Latest / Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease / 082 // Fasting and Hashimoto’s: Harmful or Helpful?

Transcript

082 // Fasting and Hashimoto’s: Harmful or Helpful? · Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease

• 0:00
  Is fasting a root cause of Hashimoto's? Does it actually trigger Hashimoto's thyroiditis?
• 0:07
  Or is fasting, like some people claim, even like a cure for Hashimoto's?
• 0:12
  Well, the answer to both of those is yes.
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  And that's what we're going to talk about today because like so many different
• 0:19
  things in your life and in your health, the answer for you might not be the
• 0:24
  same as the answer for somebody else.
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  So we're going to talk all about fasting today and I'm going to help you figure
• 0:29
  out, is this something that you could pursue or is this not a good idea for you?
• 0:34
  And welcome to the Health with Hashimoto's podcast. This is episode 82.
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  Thank you so much for joining me. My name is Esther. I am a registered nurse.
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  I'm a holistic health educator.
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  I'm a mom and I have Hashimoto's and I have tried fasting several times and
• 0:50
  it has always been really bad for me, honestly.
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  And so it was mid-fall maybe, all of a sudden I started seeing so many ads and
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  interviews with this doctor on social media.
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  And it was all about fasting and fasting with your hormones.
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  And I was intrigued because everything that I have read so far and everything
• 1:15
  that I I've looked at indicates that for women, fasting is generally harmful
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  because of our hormone cycle.
• 1:24
  And we have talked in the past that low blood sugar is actually one of the root
• 1:30
  causes for Hashimoto's.
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  Out-of-balance blood sugar, both high and low, can be a root cause,
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  but out of those two, the low blood sugars seem to be more of a stressor on
• 1:42
  the body and seem to trigger more autoimmune problems than high blood sugar.
• 1:47
  And we've talked about that before on the podcast because I do want you to know
• 1:51
  what the root causes are so that you can take action and you can implement changes
• 1:55
  so that you can see better health.
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  So when I saw all of these ads and these interviews, I was intrigued.
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  But first, let's talk about what is fasting. Fasting is basically going without
• 2:06
  food or something for a designated length of time.
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  As I record this, it is the beginning of the season of Lent,
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  and that is when many people in the church give up something so that they can
• 2:20
  take the time that they would normally focus on that thing and focus on prayer and focus on Jesus. us.
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  Traditionally, it was always food because back in traditional cultures,
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  gathering and preparing food was the bulk of your day.
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  We didn't have fridges and supermarkets and stuff.
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  So most of your time during the day and most of your energy went to preparing and eating food.
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  And so they would give that up to spend a lot of time in prayer.
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  And now some people give up other things like social media, or you'll see them give up something else.
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  But traditionally, when we talk about fasting, we are talking about giving up.
• 3:00
  Food. And so that is the context that I'm using today for this podcast episode.
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  We're talking about giving up whole foods. I'm not talking about like a water
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  fast, anything like that, giving up foods.
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  And it has gained popularity over, I don't know, maybe the last decade,
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  especially intermittent fasting.
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  And this used to be normal. People would stop eating at suppertime and then
• 3:24
  they wouldn't eat again until breakfast.
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  But now, like I said, food is so much much more easy to come by.
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  And, you know, we have microwave popcorn and we have bags of chips.
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  So what do you do after supper?
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  You sit on the couch and you have a snack. And so people are eating all the
• 3:38
  time. And that's not really good for our blood sugar.
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  It's not really good for our health. So intermittent fasting is basically at
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  the premise is taking some time off every day to not eat.
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  And when people start talking about intermittent fasting, they'll start talking about a window,
• 3:56
  window eating window and a fasting window so if
• 3:59
  you quit eating every day by 7 p.m and then
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  you start eating at 7 a.m then your
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  fasting window would be 12 hours and your eating window
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  would be 12 hours so that's like intermittent fasting and it can go up to fasting
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  windows up to several days and when people started doing this they noticed a
• 4:17
  lot of health benefits especially the men but women do not have as many health
• 4:23
  benefits when they're doing this intermittent fasting.
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  Especially women who are premenopausal.
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  And so we know that there's a correlation with hormones and there's more that
• 4:32
  we as women have to consider when we're fasting.
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  And honestly, I think that is why I had problems the first several times I tried
• 4:39
  fasting because I was just going on, you know, on the blogs and what people
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  said on the internet and about intermittent fasting.
