Hi everyone. I'm Doctor Christine Schaffner and welcome to the Spectrum of Health podcast. Today my guest is Doctor David Jaggers, and we talk about using intermittent fasting to burn fat, reduce inflammation, and improve energy and brain health.

Doctor David Jaggers is a doctor of natural medicine, and he runs one of the most popular natural websites in Doctor joggers.com, which has gotten over 1 million monthly views, and his work has been seen on the popular media such as The Doctor on Show and Hallmark Home and Family.

Doctor Shawcross is also the author of the bestselling book The Keto Metabolic Breakthrough by Victoria Bell Publishing, and is a world renowned expert in the area of ketosis, fasting and the ketogenic diet.

He's also the host of the popular Doctor Chopper's Functional Nutrition podcast. So I hope you enjoy this podcast. Intermittent fasting is something I'm trying to incorporate more in my daily life and into my patients health, and I think it's one of the best strategies you can do to improve your health and your longevity.

So enjoy the show. All right. Well, welcome, doctor jackers. It's really an honor to interview you today. Well, absolutely. Great to be on with you, Doctor Christine.

Well, great. Well, we have a really fun topic. It's something that I've been exploring not only in my personal health, but also with my patients more and more.

And that's the topic about intermittent fasting. And there's so much information on the internet these days, and you have an awesome website, and you do a really great job of breaking this topic down.

But for people who might be new to this topic, what are we talking about when we say the word intermittent fasting? For sure? Well, intermittent fasting is really something all of us do at some period of time during the day, typically at night, while we're sleeping.

And so fasting basically just means going without food. And intermittent is kind of a it's you're doing it for a period of time. And another term for it is time restricted feeding.

And many of the listeners may have heard of people that are trying to, basically condense their eating window at the time they start eating, to the time they finish eating during the day into a certain window of time, maybe eight hours or something like that.

And the way I try to explain it to people, we have a building phase and we have a cleansing phase when we're eating from from the time, from our first meal of the day until our last meal of the day.

That's our building phase when we're eating, we're going to be producing insulin. Insulin is a hormone that tells our body to build. It tells our body to store.

And then when we're not eating, insulin goes down and we activate different hormones that help us to cleanse and heal and repair. So the time between our last meal of the day and our first meal, the following day is our cleansing phase.

So if we ate, let's say from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., that would be a 12 hour building phase. And then if we fasted from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. the next morning, it would be a 12 hour cleansing phase or fasting phase.

And so that would be a 1 to 1 ratio building to cleansing. Okay. And for, you know, for kids and, pregnant women, things like that, that's usually a good window is something like that.

People that really need to build. Right. Young children, pregnant women, things like that. However, as you become an adult, unless you're, a high level athlete, you really don't need to be spending so much time building.

You want to actually spend a lot more time cleansing, healing, and repairing. And so that's where we start to try to switch this ratio up a little bit.

And we might try to, basically condense the meal time to where you're eating in an eight hour window, for example. Right, like a 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and then you cleanse and fast from 6 p.m.

to 10 a.m. the next morning. So that would be a 16 hour cleansing period in an eight hour, building or eating window. And so that would be a 2 to 1 cleansing to building.

Right. So you're going to get more hormones that are activated with things like, like autophagy, which is basically where your body starts to break down, or damaged cellular organelles like mitochondria and endoplasmic reticulum and all these different organelles that are within the cells.

We actually break those down and we take the proteins that are in them, and we form new, healthier mitochondria, new, healthier, cellular organelles. So it's like cellular recycling.

And we can also start to stimulate embryonic cells and stem cells and things like that. So we get stronger, healthier, more stress resilient cells when we open up that cleansing window and, and start to push into a fast.

That's basically what an intermittent fast is. And there's different ways of doing it, a lot different ways of doing it. You know, you can do a 18 six fast.

You do one day, 24 hour fast. And basically intermittent fasting is considered anything less than 48 hours. So 48 after 48 hours, we start to call it an extended fast.

So for some people they will do like alternate day fasting. And these are people typically that have a lot of weight to lose. And they may eat Monday, Wednesday, Friday for example, Monday, Wednesday, Friday and then eat on the weekends, but fast Tuesday and Thursday or something along those lines where they're eating, every other day.

And so that's an also an example of an intermittent fast. So there's a lot of different ways to go about this. We could talk about it from a daily perspective.

We could talk about it, you know, inside a specific window within a day. But it's a practice that really teaches the body to become more metabolically flexible.

That's really the goal of it. Metabolic flexibility means that our body is very good at burning both sugar for fuel and fat for fuel. When we're eating all the time, we create metabolic inflexibility.

We lose that metabolic flexibility. And we we depend on sugar. If you can't go, you know, three hours, 3 or 4 hours, without or without food and you get dizzy, lightheaded, you get hangry, you have a headache.

You know, you have symptoms like that. That's a sign that your body is a sugar burner and it's metabolically inflexible, and it's not able to burn our own body fat.

And for some people, they think, well, I'm very lean, like for, I, I'm typically under 10% body fat. I'm about 8% body fat, very, very lean. But I can go I do, you know, a 24 hour fast twice a week, right?

So I did two of those a week. I do what's called A52 fasting. And I have no problem doing. In fact, I feel amazing doing it because my body is good at going into the bank and taking out my stored, even though it's, you know, I don't have a lot of body fat, I plenty there to be able to fuel me for that 24 hour fast.

