Achieving Ketosis to Detox and Boost Your Energy

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

Wendie. I am honored that I was the first person you thought of because I love and admire your work so I’m honored to be here. Thank you.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Yeah, my pleasure. It’s like a mutual admiration society. So it’s good. I mean you’re super accomplished then I took your huge bio and I went okay small. You know, it’s awkward to sit there when people introduce you with lots of stuff. So is there anything you want to add before we dive in?

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

No, I mean my website’s Benazadi. Right, so if anything you want to learn about me it’s Benazadi.com

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

An open book. 

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

Yeah, exactly. 

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Alright. So I think really what we wanna narrow into is like the relationship between ketones and intermittent fasting and detox because there’s so much chronic disease out there and food is at the root of it for a lot of people. So can you tell me what caused you to go on into this route?

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

I had my own pain to purpose story. I followed a standard american diet which we know is very toxic throughout most of my life. I eat fast food. Not only did I eat bad, unhealthy food, I had unhealthy relationships, unhealthy mindset. So I was physically obese mentally obese broken, broken, ready to give up on life, literally looking for ways to do so. But thank God I got over that and I took ownership and I started to move my body. I started to practice these ancient healing strategies which we’ll talk about today and I went through this transformation, I lost 80 pounds. I went from being physically and mentally obese to healthy, both physically and mentally and that was 14 years ago. Got me really curious about health and nutrition. I started to study and I became certified as a health coach and I wrote those books you mentioned, but I saw how your food creates your mood. But for me it was 24 years of doing that damage. So although I’ve cleaned up a lot of my act, I triggered a lot of autoimmune things for myself, right, I triggered rain odds, I triggered leaky gut, I had mercury poisoning I had mold poison, so a lot of damage was done. But the amazing thing about the human body is just so resilient. As long as you continue to remove the interference, it’ll adapt and it’ll heal and we’ll talk about that. So that’s my story from pain to purpose, obese to healthy. And now I’m just so honored to be with individuals like you and learn from you and educate. We just want to educate as many people as possible.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Yeah, I would totally agree with that. Do you remember the moment where you were like that persona is used up? I’m going for a new one.

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

Yeah, I do. I read a book called the slight edge by Jeff Olson and it talked about your daily thoughts, determine your daily habits, your daily habits determine your future. So if you could just make one little tweak each day, then there’s this compound effect that could put you in the right direction. So that was the shift that I needed. And then I heard Dr. Wayne Dyer say if other people are the cause of your problems, you would have to hire a psychiatrist for the rest of the world in order for you to get better meaning you the only person you need to change. It’s nobody else’s fault. So those were the two things that really helped me take ownership.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

It’s so funny when I have a patient who every once in a while I have a patient who I can’t help and I can’t help them because what we’re gonna work on is totally outside my control. And so that outside my control is your job or your relationship. If they are super toxic and you’re not in process of fixing them, I can’t help you because write it. But I said to this patient whose job and marriage are both very toxic for her and we’re talking about how do we get her into a new job? And I was like, here’s the biggest problem. You’re the common denominator for all these things and you kind of expect things to be toxic. So how do you choose a job that’s not toxic given that what’s comfortable is toxic. Just an interesting like how do you, because she’s the common denominator.

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

Just wherever you go, there you are right, right. It needs to be from within.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

So, okay, so you start, you have this moment where you go, oh, there’s another way. And maybe I start my, maybe I start doing different habits and then you have a moment of inspiration that from from Wayne Dwyer’s speaking. And then how did you get into keto?

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

Yeah. So when I went through my health or weight loss transformation, which was primarily a weight loss transformation, I was fit, but I wasn’t necessarily healthy, right. I was one of those fit sick people. Like we see a lot of like cross fitters and bodybuilders, etc and it wasn’t until 2013 that I started to study ketosis and intermittent fasting and ancient healing strategies. And it was really fascinating to me to understand that there’s nothing really new about keto. It’s been around for as long as humans have existed. As a matter of fact. Like thank God for ketones because if our ancestors didn’t have the ability to burn body fat and produce ketones, we probably wouldn’t exist today. 

So it’s like, thank God for that. And intermittent fasting was also part of their routine because they didn’t have food readily available. So they had to burn body fat. And it was so fascinating to me and I went all in like I usually do when I get obsessed with something and I learned a lot of things around along the way. Like I think keto is great, but it’s one tool in the shed. There’s so many tools. We teach keto flexing, which is more focused on me, metabolic flexibility and then fasting came into play because I just fell in love with the way I felt when I was in a fasted state almost to the detriment that I felt so good. I used to think, well, more fasting is better, more atop A G is better. And then, you know, we know that too much of a good thing turns out to be a bad thing. So there has to be some sort of balance with both keto keto flexing and intermittent fasting.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

So do me a favor. Ben. Just back up for a minute because we know that the body the brain loves using ketones for fuel. But can you talk me through? Because for the audience, just in case they don’t really, can you geek out with me for like a minute? Just talk about how does this happen for people? What difference does it make to use ketones instead of sugar? That’s really what we’re talking about is you can either use sugar which comes from carbohydrates or protein broken down for forever, or you can use ketones which the body will make. So, talk to me about that.

