Episode 29
Transcript
Welcome back to the Fully Nourished podcast, a place to explore where female physiology and feminine energy dance together to shape our life experience. I'm your host, Jessica Ash, functional nutritionist and integrative health coach and I'm inviting you to journey with me through both the scientific and spiritual facets of what it looks like to awaken our feminine radiance and become deeply and fully nourished despite living in a society that is increasingly desperate to erase our female set-apartness. You ready?
As a reminder, everything in this podcast is for education and inspiration only and is not intended as medical advice. Please talk to the appropriate professional when necessary. And please use common sense before making any changes to your diet and lifestyle.
So today's episode is a both highly requested and long awaited topic on intermittent fasting. A lot of you have requested that I do a whole separate episode about fasting because you feel like you're being bombarded with people you know, your personal trainers, your brothers, your friends, so many people in your life are pushing intermittent fasting on you. And you want a resource to send them to say like, Hey, fasting is not necessarily appropriate for every single person, and especially women. And here's the reasons why.
I know if you listen to last week's episode with Kaya of Fundamental Nourishment, we kind of touched a little bit on fasting and touch a little bit on why autophagy, although promoted as like this amazing thing that happens in your body, pretty much your cell turnover or your body clearing out old disease cells and replacing them with new cells. This is a component that's often promoted in favor of fasting because it has been shown in the research that autophagy does increase when you're fasting, but we touched on why that might not actually be a good thing. And is it really that fasting is increasing autophagy? Or is it the fact that fasting is increasing the cell breakdown? And so the body's having to quickly renew itself a lot faster than it would if you weren't doing this stressful thing to it.
And so in this episode, I want to help you answer the question that you often ask, which is, is intermittent fasting and fasting really a healthy practice for women to be partaking in. Also, Ramadan was very recent. And so I got a lot of questions involving those spiritual fasting and religious fasting as well coming in. And so I thought we could kind of mash it together and just talk a little bit more about how different types of fasting and fasting is impacting physiology. Or how does physiology actually shift while we're fasting because I, as you know, don't ever take the route of like, you should be doing this or you shouldn't be doing this. I think a lot of people believe that I'm adamantly against fasting. And I don't really take an extreme approach to things, I like to really dive into the nuance and kind of the ebb and flow of things.
And at the end of the day, I really am just about respecting and honoring our physiology, I really like to look at what's actually happening when we partake in this thing, where we do this thing on an ultimate physiological level, not hyper focusing on one area, not just hyper focusing on muscle growth, or hyper focusing on blood sugar, or hyper focusing on the brain and actually look at the system as a whole and say, Is this actually an investment into my, I guess we could say, the bank account of my future like, am I putting in deposits or am I withdrawing? Because a lot of the health practices that are practiced today are actually withdrawals, and I look at it as almost like pulling from your future. And I do have a bias because I work typically with women of childbearing ages. And there's a good handful of menopausal women in our community as well. I specifically am looking through the lens of female physiology, and how is this going to impact you long term? Because when I'm working with a woman, and I've, I've worked with thousands now, a lot of times they have already, they're already health conscious. They're already partaking in these health fads of these health practices that are out there. And they're thinking they're doing the best thing they can for their body. And so they're doing all the things and they're wondering why they're getting worse. They're wondering why I've worked so hard for so long. I've done all these things. And it's led me to this place like I can't lose weight now. I have painful periods. I can't ovulate. I'm not making progesterone. My testosterone is high or low, my estrogen is high or low. My thyroids, low, my adrenals are burnt out, wait, what, what's happening?
And so I all of us see through the lens of our bias, and so that's the lens of my biases. I really have a heart for women. And, and I want them to really understand their bodies enough so that they can make really empowered decisions and say, Oh, this is going to impact me long term in this way, and be able to spot how it's impacting their body, a lot of us look through the lens of just weight loss and fat loss. And so we say if something is getting us the results that we want quick, we have the kind of this transactional relationship with our body and with our habits. We say, if I do this, this is happening. And so therefore it must be good. And then we're partaking in something for, let's say, six months to a year, and then all of a sudden, it lands us in a pile on the floor, we're just crumpled to the ground. And we say, Wait, I thought this was good for me because it felt good. And really, what actually happened is they thought it was good for them, because it was helping them lose weight, not realizing that some of that weight that they were losing was from their muscle tissue, or their organs or their skin. And that's why they look like they're rapidly aging. That's why they're losing that subcutaneous span and between their skin and their muscles, there's layers to health.
When you truly want to support and honor your physiology, you have to understand it first. And it gives you a different lens or a different perspective of how to view not only your body through, but also the practices that you're partaking in. So it is true that I have a particularly unique way of looking at the body because of my bias. I am somebody that is, I guess honest enough to admit that I have a bias. I have a certain personal experience and professional experience that has led me to dig deeper into certain things. I don't always care what the research is saying if women are saying something differently. And that is really what led me to dive down the rabbit hole of really starting to understand intermittent fasting and low carb diets.
Because I've been in the health space for over a decade now. I started very much off in the more like low carb, keto paleo primal space. And it's interesting because about 10 years ago, fasting was not what it is. Now, fasting was sometimes mentioned as like a therapeutic measure that maybe will help you, you know, it was kind of always thrown into the bullet points of like, if nothing else works, maybe try some fasting to give your digestive system a break. But intermittent fasting as it is now, I mean, it's everywhere. It's being promoted by every single person for both men and women. It was that promoted, like it was a while back. I think the first person that really introduced it, to me, was like the bulletproof space and the biohacking space, you know, Dave Asprey was doing the, like butter coffee fasting, where you would drink coffee blended with like butter or ghee in the morning, MCT oil, you just wouldn't have any carbohydrates in the morning, but you would fat fast. And that was the first, my first experience with intermittent fasting.
I actually did that for two or three years, it was so funny. It's so funny. Looking back now, there were so many things in my life that were falling apart, I was becoming less and less resilient to stress, just from a nervous system perspective, I was starting to lose more hair, I was starting to get more histamine symptoms, my digestive symptoms were becoming harder and harder to manage, like I had to be more and more restrictive to manage them. There were a lot of red flags starting to pop up, you know, these signs of stress and poor metabolism, but I didn't know any better. And so here I'm looking like, whoa, I'm lean, I'm really lean. I'm muscular, even though I can look back now and say like, I dislocated my shoulder. Around that time, there were injuries that were taking place. Even though I was muscular and lean, I was definitely losing muscle and like my connective tissue was struggling.