That's what we want to do is create that level of metabolic flexibility. I know you work with a lot of chronically ill people. Typically, people with chronic illness are very metabolically inflexible.

And just like exercise, we can't go from, you know, no activity living a sedentary lifestyle to all of a sudden running A5K, right. That would be, you know, you could try it, but it's not going to be comfortable.

It's going to be torture. You're going to be really, really sore for probably a week afterwards. Higher susceptibility for injuries, things like that.

Well same thing if you have chronic illness, you know you don't want to all of a sudden be doing 24 hour fast or a three day or five day fast. That can be, really, really traumatic on your body can be really, really challenging.

And actually leave you in a worse place. So you got to build up over time. Just like fitness, you you slowly start to, use this principle of progressive overload to strengthen your muscles.

So it's kind of same thing. You build a fasting muscle over time through regular practice. Awesome. That was a really great overview. And you know really makes this information accessible.

So lots of different directions we can go. But I, you know, just want to reinforce, you know, the intelligence that our body has, right, that we when we get out of the way and let the body do its work, it's amazing how we can really, you know, have vibrant health in a lot of our work is around detoxification.

Right. And modern life is full of these environmental toxicants that really overburden our bodies and make us ill if we don't, take out the trash regularly.

And we have all sorts of sophisticated detoxification strategies. But, you know, the more I learn about intermittent fasting, it's like this is foundational.

And I believe it's a lifestyle more than a therapy. I mean, obviously you can take it in all sorts of directions, but would you consider this a lifestyle rather than therapy or what's your, view on that? Yeah, I'm in complete agreement.

I think it's absolutely a lifestyle. I call it the fasting lifestyle. It's something you're practicing on a regular basis. It's not like you just do, you know, five day fast once a year, and then that's it.

You're practicing some level of intermittent fasting, time restricted feeding on a regular basis to really get the best results. And depending on where you're starting from, your level of metabolic flexibility, your level of stress, resilience, your body fat percentage, your activity level, things like that, that's going to help you understand how to customize it to yourself.

But you're right, it's definitely a lifestyle therapy. And I consider it the most ancient, inexpensive, and perhaps the most powerful healing strategy known to mankind.

Right? All of our ancestors did it. They didn't have access to food like we do. We don't. They didn't have pantries. They didn't have refrigerators. You know, they were dependent upon whatever they killed or harvested in the moment.

And sometimes they had famines and times where they couldn't, you know, find food. So they would go days without food at times. And the interesting thing is, you would think most people think, well, if you go days without food, you're not going to have any energy.

But the interesting thing is, the way that we're wired, we actually get an activation of things like human growth hormone and, cortisol and adrenaline and, different, different activity that goes on, different neurotransmitter balances that take place that give us better mental clarity.

We we get a huge downregulation of inflammation in our brain. For example, there's something called the neuro inflammasome. And fasting has been shown to dramatically reduce that.

So we get better mental clarity. We get better level of clairvoyance. A greater level of intuition. We're more mentally sharp. We're physically very, very sharp.

And that makes us it gives us a better survivability. Right. So our ancestors actually got sharper. And, you know, they had more drive during these periods of time when they go without food.

And that allowed them to then find an animal and kill it or find, you know, go out and travel for miles to scavenge for food and, and survive. And so it's really interesting how that works.

In fact, there's even cultures that tapped into this. For example, there's a popular movie called, the 300. Right now, it's kind of a more of a male masculine movie, talking about the Spartans and how this army of 300 was able to take on, you know, an army of hundreds of thousands of Persians.

And they were renowned for their their military ability. Now, the Spartans, one thing that they practice was one feast meal a day. So they would fast all day, they would train, they would work, and then they would eat in the evening. Right?

So at night they know the fire and they would feast for, you know, whatever that was two hours, whatever. And so they eat this one really large meal and then they would fast all throughout the day.

And they were known for this amazing level of resilience that they had. And there's athletes to an interesting, there's an athlete called Herschel named Herschel Walker, who is I live out here in Georgia, and he he was a phenom.

He, he played at the University of Georgia, one of the best college football players of all time. Great NFL player. And he was a running back. Running backs take a lot of you know they take a lot of hits.

Really really high impact hits. Most of them. By the time they're 40. They're you know they've got multiple surgeries. They're on a you know a bunch of pain medications and they basically sacrifice their life.

Instead, he felt so good in his 40s that he actually became a mixed martial arts fighter. And into his 50s, he was beating up 20 year olds. Now Herschel Walker says he only ate one meal a day.

Right? Which is hard to believe, especially when you're a high level athlete. But he said he would eat one meal a day. Typically healthy foods, two salads, fish, right?

Lean meat, lots of vegetables, things like that. And, you know, obviously he had a genetic he was genetically gifted. But at the same time, there's a lot of genetically gifted athletes that aren't able to do what he was able to do.

And so what practicing this level of intermittent fasting can really give us more resilience. And we actually increase our mitochondria. So not only the number of mitochondria, that's what produces the energy within all of our cells, but also the efficiency of the mitochondria to produce energy within ourselves.

Our body just gets really energy efficient when we do this. And so, so there's some powerful stories there, about really, you know, how we practice intermittent fasting throughout history.