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  I hadn't learned about the hormone aspect yet. So I was implementing what they
• 4:52
  said about how to learn how to intermittent fast, but I was not tying it to my hormones.
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  And every time I tried intermittent fasting, I tried it two different times
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  for like, I gave it a good month or two of trying to implement this in the way that people taught.
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  And I gained weight. I had increased fatigue.
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  I probably had increased Hashimoto's, but the first time I did it,
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  I didn't know that I had Hashimoto's. Maybe I was developing it.
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  I don't know, but it just didn't work for me. Have you had that experience?
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  Have you tried intermittent fasting and found that it backfired on you?
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  And maybe it even triggered some Hashimoto's like I assume that it probably
• 5:31
  did for me. Well, there's a couple of reasons.
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  Number one, when your blood sugar goes low, it is a stressor on the body.
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  It is a hard stressor on the body and that increases your cortisol.
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  Got lots of episodes on cortisol and on stress and how that impacts your immune
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  system and how it kind of of causes your immune system to go haywire,
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  and then your immune system attacks your thyroid, and that is Hashimoto's.
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  So we do not want to raise our stress level, especially chronically.
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  Well, and then in women, during our typical 28-day cycle, of course,
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  your cycle might not be 28 days, you might not even have a cycle anymore,
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  but typically on a 28-day cycle, there are different periods within that cycle
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  where we are more susceptible to stress and our body cannot tolerate fasting
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  as much because our bodies as women are created,
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  like everything about us is created for us to live and for us to grow a human being.
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  Everything is focused on that. And there are certain times in your cycle where
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  fasting does not work with your
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  cycle, and it's going to cause increased stress in your body if you try.
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  So that's kind of like the bad news. Is fasting good or bad?
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  Well, bad news, yes, it is bad.
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  And then let's look at the flip side. How is fasting good.
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  Now, fasting does a whole lot of things. And some people say that through the
• 7:03
  practice of fasting and doing it correctly, in sync with hormones,
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  they have been able to reverse their Hashimoto's.
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  I am not making any claims on this podcast.
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  You know, I never claim to diagnose, to cure, to prevent all of those things
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  that the FDA says all the time. You see a little little disclaimer at the bottom.
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  Well, I'm not here to tell you how to cure anything.
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  If it was as easy as, you know, one thing.
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  Everybody would know about it. There is not one simple thing.
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  There is things that are individual to you to support your body,
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  to do what your body needs to do.
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  And some people say that fasting is the way to do it.
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  Well, I take a little issue with the way, but it can be helpful.
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  So let's go through the different things that fasting does.
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  Number one, it creates an amplified healing state.
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  There are so many things in your body that it kind of activates and it mobilizes
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  so that your body can heal better.
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  One of those and the earliest thing is ketones.
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  Now you've probably heard of ketones because they're all over social media,
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  but ketones is what your body uses when it doesn't have sugar to burn.
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  It burns ketones. And you've heard me talk about your your mitochondria before.
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  The mitochondria are the little powerhouses in your cell and they like to run
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  on ketones. So we like to keep our mitochondria happy.
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  When you're fasting, you have more ketones. Another thing that you have when
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  you're fasting is autophagy. Now autophagy is super cool.
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  It's basically like the self-cleaning cycle of your every single cell.
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  Autophagy is when it goes through and it figures out, your body figures out
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  what is needed, what is not needed.
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  It cleans things up. It recycles, it repairs, it throws stuff away.
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  Autophagy is really, really cool. And we need autophagy to happen in order to
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  clean out our bodies, to have a healthy functioning body, to have healthy functioning organs and cells.
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  We need autophagy to happen. And autophagy does happen when you're fasting.
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  And those two things are really, really cool and helpful about about fasting.
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  Another thing that happens when you're fasting for an extended length is you
• 9:20
  have this entire like reset of your gut.
• 9:23
  Now you have probably have heard me say that when you have Hashimoto's,
• 9:29
  you have a gut component to that.
• 9:32
  We all do. And so we want to focus on gut health as much as we can,
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  because that's a huge component of your immune system.
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  And it's a huge factor in your autoimmune condition.
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  Another thing that fasting does is it helps your immune system repair.
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  And this was first discovered when people were doing three-day water fasts,
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  which if you do not have somebody guiding you through a fast, do not try a water fast.
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  So a water fast is where you don't do anything except for water.
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  Water you really need some guidance if you're going to do that but they found out this Dr.