But at the same time, it's like I was only focused on symptom management, I was only focused on my autoimmune symptoms going away, you know, I had the a lot of symptoms of you know, Hashimotos and lupus, and celiac that I was still really trying to heal from. And so I was just so focused on anything that's going to quote unquote, lower inflammation, I want to do it, you know, and so I just saw through the lens of, if it helps me keep my weight down, and I stay lean, and I don't have any autoimmune symptoms. I'm good, you know, not thinking long term. How is this going to affect me? I did not really think about that at all.
And so you really have to first kind of define what you mean by intermittent fasting. There's a lot of different types of fasting out there right now. I mean, now people are fasting daily. They're fasting with no food in their system. So they're trying to extend their fast from when they're sleeping because when we're sleeping, we're technically fasting and they're waking up and trying to extend their fast for as long as possible. They're doing these very long fasts like these eighteen-six fasts and these twenty four fasts where, you know, their eating windows are becoming shorter and shorter, and we'll get into why this can actually become a pro problem for women in just a second.
But first, it's like, hey, we have to define what we mean by intermittent fasting. I'm not talking about like the occasional skipping breakfast, I'm not talking about like, the occasional fast where, you know, you're like, Okay, I'm gonna fast for 24 hours to like, challenge my body or do some type of spiritual fasting, I'm really talking about this more like regular extending of fast. And we'll dive into this in a minute, but a manipulation of the circadian rhythm and the hormonal rhythm of the body. So a lot of proponents of fasting will say things like, it's really good for gut health. And if they don't fast, then their gut health really starts to go downhill. They also say, which is really funny to me, because the evidence does not show this at all. And especially like, in my personal experience working with clients, this does not show up at all. But people will say it's really good for detoxification, like it's detoxifying, you. And when you're not eating, you're detoxifying. Of course, as we touched on before, a lot of people will say it induces autophagy, which is really like cell turnover, your body's clearing out old cells, cells that are breaking down and replacing them with new cells.
And obviously, one of the biggest ones is weight loss or metabolic flexibility, insulin sensitivity, those types of things, and then overall metabolic health. So that's usually that's what I hear, like, I'll say, I'll hear gut health, detoxification, weight loss, fat loss, metabolic health, insulin sensitivity, those are kind of the what the proponents of intermittent fasting will often say, a lot of stuff is actually not true. But we'll talk about that. And typically, I see people that intermittent fast, they often are fasting in the morning, so they're extending their evening fast, right? Like, they're when you go to sleep, from that point, you are fasting. Now, technically, fasting is from when your food has digested through your system. So that takes usually about four to five hours to actually get it into the colon, some for some people a lot longer. For some people a lot less digestive transit time is very personal, and unique to the person, depending on what's going on. But usually, an actual fast doesn't start until about three to four hours after you've eaten your last meal. And so, you know, proponents of intermittent fasting will often say, you know, stop eating at whatever 6pm, 5pm, 4pm, then fast all through the night, and then extend your fast for as long as you can stand.
Or, even worse, is they'll say, like, do whatever you can to squash your hunger. So people, I'm noticing that women are starving, people are starving, or like, I'm starting to feel a lot of hunger. So I'm going to drink some water, or I'm going to do anything I can to kind of push this appetite down, you got to remember, appetite is our body saying hey, I need fuel now. And if I don't get it, I'm gonna start breaking you down, I'm gonna start eating you. Because we don't run on thin air. Like our body needs fuel to function glucose to function, especially our brain and central nervous system requires a lot of glucose. And so when we're not eating, especially when we're going about our daily tasks and activities, our body needs fuel. And if we're not consuming it, we can't just act like it's coming from the ether. Like, it's just, oh, we're just we continue to live on just with nothing, right? Our body's not running off of air, it's eating itself. It's eating its own tissue, right. And that's not just muscle tissue, which is often a particularly has an affinity for, but it can eat through gut tissue, skin tissue, any tissue, you see people that are under stress sometimes have issues with their sphincters, like their esophageal sphincters, or their ileocecal valve, which is that valve from the small intestine, large intestine, they'll start to have joint issues and connective tissue issues.
Your body eats itself when it does not have any fuel. And I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself. But you'll hear people say like breakfast is the least important meal of the day. And your body can create its own glucose. Well, your body can create its own glucose, but at what cost? And there's a little bit of a like, a there's a little bit of sanity to the these arguments like I feel like it's almost a lot of people in the health and wellness space right now that are leaders in the health and wellness space, you have to ask yourself a few questions like, Are they disordered around food or their body? I would say like nine times out of 10, the answer to the question is yes, you can see some pretty quick red flags these people like they've got some disordered habits. I'm not saying like go diagnose them, but I'm just saying like, pay attention to some red flags. And so many of us have disordered habits around food in our body that we don't even sometimes recognize that people are really disordered around food in their body.
Cherry-Picked Studies
But if you just take like a step back and dissect them from their expertise or their title, whether it's doctor or dietitian or nutritionist or whatever it is, and just look at them as the human being that they are, look at their behavior. their habits around food and their body and how they talk about it and just even their tone of voice. And a lot of times you can see the stress on their face, or you can hear the stress in their voice, it's very telling. And a lot of times, what you'll see is they'll start to really cherry pick studies. Like there's a, right now this is a perfect example. And I'm not going to name any names because a lot of people follow this person. But she is a big proponent of intermittent fasting, she does have a Dr. — two special letters in front of her name. So everyone takes her much more seriously. And she was sharing a study about what she was saying that intermittent fasting increases testosterone. And there was a study going around in these circles that showed, you know, they put these men again, I will, I will emphasize men through these intermittent fasting experiments. And they the conclusion of the study was their testosterone is higher.
What nobody was talking about was these men were on testosterone replacement therapy. So there's a lot of studies actually show that studies that don't include testosterone replacement that show that testosterone plummets, when men fast however, they'll pull one study and say, okay, even though the study is really poorly done, or they don't even know, and they just aren't looking at the title at the front of the study, they probably don't even read the whole study. They're like, okay, fasting increases testosterone in men, you know, by this much, and not even realizing that like, This is a really bad study, to support your bias, but they will start to really cherry pick studies, and do whatever they can to jump through these mental hoops to prove their point, because they are so committed to these practices.
