Learn How Intermittent Fasting Boosts Your Gut Health

Introduction and guest background 0:00

Welcome back. We're continuing our conversation on reversing chronic gut conditions. I'm your host Sinclair Kennally And today I am joined by my wonderful friend and colleague Cynthia Thurlow. Cynthia is truly a force of nature and has really made intermittent fasting accessible to the public today. So we're so grateful for her presence in this space and her commitment to quality and these insights and making them available to everybody. She is the author of the best selling book, Intermittent Fasting Transformation.

She is a two times TEDx speaker, which has been. Downloaded over. 14 million times or something or viewed 40 million times. It's insane. Cynthia and she's also the host of the very popular podcast Everyday Wellness, which has over 50,000 downloads a month. So you can understand why I would want this force of nature on this event, because I really want you guys to understand what intermittent fasting can do for you and where where the line and opportunity ends and where we really need to look at metabolic health as a whole.

And Cynthia can speak about both of those things with so much authority. So welcome, Cynthia. Thank you. I've been really excited to reconnecting with you and your community. Thank you. So let's just dive right in and let's get to the heart of this issue today. So we have people listening to this right now that are just getting started taking control over their health like Okay. No one in white coats going to save me. I need to figure out my chronic gut conditions. I'm not going to let this bleed into another year.

Right. And then we have people who have tried every cleanse, every diet, every fast, every gut healing protocol. They've tried every probiotic on the market. They have multiple diagnoses. They know more than the general practitioner does about what's wrong with them. Right. So it's quite the dichotomy. So I really want to feel free to speak at this very advanced level for those guys today and also make sure we give our newbies to the, you know, their own health journey. Something to start with as well to speak to that level of complexity.

I would love for you to share and like, how did you get started in this space? Let's get started there. Yeah. So I think most people know that I worked in traditional allopathic medicine first as an ER nurse in inner city Baltimore, later as a nurse practitioner in critical care and cardiology then. So not surprisingly, I'm a bit of an adrenaline junkie. But what I started to see over time was patterns of lifestyle issues that were mitigating a lot of the success I was seeing patients having with coronary artery disease, atrial fibrillation, high blood pressure, diabetes.

I mean, the list goes on and on and on. And so over time I became really interested in lifestyle medicine. And then most specifically, food is medicine. And so I, you know, drove down a rabbit hole, started a PhD program, which I didn't love, you know, did a wellness coaching program, which I did love. And then I went down this functional nutrition path and that lit me up. And so the realization that I only really wanted to talk about nutrition and knew that if I could get my patients to change their diets, they could change their lives in an allopathic model.

I kind of got patted on the head like, this is our nurse practitioner who loves to talk about food. But over time, I came to the realization that after six years in cardiology, in order to make a larger impact, I really needed to leave that traditional model. And so I took a leap of faith, didn't have a business plan, just knew I'd be successful. That can either make me sound crazy or just inherently very confident.

What intermittent fasting does for metabolic health 3:40

And so over time, I started creating programs and one on one work and at one point I decided to do a TEDTalk. And then that that changed everything, quite honestly, and started a podcast. And so little that little by little I started making a bigger impact and really at least initially really encouraging women to consider the possibility that all these limiting beliefs that we absorb from our traditional allopathic providers about the aging process and metabolic health and metabolic disease is rooted firmly in that lifestyle piece.

And so I very proudly now say that it's, you know, it's evolved into this huge focus on metabolic health. Intermittent fasting is one aspect of metabolic health, but helping people understand the impact of metabolic health is pervasive. As an example, we know right now 92 to 93% of Americans are not metabolically healthy. And so helping people understand that this is reversible and this is reversible with lifestyle and some other tweaks helps people understand that it's accessible. And I think if we can make things accessible and tangible, then we can allow patients to enact change in their lives.

And that's really empowering, far more so than writing 50 or 60 prescriptions a day, which is what I was doing before. Oh, God, you said it. So let's let's tackle intermittent fasting first, what it can do for you and where people are getting it wrong. Because thankfully, due to your advocacy and other people in space, this is becoming much more accessible as a concept. So many people in our audience may already be be trying it or have tried it and potentially done it wrong a little bit. Yeah. So intermittent fasting is as simple as saying eating less often.

