Kind: captions
Language: en
release my regular segment where i
answer
five questions or cover five topics that
matter to me and that should matter to
you and when it comes to food and health
uh and in case you're new around here uh
the reason that i picked five is because
we've got our body has five health
defense systems
these systems
our circulation our stem cells our
microbiome our gut
our dna and our immune systems actually
are working firing in all cylinders to
keep us healthy and my book eat to beat
disease
is all about how do we actually activate
our health defense systems now i've got
a special guest today but before
i introduce him i want to actually let
you know that uh my last master class
for the month is going to be this monday
uh january 31st at 8 00 pm uh january
31st at 8pm it's a free master class
sign up on the link is in my bio okay
i'm very excited to bring on a friend
and colleague dr jason fung who's going
to talk about
wait for it
intermittent fasting this is the topic
that everybody's been hearing about
dr jason fung is a canadian nephrologist
he's a world leading expert in
intermittent fasting you may have seen
some of his videos um uh and uh and he's
been treating people with diabetes and
so he's written some best-selling books
about intermittent fasting and a
intensive dietary management program
let's go ahead and bring dr jason fung
on
hey hey well
all right
all right hey
dr jason fong welcome to my uh instagram
this is great i'm so glad uh that you're
coming on board to uh my uh my my group
uh and um
uh uh tell us where you're
where you're uh i'm in toronto canada
okay but you're you're known worldwide i
know this because almost everywhere i go
somebody basically says after hearing me
talk about food and healthy like do you
know about dr jason fung do you is is he
somebody that you you know you're
connected to and so i'm so glad to have
you uh on uh on board so uh tell me uh a
little bit about
uh how you got into intermittent fasting
and maybe
that's a great question what is
intermittent fasting there's two real
parts one of course is not eating so any
time that you're not eating really
you're fasting so and the second part is
that it's voluntary so it's not
starvation starvation is where you have
no access to food
that's not fasting fasting is you have
access to food you choose not to eat it
and one of the things that
how i got into it is that i treat a lot
of type 2 diabetes and as you know
there's been actually a huge
obesity epidemic which has led to a type
2 diabetes epidemic which has led to a
lot of diabetic kidney disease and i'm a
kidney specialist so i started seeing a
lot of this disease and one of the
things i realized probably about 10
years ago is that we probably were
treating the whole thing
not very well because we were trying to
treat the disease after it got going but
the disease name diabetic kidney disease
actually tells you everything you need
to know it's caused by diabetes if you
want to get rid of it you need to get
rid of the diabetes you can't treat the
kidney disease after you got it you got
to treat the
diabetes which is mostly type 2 diabetes
that's like 95
and you know at the time people were
like well you know it's it's a chronic
progressive disease i'm like that's
baloney that's pure baloney because
everybody knew that if you lost weight
your diabetes would either get much
better or go away so therefore it wasn't
chronic it wasn't progressive it was
just that we weren't doing a great job
of getting people to lose weight so then
i started to think about the way we
treat
weight loss and of course
the medical profession had basically and
abandoned the entire field it was crazy
because there was no teaching it was
just basically
us as doctors were just like oh watch
your calories exercise but it wasn't
helping people right it wasn't really
the right advice so i started to think
about other ways to treat it including
low carbohydrate diets and also then i
started to think about intermittent
fasting
so fasting was in terrible disrepute at
the time
honestly people thought i was and i
started using this in 2013. so it's
close to 10 years people thought it was
the worst thing you could possibly do to
your body
and you know my advantage is that i i
understood the physiology and i i could
read the literature so i said well
what's so bad about it because as a
physician
we actually tell people to fast all the
time if you don't if you go for surgery
you have to fast you go for colonoscopy
you have to fast if you're post-op you
have to fast if you do fasting blood
work you have to fast so i actually tell
people all the time too fast and nothing
bad happens yet somehow people weren't
supposed to do this what was wrong with
it and at the same time we knew that
there was
you know it's it's literally the oldest
dietary intervention in the book
we knew about it from you know religions
and the bible and so on so people have
been using this for at least 2 000 years
which is important because if there's
something wrong with it we would have
found out about it 2 000 years ago right
so it wasn't some fad like some people
say it's this big fat it's like it's
it's it's not a fat it's been used for a
long long time
so then as i started researching i i
started to understand that there's
actually a huge number of advantages to
fasting
in per in in the way it applies to
weight loss but also in terms of its
health benefits outside of the weight
loss and what was striking for me anyway
was that as i started to use it some of
the patients that i had with type 2
diabetes the disease completely reversed
like it was crazy there was people i was
treating
for 10 years
i started them on a fasting regimen
within a month they were actually
classified as non-diabetic that's insane
so
but let's take a pause right there so
what is an example a practical example
for intermittent fasting because it's a
term um you you just said you made it
practical for some of these patients
what's an example
fasting is basically a period of time
that you don't eat if you think about
the way a lot of people eat breakfast
lunch dinner it's about say 10 hours of
eating and 14 hours of fasting what you
want to do if you want to try and lose
weight is you simply extend that so you
might do eight hours of feeding which is
called time restricted eating and
16 hours of fasting or you can use
something like one meal a day which is
like 23 hours of fasting and one hour of
eating for example so it can be anything
in between so it's totally up to you
