Joel Greene
We first talked about IF back in 2007 on SHR. Fast-forward to today and the mainstream is now promoting IF is the Holy Grail of dietary approaches that promises improved weight loss, age reversal, insulin sensitivity, immune function and much more. But is it really? Like every dietary fad people can take it too far. Is there a downside to IF? Is it wise to do indefinitely? What happens when it backfires? What about longer fasts? These and many other questions will be discussed.
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SHR # 2454 :: When Intermittent Fasting Backfires
Show Notes:
[6:20] What is a “fed state”?
- If the outcome is growth, we have to look at the MAPK pathway.
- MAPK governs cell cycles (division/growth).
- It activates every time that you eat and insulin is produced.
- Growth can be stimulated from either side of the equation: food and acetyl acetate.
- ERK activates after a training session, in younger bodies, to help muscles repair. ERK is activated by acetyl acetate.
- Part of the problem is that people give away tons of advice without first practicing this advice.
- In biology, nearly everything has a duality and follows a bell curve in terms of benefit to dose.
- The devil is in the dose.
[15:06] Long term intermittent fasting is detrimental, similar to how long term keto is detrimental to health.
- Diets cause reactions in the body. Whether those reactions are desirable is what is important.
[17:48] What are the master regulators of the body?
- Timing and diurnal, 7-day, and seasonal rhythms must be considered.
- Carl’s exodus from constant I.F. to 5-6 meals per day seems to be fixing a lot of his smaller problems.
- IF can affect sleep cycles when done for longer periods.
- The organ clock (food controlled) overrides the circadian clock (light controlled)
- HDAC inhibition and ampk happen during sleep by design.
- IF gives these same benefits outside of sleep and can reduce sleep stress/ affect sleep cycles.
[25:13] How food restriction affects sleep and what to do about it.
- Sleeping is more important than fasting.
[29:34] Combining IF with keto?
- Short-term: vastly beneficial.
- Long-term: should not be done.
- Keto diets produce 4-hydroxynonenal, an oncogenic electrophile.
- This accumulation overwhelms glutathione production.
- 4-HNE is beneficial in small amounts in non-cancerous cells.
- Large amounts promote cancer growth.
[34:36] Seasonality is addressed.
- Nature’s availability of food could direct this seasonality.
[44:18] Order of operations with fasting.
- Fix sleep first.
- Amplify fasts.
- Fast as short as possible after amplifying, but do this frequently.
- There should be periods of longer and shorter fasts.
- There are checkpoint meals that should follow a fast.
- You need a tool to track your sleep as well.
- Stop eating three hours before sleep.
[49:20] bizarre dreams from meal cycling.
[51:39] Individual goals must be considered when using meal cycling.
- Fasting and feasting are two sides of the balance beam.
- They both have benefits and detriments, which will be made worse the longer you are in each state past a certain threshold.
- Visualize a bell curve for benefits over time.
- Overtraining is more easily predicted based on nutrition of the trainee.
[1:10:27] Long term fasting vs. intermittent fasting?- Joel’s thoughts on Thriv protein.
- Deprogram your mind from the titles.
- The body does not distinguish between fasting and starvation. It only knows that fat cells are shrinking.
- IF redistributes visceral fat to subcutaneous fat.
- Nitrogen shifts to internal production.
- Akkermansia can be upregulated.
- Periodic cessation of eating taps into ancestral survival programming.
- This could possibly predispose offspring to have the “thrifty” gene.
Show Transcript SHR # 2454 :: When Intermittent Fasting Backfires