So we know the average American is consuming anywhere from 6 to 10 meals or drinks, sugar sweetened beverages a day. And so what we're really speaking to is by eating less often, we are able to utilize both stored sugar or glycogen or stored fats as a fuel source. And so these fuel substrates are important when we talk about metabolic flexibility, when we talk about the benefits of intermittent fasting. And it really speaks to the fact that people come to intermittent fasting out of an innate curiosity to change body composition, to lose weight, what they stay for, all the other benefits improves cognition because as they're able to break down fats stored fat, they can actually eventually get these converted over to ketones.

And in their specific types of ketones that diffuse across the blood brain barrier like beta hydroxybutyrate, and can allow us to have more mental clarity, more energy, especially brain energy. We think about reductions in biophysical markers like blood pressure, blood sugar, fasting, lipids, you know, looking specifically at triglycerides, HDL, LDL, total cholesterol can all be improved. Things like uric acid, inflammatory markers, thinking about the reduction in risk for neurocognitive disorders like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, dementia, things like that, improvement in gut integrity.

So if you fast long enough, you can get some stem cell activation. And for most of us, understanding this complex in a relationship between the gut microbiome and susceptibility to autoimmune conditions, very, very important. And it's interesting, the gut microbiome was not something that we learned about 25 years ago in school. But over the last ten or 15 years, it has definitely become something that we're talking more about and understanding that, you know, there's this bidirectional relationship between our brains and our guts and how we are.

The healthier our guts are, the healthier and more transmitters, the improvement in our immune function. All those are directly related to this fasting, eating less often. P So probably the next question will be probably the next question will be that when we're talking about these things, helping people understand that if we can allow our bodies to effectively utilize either stored fat or stored sugar as a fuel substrate, that metabolic flexibility is the way that our bodies are designed to thrive.

We're not pese is what allows our bodies to thrive as opposed to this kind of methodology that most of us are eating 2 to 3 every 2 to 3 hours. We're eating snacks, we're eating many meals. And what we're doing is we're never allowing our bodies to have an opportunity to break down food, to properly digest process. There's all sorts of interesting mechanisms in the gut, including the migrating motor complex. All these things are fully optimized or we're eating less often. And I think for many people, they may initially, you know, step into the pond of intermittent fasting and the first thing they may notice is they're not bloated and then they notice their digestion is optimized, then they're not constipated.

Maybe they're no longer having diarrhea. It could be that simple to start with. The other thing that I think is important to kind of illustrate with intermittent fasting is the process of autophagy. So this waste and recycling process where our body goes in and it removes disease disordered organelles, mitochondria that have the potential to go on and and create disease or be pre-cancerous cells or things of that nature. And so this waste and recycling process, it's like taking out the garbage is activated or upregulated in an unfed state.

Obviously the longer you fast, the more autophagy, but still beneficial for you to eat less often for even plain old digestive rest. It's so well said. Okay, so let's think about how this relates to the widespread metabolic dysfunction that we're seeing in the US today and of course the world over, especially in developed countries. Is this exposure to herbicides, pesticides and all these processed food additives that have really dysregulated our digestion? How can intermittent fasting help us to reclaim our own innate metabolic flexibility and our own gut resilience once more?

Yeah, it's such a great question. So first and foremost, when we're transitioning from a standard American diet where we're eating with meal frequency to eating 2 to 3 meals a day, again in an unfettered state, as our body is getting more acclimated to utilizing either stored sugar or stored fat for fuel, that ability to use either type of fuel substrate and a fuel substrate is just saying type of fuel is where the metabolic flexibility really resides. So when we eat food, our blood sugar will go up.

And correspondingly our body wants to create a hormone called insulin in an effort to bring it back down. So when we're in an unfed state and insulin levels are low, it allows our body to go in and free up fat from our stored fat cells to use as fuel. And that's a very important distinction to be made that a lot of people don't talk about. But if we are eating all the time, if we get up and the first thing we do in the morning is have a sugary beverage, and then maybe we have a pastry or we have a bowl of cereal.

I mean, the whole breakfast industry has conditioned us to believe that we need to have these sugary processed junk foods, which, in essence, do not stabilize our blood sugar. So they spike our blood sugar. There's a lot of physiologic things that go on when our blood sugar spikes. But first and foremost, understand when our blood sugar spikes too high can damage the endothelium, which is actually the interior

How fasting supports digestion and gut repair 10:50

lining of the blood vessel, can potentially go on to damaged organs. We have to secrete more insulin to bring that blood sugar back down. And because you're just consuming in the standard American diet a carbohydrate laden breakfast, what ends up happening is that blood sugar does not stabilize. So if you get up in the morning and you have let's just say you have bacon and eggs, you've got a protein filled breakfast that is going to stabilize your blood sugar. You're not going to need as much insulin and to bring your blood sugar back down.

