. But along with that is a cool retention of lean body mass. Right, due to growth hormone. And then on the other side, when you break the fast, you actually will have an increased efficiency in terms of your insulin sensitivity. Right. So your insulin sensitivity, the effect of the insulin that you already have. Now, we're not talking about a type one diabetic situation here, but you'll you'll see an increase in sensitivity to increase in efficiency in cell growth and plasticity. So, like, your body will be able to regrow itself faster and more efficiently. So if you're doing fasting and you're working out in a fasted state and then you refeed, you're actually doing yourself. Your body is is like that. Because then when you go back into the refeeding stage or the eating portion of your day, your body's going to be able to repair and build more efficiently than it would if you were constantly just doing like you said earlier time, the three meals a day in the three snacks a day.
[00:19:45] Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, in the study, it also cites multiple studies that looked at something simple, like just a normal 16 eight like a 16 hour fasted, eight hour eating window, which is basically just skip breakfast, maybe put off lunch just a little bit every single day, and how that across all population groups resulted in more fat loss. But still, while maintaining and even gaining strength and muscle, while while losing more fat than the control groups or those are the groups that were doing small calorie deficits. So just a broad range of applications here, a lot of positive results across multiple, multiple patient populations. And I'm just encouraging, no matter where you are or where you're you're starting or if you've been fasting for a while.
[00:20:37] And all the stuff that we've just talked about, right, so the periods of fasting versus the periods of recovery, there's a metabolic switch that takes place from the sugar to the ketones. And then back when you go back into a Fed state, the benefits of exercise, you know, the the body's ability to have better stress resistance in the energy home of the cell, the mitochondria and having increased autophagy and repair decreased insulin, all of those things. Then on the other side, you've got in the Fed state a more efficient protein synthesis. Your mitochondria actually divide and repair and increase your cells ability to put out energy, which is really cool. So increased energy. Right. All of that leads to these long term adaptations that we want, which is to decrease the insulin resistance or increase insulin sensitivity and increase what is is directly related to a lot of cardio problems in terms of cardio metabolic issues.
[00:21:45] Excuse me, when it comes to heart rate variability. So the higher your heart rate variability, the better pretty much the better your body is to absorb or handle stressful situations, physical, emotional, chemical, whatever that may be. So all of these things we've talked about increase your insulin sensitivity, increase your heart rate availability the improve your lipid metabolism. They help your gut kind of rebalance. They reduce your abdominal fat, which is a precursor to heart disease, diabetes, et cetera. It reduces your inflammation, like you mentioned in the mouse studies, and then also can be as simple as like reducing blood pressure and increasing your energy. So just an amazing overall kind of aggregate of man. There's so much happening that we don't know how to control. So let's just try to keep it really simple.
[00:22:32] Yeah, super simple, super actionable, and so I just I just love the the the broad applicability of this study and how it brought so many, numerous studies together in one spot. So we're going to link to it in the show notes. So, you know, as an action step for today, I'd say no matter where you're starting from or where you are now in your fasting journey, take a look at this, because this is some powerful evidence and just powerful connection points. No matter what you've been through or if you have any of these symptoms or any family history, that you might get a connection point here. You can you can kind of see the light at the end of the tunnel and then why this is so broadly beneficial.
[00:23:13] Now, figure three is one of the ones that I've been referencing quite a bit here. Tom, I know you went and pulled out some specific statistics and specific numbers, but the article does read a lot simpler than this chart is. But to kind of land the plane on on everything that we talked about would be cellular and molecular mechanisms. So all of the stuff that's happening in your body on a cellular physiologic level, that those underlying things showed improved organ function and resistance to stress and disease. So the overall take home of all of this is a resilience to disease resistance. And if that's not one of the most important pressing things on a lot of people's mind these days, realizing that they might be in a higher risk position with everything that's going on, it's really starting to, like you said, really actionable, where you can start working on this stuff today, pick a fasting window, stick with it, reach out to us. If you have questions, you can go to the website, download the Fast Start guide, watch the mini masterclass and really just start because it's January 11th. Our New Year's resolutions are out the window already. We know that to be true. The next challenge is coming up on January 20th. So we will be ready to rock and roll and take another group of people through the ten day fasting ramp up. So tell me if there's anything else here to kind of wrap up today. I just want to be encouraging to everyone that, yeah, they they have the ability to choose and hopefully, you know, simply looking at things like this is something greater to anchor to than you can just go put the, you know, the picking a window and sticking to it. Hopefully that makes it a little bit easier.
[00:24:49] Yeah, absolutely. You know, just just start try something a little bit new, push yourself a little bit out of your comfort zone and just know you're on the right track. And and there's a lot of really good reasons to do it.
[00:25:02] So you're absolutely right. Me, as always, I appreciate you're super excited about this year. You guys can go to the fasting for life dotcom, the fasting for life dotcom, download a fast start guide, sign up for our newsletter. You have questions. You can reach out to us at info at the Fasting for Life. Stay tuned for the release of the registration page for the challenge coming up on January twenty eighth. We are super excited and tell me we'll talk soon. Thank you.
[00:25:32] So you've heard today's episode and you may be wondering where do I start? Head on over to the Fasting for Life Dotcom 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.
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