Discover Top 3 Scientific Benefits Of Fasting

Introduction to intermittent fasting benefits 0:00

Hey, Dr. David Jockers here. Today we're talking about the top three reasons to do intermittent fasting.

Fat burning and ketone production 0:14

Number one is fat burning. Okay? When your body fat, normally your body is either burning sugar or burning fat. If we're continually eating, particularly for eating higher amounts of carbohydrates, then our body is going to be focused on burning sugar as it's kind of primary fuel. And it will also burn fat, but to a lesser extent when we start going a longer period of time without food, then our blood sugar starts to drop. We start using up sugar that's in our liver, that's in our muscles. We call that glycogen stored sugar.

We use that for energy. And then once that gets to a certain threshold, then our body says, okay, we need to start burning our fat. Our fat is, you know, like our bank reserve. Right. So we're now we're dipping into our savings account, right.

Growth hormone and anti-aging effects 1:00

In general, you know, financially we don't want to dip into our savings account. But when it comes to our overall health and well-being, we do want to dip into our fat and start burning fat for fuel when we burn fat for fuel. It's a amazing energy source for the different cells of our body. However, it's hard to get fatty acids up into the brain, right? For for a fuel source for the brain, because the blood brain barrier doesn't allow the fatty acids. There are too large of a molecule. So our liver will actually take fatty acids and turn them into something called ketones, which are a water soluble molecule that can cross the blood brain barrier and can create an energy source for the brain.

On top of that, ketones also tell the mitochondria, which are the basically what produce all the energy within the cells. They tell the mitochondria to do something called uncoupling, which is almost like a wasting of an energy producing heat. And that process actually drives down inflammation and oxidative stress throughout our entire body. There are signaling molecule that tells the body bring down inflammation, bring down oxidative stress, which slows down our aging process and makes us think sharper and clearer, have better energy throughout the day.

So fat burning and ketones are an amazing benefit. Now, when we think about the time period of the fast, we start really revving up. Fat burning roughly about 14 to 16 hours into the fast usually takes us about 12 hours to go through. You know, the calories we consumed in our last meal, as well as any sort of stored sugar that's, you know, in our, our, muscles, in our liver, right. Our glycogen. After we get to that 12 hour mark, right, right around there, we start gradually shifting into burning fat for fuel.

And that really picks up around that 14, 16 hour mark. So that's when we're really starting to burn fat and our ketone levels start going up.

Autophagy and cellular cleanup 3:00

Now the second benefit is growth hormone growth hormone or HGH, is our quintessential anti-aging hormone. Now a lot of people will go, you know, particularly celebrities and athletes, and they'll spend a lot of money to get growth hormone injections, but you really don't need any sort of injection. In fact, I don't recommend synthetic growth hormone. I recommend growth hormone made by your body's best doctor, which is you write your physiology, the power God put within you knows exactly what you need at the right time.

And when you are doing some sort of time restricted feeding, which is what all of our ancestors did because they didn't have access to food pantries and refrigerators. So they would regularly go, you know, a day without eating. That was not uncommon for our ancestors. That was a very common thing. They would have this major rise in growth hormone and growth hormone. The reason why it's a quintessential anti-aging hormone is it helps us burn fat. It helps us build muscle, actually preserves your lean body tissue.

You think about it from an ancestral perspective. When our ancestors didn't have food, if they were like weak and tired and had brain fog and couldn't concentrate and focus needed someone to lay around, they would die. So what happens? We have this kind of hormonal flux that takes place when we actually get more energized, more mentally sharp. We feel better, we feel strong, and that gives us the drive to go out and kill something or go out and find food, you know, go go out and, hunt or gather so we can feed.

Right? And so we can eat. And so growth hormone will make you feel great. When it's elevated, you'll feel sharp, you know, feel clear. It's great for your immune system, great for your skin actually helps regenerate the collagen in your skin. Great for bone tissue. So you start getting a good rise of growth hormone roughly 16 to 20 hours into that fast. Okay. So the key is insulin, which is your fat storage hormone is what we call the antagonist or the opposite, right. The enemy of growth hormone.

When insulin is elevated it's going to bring growth hormone down okay. When insulin's down because we've been fasting growth hormone starts going up. So this is where we get these great benefits of growth hormone right in that range. Then the third great benefit is autophagy. And this is where your body breaks down old damaged cellular organelles. So for example within all the cells we have lots of mitochondria. The mitochondria produce all the energy for the cell. But these mitochondria become damaged.