And like, that's all fine and dandy for yourself personally. But when you're doing this publicly, you're kind of manipulating the public to think a certain thing about something so that when they start to, or if they start to have problems, while they're doing, let's say intermittent fasting, they actually end up gaslighting themselves or questioning themselves. And you actually see the slot happen with a lot of these experts that are so tied to specific practices like keto or low carb or intermittent fasting. They've centered their whole brand around it. Ray Peat often talks about this where it's like, is it marketing? Or is it actually research and education because there can be a difference between the two and a lot of education out there right now is actually marketing, where people become so committed to this thing, that they can't separate themselves from it anymore. So even if all the research that's coming out, is showing that this thing is maybe not so good, and they thought it was good, or even if people are sending the messages and sending them emails and saying I'm doing what you're telling me to do, and it's not working, you'll often see the phenomenon is kind of like gaslight people into thinking that they're doing something wrong, or they're not sticking to the program hard enough, and they're not being restrictive enough. instead of admitting like, hey, this might not work for everybody, or this is what I have found has worked for me, this is what I have found in the research, although make sure you're listening to your own body. So a lot of people end up thinking, Okay, what am I doing wrong, or even worse, they go harder, they fast, harder, they fast longer, they restrict their carbs lower, and it just becomes this very, very stressful approach to life and health and their diet and nutrition.
So at the end of the day, I think honesty is first important. Like you really need to ask yourself, why are you fasting, because nine out of 10 people if they were just honest, instead of saying this for my gut health or detoxification or autophagy, just be honest, and say you're doing it to lose weight. Just be honest. And a lot of times you'll hear the argument is like, well, I've done everything else. And this is the only thing that works for me. A lot of times that everything else is jumping from extreme diet to extreme diet to extreme diet to extreme diet, from keto, to paleo to vegan to carnivore, to Weight Watchers to low calorie eating, they have never actually healed their metabolism, they've never actually practiced metabolic restoration, where they eat a balanced diet of protein, carbs and fat with you know, a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. Practice consistent exercise on a regular basis, had enjoyable hobbies in their life. Spend time outside, you know, just like basic things that we know to be healthy. But oftentimes people that say I've done everything and nothing has worked very regularly, when I talk to them, they're more of an inconsistent type of eater. They're never on a certain type of plan for long, they're always looking for a quick fix. And so fasting can be a certain quick fix for a lot of people.
So we need to ask ourselves, why are we fasting now? We'll talk about religious fasting at the end of the episode because I think that kind of warrants its own section. But when I say why are you intermittent fasting, you have to be honest, if it's to lose weight, there are some things you should know about using fasting to lose weight, because it oftentimes is going to come back and bite you in the ass if you're using it to lose weight. Now before you say, but the research but the research says, I'm going to tell you that I comb for research, like I want to find a significant piece of research that supports intermittent fasting as a strong metabolic supporting activity or insulin sensitivity promoting activity for women of childbearing ages. And I have not seen a one thing, only things that I've found is that it's impacting their sympathetic nervous system, the adrenals, the thyroid, all in negative ways. I've really never seen a study that's like, wow, it shows 100% that this is something that women of childbearing years should be practicing. Keep in mind that a lot of studies out there, even if they're critical in vivo are done on animals, mice, rats, like I'm not a mouse, and I'm not a rat. So don't compare rodents results to me, because I'm not a rodent, and I don't live like a rodent. And then, even in the human studies, a lot of times it's men, or you'll see like, there's a handful of studies done on menopausal women that no longer have a cycle.
But the thing is, this is where you know, always looking to the research can be really difficult regarding, especially in the fitness and nutrition space. It's because female physiology and male physiology are completely different. They function on a completely different plane. I don't know why, like it's taking so much time for people to realize that we have completely different physiologies and our bone structure is different. Our hormones are different. Our metabolisms are different. Our sensitivity, environmental stressors are different. Our biological purpose is different. Obviously, it's politically incorrect to say those things. And so I think that's why we drag our feet about it right now, because science supports industry. And science supports the agenda of the time.
Red Flags
But I get like multiple red flags, even with the push for men to intermittent fast, because to me, there's something very red flaggy about convincing men who are supposed to be strong and powerful, and have sharp minds, to teach them that they're stronger when they're not eating than when they are eating. Like, to me that's just a little bit red flaggy in and of itself. And the research on fasting is very, like very thin. It's like a castle made of sand. Like it just feels very, there's never been a study that I've read that I'm like, Oh my gosh, absolutely. My husband should be fasting 100%. And just from personal observation, when I'm working with people, when they are practicing, like regular fasting on an almost daily basis, or multiple times per week basis, almost on every level metabolically they’re more unhealthy than somebody who's just eating a balanced three meals a day. You see poor appetite, poor libido, poor sleep.
For a lot of women, it's usually resulting in some type of binging whether that be like on a nightly basis or like a weekly basis, even men, you're seeing them have more cravings, appetite dysregulation, so you know, not being not being hungry and then being starving, no consistency to those hunger hormones like ghrelin and leptin. And this podcast is not about men and fasting, so we won't dive too much into it, I do think men are probably a little bit more resilient to fasting just because of their hormones. But that doesn't mean that men are just completely resilient to it. And it really depends on who the man is, what his life stressors are, because a man that is exposed to a ton of stress is probably not going to actually find benefit from fasting, which we'll talk about in a second.
So if you've been around here for a while, you'll hear me say again, and again, that female physiology is really centered around safety and stability. When you look at how the female metabolism has to transform energy, it has to take in energy and transmute it or alchemize it into something else, right? A perfect example of this is, you know, the most physical example of this is through growing a baby and the birth process, right? We take in energy, we're transforming that energy into a human being, we're taking something really intangible, something spiritual, something kind of esoteric, that we don't quite understand. Right? Our body is, in a way, co creating with the Creator of the universe that has that capacity, that connective capacity where we take energy, we transmute it, we alchemize it into something else. And then we do it for a period of time and then it comes to fruition or it gets birthed into a material form.
This is very different from male physiology. Male physiology is often a taking in a lot of things at once and then kind of focusing it or prioritizing it into something small. A perfect physical example of that is the seed or the sperm, complete polarity here, male physiology takes something very big makes it very small, it's a spark of something. And then the woman takes that spark, that spark happens within her body, and it expands and grows, expands and grows. And so I've touched on this in a few different episodes, especially episode five, a very popular episode. But our physiology is concerned with very different biological purposes. And so because women contain so much power, there's a specific type of energetic power there, our bodies need an internal safety and stability to make sure this energy transformation can take place. Without safety, and our body does put safety measures up to try to protect us as much as possible, it's why our body fat percentage is much higher. Why we have more estrogen and progesterone than men and less testosterone, we have the capability of storing a lot more safety, aka fat, right? That's just fuel stored for later, these are safe stops, these are safety mechanisms, so that we will still have fuel in times of famine or in times of scarcity.