Above that and, yeah, we're wired to do this. Right. And we might all be at different places in our health, how long it will take us to adapt to this?

But we're all you know, wired to do this. And, you know, as I've learned over the years about the benefits of I'm an archer Catholic doctor, so even learned about fasting in school.

And there's been, you know, there fasting clinics that have all these amazing stories. And so I was always imprinted with that and just trying to figure out how to apply that to my own life and to my patients.

And one thing you've already touched on, there's so many diets out there, right? There's so many diets, from paleo to keto to blood type to vegan to whatever.

So how do you intersect? Like actually what you're eating to the actual benefits of the intermittent fasting. So so what I've learned is what I, my sense is that the intermittent fasting, no matter what you eat, is actually probably one of the healthiest things we do, but we can fine tune it in.

Perfected with diet, of course, in what we're actually eating. Do you have how do you guide people want to choose to eat when they're eating in these windows at time?

Yeah, for sure. So I'm a big advocate of a very clean, healthy diet and ideally a diet that helps our body to use fat as fuel. So I I'm a fan of a lower carbohydrate diet.

I have three basic principles. Reduce sugar and grains, get rid of bad, bad fats. So like bad vegetable oils like corn oil, soybean, cottonseed, peanut, sunflower oil.

Right. So all those types of processed oils, canola oil, get rid of those. Eat more good fats. Avocados, coconut oil, olive oil, different things like that grass fed butter.

And then clean meat. Right. So organic, grass fed, organic pasture raised animal products. So that's, you know, the typical three rules, that, that we follow.

And then, you know, if people feel good getting their body into ketosis and going very low carb, great, they don't feel as good there and they want to do more carbs.

That's fine. But typically it's going to be a lower carb template, foods that provoke less inflammation in the system. And so what we want to go with and you know, when you do eat, you want to eat well.

So you want to feast. You want to eat till you're satiated. We're not trying to count calories or anything like that. You know, we're trying to compartmentalize the eating window or or condense it, but when we do, we we eat really well.

So you eat till you're fully satiated and do things to help support your digestive system, whether it's digestive enzymes, probiotics, things like that can be very helpful.

Making sure that you're extracting the full amount of nutrients, producing the least amount of metabolic waste, from consuming those foods. So I think all of that's important.

But, you know, the interesting thing is intermittent fasting. I've seen it. Not that I recommend this, but I've seen it for people that just, you know, are experimenting or just not interested in eating healthy.

I've seen it give them more, more leeway. Right. Like there's a guy on YouTube that he, for whatever reason, he's eating like his brand. I guess what he's he's created is this, he'll eat, like, one meal a day at, like, midnight, which is really odd time.

I don't recommend eating like that, but I eat, like, just like a really big pizza, you know, and things like that. Really bad food. But he's lost over 100 pounds.

He's in, you know, better shape, better energy. You know, he talks about how great he feels compared to how he used to feel, and he's only eating one meal a day.

So I don't recommend that. As you know, that's not how I live. I don't recommend that. But, I do feel like utilizing intermittent fasting can help you get away with just basically provide more resilience.

Your body's able to handle other stressors more effectively. Yeah. I like to tell my patients, health is resilience. So I totally, buy into that. So within that time restricted window.

So you're eating till you're full, obviously. Like we're in alignment with a lot of the recommendations about foods that we actually recommend. What about snacking?

Do you feel that snacking is okay in that window of time? Or should you really focus on those two meals a day with 1 to 2 meals a day within that window of time?

So, you know, that's a great question. Always really depends on the individual. So I'll tell you how I start people. So especially somebody that's chronically ill, you know, just again, just like exercise, if somebody is sedentary they haven't exercised.

You know we're not going to start them out with heavy weights. So we're going to start them out very light and start gradually building strength, building neuromuscular activity to where they're getting stronger and they're able to handle more.

So same thing here. So we start out with a 12 hour fast between our last meal our first meal and then what I recommend people do is in the morning when we first wake up, we're already dehydrated.

So we breathe out water vapor all night. So all of us are dehydrated when we first wake up. So you want to start your day drinking good clean water. So I recommend drinking at least 8 to 16oz of water in the morning before you even think about food.

And you could do other things like putting some lemon in it, doing some warm lemon water can be a really great idea for cleansing. And, herbal tea can be a good strategy, things like that.

But get your body hydrated. I think that's always a first thing. And what happens is, if you're used to eating a big breakfast, that's because you have a hormone called ghrelin that is released from your stomach whenever it feels like there's nothing in the stomach.

And it's also a conditioned response. So if we're used to eating at a certain period of time, we're going to release more growling. Growling is a hunger hormone.

It tells the brain, I'm hungry, I need to eat now. It's not a true. It's it's more of a psychological hunger than it is a true physical hunger. So when you hydrate, well, you actually suppress ghrelin because you're going to extend the stomach as the water comes in, you're going to get less ghrelin release.

You're not it's easier to push off, hunger. So if you hydrate, well, you start with 8 to 16oz of water and then you could possibly, you know, move it up to, let's say, 32oz of water.

Before you even think about food or time, you'll see it's pretty easy to fast to 14 hours and then possibly even to 16 hours, like we were talking about kind of that 16 eight window.

And that's a great strategy to apply now for somebody, you know, the toughest population that I've had to get doing a regular intermittent fast is going to be usually young, highly active women who are very low in body fat and also exercise on a regular basis and are Type-A personalities and oftentimes have young kids. Right.