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

Yeah, I would love to geek out with you for sure. So people think glucose is needed for the brain and for the body to survive. And they’re right. However, the caveat is you don’t have to eat the car to create that glucose. Your body can manufacture its own glucose from the backbone of fat and from protein. Your body can create glucose neurogenesis. So yeah, we always need glucose. The brain will always need a certain percentage of glucose, but we don’t necessarily have to eat that. There’s no such thing as essential carbohydrates. Only essential amino acids and essential fats. With that being said, I’m not against carbs, but here’s the problem in America. We have that study that came out from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 2018, which looked at over 8000 people. They looked at blood pressure on medication off medication B. M. I. Which kind of B could kind of be hit or miss. But they looked at all these different metrics. And at the end of the study, they said Only 12% of American adults are metabolically healthy, meaning 88% of American adults are unhealthy. They’re metabolically inflexible. That was before COVID and it probably got worse after that. 

So they’re sugar burners, they’re only burning sugar. They’re not using ketones. They’re very metabolically inflexible, 88% plus of the American population. They really could use something like ketones. Which is just a simple way of lowering glucose and insulin. Because you’re lowering your carbohydrate intake. Then you start to utilize your fat stores for energy, which is why we have fat stores. Those fatty acids are sent to your liver. Your liver produces ketones. There’s three types of ketones. There’s beta hydroxybutyrate which is measured in the blood, there’s acid tone which is expelled in the breath and there’s a cdo acetate which is expelled in the urine. Beta high beta hydroxybutyrate GHB has the unique ability to cross the blood brain barrier and give the brain a very powerful fuel source which helps with brain fog. Mental fatigue helps with clarity as a matter of fact babies and a lecture on this all the time, babies that are breastfed go in and add a ketosis because breast milk is saturated fat and cholesterol and it actually helps the development of that baby’s brain. Yes there’s glucose and sugar and breast milk. But the baby uses that sugar so efficiently taps internet ketosis. So burning fat and being in ketosis is literally our primal birthright. But we’ve gotten away from it with high carbohydrates and snacking and then if you want Wendie I’ll stop here. But if you want I can get into the mitochondrial benefit of ketones as well.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

So I would like to go into the mitochondria because I love mitochondria and the thing that you were talking about that was so poignant to me. I got a million years ago I presented for National celiac Association. We talked about food and mood and we talked about sugar and in that you know I did all this research and and back in like the 18 hundreds people ate the equivalent in a year of sugar for what we eat in a day now. So the R. D. A. Is 40 g and back in 1800s that’s how much people, that’s how much sugar people had in the whole year. So when you think about that, that’s just horrifying because I can’t even do that math in my head. You know 365 times 40 Something like 12,000 g of sugar. Right? It’s crazy. So the first thing they’ll say is that we’re completely addicted to sugar and it’s terrible for you. But then the next thing is just that juxtaposition of like how much we’re really eating. And I also remember the stats like one out of every three Americans is overweight and one out of every three is obese. Which is justly that’s why we’re doing the summit right? Because it’s all about auto immunity, chronic diseases. And my goal is, in my lifetime, it won’t happen. But my future that I live into is how do we eradicate chronic disease? That’s my goal. I’m not gonna accomplish it. But that’s big enough to get me out of bed every day and keep me forward and quote, moving forward. So let’s go back to the mitochondria because let’s start with what’s the mitochondria?

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

Yeah, and I love that worthy ideal that you have very worthy. And let’s just close the gap on that, right? Let’s close the gap between where we are with America and the world and get them as healthy as possible. So that’s why the summit is super important. And the mitochondria the key to getting healthy, I mean pretty much every disease out there is linked to mitochondrial dysfunction. So the mitochondria has two roles as you know, Wendie, there’s a it’s an energy factor if you want to call it that it pumps out energy A T. P. Adenosine triphosphate, but it’s not a mindless energy factory, meaning there’s a dual role to it. And Dr. Robert Navio has put out a lot of research on the intelligence of the mitochondria. How there’s it’s kind of like a surveillance system that’s looking for threats. And if it determines there’s too much threat to many threats, it goes into the cell danger response where it shuts down or or lowers energy production leading to chronic fatigue and all these symptoms people have. So when I say the word threats, I mean stress and threats. Same thing when I say that there’s three different areas of stress. There’s mental emotional stress, there’s physical stress. And of course your big thing, there’s chemical stress, any area of those three areas of stress that are too much the mitochondria will see that and lower or shut down energy production for as a survival mechanism. And that leads to a lot of symptoms and a lot of problems. All right now, where does keto come into play here? Well, we have figured out that ketones are actually signaling molecules, meaning they communicate with your mitochondria to create more mitochondria. This mito genesis process.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

upregulating the system

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

Regulating. Exactly helping the system run more efficiently. More ATP more energy. That’s why when you look at the electron transport chain and look at what glucose produces in terms of ATP versus what ketones produced. There’s about a 400% increase in ATP production from ketones versus glucose because of the mid to genesis the creation of new mitochondria. But that’s just one thing that’s happening.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Time out, can you repeat that? So basically, no, I’m gonna repeat that if you eat if you’re getting energy from sugar versus getting energy from ketones, the energy you get from ketones because because they cause the mitochondria to up regulate and make more mitochondria is 400 times more than what you get from sugar. Did I get the right?