But our body does not thrive in times of scarcity, our body does not thrive in times of famine, it does what it needs to do at its own cost, because the priority is the young right, the priority is the offspring, we need to be able to not only grow and birth a baby, but also nurture that baby until it's capable of taking care of itself. We live a completely different existence biologically and physiologically than men ever do. And so it does grind my gears, when you have a lot of men telling women, these are men that often have never studied female physiology, or very basic and limited understanding of it, to intermittent fast or to put their body intentionally into states of scarcity on a regular basis. And then acting super surprised, like, oh my gosh, I don't know why your adrenals are so messed up, or I don't know why you're having thyroid problems, like Beats me. And it's like, really, we have specific safe stops, that when our body is in a state of famine, we quickly start to compensate, we quickly start to shift our hormones, which are chemical messengers, from cell to cell, it's how our body communicates with itself and says, Okay, guys, we are now conserving, we are now holding on to energy, we are now holding on to minerals, we are now holding on to nutrients, we are now holding on to toxins, holding on to metals, we are now doing the basic bare minimums, because we are conserving and because of our hormonal structure truly, you know, we have way more estrogen, way more progesterone, we tend to have a higher body fat percentage than men, we actually are a little bit more sensitive to these types of practices, and we're gonna find it's going to impact our biology a lot faster.
So even if you do experience that initial like, I feel so much better when I'm fasting. This is often an argument you'll hear from women when I talk about fasting often here, but I feel so much better when I'm fasting, or you'll hear like, but my gut function is so much better when I'm fasting or I just but mostly it's I feel so much better and more mentally clear and more focused. I feel better. There's a lack of understanding why there's always an initial feeling of feeling better when there's epinephrine involved, when there's adrenaline involved. And it always surprises me how much people that are proponents of fasting don't even understand the basic physiology, like they'll pull out research studies until they're blue in the face. But when you just look at the basic mechanisms of what's happening when we fast, it's pretty clear that this is not something we want to be inducing on a regular basis.
The Body Doesn’t Run on Thin Air
So I touched a little bit earlier on, you know, the female body does not run on thin air, and we have to get that fuel from somewhere, you'll often hear that argument of your body can manufacture its own glucose via gluconeogenesis. So to break that down for you, gluconeogenesis is a process where your liver takes proteins, and it will turn them into sugars because at the end of the day, your central nervous system and brain cannot run on anything but glucose. And so although there's many cells in your body that do have an affinity for fat, there are certain cells that just cannot and only utilize glucose to function because it's that quick firing fuel protein. Utilizing protein for energy is one of the most inefficient fuel sources ever. It creates so much metabolic waste. And it's so energy consuming and time consuming for the liver. So the liver has 500+ jobs, enzymatic reactions, it's constantly taking the chemicals and the pollutants we're exposed to and breaking them down. It's converting thyroid hormone from t4 to t3. It is constantly maintaining our blood sugar, it is a storage place of nutrients. And so it's constantly having to maintain nutrient status throughout the body. The liver has a lot of important jobs. And so this is why I don't like this argument of the body can manufacture its own glucose because yes, although that's technically true, that doesn't necessarily mean that you want to put that burden on an organ that's already doing many things for you and do it intentionally and purposefully. That's not a good long term strategy for making sure your brain and your nervous system are getting enough glucose.
And what a lot of people don't talk about is what actually happens to get gluconeogenesis to start. So there's a few different hormones that are involved. Epinephrine being the first one, you know, adrenaline, which is produced by the adrenal glands is one of the first glucocorticoids which is just a fancy word for glucose, glucose-controlling steroid or hormone corticoid. So glucocorticoids just mean they are hormones that impact your glucose status, they move glucose around the body.
Adrenaline is considered a glucocorticoid, as is like glucagon and insulin. And even cortisol is a glucocorticoid. And so when you are relying on your liver to manufacture your glucose, what's actually happening is you're relying on your adrenal sympathetic nervous system, which is technically called the sympathoadrenal branch of the autonomic nervous system to manufacture glucose for you. And so you are recruiting the adrenals every time you need glucose, and you're not eating it. The first step in this process is actually having the adrenals secrete epinephrine. And there are studies that show that people that are fasting have much higher amounts of epinephrine coming out of their urine than people that are not fasting. And this is a protective mechanism to keep us from dropping into a state of such so much hyperglycemia or such low blood sugar that we die, that all of our cells do not have fuel. It's a stop mechanism. It's a safety mechanism. It's to keep us from experiencing hyperglycemia and then adrenaline, which you can look at in the research. You can just literally Google relationships between adrenaline and glucagon. And adrenaline will stimulate a hormone called glucagon.
And glucagon is insulins opposite. So insulin is a blood sugar lowering hormone, it gets glucose into the cell. Glucagon is a blood sugar raising hormone. So it starts to stimulate the body to break down itself and send the proteins to the liver. Adrenaline is what gets glucagon going. And so there's these chain reactions that are occurring to get the body to actually start manufacturing glucose so that you can continue to survive that require not only your nervous system, the sympathetic branch of your autonomic nervous system, but also your adrenal glands, and it starts to shift your body from a state of I'm in homeostasis to now I am in survival.
We live in a culture right now, especially a health culture, that is addicted to survival mode. We are obsessed with staying in Fight or flight. And we are so stuck in a fight or flight or freeze state that we are uncomfortable when we are not in it. And so we oftentimes mistake fight or flight or adrenaline responses with feeling good. And oh, I'm so much more mentally clear. And it's like, yeah, because your body's in survival, it's focused on just surviving in the next moment, if you were being hunted, or you were hunting something, you would be very hyper focused on what you were doing, you would be very mentally clear. But you would also be a little bit suspicious of everything, a little jumpy, and long term, your body's going to stop taking care of certain systems, like you're going to see your digestive system start to crumble, and you're going to start to see your skin and your hair start to really show the signs of it.
And then long term, you know, adrenaline is more of a short term response hormone. It's very taxing on the adrenals to produce adrenaline and epinephrine constantly. And so you're going to often see that cortisol becomes a chronic response hormone to this, it's the chronic glucocorticoid that's involved. This is why so many people right now are having a hard time. They're like, I don't know why my cortisol is just in the trash can. My circadian rhythms in the trash can, I'm not sleeping well. And it's because a lot of the health practices that they're partaking in, are adding to the stress instead of reducing the stress that's on their body. But the reason why a lot of people initially feel better in fight or flight is because they're so frozen, or they're so burned out, that anything that's going to stimulate this adrenaline response is going to make them feel like oh, I finally have energy again, I finally have focus again, oh my gosh.