So, you know, they're just too much stress going on there. So for those women, oftentimes what we'll do is something called crescendo fasting, where we'll do like a 12 to 14 hour fasts on a daily basis and then two days a week, nonconsecutive days, like a Monday, Thursday or something like that.

We'll try to push it up to 16 hours. That way they get a few days. So any sort of new dietary strategy, whether it's, you know, if you're not used to eating breakfast and you eat breakfast, that's actually a stressor.

If you're just eating breakfast and you don't eat breakfast, that's a stressor, right? So any sort of change is a stressor on your body. So we don't want too much stress all of a sudden, right.

Too quickly. So the two days a week spacing it out tends to work really well. A lot of people feel like, oh, I can do this. Just feels this feels good.

Then if they're feeling good, there will move to three days a week like an every other day, right? Doing something like a 16 hour fast. And you try to find a window that works best for you.

For some people, they do better eating earlier in the day and then fasting through dinner. For some people, they have trouble sleeping. When they do that, they do better, fasts or eat fasting through breakfast and eating lunch and dinner.

And in some cases, some people do better with a breakfast, dinner, but a fast throughout the day and they feel better there. So experimentation. There's no real dogmatic strategy to it.

There is, you know, we are very open to experimentation, kind of trying to figure out what's going to work best for you and your body. But yes, I do like to get get people down to 1 to 2 meals a day at most, three meals, okay.

No snacks. So if you're doing three meals, you know, three small meals, especially for people, let's say that, you know, perhaps have had their gallbladder taken out or something like that, and they can't handle a very large meal, gastric bypass, you know, whatever it is, doing something like three small meals in, let's say, an eight hour eating window can be very effective as well.

But we don't want to be adding in snacks. You know, the average individual is eating 6 to 8 times a day. They don't think they are, but they're, you know, sipping on kombucha or you know, they're drinking something that has got some sort of sweetener in it.

They don't think of it as a meal, but every time they do that, they're stimulating insulin because insulin is coming out to grab up the sugar or even in response, like even if you're drinking.

For some people, drinking like a stevia sweetened, drink, for example, can stimulate more and more of an insulin release. So as long as insulin is being triggered, that's considered a meal.

It might even just be like a small handful of nuts or, you know, half an apple. But that's still considered a meal because you're getting this hormone, response, this hormonal response from your body.

So we want to avoid that when we eat. You eat well, right. So take, you know, an hour or so, take your time, eat a really great meal until you're fully satiated, and then stop eating.

Yeah. Great points. And I have to ask the question because I'm sure a lot of people are still conflicted about this. So people have a little bit of coffee in the morning.

How do you see coffee? Is that to be within the time restricted window of eating or it will that, will that break a fast. And can you just what are your thoughts on coffee.

Yeah I mean that's a really good question. So and I think it's it's highly variable. So typically drinking coffee coffee really should be a performance enhancement tool.

The research says that chlorogenic acid, caffeine acid that are in the coffee actually help stimulate autophagy and enhance the benefits of fasting. However, I found it to be very a very individual type of, situation where if you drink coffee and you should feel great like that, you should feel fantastic, it should actually help you fast longer.

If you feel like you're getting more hungry, you're having more cravings. That's a sign you're not getting a good response. Either you're a slow caffeine metabolize or you might be magnesium deficient.

I found for some people just taking like, like for me, I do best when I put in some unsweetened magnesium L three and eight, I got a combination of three and eight and, Gleason eight, and I actually put that in my coffee.

Because coffee, the coffee plant has magnesium, but the effect it has on your adrenal glands actually depletes magnesium. And so sometimes just adding a little bit of that and maybe a little bit of salt, because you're going to lose a little bit of electrolytes can help you have a better blood sugar response to where you are not having more cravings.

You can also test your blood sugar if you're seeing a jump over ten. Like let's say you're fasting. Blood sugar is 85 and it jumps up to 95 100. That's a sign that you're having a stress too much of a stress response to that coffee.

You're going to have a little bit of an increase. That's normal. Because of it's it's activating, the, the, glucocorticoids, cortisol and things like that.

They're going to they're going to increase your blood sugar a little bit, but you don't want too much of an increase because then insulin is going to come out.

Then your blood sugar is going to drop. You're going to feel well, you know, most people think of is the crash and you're going to be hungry and you're going to have cravings.

So you have to manage that. So a lot of times the dose matters. Possibly taking adaptogens with it. Like for example, the coffee that I like is for somatic, which has, you know, like lion's mane and stuff like that, which can help you adapt a little bit more effectively. Right.

So that's kind of adapting you back to homeostasis, balancing you a little bit better so you don't get too much, stimulation. So you got to watch how much caffeine you're taking in, you know, watch what you're putting in.

And of course, you know, if you're putting in creamers and things like that, that can all have an impact. Anything that's going to have really more than ten calories is going to reduce the amount of autophagy and the amount of benefits you're going to get from fasting.

However, again, it depends on your goals, right? So if you do like a bulletproof coffee with the butter and the MCT oil, that can increase ketones in your system.

So it's going to slow down autophagy, but it's going to increase ketones. And that may allow you to fast for a longer period of time. And you're still going to be in a calorie restricted state to where you are going to get some of the benefits of fasting.