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  Walter Longo he did these studies with a three-day water fast and he found that
• 10:12
  like it it just reset the whole immune system he was working with patients with
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  cancer and they were on chemo and it was crazy like they were all of a sudden
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  releasing all these stem cells the stem cells.
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  Naturally go to the places in your body that need the most healing and these
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  people were having so much renewal and like this reset of their entire immune
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  system, which was really cool.
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  So of course, if we're having problems with our immune system,
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  that sounds ideal, right?
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  Like, if we just do this one thing, you can fix everything. What?
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  That sounds like the American dream. Not the traditional American dream,
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  the current American dream, where we want a pill for every ill.
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  We want a quick solution to a problem that's been building for decades.
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  We want fast. so if you could just like do a
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  three-day water fast and fix it awesome but it
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  doesn't work that way sorry it does not
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  work that way and one reason is because if you have problems with your blood
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  sugar like if you've ever gotten hangry especially if you get hangry frequently
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  like you are not ready to do a fast if you get hangry it is your body saying
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  that you don't handle low blood sugar well.
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  When you get hangry, that feeling of impatience and anger when you get hungry,
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  or you don't even feel hungry yet, you're just irritable.
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  And then you're like, oh yeah, I haven't eaten in a while.
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  That's a sign that your body does not handle low blood sugar well.
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  And you're not ready to fast, quite honestly.
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  You're not ready. You need to get your blood sugar taken care of.
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  Well, let me go over the six different lengths of fasts and what they do.
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  This is from the book Fast Like a Girl.
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  And if you want to explore fasting, if you want to try it out,
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  I highly recommend that you get the book.
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  I have the book on Kindle and I will be getting it in paperback because this
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  is a book where you need the appendices so that you can know exactly what to
• 12:10
  do if you have Hashimoto's or if you have adrenal fatigue.
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  And then you need like the the towards the end, the recipes.
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  There's some really good recipes in there as far as blood sugar balancing recipes.
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  And then you need the charts in the middle to help you know when to eat what.
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  And those things are just kind of harder on a Kindle.
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  You can bookmark each thing, but this is a book that you really want to have
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  in your hand as a reference guide,
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  as you learn to fast, as you prepare your body, as you figure out when to do
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  what, but you really want to have this book in your hands.
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  The author is Dr. Mindy Pelz, and she was all over social media a little while ago.
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  And you can look her up on YouTube, you can look her up on any of the social channels.
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  She has some, I think a free Facebook group, and then a Facebook group where
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  you pay a lot of money every month in order to fast with her to have these guided
• 13:03
  fasts. But she's got tons of resources.
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  But the Fast Like a Girl book is great. I would recommend that if you you want to dive into this.
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  So anyway, the six different length fasts are these.
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  First is intermittent fasting, and that's between 12 and 16 hours without food.
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  And then the next one is autophagy fasting, and that's, like I said,
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  it activates your body to clean things up.
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  I love autophagy. I have little autophagy activators. They are in the protandum line.
• 13:33
  I've told you you before about the Protandim NRF2 that activates my body to
• 13:38
  create its own antioxidants and protect me that way. It decreases oxidative stress.
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  I also take the NRF1 activator, and that helps my mitochondria.
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  Well, the third one, and this one I believe is best during two parts of the
• 13:52
  cycle after reading this book, it activates autophagy.
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  So even though I haven't been able to fast in the past, I've been able to activate
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  autophagy, and that's the cleaning.
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  So autophagy fasting starts at 17 hours.
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  After 24 hours of fasting, you're starting to reset your gut,
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  which is super cool. reset all of those microbes and do like two or three other
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  things in the gut to help heal.
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  Then after 36 hours, you start to burn more fat.
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  After 48 hours, you actually reset your dopamine.
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  So that is really cool if you're struggling with depression or if you find that
• 14:30
  you are struggling with like an addiction to your phone and you really need those dopamine hits,
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  then combining a like food fast with a social media fast can be helpful.
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  And then after 72 hours, like I said, that's where you start to release the
• 14:47
  stem cells and you're going to have the immune reset fast.
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  So those are the six different lengths that she talks about in the book.
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  But what I found the best, absolutely loved it, is she's got a chart in here
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  and it's a couple of places in here and and it talks about when to fast and when to eat.
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  So in the book, there's this chart of a 28-day, she actually has a 30-day menstrual
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  cycle, and it tells you what is when.
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  The first about week of your cycle is menstruation. And so that's when you bleed.