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

I actually have, I’m going to pull up the exact number for you because I actually have it. So I know that it’s 32 to 36 ATP from a molecule of glucose. But let me give you the exact one for ketones.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

This is insane. That like, you know, I don’t think people really think about if you go into a carb crash, you eat and you have a car crash, you really are crashing versus when you have ketones you’re continually building more a teepee and improving your energy. 

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

Exactly, yeah. So it’s 100 and 2200 and 68 ATP from ketones versus 32 to 36 ATP from glucose because of the creation of new mitochondria.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

400 times more. 

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

Yeah. How many more? How much more? 

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

400?

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

That’s 400. Yeah. That’s what I think. My math. My math is correct.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Yeah. Perfect.

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

That’s because it’s kind of like when you’re in ketosis, it’s kind of like a survival mode meaning that’s why I don’t love it long term, but short term. Amazing because which by the way, Well, it’ll depend, right? Somebody really has metabolic damage. Maybe like they would go six months if somebody’s fairly healthy, you know, 2-3 months of ketosis and then we start flexing. So it’ll depend, but no more than a year. For sure from and most people do it for a year, which is unfortunate. But what do you mean by flexing? I mean intentionally eating healthy carbohydrates to get a healthy insulin spike, Make hormonal conversions, including thyroid 24223 and get out of ketosis. Like flex yourself outn and then back in the goals, metabolic flexibility. That’s what I meant by flexing.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Okay. Yeah. I usually say to someone, you know, after six months, you’re gonna want to take a break, ease off, ease back. It sounds like you’re doing it a little stricter than I do it for people. But I’m like the 10,000 ft view. Like don’t do it longer than six months. Singer dialed in.

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

Very similar. Yeah, exactly. So that could be just a good rule of thumb for people like six months. And, we’ve always changed up our diet and changed our foods throughout the entire human civilization. It’s just the last 50 years that we started eating the same diet long term, but there’s not one culture that followed the same diet long term, they always changed it even with keto. So that it’s a survival mechanism really. When you’re in ketosis it’s your mitochondria are creating more mitochondria and it’s doing this uncoupling process. And this is really cool because you might think all right if you’re creating more A. T. P. You might be creating more free radicals because just like if I burn firewood in my room here there’s smoke similar when your cells create energy, there’s cellular smoke toxins, reactive oxygen species. So you might think, okay, is that not a good thing if you’re producing more energy there’s more smoke. But here’s the cool thing about keto, the mitochondrial uncoupling process that happens. And the analogy that I got from Dr. Stephen Gondry, I think it’s a brilliant analogy is this pressure cooker, you’re using a pressure cooker for dinner. All this theme gets built up in the pressure cooker and then you have that release valve to get rid of any excess steam. That’s kind of what’s happening at the mitochondrial level with this uncoupling process is it’s actually lowering free radicals and producing more energy at the same time. Which is super damn cool. So that’s why one of the few reasons why I love keto. Yeah.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Okay. And we were starting to talk about the mitochondria when we sort of took this detour. The I had read at one point when you start keto the demand on the mitochondria for carnitine just spikes. And this is why people will get this keto fatigue when they first start. Can you talk about that?

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

Yeah. L carnitine is a great tip for somebody new to keto. Actually give it to a lot of people especially when they’re struggling on keto. L carnitine is kind of like a bus to shuttle fat to your mitochondria to produce more energy. And if you have already like if you’re doing keto and you’re starting off to Wendie’s point, your mitochondria is just so like fatigue and damaged. Like yeah sluggish. They’ve been sitting on the couch for years and now you’re like all right, it’s time to burn some ketones. They’re like well what are these things? I’m just so used to being on the couch. So L carnitine can help for sure. As a way to get a shuttle nutrients into your mitochondria. I’ve also used l carnitine for reactive hypoglycemia when people are transitioning from a fat sugar burner to a fat burner. But they’re getting these steep glucose drops. We go slower with them but then we get them on L carnitine. It really helps keeping your electrolytes up are important because as you drop insulin you lo you release excess water weight. But you also have this directed process where you release electrolytes. So getting that up as well. But yeah you gave a great tip right there if you’re gonna do keto L carnitine from the 1st 14 days could be a great bio hack.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

That’s really great to know for people you know I’m just thinking about I’m studying currently the telomeres and mitochondrial link and how telomeres are. The think of it like the end cap you know it’s an end cap on our D. N. A. To keep the D. N. A. From unraveling. And they essentially act in either a positive symbiosis or really negative one. So if the mitochondria are unhappy the telomeres aren’t happy either that messes with your D. N. A. And you start circling the drain and it’s a vicious circle. And one of the most impactful things you can do to help your both telomere health and your mitochondrial health is calorie restricted intermittent fast. So you know you’re just starting to talk about the things that improve energy longevity and the ability for the body to start functioning properly. So this is great. So you mentioned ancient healing strategies that you had started to dive into. Can you talk about those?