If you do the bulletproof coffee, and it may, and it makes it easy for you to fast until 2 p.m. in the afternoon, then you're probably going to get some of the benefits of autophagy.

You know, most likely that's going to happen better fat burning, things like that, as opposed to, you know, if you didn't do that and you were hungry at 10 a.m.

or 11 a.m., right, so you're going to be able to push that caloric restricted window a little bit longer and, get some of those benefits. So it's very, very variable, very individual.

You just have to see how your body's responding. Thanks for clarifying that. And I think that it's a great tool to measure, before and after, you know, the coffee that whatever concoction preparing it's impacting your blood sugar and then, yeah, I mean, there's those people who coffee is just one of those things.

You know, their body does really well. And then some people, of course, they know that caffeine and coffee is not good for them, and so don't even try that.

But, but then I hadn't heard of the magnesium three made in the coffee. That's a great idea. And also the electrolytes. I think that's, you know, really fun as well.

So coffee is always a big one. And then you answered some of the questions around women. What what about women? What their hormonal cycle do you find needs change throughout their cycle depending on for females who are still menstruating, are their carb needs going to change throughout their cycle and how do you navigate that if you do?

Absolutely. And that's a really good question. So typically, you know, day one of the menstrual cycle is menstruation. Usually when menstruation happens that's actually a great time to do fasting or a very low carb ketogenic diet.

But as you get closer to ovulation, typically like day 12, you know, or so like a few days before ovulation, you need more estrogen. And oftentimes estrogen follows insulin, right.

So for suppressing insulin we're not going to get as good a release of estrogen. You may end up missing your cycle or having it be delayed. So I recommend feasting eating a lot more healthy carbs usually from day 12.

And sometimes we'll do that till about day 17. Okay. So for like 4 or 5 days there, it's kind of your feast window right. Doing more sweet potatoes and pumpkin and different things like that.

Beets, carrots. Right. A lot of these more healthy starches. Really great idea to do that during that period of time. And then, again, you're then you can definitely go back to fasting, for about a week there right before your, the last week of your menstrual cycle.

Most women notice that they have more cravings, right? So usually from my day 23 to 28, the cravings start to increase because again, you need more hormones to be produced there.

More progesterone, more estrogen there. For the, for the menstrual cycle. So that last five days or so, back to feasting. So it's kind of this feast famine cycle.

So the best time to do, you know, like if you're going to do an extended fast, it's probably going to be in that day 1 to 10, like right after after you menstruate.

Right. In that period of time, oftentimes women notice that they just feel a lot better as they're having their menstrual cycle fasting or going into ketosis or doing one meal a day or something along those lines.

They feel really good. But if they continue that, they oftentimes will miss their cycle and have different issues. So I do have an article on my website on menstrual cycle, feast, famine, cycling around that where I explain more of that.

But typically it's like day one through ten, one through 12. Really good time for for fasting ketosis day roughly day 10 to 12. Somewhere in that range up to maybe day 17.

Really good time for feasting. Then day 17 to day 22 or 23. Really good for fasting. And then day 23 through 28, really good for feasting. So it's a true feast famine cycle.

And I, I'm not like fully clear on those windows because for women that are very low body fat, they might need a little bit like an extra day or two of feasting for women that are overweight.

They might need a little less feasting. Right. And they can handle more fasting the more I love how this lifestyle really connects us to these rhythms in life, right?

So we have especially women who, know that they have these monthly cycles that we go through, but we all, you know, have a daily cycle, we have monthly cycles.

But in my practice, I see how the full moon cycle even, you know, affects people. And so I think, you know, living in this cyclical kind of, rhythm really connects us to, you know, how really our body works and also the rhythms of life and how to, you know, reflect on that.

I think it's, yeah, a very intentional way to, live. And, you know, with your comments around fasting and, you know, feasting around the menstrual cycle, something that, you know, my patients just share with me.

I've called it the luteal phase, where kind of after ovulation, a lot of my women, especially, who have Lyme or chronic illnesses that, have chronic pathogenic loads that they tend to be more flared, they're more symptomatic, especially that week going, it's week leading up to their menstrual cycle.

So it's kind of like after ambulation. And you know, how I've made sense of it is that, you know, around ovulation and after the immune system is starting to get suppressed in case in preparation for a pregnancy, if that's going to happen that month and then so that immune suppression can also have these pathogens, you know, maybe more, you know, overactive or not in check, if you will.

And then as you get closer to shutting the lining, if you're not pregnant, prostaglandins can increase. And then more information can kind of mount. And so I've been I haven't done this with enough women.

But you're inspired me to do this is like how can we also use this feast famine cycle to maybe give it more? I mean, resilience and maybe they might not be asymptomatic because a lot of my patients are low carb and, you know, they just can't tolerate grains and carbs.

So they're they're doing those diets. Maybe they need to give themselves more carbs. So during those times and they might not feel as bad. So it's just something I've been reflecting on.

And you're helping me think that through. Yeah, I think and I think it's especially important for very lean women, you know, because again, the body's so sensitive to amount of body fat.

So you get those very lean women and especially, you know, a lot of women that have chronic illness, not certainly not all, but there are a high percentage that are very catabolic.

