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Is Intermittent Fasting Really the Secret to Health? · Doctor Turned Health Coach

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  Welcome to the doctor-turned-health-coach podcast. My name is Dr. Ashwari.
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  I'm a family medicine physician-turned-health-coach.
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  And in this podcast, really, we talk about everything that has to do with aging,
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  healthy aging, and wellness, and making the right health choices through this health-coaching lens.
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  One of my clients recently asked me about intermittent fasting,
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  so I decided to review some of the data, the literature, and consult some of
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  the leading experts and come up with an answer, a generic answer, of course.
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  And hopefully this is of value to you guys.
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  All right, so when it comes to intermittent fasting, there is no hard and set
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  rule. There are many different versions of doing it, right?
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  Just the fact that you go to bed and don't eat in the middle of the night,
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  that's already intermittent fasting.
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  A lot of people don't appreciate that or don't consider that aspect because
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  a good quarter of the population, if not more,
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  will actually wake up in the middle of the night or late at night,
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  right before they go to sleep, they will eat something.
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  Or as soon as they wake up in the morning, they will pop a piece of candy.
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  That's a very common thing and it has a lot to do with blood sugar issues.
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  Blood sugar is a very tough problem in many people.
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  In fact, some people's blood sugars get so low in the middle of the night that
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  it wakes them up, they have a hard time, and for those reasons,
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  they rather have something in their mouth to stabilize their blood sugar.
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  Of course, the main problem for these individuals usually is that they do have
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  a blood sugar metabolism problem,
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  often something we refer to as insulin resistance or metabolic disease.
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  If this can be controlled, if this can be fixed, then all of these late-night
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  appetites often become quite a lot better.
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  And if anything, there's better choices to make as opposed to eating a piece
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  of candy when you first wake up.
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  That said, going back to intermittent fasting, if you go to bed at 10 p.m.
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  Or midnight and you don't eat breakfast until 7 a.m., 10 a.m.,
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  that's intermittent fasting.
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  That is intermittent fasting. Now, what is the value of intermittent fasting?
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  A lot of people think that the fasting window itself is quite valuable.
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  But when we look at the data, when we look at the research, it's just a calorie restriction.
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  It's only the calorie restriction that's driving the majority of the health benefits.
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  Meaning, if I restricted your eating window to just eight hours a day,
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  and so therefore you had a 16-hour fasting window, you had an intermittent fasting
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  of 16 hours, but if you ate the same calories as the person who doesn't have
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  a restricted eating window,
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  so they're not doing any intermittent fasting, well, guess what?
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  The outcomes, the metabolic outcomes, the heart health outcomes,
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  the cardiovascular outcomes, everything would be pretty much the same.
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  For those reasons, I think intermittent fasting is valuable if you at least
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  give your body a few hours of a break between putting something in your mouth.
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  It's not only great for your gut health, it's also great for your brain,
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  it's great for your teeth, your gums, the oral flora, the bacteria in your gut,
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  all of these things benefit from that little bit of a break.
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  What I do like about intermittent fasting is that it gives me a bit of predictability
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  and it limits me having to make a choice.
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  Choices in our modern society is one of the biggest curses, at least in my opinion, I could be wrong.
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  But sometimes you have so many
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  choices that you feel overwhelmed with having to make so many choices.
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  Instead, I limit myself by saying that I'm not going to eat a lot of,
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  for example, for me, I'm not going to eat any ultra processed foods. So that's easy.
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  I never am swayed by a bag of Doritos because I would never eat it.
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  That's just the way I function. It's going to be different for every person.
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  Another one that I do is meat and things like that. It's just something that
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  I'm not going to do. I don't eat a lot of meat.
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  I'll eat a lot of animal-based products. So it makes my decision tree generally quite easy.
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  And because I usually don't eat after 8 p.m.
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  Or so, it also makes my life rather easy because I'm going to,
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  in general, not eat until 9 or 10 a.m.
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  So I have that 8 to 12-hour window of not eating, which is my fasting window.
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  And it's also nice because in that fasting window, I don't have to make any decisions about food.
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  If somebody offers me food, nope, I don't eat this late, done.
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  Nope, not drinking any alcohol.
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  Nope, just not happening. It's just a decision I don't have to make because
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  it's something that I don't do.
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  And because it's something that I don't do, it's a decision that was made well ahead of time.
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  Alcohol is the same way. I usually won't have alcohol late at night,
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  And I definitely won't have caffeine after 1 p.m.
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  I just don't because it doesn't suit me well. And I've already made those decisions.
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  So in that way, I think fasting can be a fantastic way.
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  But always pay attention to your body. Experiment.
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  You might do a fasting window that makes you feel so good and energetic.
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  And somebody else doesn't derive any benefit from it. So experiment and find
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  out if it's the right option for you.
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  I hope this is of value to you guys. share it with anybody else that would benefit
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  if you like my podcast if you enjoy it i would love an online review go to apple
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  podcast that's the best place to leave me a review give me some feedback and
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  tell me what you would like to hear more of take care.