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

Yeah so ancient meaning they’ve been around forever ketosis is one of them. You just said another one fasting fasting ketosis. Things like the carnivore diet. Things like vitamin G gratitude is these are ancient healing strategies. That’s my favorite one by the way. But fasting. Do you want me to get into fasting a little bit Wendie or?

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

We can talk about that or why gratitude is such an important.

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

Yeah we’ll start with gratitude. Yeah. Well for many many reasons right? Not just there’s signs to back it up. There’s also some woo woo to it. But you know I’m okay with some woo woo. It’s a universal law, Wendie. What you feed energy to expands. So just like gravity is a universal law. But you’re like Ben, gravity’s woo woo, I don’t believe in it. But you know if you don’t believe in gravity but I hold something up and drop it. Like even if you don’t believe in it, you see that it exists. Same thing with the universal, all universal laws meaning whatever you feed energy to expand with gratitude, what you appreciate appreciates and the science behind it. There’s a couple of things in the brain. There’s a part of the brain called the reticulated activation system is like the size of your pinky and it’s a selective seeking mechanism. If we didn’t have the ras the particular activation system we would short circuit the brain. There’s like so many stimulations, millions of things happening and the brain needs to filter that out. So thank God for the ras, it filters out what’s more important to you, what do you really need to see and pay attention to and you’re going to see the things that you put energy into. For example, when do you want to buy Red Tesla and you’re looking on autotrader, you’re looking at, you’re going to the dealership and you buy red Tesla, you drive home in your red Tesla and all of a sudden for weeks you see red Tesla everywhere and you’re thinking, damn, I thought I was cool. 

But everybody has a red Tesla now that they just by the red Tesla or were the red Tesla always there? Of course they were always there. But now you’ve activated the Rs to see it. So with gratitude, when you start to focus on what’s going right for you, what you appreciate the relationships and from the smallest things like thank God we have zoomed to have this conversation. You get more of that in your life. You see more of the benefits versus the opposite of why am I ugly? Why am I unhealthy? Why is this not working for me then? Are you going to see our obstacles? But when you focus on gratitude, the obstacles turn into opportunities. And one more thing on this dr joe dispenser to looked at brain scans on individuals who took vitamin G. They practice gratitude. And he saw 1200 different chemical reactions take place instantaneously. They put the body in the brain and this anti inflammatory healing state, oxytocin, dopamine serotonin and all these amazing neurotransmitters and it’s free. That’s the problem people, it’s easier to do an easy not to do, but vitamin G, the most important vitamin you’ll ever take to this day.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Yeah, I would, I would echo that, I don’t think there’s any woo at all to this because if you think about, okay, have a thought that’s disempowering like I’m so ugly or I’m so fat or why don’t things ever go my way that thought signals a whole pathway in your adrenals? So you start to pump out cortisone because your adrenals don’t know that this is just crazy. Talk stupid stuff like your your brain can set you down a whole pathway. For example, we were in California and I happened, I was in the passenger seat, my husband’s driving on our left is a wall of cement, it’s like 10 ft tall so you can and we’re in the left lane, you can’t go anywhere on our right is a car right in front of us and to the that cars right in front of them and the third lane was another car. I happen to look up and see the car, two car, two lanes over swerve. Now I know they’re gonna hit the car that’s right in front of us and the car, I guess you can’t see the car was not able to, the car next to us was not able to move in front of us without us getting out of the way where they would have put us into the barrier. 

So I’m like I see the car, two cars over and I say brake break break and he does and the car right in front of us to the right swerved into our lane and we don’t hit the barrier. Okay, Nothing happened. It took me two days to recover from that thinking, oh my God, we’re gonna total our car, we’re gonna get in a massive accident. We’re gonna, you know, we have four kids, what if we leave them? You know, like all this this stuff is occurring in a fraction of a millisecond. But two days later, I finally said, okay, my body is starting to recover from that tremendous, tremendous cortisol rush. So obviously most people don’t go through that most of the time and I’m grateful. I’m grateful that I haven’t in a while, but really even having a thought will set you off down a pathway. So having a disempowering thought, your cortisol kicks in your cortisol then says to your liver don’t do detox because we’re in the midst of a crisis here, Peeps. So no detox happens and your cortisol says to your gut guys, you know, this is not the time. So then you get constipated, you don’t excrete toxins and you start the vicious circle again. And so not only do I don’t think it’s woo at all, I mean there’s data for this.

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

Yeah, absolutely, that’s a perfect story of what the body perceives a stress, mental, emotional physical chemical and it automatically goes into this cell danger response. You were there for two days, which a lot of people don’t even have the awareness to understand that’s what they’re going through. They just feel off. But to your point, yeah, there’s research now and Dr. Bruce Lipton has proven that your thoughts are frequencies that are small enough and strong enough to penetrate the membrane of yourselves and actually communicate with your D. N. A. Nucleus. And he has shown with his work that a negative thought, what I call a stinking thinking thought, hateful thought produces inflammatory proteins from your D. N. A. But if it’s a healthy loving, abundant, grateful thought, anti inflammatory protein, anti inflammatory processes. 