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  Day one of your cycle is the first day that you're bleeding.
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  And that, she calls, is a power phase. During the power phase, you can be fasting.
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  And then during the next phase, that's like the week when you're ovulating.
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  That is when you cannot fast.
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  Your body is putting all our resources into maybe we can make a baby.
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  And if you're fasting or you're telling your body it's not safe to make a baby
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  and then your hormones are going to get all messed up, they're going to be all out of whack.
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  It's really not good to fast when you're in that part of your cycle.
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  And I don't just mean that if you're not wanting to get pregnant this month,
• 16:03
  then it's going to be okay to fast because there are so many things that hinge
• 16:08
  on your hormones and it is to your benefit and everybody's benefit around you,
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  but you're going to be the healthiest
• 16:14
  when you honor the hormones and your cycles, your cycle of hormones.
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  And you do not want to fast at least not
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  a long time during that ovulation stage and
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  then there's another power stage power phase after ovulation
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  and that's another time when you can do fasting and
• 16:32
  it's okay with your hormones and then you go into this next stage which she
• 16:37
  calls the nurture phase and that is until you bleed again and these are not
• 16:43
  like four seven day periods it really varies on you,
• 16:49
  but it also varies on this chart.
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  So grab the book, look it up. I'm sure that this chart is on the internet somewhere.
• 16:57
  If you look it up, I will try to find it and post a link down in the show notes.
• 17:02
  Or you can always head over to my blog.
• 17:04
  I do try to keep the blog updated, usually within one week of the podcast episode airing.
• 17:10
  Then I have the transcript, you know, revised so that it reads better,
• 17:15
  and I have that up on the blog, and I will have all the links in the blog,
• 17:19
  and then I should have this chart if I can find it, or I'll just have a link to it.
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  Anyway, you really want to honor your hormones and to work with them.
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  When you are working against your hormones, things don't work.
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  And that's, I think, the biggest reason why fasting, as a general thing doesn't
• 17:39
  work well for women. Men, they have a 24-hour cycle.
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  24 hours. Every single day is the same as far as their hormones.
• 17:47
  Women, our hormones are always changing.
• 17:51
  We have several different hormones and they go off of each other and one rises, one falls.
• 17:57
  It's really complex. It is amazing.
• 17:59
  Women are amazing. Our bodies are incredible.
• 18:03
  Everything that we go through in in a period cycle, it's so cool.
• 18:08
  And I really feel bad that we don't grow up knowing that.
• 18:12
  We do not grow up, at least I didn't. I didn't grow up knowing that it was a gift to be a woman.
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  Instead, we felt like it was shameful to get a period.
• 18:25
  Puberty was, well, it still is awkward for everybody. It's not fun for any woman. But...
• 18:31
  It's a really, really cool thing. And our hormones are amazing when you learn
• 18:35
  that you can work with your hormones and that you can harness different types
• 18:40
  of energy during different parts of your cycle.
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  Like there's one week where you feel more beautiful and you actually like look
• 18:46
  better according to what your hormones are doing with your skin and with other things.
• 18:51
  And then there's other times during your cycle where you are able to multitask
• 18:57
  and you're able to get a ton of stuff stuff done.
• 18:59
  There's other times in your cycle where you are more emotional,
• 19:03
  and that is probably the one that we all recognize.
• 19:07
  But really, our cycles are wonderful.
• 19:10
  And I feel bad that so many of us have grown up thinking that it's almost shameful
• 19:16
  to be a woman. It's not. You are amazing.
• 19:18
  Your body has been created perfectly.
• 19:20
  And when you can learn to work with your hormones and not stress them out,
• 19:25
  things are going to work better.
• 19:26
  So in summary, fasting, it can be bad, it can be good.
• 19:32
  If you're just going to like fly into it and try it, then it's probably going to be bad.
• 19:36
  If you're going to prepare your body to adapt, if you're going to prepare your
• 19:41
  blood sugar and get off of that hangry cycle, then that's going to be better.
• 19:45
  And then if you work with your hormones and follow a specific plan like this fast like a girl.
• 19:52
  There's possibly other ones out there too that teach you how to follow your
• 19:56
  hormones. Then that's going to be better.
• 19:59
  Always work with your hormones because when you're working with your body,
• 20:02
  things are going to work better.
• 20:05
  This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only.
• 20:09
  Please be sure to discuss any concerns and plans with your trusted healthcare professional.
• 20:14
  Music.