And because of the healthy fats, let's say you have some avocado with that, it's going to allow you to go a longer period of time in between meals. So one of the first things that I talk about is understanding the fuel substrate mechanisms that we do want to be able to our bodies be able to utilize either stored sugar or stored fats, but also understanding that we want to restructure our meals to help stabilize that blood sugar. Really focusing in on protein, I would say protein is the most satiating macronutrient very, very important for a number of things that go on in the body, not the least of which satiety, which is what allows us to go longer.

And then helping people understand that in between those meals, you have all this freed up time. You don't have to worry about food prep. You don't have to worry about grabbing that donut at 10:00. You don't need that sugary. Starbucks, Starbucks, Starbucks coffee at 11 a.m. because you're having a sugar crash. And so those are like basic first steps and we're talking about metabolic flexibility, but we're also speaking to sleep quality. We know if you're not getting high quality sleep at night and that's defined as less than 6 hours a night, we know that you have a 60% risk of developing insulin resistance just from one night of poor sleep.

It just regulates leptin and ghrelin, which is key appetite and satiety hormones. And I always say you're not going to crave chicken and broccoli, you're going to crave junk if you haven't slept well. Stress management also feeds into that metabolic flexibility. So when you're stressed and you're you're stressed out and it's chronic, your cortisol level goes up initially, your blood sugar goes up correspondingly as what happens, that insulin level goes up and you will remain in this kind of fat storage mode.

And then also thinking about the macros as I kind of touched on are very, very important. And then lastly, I would say when we're talking about this internal relationship of metabolic flexibility, I'd be remiss if we didn't talk about strength training, understanding that north of 40 we are losing muscle mass. It's called sarcopenia. It's not a question of if, but when. As you lose muscle mass, you are losing insulin sensitivity and you're losing insulin sensitivity. Those cells are not as receptive to the lock and key mechanism that insulin uses to move blood sugar into a cell to keep it out of the bloodstream.

And so helping people understand that doing a long haul cardio, you know, for all the cardio buddies out there that they want to they want to pound out ten miles every day and they think that's the way to keep them svelte. I'm here to tell you, you know, muscle is this organ of longevity. You know, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon talks a lot about that. But very important to understand that metabolic flexibility is largely tied into how much muscle mass you maintain and you hold on to muscle is a glucose reservoir.

Even taking a walk after dinner or a walk after a meal can help with this glucose disposal. Also very important. So I always think about metabolic flexibility. It ties into that. And you touched on this other piece of metabolic flexibility that plays into the toxins we're exposed to in our environment. Personal care products and food absolutely impacts our hormone receptors. Impacts is endocrine disrupting chemicals can offset the receptor sites which can lead to your body is trying to protect itself.

As frustrating as it is when you are gaining more adipose tissue and trying to figure that, figure out why that's happening can be a direct reflection of these things that we're exposed to. And the other piece that I would just tell you and lastly is trauma. We know that individuals that are that have high scores or adverse childhood events are more at risk for developing autoimmune conditions and weight loss resistance later in life. So understanding the role of an overactive, sympathetic nervous system can drive metabolic health issues.

And that is something Sinclair, that I in the past year have really kind of leaned into because I think it's such an invaluable connection that many of us, myself included, weren't making those connections before. But now understand that complex in a relationship with metabolic health. I think that's so beautifully said. You just gave such a great overview of the different factors that are really plaguing us today. And what I noticed, too, as you were talking about this is something about the the people in this audience and how so many of them have been trained into avoiding major sections of food.

You know, they've been gluten free for a long time, like that ship has sailed and it went. But, you know, they still haven't resolved their issues or they wouldn't be listening. Right. And so I'm thinking about what they need to hear from you today. And I would love for you to unpack a little bit more about this. You know, given all these factors that have added to their stress, that have created these persistent gut issues, really, when you think about it, the gut is one of the most resilient systems in the entire body. Right.