But again, that's that holding from the future to take care of the present. And we do pay for it later. Because our adrenals can only pump out stress, you can only stay in that alarm state for so long. If you've ever looked at Hans Selye’s you know general adaptation syndrome, which I talked about in the masterclass, that hypervigilant, alarm state can only last so long, we only have resources for maintaining that for so long.
Another reason why people tend to initially feel better or even experience some weight loss or fat loss, when they're intermittent fasting is because of endotoxin and metabolic waste. So when people have dysbiosis, or they're very, their microbiome is extremely imbalanced, their digestive system is imbalanced, oftentimes from inconsistent eating patterns, not getting outside, not grounding, not earthing, not exercising regularly, just not having healthy outputs, or having tons of nervous system stress, because our enteric nervous system is mostly housed in the gut. So if we're storing a lot of trauma, or emotional distress, or emotions or feelings in our gut, they're often going to kind of just start to rot there. And we start to have, you know, microbiome imbalance, we start to have gut issues, we start to have constipation and diarrhea, we start to just have an imbalanced system. And when we have bacteria in our gut that's producing excessive amounts of endotoxin, or lipid polysaccharides. These are inflammatory compounds, metabolic waste products that come from the gut, and they can get into the bloodstream. And they really start to cause inflammation in the system. And so not only is stress response in and of itself, like adrenaline, or epinephrine, an inflammatory suppressor, because let's say you're running from an angry bear, you break your foot on a rock, you have to keep going, right, you're not even gonna feel it. So some of us have experienced that where we're in such an adrenaline response, that we get hurt. And we don't even feel it until we come down from the high of adrenaline and it's like, oh, my gosh, ouch. I hurt myself really bad. You know, that's kind of the inflammatory suppression that comes from these high stress hormones.
But then on top of it, if you're going through periods where you are giving your digestive system a break, meaning that you're already imbalanced microbiome, every time you're eating is releasing these lipo polysaccharides, these endotoxins into your system driving up inflammation, you're going to say, like, Oh, I feel so much better when I don't eat. That's not because intermittent fasting is helping you. It's because your gut is already imbalanced. And depending on your situation, the intermittent fasting can actually be causing more stress on your system. So over time, you're going to have to eat less and less to feel good. If that's your, if that's your strategy, that it's going to be like, Wow, my guts functioning less and less. During my eating windows, the times that I'm actually eating, I find my digestion is much poorer. This is because cortisol and adrenaline actually have a huge impact on gut tissue. Not only can we disintegrate our own gut tissue when we're under stress, but cortisol and adrenaline in it in and of itself actually impacts the gut lining.
Our thyroid hormone also can cause this kind of cellular leakiness. So when we're in a high stress state chronically, we definitely start to see our gut tissue, just the integrity of our gut barrier, our intestinal barrier start to decrease over time. Fasting doesn't necessarily fix that. It's just kind of almost like a bandaid or symptom suppression of like when you don't eat, you're not stimulating these microbes to create these endotoxins as much. And that can be very therapeutic for some people, especially if they're in such a bad metabolic or gut state, that these gut microbes and these metabolic waste products that are coming from their gut are causing such a problem, but it's not going to usually be a long term solution. And in fact, a lot of people's gut issues are coming from their nervous system dysfunction, and their high stress metabolic state that they're already in. And so adding fasting on top of that is necessarily going to make that better.
In fact, and a lot of times for women, it actually ends up making them feel worse. And then that doesn't even get us started talking about like ghrelin and leptin, these kind of hunger hormones, satiety hormones, histamine is involved in satiety, neuropeptides, like kisspeptin, that impacts both endocrine function and reproductive function. Our kisspeptin is very sensitive to survival signals, and scarcity. So things like fasting and even low carb eating can really impact kisspeptin are actually like two, I think it's two times more sensitive to kisspeptin than men are. And this is really a neuropeptide, that tells the body that like, it's safe, you have enough, and you're good. And it also has the power to put us into a state of scarcity and famine.
And this is really where women who are so focused on weight loss are so focused on fat loss or get kind of trapped into intermittent fasting. This is where they find that once intermittent fasting stops working for them, which can sometimes take two years, right, I often see that pattern where women are really gung ho about intermittent fasting, they're like, oh, my gosh, it works so well. They lose initial, whatever, 10 pounds, because they're losing muscle and water and minerals, and a lot of other things. It's not usually fat that is a little bit harder to lose. And they'll have this initial high. Now some women will tell me that No, I never had that. Like I always felt horrible intermittent fasting, and that's great. Listen to your body. But for some women, they'll have this initial high, it'll sometimes last three months, it'll sometimes last six months, it'll sometimes lasts a year, it'll sometimes last two years. But what happens is over that time, there's red flags, there's metabolic red flags, right? They're having hair loss, their mood is all over the place, their stress tolerance is very low, they have that kind of low grade internal angst or tension. Maybe they're not ovulating or ovulating as well anymore, their fertility is poor, their digestive functions maybe low, they're getting more constipated. Over time, maybe they're sleeping a little bit more poorly, like there can be these tiny little red flags that start to pop up over time.
And sometimes the biggest red flag is that they're actually no longer losing weight. In fact, some of them start to gain weight because scarcity survival says conserve, conserve, conserve. And I've seen women who have gained weight on 800 calories a day, because their body is trying to conserve so heavily. And you know, thyroid function has decreased over time, because thyroid conversion is impacted by fasting. And so they start to fast harder, they start to say, I gotta go lower carb, or I've got to fast longer, I need to go from a 16-8 to a 24. Or I've got to go from a, you know, 14-10 to a 18-6. And for some of them that works, because remember, adrenaline was going to really stimulate the release of free fatty acids into the bloodstream, you're going to be burning fuel real quick, it's not an efficient use of fuel. It's not a good strong metabolic function. But you will be burning up energy quite quickly, in a kind of more chaotic way. But you're gonna find that you're gonna have to fast harder and harder and harder and be more and more restrictive and restrictive and restrictive. Eventually, you just hit a wall.