They have trouble keeping any muscle mass on things like that. So yeah, the feast, famine, cycling can really, really help. Awesome. So you mentioned, you know, like that kombucha can break a fast rate or, trigger insulin.

So, you know, I find a lot of people like their nighttime rituals, right? So nighttime can be a time where people might, you know, have cravings or they might be tempted to eat or they might just, you know, try to have some, you know, how, I guess, how can we replace, like, rituals that maybe people don't notice, like having that chocolate or having the kombucha might be, you know, setting them up not for success.

What do you do at night to, Or do you just go to bed early, you know? And how do you tackle that? Yeah. You know, so so for me, I just try to make sure that I eat a really good, satiating dinner.

I think that really helps. In some cases, some people do better, with like a little bit of carb back loading where especially active people where they are very low carb during the day and then at night they have a little bit more carbs.

Right? And it may not be every day, it might be every other day or something like that. You know? And that could be something simple, like a little bit of sweet potato.

Or it could be, you know, beets or carrots or, you know, some sort of healthy approach or berries. Right. Which can be real satiating or, you know, coconut whipped cream or, you know, some sort of like a healthy type of thing like that.

And, you know, if, if for some people just having some sort of like a healthy, lower carb, healthier variety dessert after dinner can be really helpful for saving that off.

Now, there's also some some different products out there. And herbs and things like that that can really help. And herbal teas, like there is an herbal tea from Peak Tea Company that they actually make fasting teas and they've got one with cinnamon in it.

So it's a cinnamon herbal tea and it's got some other things like ginger in there. Cinnamon can be really good for helping get rid of cravings. Jane Nema is another good one.

There's actually a company. It's like I can't remember exactly the name of it, but it's has has to do with stopping cravings. And they have a gum slash, you know, like they also have like little, you know, little almost like little pieces of candy that have natural ingredients that you can just kind of throw in after your meal.

And its main ingredient is Jane. Emma. Right. Which is a great herb for helping stabilize blood sugar, reduce cravings. That can be helpful. Camomile tea can be really helpful.

So it's almost like, kava also is another good one cup of tea. Right. And, you know, so drinking some herbal tea, some warm tea oftentimes can help get rid of those types of cravings.

Hydration in general throughout the day, I find to be really important for cravings. A lot of times we think we're hungry, but we're really thirsty. And so that part of our brain, our hypothalamus or a hunger center and our thirst center, it's right next to each other.

And because food is so prevalent in our society, and whenever we eat, we get a dopamine release, meaning we feel good, right? And that's a great thing.

However, we oftentimes get addicted to that dopamine release. And so we're typically going for food when we're really are thirsty. Really. Our body really needs water.

So hydrating well between meals makes it easier fast between meals. And then after dinner, give yourself a little bit of time to, to break down that food.

Make sure you got good stomach acid production. You know, so give yourself 45 minutes to an hour, after your dinner, but then hydrate your body, get some herbal tea, drink some water.

And that can really help take away some of those cravings. So I find that to be really helpful. And, you know, you can also supplement again with, with different herbs.

Berberine. Jane. Emma. Banana leaf. Right. There's a lot of different herbal products that have these types of things. Usually they're marketed for like blood sugar support, but they also really work well for helping reduce cravings.

Awesome idea. So a lot of people can, you know, get their pantry stocked when you want to be set up for success, right? So yeah, this is one of your weaknesses or your areas that you're concerned about.

Now, doctor jackers just gave us a huge list to think about, as you mentioned is what do you think about supplements and breaking fasts? Do you feel like this performance needs to be taken within the time restricted windows of eating, or do you feel like it's outside of that?

Are you okay with that? I guess of course it depends. But yeah, it depends on the supplement. Right. So, you know, there are some supplements that they just you're going to digest them better when they're taken with meals.

Usually that's going to be things like minerals like zinc for example. Fish oil, vitamin D. So fat soluble nutrients, things that are actually fatty acids like fish oil or omega three is, always want to take that with a meal.

Now, there are other things that, you know, actually can help enhance a fast. So adaptogenic herbs, for example, these extracts, they're gonna have literally no calories in them.

But at the same time, they're going to help basically, you know, for some people fasting increases the cortisol too much. Right. And so taking something like an adaptogenic herb is going to help your body release the amount of cortisol that it should be releasing for the environment that it's in.

So it's again, almost like a thermostat, right? So if you're producing too much cortisol it's going to bring it down a little bit. If you're not producing enough to give you energy and wakefulness, it's going to bring it up a little bit.

So I think adaptogens are great. I think that, in some cases some vitamin C can be helpful. I think that, let's see magnesium in like an unsweetened form, you know, so there are, there are forms that are sweetened.

So you want to avoid those, during a fast but an unsweetened form, magnesium I think would be really helpful because magnesium is really more, more or less almost like an adaptogen, really helps our body adapt to stress.

Most people are depleting magnesium. The more stressed your under, the more you're going through magnesium. So I think that that can be really helpful.

Binders are great during a fast because your body's usually eliminating more toxins. So whether it's activated charcoal or bentonite clay or, zeolites or folic acid, humic acid, those bioactive carbons or Chlorella or something along those lines, I think, that's all great.

You know, you can definitely take those. So again, you're trying to avoid things that have calories in them. And usually your supplements will say. So, for example, if you were to just take a straight Chlorella supplement, that's great.