Metabolism creates a lot of oxidative stress a lot of free radicals the mitochondria become damaged. And now they're no longer very efficient. So a lot of the mitochondria within the cell are kind of sputtering around. They're producing, let's say, 30% of the level of, cellular energy, ATP that they should be. And yet they're just sitting there continuing to sputter. So when our body undergoes autophagy, it breaks down these less efficient or older. Another term we use is called senescent mitochondria that are aged takes the raw materials and recycles them and creates new, healthy, strong, stress resilient mitochondria that are producing energy at 100% of their capacity.

So it's like an internal recycling. It's a cleansing and recycling process that takes place within all the cells of your body, particularly the cells that are damaged and older. Okay. So your body does that through autophagy and undergoes that. Autophagy is also the way that our body gets rid of viral infected cells. Right. So all of us have cells in our body that a virus has impacted. And if we don't get rid of those cells, they continue to replicate when we have the flu. Right. Or some sort of, you know, a viral, fever, it's because there's been so many cells that have been infected, and now these cells are dying and they're, they're they're releasing all this, all these contaminants and our immune system is activated.

It's producing lots and lots of inflammation. And we feel terrible, right? We feel awful. And so a lot of times though, we'll get back to balance. But they'll still be a remnant of the viral load. Right. They'll still be a certain amount of, virus that's kind of lying, lurking, you know, in certain areas of the body when we're under stress again and we're not sleeping well or we haven't eaten well, it will peak right? And now all of a sudden, it will start to replicate and we'll have more and more symptoms.

This is common with a lot of different viruses, like for example, cytomegalovirus, Epstein-Barr virus. Both of those are associated with chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, Hashimoto's thyroiditis, different symptoms like that, different conditions. So there's a lot different conditions cancers a lot of cancers. There's a viral component, they're lying dormant in your body. And you may not notice. You may not feel like you have the flu, but you still need to get rid of these viral infected cells.

And that's what happens with autophagy. Our body really is able to get rid of these viral infected cells. And, you know, in a sense, it's like a cleansing, internal cleansing and healing process. So when does autophagy really start to spike? Around 20 hours, 20 hours into the fast, we start getting a major rise in that autophagy. And so this is why I'm a huge fan on a daily basis with your intermittent fasting schedule, you want to do roughly 16, you know, certainly 14 hours. I like on a daily basis for sure.

Meaning you finish dinner at 7 p.m., you don't eat again until 9 a.m. the next day, right? For most people, that's very, very doable. You just hydrate in the morning, okay? And that will, extend your stomach and you won't feel the cravings or the hunger. Right. And that actually shuts down hunger hormones and you feel satiated. And so it's easier to fast when you do that.

Feast-famine cycling and fasting schedule 9:00

So go for 14 hours for sure. And that's pretty easy. Then we can get into that fat burning mode by, you know, pushing it out to about 16 hours and eating in an eight hour eating window. That's a great range to do on a regular basis. You may want to push it into, let's say, 18, 16 to 18 hours to get a little bit more growth hormone. Right. And you don't need to do that every day. But let's say you do it once or twice a week. That's fantastic. And then autophagy one day a week okay. One day a week, you extend your fast and go between 20 and 24 hours, right.

Like a lunch to lunch fast, dinner to dinner fast. And if you do that, your body's going to really do some deep cellular healing. Clean and repair a lot of things in your body. Reduce the aging process. I mean, over the course of a year, if you're doing that every single week, you're going to be like an entirely new cellular being. So it's extremely powerful healing strategy that's ancestral. All of our ancestors did this. They just didn't do it intentionally necessarily. Some some, you know, in some, some religious cultures, they did, but typically they just did it because they didn't have food available.

Right. And so they did it out of necessity. But now we need to be more intentional about it and intentionally go out, go about this process. So do this when you consume your meals, consume enough calories, eating a lot when you do eat right, 30g of protein, 30g of fat, or more and get sufficient, quantities of calories when you are eating. That's important. That's why we call it feast famine cycling, right? It's not just a low calorie diet. When we eat, we want to eat a lot. We want to eat a good amount of calories, a good amount of protein to drive all the, you know, protein synthesis that we need for healthy muscles and a healthy body.

But when we're in that fasting zone, right, when we're in the period of time when where we've decided we're going to fast, we fast, right? And we stick with that, try to get the best benefits of fat burning, growth hormone and autophagy. Now, for some individuals will also recommend like one day a week where you're eating even larger amounts of calories in a larger eating window, maybe a 12 hour eating window one day a week, where we call it a feast day, right? And so in some cases, especially if you don't want to lose any weight, that can be really, really beneficial, because it resets all your hormones.

And then you go back into your intermittent fasting, including your one day a week where you're doing like a 20 to 24 hour fast, and now you're getting the best benefits of feast, famine, cycling. So hopefully you guys got a lot out of this right here. And the training that we did today, be sure to subscribe. So that way you get access to all of the future videos, share this with somebody that you know and that you care about. Be blessed. Everybody will see in a future training.