And yet when we see these, like recurring metabolic issues and we're not moving the needle and we're getting more and more sensitive over time, one of the things I notice is that people throw the concept of macros just out the window. The more reactive you are to certain food groups, the less you're really thinking about protein versus carbohydrates and fats. And I'm wondering if you could help people think about that. If they already have a chronic gut condition, how should they be thinking about balancing macros and intermittent fasting for themselves so that they stop unwittingly perpetuating the issue through food?

It's like they're poking the bruise. They're trying to heal. Thanks. It's such a great question. Sinclair, I think it's helpful just to give context. So in 2019, I was hospitalized for 13 days and was on six weeks of antibiotics and antifungals. And let me tell you, my gut is still not 100%, but the first nine months afterwards, the only thing my gut tolerated was meat. I'm not suggesting that that's the right answer for everyone, but I do think that when you feel like you are reactive to many things, and I've experienced that personally and it's very frustrating that I went back to basics, it was like, okay, bone broth, meat.

I couldn't even tolerate fish or chicken. It was like really like stewed meat was where I kind of started and it wasn't a gapps compliant diet or anything. I didn't want it to be that complicated.

Healing chronic gut issues with simple macros 17:20

So I think sometimes you have to go back to removing the most inflammatory foods. So, you know, kind of big concepts is looking at like processed sugar and obviously alcohol, but you know, gluten and grains. I know you've got a very sophisticated audience, but sometimes it can be pulling out dairy. And I find that sometimes dairy is the hardest thing for people to get rid of because they get this case of morphine opiate rush. When they consume these foods, they love their ice cream, they want their cheese.

Do not tell them not to eat it, but I do think when you're in a healing phase or you're trying to heal, sometimes you peel. It's like peeling an onion. You're trying to peel back one little layer to get a little bit of traction to move forward. And so sometimes you have to trust the process of really saying, I really love X food and I'm going to trust the process that if I remove this and I feel better in two weeks or one week or five days, then my body is telling me this is the right step forward.

Now I think we can get lost in minutia of details like there are people are like, I have to be on low histamine, I have to be on no lids, I have to be a no SAPIEN and no Lectins. No, that's overwhelming. I just say start big and maybe you just have some protein. We know that's what your body needs. And actually as we get older, we actually need more protein. Our protein needs increase, just like my teenagers are in this mass of anabolic phase. I'm on the other end and I'm on this phase where I actually need more protein just as much as the teenagers to maintain.

So I think on a lot of levels, when you understand the inflammatory nature of some of the high level foods I talked about, it's understanding that we don't want to get in a position where we only three foods. I see a lot of that like people are so afraid to eat are afraid to eat outside the house. They're afraid to eat at their loved ones houses. They're afraid because they've lost so much control of what's going on with their body that they they've got like three things they can eat that don't don't give them diarrhea, don't give them bloating, don't give them constipation.

And so I think you really have to scale back and understand that maybe a little bit of fasting combined, a very simple diet, very simple. Just a little bit of protein. Maybe it's a cooked vegetable that you can tolerate. I mean, I started with like stewed potatoes. I mean, it was at that my my life was pretty interesting for that first nine months after I was hospitalized. But helping people understand that you want to give your body nourishment, but it may be that you're eating things that are a little bland or like salt became my best friend.

High quality salt, because I added salt to all of my meals. And it made it went from being kind of bland to delicious with a little bit of salt. But I think that that the best advice I can provide, having worked with thousands and thousands of patients over the years, is, number one, trust the process. Trust your provider, the person you're working with. Number two, we don't want you to get so whittled down that you have three foods you eat and you are terrified to move outside that box. You have yourself in number three, adding a little bit of salt and doing a little bit of fasting.

It could be maybe you fast from 6:00 in the evening till 8:00 in the morning, or maybe you have your last meal at seven and you eat at 8:00 the following day and you're doing just like a 13 hour fast. That's great. There's so many digestive benefits. By eating less often, you're going to allow your body to go in and be able to heal and mend a lot of these areas and the gut microbiome that, you know, many times they've been ravaged. If you've been on antibiotics repeatedly, I know for me I've six weeks of antibiotics, antifungals, my entire gut microbiome.

Microbiome was completely wiped out of beneficial bacteria. And the diligence of understanding that it can take 18 months, 24 months to kind of get things back online. But understanding and trusting the process and as you tolerate things like prebiotic and probiotic rich foods, like I started with little amounts of fermented cabbage, now sometimes people say, well, I can't tolerate the cabbage, little bit of cabbage. It's every day I'd have a forkful and then I would just kind of keep moving that needle up.