So if you think about that, if your thoughts are that powerful to actually communicate with their DNA to create certain proteins, then the next question is all right. How many thoughts do we have every single day? And then the answer is that there’s about upwards of 60,000 is what psychiatrists estimate. So if we have 60,000 thoughts per day, they determine how many of those thoughts are the same thoughts from yesterday. And they said 90% is what they determine. And out of those thoughts, 85% of them are negative thoughts to stinking thinking thoughts. This is the most important empowering thing about why I’m sharing this. Because if your thoughts create proteins and it could be inflammatory proteins or anti inflammatory proteins, that means with 60,000 thoughts per day. Those are six, 30,000 opportunities to put your body in a healing anti inflammatory state and that is free. It just creates just you just need awareness to do so so that to me is very inspiring.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

So talk me through this. So tell me a typical thought that you would work with someone to transform. So like what’s what’s, what’s something low hanging.

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

I’m never gonna be able to overcome my autoimmune disease. You know, in relevance to this conversation or I’m never gonna be able to lose this weight. So how do you convert that to gratitude? You let you look at the thought and you think, okay, this is like a negative cloud passing. So you let that, that you acknowledge it and say thank you, but you’re not serving me right now. You let it pass, so acknowledge it and you say thank you and you serve it. And then how do you convert that to gratitude? Well, you could, you could think about something called an affirmation. I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard of affirmations, but there’s affirmations where I’m healthy. I’m wealthy and I think there’s value in that. There’s something called affirmations and Doctor, not Doctor, but no, A Saint John has kind of coined this and it, it’s asking the question, why am I able to lose this weight in this scenario when you asked the question, it kind of causes you to seek the answers. So you could then say, well seven days ago I got rid of soda and it’s been seven days since I drink any soda and you celebrate that and you have gratitude for that. So it kind of helps you search for the gratitude and search for the answer. 

So you would ask the question, why am I so healthy? Why am I completely healed from my autoimmune disease? Why have I detox so well that I’m thriving in my health and it forces you to find the answer. That’s one way. But when it comes to gratitude, there’s always something to be grateful for the fact that we live on planet Earth. The chances of you being born or 400 trillion to one. So thank God for that you know the relationships you have the technology, there’s always something to be grateful for. So I just think it’s in general, a good rule of thumb is to write down 10 things you’re grateful for before bed and in the morning and just doing that, we’ll just develop the gratitude muscle for you.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

I think even being able to engage in the conversation right? Like yeah, it’s been a challenge to lose weight or get healthy or manage my God or whatever that is and I’m able to have the conversation. So I’m grateful for that even that ability, right? So I think that I always say to my kids a complaint is a poorly phrased request. So how do you convert your complaint into a request because it sounds like you have a request but your phrasing it like a complaint. So let’s switch that. So I think there’s a real opportunity here because you’re always say you’re only as healthy as your sickest kid, but you’re also only as healthy as your thoughts, you know? So if you’re thinking sick then you’re going to be sick.

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

That is so good. Yeah, and I’ll put a spin on it, right? The stinking thinking that I got from zig Ziglar by the way, so I gotta give him credit. But then I took it further and I would say if you’re thinking is thinking your dreams are shrinking streams, health dreams so make sure you overcome that the head trash that Noah St. John talks about the stinking thinking overcome that and you’ll really change your life.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Yeah, it’s really funny because I would say I’m not even sure how long ago, but certainly more than a year ago I looked at my husband, I was like, you know, he’s an immigrant and and I grew up kind of scrappy, like I was fired from my first job when I was 15 because I wasn’t actually 15, I lied about my age, I was 14 and then they kind of caught up with me and said, well where’s your work permit? And I was like, well you know, yeah, I don’t have one because I’m not 15 and they were like, okay you’re done nice working with you come back when you’re 15 So I’ve been scrappy and he’s scrappy and we had this persona like scrappy, you know, we’ll do it ourselves what kind of stuff suffer and struggle and left him a year ago and I went maybe even more again, like I’m done with that persona. That persona has used itself up, I’m done and and I said I’m gonna replace it with one of like abundance and ease and just like things are just going to happen because we’re done with that persona and it’s really interesting the things that happen when you tell the universe what you want. I would say the universe is male because you have to be very specific with it.

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

You’re so right, Oh, that’s so good, you’re right, It is. And it’s like you’re, we create stories and the story you created was that you know, you needed to like grind it out and be resilient and then you just change the story and you change your life just by changing that story.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Yes. So if you’re listening, I would say gratitude, convert your complaints into requests, change your story. Actually even identify your story. Like what’s your persona identify it? So, okay, I didn’t let you get into the ancient healing strap, Jesus, like totally derailed.

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

Vitamin G is, vitamin has been around forever, so we’ll call that but fasting is the next one, right? So fasting. I think fasting is an amazing tool. What? But with all tools we have to make sure we know how to use the tool. Chainsaw is could be an amazing tool. But more important than the tools, the person who wields it right chainsaw could hurt you or it could help you. Fasting is similar. So we got to know how to use the tool. So I do like the process of doing keto for 14 to 21 days before we implement too much intermittent fasting. I like to get more metabolically flexible, get ketones flooding in the brain before we practice too much fasting. So that’s the first step. We already talked about keto and there’s a lot of benefits to ketosis. Fasting checks the box on pretty much every health benefit you’re looking for. Oh you want to have more mental clarity and more brain derived neurotrophic factor fast. 