The Ancestor Argument
I think this is really determined by what you're doing while you're fasting. Like if you are exercising while you're fasting or working really high, like mentally strenuous job while you're fasting, there's a little bit of a difference. But for women who are already very high stress, you add fasting on top of it, and it's just metabolic disaster. And so when you hear the arguments like Well, our ancestors did it. So it must be healthy. I think that argument is very dumb. Like that's such a dumb argument. It's like, well, our ancestors like ran after, you know, whatever wooly mammoths. Like I need to go run after a fake wooly mammoth, or our ancestors lived in a cave, so it must be superior. So I'm gonna go find a cave and live in it. You just had kind of a dumb, very baseline argument. I don't think our ancestors would have chosen to not eat unless they absolutely had to.
And when you look at traditional cuisines, most traditional cuisines have three solid meals a day, very large meal in the morning, very satiating, tends to be the biggest meal of the day, very satiating lunch, and then a dinner. And then you know, pregnant women, sick people, children often get snacks in between, like it's pretty basic and common sensical. And even when you look at animals in nature who don't eat or are “fasting”, like a sick animal, for example, they are very particular about they're doing all their fasting, they're usually laying down resting, they've kind of, they're in a place where they can rest. And you know, animals when they're hungry, especially like hunters, and carnivores, they will hunt when they're hungry. They're not like, let me extend this fast a little longer. Like, let me wait to hunt the gazelle until I've gotten, you know, a 48 hour fast. They're hungry. They say, Okay, it's time to hunt, let's go eat. And they start to really struggle when they can't hunt.
I've been watching this like National Geographic, like a documentary about the queens of different terrains, and I'm watching the one on the queens of Africa. And it's about like lions and hyenas. And oh, my gosh, this shit is brutal. But it's just interesting to see their patterns. It's like, oh, the pack is hungry, like, let's eat, there's always a pack going, especially the hyenas, there's always a group going out to hunt and bring something back for the pack, like, very rarely, is it that they don't have food. And then when they can't hunt, or they can't get something, they really start to struggle pretty quickly. Like, they're like, we're hungry, we got to eat. And there's an urgency involved in it. They're not like, I'm just going to lounge around and extend my fast.
Religious Fasting
That really brings us to religious fasting. It's really interesting, because, you know, people that say, well, fasting has been done for generations, spiritual fasts, religious fasts. Sure, but it was a focused time to focus on you know, the weakness of the material body, of focused time to pray, and be in a state of connection and reliance on God. And it wasn't like, Hey, look at me, look at me how long I can fast. I mean, I'm sure there's some people that do that. But it's always done in a state of rest. And now we have a world that is very physiologically stressful, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's like, these are true stressors. However, we are so stressed out of our mind by just the pressures of of our modern life. Everything is stressful, blue light is stressful, our jobs are stressful, taxes are stressful, traffic is stressful, driving, the car is stressful, the daily list of to dues are stressful, there's so much on our plates, our daily lives are really the minute I wake up, you have to be kind of conscious of what you start to think about most people who are not conscious of their stress, they're waking up and they're immediately jumping into a state of like, I gotta get this done. hypervigilance like to do list, let's go, let's go, let's go. There's no reason for us to not be fueled when we have to use our nervous system in our brain with that type of stress and pressure on top of it. This daily fasting, especially extending the breakfast fast, the morning fast, makes absolutely no common sense within the daily wake and sleep cycle. It's so funny to see that proponents of intermittent fasting are also talking about the circadian rhythm. And I'm like, you are just saying buzzwords don't know anything. You don't know anything. It's so frustrating because it's like if you truly understood the circadian rhythm, you truly understood the daily wake and sleep cycle, you'd understand that in the light of day cortisol starts to get secreted.
Clarifying the Circadian Rhythm
Cortisol is a part of the circadian rhythm. You know, as you wake up, your cortisol starts to gently rise or in a healthy system, your adrenals will start to release cortisol, and they would peak kind of mid morning mid day and then start to decline for the rest of the day. And then as night comes on, as long as no light is interacting with your melatonin secretion, your pineal gland will start to secrete melatonin. What a lot of people don't talk about in the circadian rhythm in the wake sleep cycle is that DHEA is a huge part of the wake sleep cycle as well. DHEA is a hormone. It's technically usually referred to as an adrenal androgen, but it's a hormone also secreted by the adrenal glands. The adrenal glands secrete many different hormones, dozens of hormones, and I find it interesting because I like to read a lot of old medical texts and historical texts, I find the ones from the 1800s and 1900s are a lot less biased. And I kept reading about these glands called the Suprarenal glands, and I mentioned I was like, What are they talking about the Suprarenal glands, and the the, you know, the adrenals sit on top of the kidneys like little hats, they look like little hats.
But it's not until very recently that the adrenal glands are actually called the adrenal glands. I've always usually been referred to in conjunction with the kidneys as these “Supra,” which in Latin means above the renal kidney glands. And I find that really interesting because a lot of the hormones that the adrenals secrete are glucocorticoids. So glucose-moving hormones, hormones that regulate glucose, and then mineralocorticoids are mineral regulating hormones and then the kidneys of course are responsible for also maintaining the fluid balance within the body, cleaning the blood allowed, yes filtering the blood, yes, but also maintaining fluid balance. So it's actually been very helpful for me in my research and just in studying physiology, when I started to see the kidneys and the adrenals, it's kind of like these duos that are working together. It made a lot of sense also makes a lot of sense that when we are in a hyper vigilant state, we brace ourselves, we kind of start to brace ourselves for impact, we start to brace ourselves for an attack, right, because we're in a fight or flight state, and the literal bracing, when we start to brace ourselves our back, which is where the kidneys and the adrenals are. You know, some people will even say that when they're in a high stress state, their adrenal ache, they actually feel like aching in their back. Because the whole system is connected.
When we start to brace. We're also feeling this stimulation of the suprarenal glands or the adrenal glands, and we have a lot of hormones starting to pump out. And when the adrenal glands have to focus so heavily on producing adrenaline and cortisol to, let's say, produce us glucose, they're not going to be as focused on producing DHEA. So you'll often see a dysregulation of DHEA, and people that are chronically stressed, and DHEA, interestingly enough, so when melatonin gets secreted at night, it actually starts to mobilize pollutants, heavy metals, certain things that we want removed from the body and mobilizes them because sleep is a time of renewal and regeneration, right? Well, DHEA, when it starts to get secreted in the morning is actually what stimulates the release of these from the body. And so when people are outside of their awakened sleep cycle, they will often not mobilize these pollutants and metals, or not eliminate them because they're not getting that stimulation from DHEA. And you see this when people are in a state of fasting, a lot of people have impaired middle secretion, like I've seen people that have gone through long term fasting, have a really hard time excreting metals, and it takes a while to get them back into a place of extreme metals. Or you go you'll see people that are chronic intermittent fasters, like on their hair tissue mineral analysis, they're not moving anything, not mobilizing anything, and then all of a sudden, you start to focus on their mineral balance, and they start to dump just so many metals out of their system.