But if you're doing like a greens powder that has 20 calories per scoop, it should be better to do that. Let's say if you were having like an eight hour eating window and you're doing two meals, have your meal and then like two hours later, have your greens powder in water or something like that, right?

You're not going to get much of an insulin release. Right? But that would be a better time to do something like that and try to keep your fast in the morning.

Let's say if it was in the morning or just you're that fasting window a little bit more pure white, or you're not consuming things that have more calories in them.

Yeah. That's a we we use a lot of binders in our protocols. And you know, the hard part for people to take them is like when do they fit them in. So you know this intermittent fasting lifestyle actually naturally gives you the time, you know, windows to take you, binders, which are also probably a really awesome addition to fasting as your body, you know, that sort of things.

Yeah. I really think, you know, when when people have trouble with fasts, it usually has to do with blood sugar instability. So adaptogens can be very helpful.

Magnesium can be very, very helpful for that or toxin release because you know, your fat cells are breaking. Now a lot of times, you know, we were storing different, different bio toxins in our fat cells, heavy metals, things like that.

So as your body starts to break down fat and use it for fuel, we're going to release more of these toxins. We also have gut bacteria dying so we can release more endotoxins.

So binders are really helpful. You know, during those periods of time. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, I know, I, I feel like there's so foundational to our protocols and really lifestyle in modern day.

What we're, our bodies are up against. That's one takeaway, you know, from you know, this podcast, it's not only of course, adopting this lifestyle, but the importance of binders.

I try to share that a lot. So, you know, you're such a wealth of knowledge with all of this. And so just a little bit of a detour. But do you have any insight on gestational diabetes?

That's something I actually went through myself, and I want to have another child. And I've noticed my, you know, blood sugar in the morning still is still higher than I'd like it to be.

And I'm, you know, trying to I'm not doing full fasting days, but I am. Yeah. I'm just really curious of what your insights with working with all the people you've worked with over the years of gestational diabetes.

Yeah. I mean, I think it I think it definitely can range, obviously trying and trying to dial in the diet, you know, obviously is is number one getting really good activity trying to prioritize sleep.

So getting all the main lifestyle factors, you know, working well is, is very, very important right off the bat. You know, it's interesting because, you know, there's just so much there's so many warnings and, you know, don't take these supplements when you're pregnant and this and that.

And so to some degree, you always have to, you have to realize that they just haven't been studied. But not that, for example, some of these herbs are most of them are not knowing what they're going to do for somebody that's pregnant or not.

Right. But in some cases I've use things like, again, cinnamon, right, giant Emma, things like that to help get the blood sugar more stable. And then yes, doing a little bit more intermittent fasting, even if the woman's pregnant, try to just compartmentalize it.

If they've got just gestational diabetes, getting them moving a lot. Strength training, a lot of women when they get pregnant or are afraid to do any sort of strength training.

My, actually, as we speak right now, my wife's pregnant. Oh, okay. So as we speak or she's six weeks, six weeks pregnant with our fourth child, right.

So, So. Yeah. So. So we work out together, so just, you know, having her regularly do strength training, obviously, there can come to a point, you know, when you're in month nine, or especially if you have a history of, premature births.

Sometimes doing that activity can promote labor. If you have a history of, late births, right where you go past your due date, then you really can continue to do some level of strength training, because that's actually going to help you get more on date.

Right. And, and have a better pregnancy. So strength training I think can be extremely important for helping prevent against gestational diabetes. Having that lean body tissue and activating those glute for receptors within your muscles, the glute for receptors act as basically like insulin, right.

So they're grabbing up sugar that's in the system. But at the same time you also need a lot of rest because you don't want to overtrain you certainly don't want that.

Overtraining is is, you know, going to create a chronic stress, response in your body and you're going to end up having higher levels of blood sugar. So you got to get the right amount. Right.

You don't need much 20 to 30 minutes, maybe 3 to 4 days a week is really all you need. Take a walk every day. Try to get out in the sun as much as you possibly can.

I know you're in Seattle, so, like, sometimes of the year, right? Today we are. We are outside. It's beautiful fall weather out here in Georgia. So I was just outside with my kids playing basketball and stuff like that.

But yeah, we try to get as much sun, sunshine, sun exposure as we can and believe it or not, sun exposure and also grounding. Just getting your bare feet on grass, dirt, sand can have a really positive effect on your stress response and your blood sugar.

Right. And so I think all of those things are really, really important. So making sure you get the right amount of stress not too much, not too little.

Right. So exercise is a stressor on your body. So is fasting. So those are positive stressors. But we want to get just the right amount. I think that's that's important.

And again everybody's variable and different right. So we got to kind of balance it out. Yeah I know things for a change that I just feel you know like you said you know pregnant women a lot of people don't want to take a stand on how to treat them or what to share because of the, you know, the risks and the implications of saying the wrong things.

But I think, you know, of course, there's only a more chronic illness in our children. And I think we need to wake up, I'm pretty sure, and moms and, you know, it's, you know, the starting of a healthy life, right?

So this is awesome. And, yeah. And also a ketogenic diet, too, if if your blood sugars are running really high, dial back the carbs to just kind of obvious thing, right.

Doesn't always work. But for a lot of cases it does. Yeah. I'll keep you posted I know that, yeah. With me, it was kind of a curveball because I eat. I mean, I'm pretty healthy, I'm human, but I'm, you know, walking this lifestyle, right? Yeah.