So I think from that perspective, it's, it's understanding the digestive rest and a little bit of fasting can help heal the gut. If you're feeling up to it. We no longer fasts are very beneficial for some degree of stem cell activation and stem cells are very healing and and nourishing when they're activated in the body. But also understand that you do need to eat. We don't want you to get to a point where you are tactic, which means when your body is breaking down muscle to fuel your body. That happened to me when I was in the hospital because I couldn't eat and I walked out £15 lighter, which wasn't a good look for anybody.

But the point of why I'm sharing this is to give you some sense of these things can happen to all of us. And I'm on this journey back, and I want you to trust in the process and come back on this journey to where you're going to get to a point where, you know, I can eat certain foods. I feel good when I eat certain foods. I can fast when I feel like I need a little bit more digestive rest really understanding that interrelationship and again that bidirectional communication between your brain and your gut is certainly very, very helpful.

And I always say healthy gut to make healthy neurotransmitters healthy neurotransmitters allow us to see the world from a different, more positive lens. And I think for a lot of individuals, there's so much going on in the gut that it makes it hard for them to see that. Yeah, that's such a great point. Thank you for speaking to that piece at the end there because it is so hard to push forward once you have, you know, created a situation, but now you're trying to survive through and rebuild from.

And it's really hard not to make some deeper meaning out of it that is not positive. And it really is a neurotransmitter issue, like it's a biochemical bioelectrical issue. And guys, if you're listening, I just of course you're listening. But if you're resonating with what we're talking about here percent, then I have been through, you know, some deep, dark moments with our health. And so we can tell you from experience, you will climb out of this by, you know, with some chop wood carry water basics.

And I think in our desperation when the first few things we try to work, we go more and more complex. And I'm so thrilled to hear you emphasize the basics here, because often when we get students and, you know, clients coming into our practice, they've tried everything and they're down to three foods, like you said. But what three foods are those? They're veggie burger patties that are black bean and they're just like elect and bomb, right? Of highly processed, you know, chemical laden foods. They're gluten free mills, crackers, you know, again, a bomb, you know, it's gluten free, but it's still full of grains and it's highly, highly processed.

And then like maybe ground beef patties once in a while. Yeah, well, and the thing that's funny about simple mills and I'll just use that as an example, you follow seed oils. So we talk about the net impact of seed oils on, you know, cellular health, mitochondrial health and when we're trying to heal how it can downregulate ATP production and so, so, so important. And the irony is when I was trying to heal my gut, what did I, I unknowingly thinking, oh, these simple mills, almond flour, crackers, and it's an oxygen bomb.

And when I stopped eating those, I was like, oh, my gosh, I didn't realize that almonds were so problematic for me, but I think you bring up such a good point that if those safe foods are three or two out of three highly processed foods, goodness, it's hard to climb back out of that because you conditioned yourself to believe that that's your that's your safety raft and you don't want to let go of the safety craft. And we're here to tell you that we're going to give you the tools to get you off the safety route, to get you to a point where you can actually heal your gut with healthy, nourishing food and not hyper palatable, highly processed food.

Yeah. Thank you so much for making that distinction about the processed foods and also the seed oils versus healing fats. So one of the things that I'm I'm not surprised to hear you say, but I'm so glad you're saying it is, you know, about the grass fed, the ruminant proteins of eating protein forward, because I think people think, well, proteins are complex. I need to stay away from those when I'm not feeling well, like it's going to cost your body more energy to digest them. But actually, clinically, what we see and this is really hard, candidly for me to admit, having been an almost lifelong vegetarian

Protein-forward eating and recovery from gut damage 25:40

and but clinically, it is undeniable that people who are willing to eat animal protein forward, and especially the grass fed ruminant animals that heal so much faster, and it's the vegetarians and especially the vegans that are lagging behind, in part because it's the quality of the proteins and also, you know, the fact that they're relying on, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. No, I agree with you. And it's it's funny that I'll disclose something to your audience and to you I probably haven't talked a lot about I got a dog in 1994 and I stopped eating mammalian meat.

I ate chicken, I eat fish. So I still had a wide variety of animal protein that I eat, but I just decided that I was not going to eat mammals. So, you know, when I was in the hospital during that 30 day hospitalization or what I dreamt about, well, number one, getting home to my family. Number two, I dreamt about bloody hamburgers. And when I got home, my husband was so happy that I wanted to eat like cow and bison and lamb. I mean, we have the full we got it, you name it. We've got wild boar. I had everything.