You want to fix your gut, you want to lose some weight. When a lower inflammation want to increase your ceiling mirrors want to increase your cert two and one genes fastening. It’s just such an amazing too. The number one priority for the human body and the Indian intelligence is survival. The body just wants to survive. It will do anything in the short term to survive. Even if that means creating disease in the long term like cancer developing long term. But with fasting when your body is in a fasted state, 18 hours into a fast 24 hours into the fast. The innate intelligence is automatically hardwired genetically to go into this thought process of whoa! We must be going through a famine. We need to look for cells that are not functioning well and use those cells for energy attempt to regenerate and fix those cells. This is called autophagy or even go a step further. If this cell is a sin essence sell a zombie cells, people like to call them, meaning no function could turn into cancer could turn into autoimmune disease. The innate intelligence will send a signal to zap the cell apoptosis, programmed cell death but then it goes a step further and then it creates a stem cell. 

And that stem cell could be used for your gut, for your liver, for your eyeball, for your brain. The Nate intelligence will determine and all of this is happening during a fast. The United Intelligence doesn’t care about Uber eats or doordash or whole foods supermarket. This is automatically happening. It’s one of the best ways to heal autoimmune conditions. It works really well with detox because it helps you produce more ketones. It helps your body get rid of toxins more efficiently. So I could go on and on and on. But I’ll stop there. I just love fasting as a tool.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Yeah, I mean and when you say fasting, are you talking about intermittent fasting? It sounds like you’re also talking about extended fasting. What do you mean?

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

Yeah, I’m glad you brought that up because I was referring to more intermittent fasting. But there are what’s called block fasting three or more days and that’s where the benefits go even farther. You get more technology, more of this, the immune system regenerating, you get more stem cell, more growth hormone. So that would be a tool that I would utilize personally one or two times per year or 3-5 day water fast. But the intermittent fasting, you get a lot of those benefits from a short term effect too.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Yeah, there’s a lot of ways to do this, right. I always say to people, if you’re gonna do a 3-5 day fast, I mean, I’ve done, it’s funny, we did one got a million years ago and it was a five day fast, but it was, it was forget the name of the company, but we drank this peppermint or ginger packet and it was, it was, I think it was fiber to keep us moving and I got hungry, right? You drink this like six times a day and I got hungry. But what was so, so striking was I always figured that when I would fast I would get hungrier and you would just keep getting hungrier, but I never got hungrier than just like, I’m really hungry, right? And I mean you’re jewish right on jewish and so you fast every year and 24 hours is like I’m, I gotta eat. I gotta break my fast for young people, but I never got hungrier than I’m super hungry, which was so shocking because I always figured after 24 hours to get worse but didn’t.

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

Yeah, the study that’s interesting because the studies show that grilling as you know, the hunger hormone peaks on day two and then from there kind of there’s a gradual decline. But but there’s a it’s it’s more what I’ve noticed when I do it and I’ve kind of lead people through longer fast. I do think that’s important. By the way, I work with somebody if you’re gonna do a long fast. I’ve noticed that hunger and just everything when it comes to a longer fast is more psychological than physiological. The bodies can adapt to it very fun. But people, you know, they get in their head and they think about the hunger or whatever. Yeah, I’m suffering or like the pure pressure of it, your friends telling you you’re going to die. But it’s more psychological and physiological I’ve seen so you.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

So you say, okay, you do a water fast. I mean you can survive on water for a long time. So five days is not going to kill you are there? People you would say don’t do a water fast. You know, you refer to when you’re first starting keto. You’re gonna do keto first and then intermittent fasting? There are certainly people who are too sick to dive right in. So where’s the line? Right? Because this is auto immunity and chronic diseases. So I would say I would start to hazard, you know if you have diabetes type two diabetes that’s more reasonable than if you can’t get out of bed in the morning that there’s how do you use people in?

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

Yeah. You know that’s a good question because fasting is a stress to the body and it can be a really powerful hermetic stress that forces the body to adapting and stronger and better. Similar to exercise. That’s what your missus is. But if you’re ready chronic fatigue you can’t get out of bed and you’re like I’m gonna apply stress to my body and wake it up. That ain’t gonna work right? So you start with low hanging fruit, you start with gratitude journaling. You start with maybe a Castor oil pack and you know get some supplements in to help your liver out and you start doing something slowly. But the people who struggled the most during a long fast are the people who are most toxic. They’re dumping all these toxins as you know and the body is just like whoa because we store a lot of these toxins in our fat and we start to use body fat during the fast which is great.

But then these toxins get released and then your body is like whoa every time I burn fat we release these toxins, let’s stop burning fat and then auto accumulates. So for those people, we have them on hydrogen water, we have them on specific binders. We have them on maybe castor oil packs, liver support. We do things to kind of support that. So that would be like the middle. You have the person who’s not able to do any fasting, who needs to do more slower things. You have a person who’s very toxic, but they’re still going through their day to day. They need some more detox support. Then you have a healthier person who’s able to handle it. And that’s a good sign. If you’re able to do a five day water fast and rock that fast and feel good. That’s a great sign. So those are the kind of three different levels there.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Okay, so you actually kind of just transitioned beautifully into what are the pitfalls of detox, right? Because we’re talking one level about a very, I mean a five day water fast is a pretty strong detox. It is really powerful. So what are the hazards? Yeah. Falls hazards. What are the things you want people to watch out for?