So this idea that fasting just automatically increases detoxification is not necessarily true. And in fact, if you look at the physiology of what's happening, when you fast your body is going into a conservation state, it's going to hold on to most of what's in the system, the only thing that's going to be released is the adrenaline induced free fatty acids. So when adrenaline is high, your body needs fuel very quickly, your body will rapidly open up the fat cells. Keep in mind, the fat cells are not just where we store fat and glucose stored for later fuel. We also store a lot of toxins in the fat cells, fat soluble toxins, the PCBs, silicones, these “forever” chemicals, estrogens, metals can be stored in the fat, there's a lot of different toxins and pollutants that can be stored in the fat. And so when we're rapidly opening up, these fat cells actually put a lot of burden on the elimination systems as well, and then you're not giving them energy, it can become this very vicious cycle.
The Need for Glucose
And then people that support intermittent fasting will often be proponents of low carb, and the problem is, is that glucose helps you create glucuronic acid, and glucuronic acid in the liver is actually what binds to and renders estrogen harmless. So estrogen to be eliminated by the body safely has to be bound to a sugar acid or glucuronic acid. And when you don't have enough glucose, you actually can't eliminate estrogen effectively. It will often go back into circulation, it can drop through that kind of trapdoor if you want to call it that and deliver and go back into circulation. And if the body knows it's not going to be able to remove it, it goes into the fat. And so I have seen so many women become very estrogen dominant, even if their body fat percentage is lower, they're starting to see less muscle, more body fat, their body's starting to break down muscle create more body fat to be able to store this estrogen store these toxins, and they start to become almost like skinny fat, like their body is breaking down muscle tissue to fuel the brain. And then they're gonna see more cellulite, or cellulite at their fascia can sometimes become very dehydrated. It can be quite a crapshoot.
At the end of the day, you know, it just makes very little sense with all of the stresses placed on our shoulders, in the modern environment that we live in to say, I'm going to really, in the first half of my day, the hardest part of my day when my body's already been fasting, when I have to rise and greet my day and face my day, I'm going to be not fueled during that time, and I'm going to focus my eating on the latter half of the day. It makes absolutely no sense. Of course women are having uncontrollable sugar cravings, probably binging at night, or just eating their pantry is like starting to become scavengers. And if it's not a nightly thing, you know, binging can be a weekly thing, or every two weeks, it's almost like you hold off for as long as you can until you can't any longer. And you're gonna reach for the high sugar, high calorie foods because your body needs energy. It's normal, it's natural. But what you're gonna find, as a theme, is that really, it's about playing your metabolic long game. And what that is, is it's really about creating a resilience within the female metabolism, it's about creating a container of safety, as I like to call it. It's about making us more and more resilient to stressors over time, not less and less.
A lot of the health practices out there are so focused on “metabolic health” or insulin sensitivity or just losing weight, to be honest. And they'll say it's in the name of metabolic health. But they're not actually about creating a resilience within the nervous system and resilience and safety within the system, which can sometimes take time. If you've been in a stressed out state for a long period of time, which honestly, a lot of us have already been in that state, where we're inconsistently eating, jumping from yo-yo diet, to yo-yo diet, over exercising and then under exercising, or just going through periods where like, even if you're not a dieter, or you've never really fallen for extremes, maybe you've drastically under ate, like just kind of stuck to a very low calorie diet. Or even if you have never been like an under eater, but more of an inconsistent eater, you know, you know, those women that are like, “Oh, my gosh, I forgot to eat, you know, I forgot to eat all day,” you know, we have a really screwed up relationship with food in our society.
Especially women, we seem to think that we can just go through our life without eating and eating consistently without nourishment. And over time, you know, we tend to think, oh, as women age, their metabolism gets less healthy, it becomes harder and harder to lose weight. No, what's actually happened is over time, our metabolism has really shifted under the influence of glucocorticoids. Our resilience in our 20s is not the same in our 30s. And we had a little bit more wiggle room with the stress of still inducing stress. And that stress has accumulated over time to lead us to this very point. Everything we've done up until this point is affecting our metabolism. Right now. Our hormones right now, every habit, every practice, and so a lot of us are looking at, well, what I'm doing right now is not working. So I need to go back or I need to do XYZ thing, know what you've done. The unhealthy habits that we've partaken in that put our body into a state of survival, a state of scarcity, have led us to this point where it feels like we now have a less resilient metabolism, a less resilient nervous system and less resilient hormones.
I've said this so many times when people say that this phrase really sticks with them. But it's like, a lot of times we have to eat our way out of it. And it can be really scary, especially when we feel like we've been programmed to believe that food is the thing that's making us fat, when in reality, it's the inconsistency. It's the unhealthy habits, it's the dysregulation around food, the extremes, the pendulum swings, that has really made us fat. And jumping on another extreme might get us a result. But how long is that result going to last? And that's what's leading us to this place of just severe exhaustion and burnout, where we're jumping from thing to thing to thing constantly chasing our health issues, constantly having something we need to fix. Because until we have a lens to view the body through until we really understand our physiology, we will just fall prey to these things.
The Alternative to Fasting
So what is a more strategic and body honoring way to focus on long term metabolic health and even weight loss? If you're like, “Well, what's an alternative to fasting, Jessica? Because I want you to know, fasting is the only thing that works for me.” And I want to ask you, this is you know, something for you to kind of ponder today after we finish this episode is have you ever eaten consistently enough protein each day, so make sure you got over 100 grams of bioavailable protein, not plant protein, real satiating hearty animal protein, like the omnivore you are. Have you consistently eaten at least three meals a day with your protein spread out throughout the day, you know, let's say 30 to 35 grams per meal, let's just throw out a number and have some satiating carbohydrates, whatever that is for you. For some people that might be sourdough. For some people that might be potatoes, for some people that might be fruit and some fiber. So some you know veggies for some people that might be beans for some people that might be the fiber that's just found in the fruit, but just you know satiate yourself enough protein, carbs and fat and eaten that consistently, three meals a day for, let's say 30 to 60 days. Enough calories to where you're not hungry, not having cravings. You're indulging yourself when you want something sweet you're having instead of having something like disgusting freakin food that has ingredients that are not really meant to be eaten, you know, I'm talking about like something sweetened with maple syrup or something sweetened with honey, or even oh my gosh, like heaven forbid a little bit of cane sugar, whatever you like, just in a moderate portion in a common sensical way.