And so I jokingly say that part of healing my gut was getting back to eating these animals. And so I think it's important to say, like, what was my body craving? I craved meat. That was all I crave that in water. It was the craziest thing. But I wanted meat and and to this day, it's like I eat a lot of meat. I rarely eat fish, I rarely eat chicken. I really do appreciate and understand that that was part of my healing journey. And the irony is my Italian mother. So if anyone has an Italian mother, they tend to be bossy.

And so she stayed with me for the first month after I was hospitalized. And so she cooked for me every day, bone broth and all sorts of healing things. And one night she made me shrimp. And I'll never forget this. I think I've been home for three weeks. My body did not want that shrimp. I mean, I was crampy and felt terrible all and I told my mom, I said, I think the only things I can eat is like stewed meats and so or like a cooked burger, but like a plain burger with salt. That was all I could do.

And so I found it so interesting how my body was craving exactly the things that needed to help heal and how other types of proteins weren't as readily accepted. Meat. Now I'm fine with shellfish, but at that time it didn't work well. But really and truly, I think if you are trying to heal your God in your vegetarian or vegan, or maybe you are like a limited, you know, you just eat poultry and fish. Being open minded to the fact the amino acid profile of animal based proteins is superior to plant based proteins, you're going to get a more varied type of amino acid profile.

You have these leucine thresholds that are met, and so just be open to the possibility. I mean, I certainly had not eaten red meat that I was aware of for nearly 20 years. And so my entire family was like celebrating. They were like, finally, finally, she's eating red meat again. But it really did help heal my gut. And to this day, I preferentially want that over chicken or fish of any kind. That's so interesting. And I know so many people have arrived at that conclusion, usually the hard way. So thank you for sharing that.

If you would, if you wouldn't mind, I would love for you to unpack for us some outdated aspects of metabolic health. Just give you a chance to math best right here since you are such an expert on that. I think you might have a book coming out about that. Yes, I'm writing book number two right now. So. Yes, so number one, E to stoke your metabolism. This is something that I propagated as a new nurse, a new nurse practitioner. Now I know better and I like you all to understand why it is so important to eat less frequently that this keeps your blood sugar stable, that it allows your body to go in and use stored fats for energy.

And we really do want our bodies to be, depending on how physically active we are and what we're eating, we want our bodies to be able to go back and forth between using stored fat or stored sugar as a fuel source. So the eat to stop your metabolism is complete garbage. Number two, I would say that, you know, eat those heart healthy grains. Now I'm here to remind you all, we were kind of starting with kind of these high level concepts about the need for protein protein. Protein protein is the most satiating macronutrient.

We also need those amino acids. We need those amino acids for repair, for helping to heal the gut microbiome, to heal from autoimmune conditions. And so understanding that we want to stack our meals as such. So you want at a minimum 30 grams of protein in each meal. And I know for some people they're going to say, what do you mean that's so you can you can weigh and measure it. I kind of push up towards 50, 60 grams, but I've been doing this for a while and you want to do that for a couple of reasons.

You want to stimulate muscle protein synthesis. Remember, we talked earlier about how important it is to make sure you maintain and build muscle, especially north of 40, because we have this accelerated loss of muscle mass and muscle is the organ of longevity. A lot helps with insulin sensitivity. So understanding we want to have at a minimum 30 to 40 grams of of highly accessible animal based protein is going to be your best option. But if you're choosing to do a plant based option, please pick like a whole plant based option, whether it's legumes or beans or hemp seeds, as opposed to processed soy, which I'm not really a fan of.

Then you're adding into your meal if it's not any part of the meat. So if you're having a ribeye, you've already got your healthy fats. If you're having a fillet, maybe you add some avocado on top of the salad and then depending on how metabolically healthy you are, the carbohydrate piece. So I think most carbohydrates should really come from non-starchy vegetables, low glycemic berries, you know, a two part apple. That's where you want your carbohydrates to come from. If you're more physically active and more insulin sensitive, root vegetables, sweet potato are going to be nice options.

But the concept of heart healthy grains is wrong for two reasons.