I just think, you know, stress, you know, I, I had practices and employees and. Yeah, all of that. And I think about I would love to dive deeper. I haven't done this enough, but how the environmental toxicants can also affect oh yeah.

Gestational diabetes is the mom was mobilizing so much, you know, during that time and how that could also affect, you know, blood sugar. But but yeah, I think blood sugar.

Yeah. The key to health, right. We know it's, preventative of, you know, so many chronic illnesses. You know, I see a lot of patients with chronic illness.

But if you want to prevent cancers and neurological. Yeah. Is and, you know, all the things that we want to prevent, this is so what what are what are your thoughts on using binders during pregnancy to.

Yeah. You know, we're really proponent of that's okay. I mean, I think a lot of the data around our like is Chlorella is like a superfood and a nutritional support.

And and then it can also have that dual role as a binder. So I took Sorella throughout my pregnancy. My daughter is really healthy and we had a really amazing birth and all that good stuff.

But I just I felt I mean, I'm so educated on all this and I felt so sad for the women who don't advocate themselves once they're in that box of gestational diabetes, because they it put you on a time window and, you know, they do all this stuff.

But we had a natural birth and I wasn't induced and all that good stuff. So I know I'm grateful, but I did binders and then I did a lot of body work too.

I think that also gets under estimate because yeah, I do chiropractic and I had been my mother and animal massage and acupuncture, and I think that's a huge support for women during their pregnancy and leading up to their birth.

Because your structure has so much to do with getting your baby out. And so I think that's often underestimated. But, you know, that's a really, really great point.

You know, my wife, and she's obviously in her first trimester and over the last two weeks has had a lot of issues with burping. All right. More so than our other kids.

Now, she's 38. And so she's a little bit older, but I had to put her on a low Fodmap diet. It seems to be helping, and taking some charcoal because she's had a lot of, a lot of burping all of a sudden.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. You know, means it's system shifting, right? You know, so she's in that, suppressed state again, you know, to have the healthy baby.

And so that's when, you know, maybe some underlying dysbiosis that, you know, she was making this more prevalent and then, you know, yes, the progesterone, you know, increases in the but it does move around.

And you know, that could also, you know, be part of it. But I'm glad I'm glad you have her on plan. Yeah. Exactly. You've been experimenting right. So yeah. Share your story.

I mean, it's so fun for, I think, a lot of new moms and moms. Yeah. You know, to see other people walk in this whole completely alternative way of having the child compared with what many people are, you know, it's just the conventional, system, right?

That people have to kind of go outside of that to find all this other knowledge, which I think is so important, you know, change the future for our children.

Yeah. For sure. Well, I see a lot of women will get a lot of nausea, and they'll start craving, like, crackers and stuff like that. And I think, and they seem to feel better when they do that.

And I think it has to do with the fact that, again, they've got some level of bacterial overgrowth and also the progesterone reduces the contractility of like the esophageal sphincter.

Some of the different sphincters don't work quite as well. Everything is getting looser right. And so the sphincters don't work quite as well. So a lot of times, there's things moving through the cycle valve back into the small intestine.

There's things not moving in through the stomach, and it's causing this sort of disorder. And so, even though I'm not a huge fan of a low Fodmap diet for a long term, for a few weeks while you're producing a lot of these hormones, sometimes that can be helpful because you don't want as much prebiotic.

Because again, you've you've got too much bacteria in the system. I think that's kind of my theory of why some women seem to feel better eating things like crackers, obviously try to get the best sourcing.

But, you know, normally I would never recommend that in a diet, even if it's whole grain or gluten free, you know, things like that. But she seems to feel a little better doing it, so I'm like, well, I think we had to take out, like, onions and garlic and broccoli and.

Right, all these healthy foods because, avocado, because she was eating guacamole and just having a massive amount of burping and things like that. And so we've had to cut back a lot of these foods that are very, very healthy foods.

But unfortunately just hasn't been able to respond well for them. And this is really just like a like last week or two that we've been dealing with this.

But almost every day we're like trying to figure out what the next thing is. Yeah. So. Oh well you're a great team I'm sure. And she's in good hands and I'm sure we'll chat for any questions.

It was so, now what about savory? So yeah. Keep us posted with how she does. And congratulations. What a joy. Especially during this time. And I could keep you here all day.

I've learned so much from, you know, they appreciate your ability to break all this information down and make it really accessible because I think people some when this is new to people, they just go in overwhelm and they can't quite realize how to adopt this into their lifestyle.

And I think you gave a lot of people some pearls today. So thank you. Thank you. And how can people find out more about your work or any wonderful things that you're up to at this time?

For sure. Well, you can find me on Doctor jokers.com. That's my main website and, social media doctor David Joker's YouTube and also have a great book coming out in October.

It's called the Fasting Transformation, where I talk a lot more about these fasting strategies and really how to, how to apply fasting to get the best results.

Awesome mobile. Definitely put that at all in the show notes. And yeah, thank you for all the incredible education you put out into the world. A lot of my patients have used your website as a resource and it has really awesome information.

So thank you. Well thank you, I appreciate you having me on. I think you will have a beautiful day. And thank you everyone, and we'll have all the information in the show notes and have a great day.

The Intermittent Fasting Transformation

Christine Schaffner, ND

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

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