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

Well, people, people think that detox is like, I did a 21 day cleanse and toxins are out. How much does that piss you off?

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

You know, here’s the thing, what I always say is like a cleanse is great for a reset, but it’s not getting rid of your toxins, it’s just sort of setting the bar back to where you think you should be. But it’s not it’s not doing the job.

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

Yeah. People who know detox, I’ve seen him get angry but I love the grays of you by not saying you’re not pissed. But it’s not the same thing as detox.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

I’m not angry. It’s just it’s like, well the problem is, you know, we want it today and we want it fast. But I mean detox takes a long time because otherwise it’s unsafe. Yeah, you can reset in a heartbeat. You can reset however long you want. But detox itself is going to take awhile.

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

That’s right. You’re years, not months, right. Yeah, unfortunately. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get better within a month, but you’ve accumulated toxins. So that’s one pitfall. People just think I could do a seven day colon cleanse or a coffee enema and all those are great to your point. But that’s not real detox. Those are poopers. It’s a good start and it’s a good support. But that’s not real detox. So that’s one pitfall thinking that you detox because you did a seven day juice fast or even a regular fast. Great. But that’s not real detox. Another pitfall is people actually doing real detox but doing it too soon, meaning their liver, their coal and their kidneys are all malfunctioning their pathways are not open and they start a detox cycle like what? So they are pulling toxins from their bones and from their tissues. But they can’t get rid of it and that could actually make things worse. So that’s another big pitfall. Detox starts downstream and then you open up the pathways and work your way upstream. I mean I’m speaking to the choir here but that’s pause there. What are your thoughts on that Wendie?

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

I think I want to get really granular with people so everything starts in the gut. So if you’re not pooping or if it’s dysfunctional or bloating gas, diarrhea, constipation, reflex guard any kind of nutritional deficiencies you want to look to the gut and if you’re not having regular movement then guess where your poop and guess where your toxins are sitting, right? You and I both know it’s sitting in your gut and here’s what’s even creepier is that all that stuff you’re trying to get rid of? Humans can get rid of about 1% of their mercury in the body on any given day. But when the guts dysfunctional you’re gonna recycle 99% of that 1%. So you’re getting rid of .01%. So it takes 99 times as long to get rid of your toxin. So the gut is critical. You say detox starts downstream. Detox starts in the gut, you have to make sure that you’re pooping that you’re inhibiting that beta glue community. So you don’t inappropriately recycle your hormones that you have fiber to bind like you really need to optimize your gut. So I think it’s critical to start with the gut. So that’s what I mean by downstream, when you say downstream, I think gut and then, and then liver and adrenals because those will tank it pretty fast too.

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

Yeah, I love that. So great clarification there and that’s what you want to do and that could be 30 to 60 to 90 days depending on how you know tax the gut is the second thing or the third pitfall. I think we’re on the third one now. I don’t know if you’ve seen this, but I’ve seen people who have done detox with well known health experts and I asked them if they have silver fillings in their mouth and they still do and they went through a detox program having the practitioner never asked them if they kept the fillings in. I mean how wild is that? I think the last time we talked I was getting my fillings out and it made a huge difference.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

So yeah, that’s the question we ask everyone was like, do you have silver fillings by any chance if you got mercury? It’s only fish and feelings. Those are the two big ones or actually lineage. Like if you came out of a woman who had it and and she brushed fed you then got a double whammy.

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

Yeah and that’s it. You know, you got to remove the source, I had eight of them and I got them removed. so you can begin the detox process with fillings but you gotta get it out, especially before you start pulling it from the brain because you’re just gonna auto intoxicate. So that’s another pitfall. Another one I guess we’re on the fourth one of detox is their people are not doing on off cycles, they’re exhausting their detox pathways not creating this concentration gradient. So they’re just detoxing every day, 30 days, 40 days in a row. But there needs to be an on off cycle where you’re giving your detox pathways arrest, you’re creating this concentration gradient. So I’d love for you to speak more on that and what you’ve seen with that, but what are the importance of having on off cycles for you?

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Yeah. I don’t think I think more about it from just a human standpoint, like when you do detox constantly you get treatment fatigue and it’s hard, it’s hard, it’s a pain in the butt, it’s cost money, it takes your time. So it’s tiring. So what I usually say is you know you do you do a period, you test, you repeat, you repeat the testing, see how it is and then pick it up again. But there’s a lot of ways to do detox. I don’t think I’d love you to talk more about the gradient because I never talk about that with people. I just talked about like how do you just not burn out on treatment.