Outdated metabolic health myths and closing advice 31:50

Number one, because most of us are not metabolically healthy and eating more processed type carbohydrates is not a good idea. But we also know that the grains and the gluten oftentimes are sprayed with an herbicide pesticide called Roundup by Monsanto. And this glyphosate actually damages and puts holes in the small intestinal lining. This is what leads to small intestinal hyper permeability or leaky gut. So we want to limit those kinds of foods and be very conscientious, and that is a byproduct of our modern day lifestyles.

And I could go off on a tangent talking about dwarf wheat and how that has really impacted our gut health. I would say number three is that sleep doesn't matter and I think we've all been conditioned that you can sleep when you're dead. I know that my my faculty used to tell us that many of us told ourselves that, you know, you work in health care, you work overnight, you work terribly long hours, and you just think sleep is the last thing I need to worry about. Sleep is critically important, if not foundational, not just to metabolic health, but healing in the body.

We know that deep and REM sleep are critically important and if any of you have an offering, a whoop band and Apple Watch and you track those metrics, I think this can be very, very helpful. You definitely want to be making sure you're getting 90 minutes of deep and 90 minutes of REM. I would argue you need more, but at a bare minimum, and those sleep metrics start to falter like deep sleep becomes increasingly more challenging as we get older. But again, that doesn't have to be your destiny. But I would say those are probably three things about metabolic health that are fallacies and then kind of providing might be other side like sleep isn't important, no macros aren't important, breakfast is the most important meal of the day or eat to stroke your metabolism.

I think clearing those things up is important from a foundational perspective in terms of understanding why these three things are so, so important to help stabilize blood sugar, become more metabolically flexible, and set yourself up that you can optimize healing and metabolic flexibility. Wow, that's fabulous overview of what is still lingering. That's making people sick right now. Thank you so much. And what would you like to end with today? Any last thoughts for our folks? Just getting started or our gluten free yogis who know everything can still go well?

I mean, here's the thing. There's a continuum of people that are participating on this summit. And so for some of you, this may be repeat information. For others, you might be the first time you're hearing it. For those of you that are very well versed in this terminology and some of the things that that I've talked about, Sinclair has talked about be open to learning something new. Even I would say every day I intend endeavor to learn something new, be open minded to learning something new, trying something new, being open to the possibility that there is something that you need to be doing that you're not yet aware of.

For those that are new, it's very easy to get overwhelmed. There's a lot that we talked about, but I would encourage you to do one simple thing. One simple thing. I want you to walk after a meal. We know that walking after a meal can improve blood sugar regulation. We know that your muscles are actually actively taking up that glucose to use it as fuel as you are walking. It's one of the easiest ways to mitigate a blood sugar response. Like if you go out and you celebrate with your friends or your loved ones and you have a bit of cake at the end of the night and you're like, My blood sugar is probably not where it should be.

I definitely encourage people to buy glucometer or have continuous glucose monitors. I think they're invaluable resources. Go take a walk. That's something that I always kind of fit into my day. If I feel like I'm like, you know, maybe today I haven't been as physically active or maybe I a little bit with carbohydrate. I'm not as busy. That's the time that that wall can really have, can really set up your sleep to get your blood sugar down so you get into sleep, have better quality sleep, wake up with a healthy blood sugar.

I think that's probably the first step that I think for the newbies and for those that are more seasoned, be open to the possibility that there might be some nugget of gold in this presentation and other presentations that you can take to improve what you're doing. Already. I think for so many of us, we have probably have a shared avatar in some respects. I have women that are very smart, they are very educated, they're very knowledgeable. They listen to the podcast, they do all the work. And I would say there's always some new nugget, whether it's the trauma piece that we talked about today, the inner relationship with metabolic health, whether it is talking about changing up your macros.

And I would imagine most women are not eating enough protein. Maybe the guys are, but I find most women under e protein eat the wrong adulterated fats and eat too many carbs. And just by changing that up can be life changing. That's so beautifully said. Thank you so much for speaking to the range of folks listening in today. It's so important that we remember that we're not alone, that there's plenty of hope, there's so many great tools. Just keep walking this path. You will figure it out. It's all available.

Just needs to be right thing, right time, and make sure that it's in the right order. You know? Absolutely. Thanks for sharing your wisdom with us today. And I hope that everybody goes out. If you haven't already pick up this book, it's phenomenal. Intermittent fasting transformation. Thank you. And definitely keep an eye out for the metabolic one, which I'm sure will be out next year. Yeah.