Have you ever eaten that way before? I know from my experience that most women will honestly say no to that question, they have never consistently given their body the fuel it needs in a biologically appropriate way on a consistent basis. And given themselves the time it takes to get into a safe place ever, or they can't remember the last time they just ate in a way that was nourishing to them. That is a more effective way than anything else I've found. I've experimented with so many different things. I've seen so many different clients. And there's nothing more effective than anchoring your blood sugar throughout the day and satiating yourself with enough nutrients and calories every single day. And then living a healthy lifestyle, moving regularly, getting outside in the sun, you know, getting your feet on the ground for 10 or 15 minutes a day. It doesn't have to be extreme.
I know it's not sexy. I know it's not one of those things where it's like, I want something extreme, I want something sexy that I can tag on Instagram. But that's not what gets us results, because it's just never going to be sustainable. And we're always going to be swinging back and forth on the pendulum. Doesn't it get tiring, doesn't it get exhausting? And if you are going to fast, I would say probably the worst time to fast is the morning. I would much prefer someone fasting when the sun is down versus when the sun is up. Daily fasting is probably not a great long term strategy, as it will usually end up affecting your leptin and your ghrelin. And if you have been long term fasting, it's probably going to take you time to actually regulate these hormones. So get your appetite back into a place where you don't have an appetite extremes where you're not hungry when you wake up, and then you're starving later on or you go through these periods of not being not hungry and starving, you want a more balanced appetite.
But if you're a woman of childbearing years, it's probably going to have some impact on your endocrine system and your reproductive system. And also keep in mind that what you're doing while you're in the state of fasting matters. So what state you're in, if you're stressed out of your mind, fasting is putting your body into a fight or flight state or a sympathetic state. And then if you're doing activities that are also doing that, like for example, just exercise puts you into sympathetic state, that doesn't make exercise bad. But what it does is it should induce some type of awareness where, okay, when I exercise, I go into a sympathetic state. So I want to be fueled when I'm under that stress, so my body can get the most from the state that it's in. And then we want to get back into a parasympathetic state as quickly as we can. So if we're working a really stressful job, or like combating traffic or doing something that's putting a ton of pressure and stress on us, while we're fasting is going to compound those sympathetic nervous system impacts on the system. And it's going to pool all the blood towards the internal organs, the lungs, the heart, the muscles and away from the digestive tract and the skin and the hair. And the extremities, there's going to be usually a coldness to our extremities, a mood imbalances, we're going to be a little bit more snappy, we're going to feel a little bit more jumpy, we're going to be more irritated, or we're going to jump in between that and just being exhausted and then right back into the snappiness, there's not going to be kind of a balance content feeling within us.
So we need to be aware and do fasting correctly, you know, occasionally skipping breakfast, or occasionally, you know, while you're laying in bed, and you're just like I'm in a lounge here for a little while don't feel like making my breakfast yet is very different than like, Oh, I gotta get going, and I gotta skip breakfast, and I gotta get the kids to school and get to work and this and that. And this and that. No, I haven't eaten until 1pm. Very different situations. And then occasional spiritual fast, done mindfully, or completely different, right? Usually spiritual fasting, especially historically, was done in a very different state than it is now. We didn't live our modern, very stressful lifestyle. We do live in a very physiologically stressful environment. So we should be mindful of what we're doing while we're fasting. Regardless of if it's spiritual or “health promoting” fasting, which I actually think is not a thing, but I am going to let you conclude your own takeaways from the episode. And to be honest, it's much better, like I said before, to eat with the sun, so that the sun can help you utilize what you're eating. Rather than not eat during the day and eat a majority of your food in the evening. It makes absolutely no sense. Your systems are starting to shut down for the day, rather than rev up for the day. I would much rather fuel myself when I'm at the height of my metabolism than at the lowest point of my metabolism.
So there's obviously so many little rabbit holes and trails we could go down with this. I tried to keep it as succinct as possible and as focused as possible. I hope that gives you a lot to work with and a A lot to kind of think about and chew on and marinate on or share. At the end of the day, you know, we got to take this stuff very lightly. It's really not that serious. I just care for women, I care for female physiology, I know what it feels like to be undernourished and nourished. And so I want to shout it from the rooftops that life is so much better, when we're nourished, when we're not having to be in a state of scarcity or survival. Every moment of every day, your life experience is completely different. You see things differently, you choose different relationships, you live completely different life, you choose different career paths. It's a completely different life.
And as much as I say that we should take our health practices lightly and with a little bit of a laugh or a giggle, we also need to be aware that the state it puts our body in matters, because that's going to shift our perspective and how we see life how we see God, how we see our existence here, it really does have almost an an an eternal impact, or at least a life impact on how we go about our life. I just care that you have the best life experience you possibly can. I care that you are connected to your higher power, I care that you're able to tap into that really powerful feminine energy that you are capable of. And I would love for women to not have to live every life as if it's it's life or death, that every decision that they make is on their shoulders and is bearing down on them. And practices that induce stress and induce survival can absolutely make us feel that way. So as light as these things can be, they can also really impact us. And information can be power. So if you've never heard that or never even thought of that, I encourage you to look at food and nutrition a little bit differently. It's a tool to nurture yourself and Mother yourself to get yourself into a place of comfort and safety and stability so that your body can start to shift its focus to one of growth and restoration and metabolic function, energetic transformation, versus just constantly on the defense and in a place of survival.
Episode Links
In this episode, I mentioned:
Episode 5 - Unleash the Rhythm: How to Respect and Optimize Your Unique Physiology
https://www.everand.com/podcast/664531147/Episode-5-Unleash-the-Rhythm-How-to-Respect-and-Optimize-Your-Unique-PhysiologyEpisode 28 - Busting Health & Wellness Myths: How Diets Ruin Metabolism, Sugar is Not the Devil, Does Carnivore really “Heal”, Intermittent Fasting, Autophagy Might Not Be a Good Thing and the Myth of Running Out of Eggs with Kaya of Fundamental Nutrition
https://podcasts.apple.com/mt/podcast/busting-health-wellness-myths-how-diets-ruin-metabolism/id1697183569?i=1000652812958
Earthrunners:
Link: https://earthrunners.com/?rfsn=5275875.e3ea40
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