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

Yeah I mean you’re right, that’s probably a more practical way to look at it, it’s like give me a break, everybody needs a break. So I like that. Well the analogy I give for the concentration gradients and look you can explain the concentration gradients way better than I can. I’ll give the analogy and that you should hear the science behind it. The analogy I like to give is kind of like you have a garage and your garage has all this junk toxins but the real big toxins that you really want to get to or towards the back of the garage, it’s very difficult to get there in one straight shoot shot because you have all this other junk in the way. So you got to clear the junk in the way, meaning toxins that are kind of around the cells in your bloodstream. So you can have easier access to the metals in your brain, the hypothalamus, pituitary and the bone lead in the bone. So you create this concentration gradients where you clear the stuff that’s in the way and then you have easier access to the junk in the back. What are your thoughts on that analogy?

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

I think it’s a great analogy. I always refer to like detox as sort of thinking, thinking of like a whole wall with a million holes in and you’re gonna clear those whole and they’re all filled with gum and you’re gonna pull the gum out with tweezers piece by piece. I always think like, you know, because lead is just so painful to remove for people not painful, physically painful. It just takes a while. So yeah, I think the idea of that you want to clear the way so that you can ramp up, I mean there’s so much in this right then. So you want to ramp up the detox systems, gut, liver adrenals, sweat, sleep, clear up your food, clear up your brain, meaning how you think and what you refer to. There’s a lot that goes into this. So it’s not uni factorial either. But I think that I think this is really well said in terms of clearing the way to get the big stuff. Any other pitfalls of detox?

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

Yeah, they probably are. I can’t think of any. Do you have any that you want to add to that list? There probably are. I just can’t think of any more.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Well, it’s always gonna always say it’s like a construction project, right? You think about think about that wrecking ball. It takes two days to level a facility, but it takes two years to build something beautiful in its place. So detox and transforming your health is always going to take longer than you think, oh, like constructing a human, right? Gonna take longer than you think it’s going to cost more money than you think and it’s gonna be more of a pain in the butt than you think and there’ll be breakdowns on the way. So taken with a grain of salt and keep moving.

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

That’s great. That’s a perfect analogy and it’s gonna take time. It’s gonna take years to get those metals out of your bone and tissue. Just know that. But oh my gosh doing detox the right way, what Wendie teaches in your book Dirty girl. And in me just that has moved the dial for my health and for more people than anything else, keto is great. Fasting is great exercise. All that is part of it. But getting those medals out I believe and I think you agree with me that it’s the number one cause of cellular membrane inflammation of these toxins and they’re everywhere. They’re not going away. Oh the last component when they all add to this is glyphosate and Dr. Stephanie sent research right on what it does to drive it further into the tissue. So you got to eat a clean organic diet to Stephanie’s actually on our summit.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

So you’ll be able to listen to her interview on glyphosate.

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

I’m gonna watch that. I can’t wait for that.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Glyphosate is horrifying and I’m I speak on that too and it’s just horrifying when I was doing the research for the talk I was giving I had to stop because it was like I had to vomit in my own mouth. Just the thought, the whole big business thing and the thing that I’ll just say is wherever you are level up. So Ben just mentioned glyphosate and if you can go and eat a fully organic diet amazing. But if you can’t pick something that you’re going to level up on either eliminate your grains and only eat organic grains because there’s a tremendously contaminated that includes cereal and bread by the way or pick your wine. It’s a dirty little secret. Your wine is dirty because it’s all been concentrated so now or high fructose corn or juices that you’re feeding your kids or that you’re drinking well don’t drink your juice because it’s just drinking sugar. But really look at what’s one way that you can make a difference in your food and what’s a line you can draw, frozen vegetables are great, especially if they’re organic, if you can’t get them fresh. So yeah, I mean yeah, we’re so excited because you can see Stephanie talking about glyphosate.

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

I can’t wait, I can’t wait to see you. And the rest of the summit of course and you’re right, do the best you can with your resources, we want to make sure we are. You know, addressing everybody. Fasting is a great tool in this scenario because you save money with fasting and you can apply it to like healthier organic food etcetera. So fasting is one of those great free tools that helps you save money.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

I think that’s a great idea, but so we’ve covered a lot. I mean we’ve really sort of ranged everything from keto fasting gratitude, dangers of detox ancient healing strategies. We’ve covered a lot in this talk and I’m really grateful that you came on this summit because you just are such a wealth of information. So a thank you and be I know that you mention your website dot com and that will be in the resources and I also believe that you’ve contributed, you have a program that you wanted people to participate in, right?

Ben Azadi, FDN-P

I have I do, yeah, I do these keto challenges 2 to 3 times a year. I just finished one up. I’ll take thousands of people get them to burn fat instead of sugar in seven days. So go to ketocampchallenge.com to learn about the next one. And then my website has my books, my social media, which has benazadi.com. But before we finish, I want to also express my gratitude for you Wendie and your husband Ed and what you’re doing. It was just a pleasure to bring you on my podcast last year and then got to know you and the work you’re doing. I think it’s so amazing. It’s so critical and I’m honored to be on this summit. Thank you so much for having me.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Thanks for being here. I mean it’s mutual Ben and we just love your work and what you’re doing and you’re fantastic. So thank you for being here. Thank you for listening to another episode of the environmental toxicants, auto immunity and chronic diseases Summit. Our guest today was Ben Azadi, who we love to pieces and join us for another episode.