and this is what we do so the difference
between fasting sort of in the 60s when
there's a lot of studies on fasting is
when they did studies in the 60s they
were talking like 30 days of fasting
sort of thing we don't do that anymore
no not even close right so one meal a
day is
that that that that's a that's a protest
fast
that's that's that's like i think yeah
exactly i'm against violent fast
here here here what here the fasting is
i'm against disease exactly and i'm
actually fascinated and and the thing is
that people used to think um that oh
there's something really wrong with
fasting but when you think about it from
a very simple standpoint is there's
actually nothing wrong when you fast
your body what you're doing is you're
allowing your body to use the calories
that have been stored away so body fat
is nothing more or less than a store of
food energy or calories if you're eating
you're not going to use the stores
coming from your body right the body fat
because you have food coming in so
you're going to use the energy coming
from your food
it's only when you don't eat that your
your body then gets the signals to start
using calories that are stored in your
body fat so you're in fact using your
body fat for precisely the reason that
you have it like the body fat's not
there for looks it's there for you as a
source of calories so therefore let your
body use it give it the time i'm not
saying it's easy or fun right that's not
what i'm saying at all it's actually
very difficult and not that much fun
but
if you are you know unhealthy if you
really want to lose weight this is a
reasonable option for you to try
and i and i love the fact that you said
you know it actually activates your body
to do what it's supposed to do
the
word uh fat uh
energy the other things that interfere
mr fasting does it's kind of a reset so
we know that for the stem cells in your
body that actually are responsible for
regenerating your health continuously
including the immune system when you
actually fast you are actually just
triggering your immune system to kind of
reset itself and that and that's a good
thing you don't want actually your
immune system be the same old worn out
immune cells have been around all the
time you want to refresh it's kind of
like shutting down your hard drive and
every now and then restarting it kind of
clears the decks and you get a kind of
fresh crop so that's one of the things
it does the other thing that you know i
because i did a lot of cancer research
we found surprisingly that actually
restricting calories and going to
intermittent fasting actually can
contribute to cutting off the blood
supply feeding cancers and so here's
another reason
how you can eat or not eat to be able to
interfere with the disease without you
know that this is completely
in parallel to whatever it is the
oncologist or the endocrinologist might
recommend for you to do or the or the
infectious disease specialist or the
cardiologist
so i think that this is where you know
what what's great what i love about kind
of how you got into this
jason is that you know you
were treating patients
you um observed uh something that other
people were not really thinking about
you reflected on how it made sense
physiologically meaning how the body is
hardwired and then you and you tested it
out and found that it actually uh could
be helpful so what are some of the
diseases besides um body fat that uh you
write about in your book the obesity
code yeah obesity is one thing what are
some of this there's actually a lot and
there's a huge number of advantages to
intermittent fasting so type 2 diabetes
is the other one so i wrote a book
called the the diabetes code which is
also talking about how it can really
help your type 2 diabetes really through
weight loss but essentially it's very
simple if you don't eat your body is
going to start using up some of that
blood glucose and the whole disease is
that there's too much of this blood
glucose so as you burn it all off the
disease essentially just goes away which
is which is amazing because type 2
diabetes is actually a huge huge risk
factor
for so many diseases heart attacks
strokes cancers blindness amputation you
know kidney disease so there's a ton
infections diabetic foot infections are
like the worst things you'll ever see
right um so the diabetes it's a huge
huge important topic but on top of that
there's actually so much other so cancer
you mentioned and i wrote a book also
called the cancer code which is about
not just about nutrition but also
about how cancer developed and what is
cancer but
there are ways to impact it because the
diet turns out to be a huge part of the
risk of cancer so if you look at and
they've done these when they look at
attribution risk they look at the
what contributes to the causes of cancer
uh the biggest one is tobacco at about
the diet is actually about the same it's
about 30 and way above anything else
genetics is like five percent all those
carcinogens maybe two percent so diet is
a massive massive contributor to
cancer risk and you see that because now
a lot of cancers the common ones colon
cancer breast cancer are actually
classified as obesity obesity-associated
cancer so a huge huge important topic
people uh also look at autoimmune
diseases
and you talked about resetting the
immune system which is exactly what the
body does actually and that's why if you
look at a lot of religious sort of
fasting it's it's just that once a year
they're like okay let's do a big fast
and reset right it's it's it's the same
idea and there's this um this process
called autophagy which is probably very
instrumental and this is a relatively
recent phenomenon that's been uh
understood and when you fast what
happens is that your body actually
starts to break down some of these
proteins and you might think oh breaking
down that's really really bad that's
what people used to think but in fact
what happens when you break it down is
that your growth hormone is also very
high so then when you start to feed
again remember it's a cycle feeding and
fasting then what you've done is you've
gotten rid of the old junkie stuff
and you're going to rebuild the new
stuff so
it it it is like a spring cleaning for
your body that allows you to actually
have a nicer home to actually live in
and and and the clutter
actually kind of uh metaphorically uh
builds up until it causes a problem
which can be diseased and so house
cleaning reorganizing you know kind of
getting rid of the stuff you don't want
to have so autophagy you know it's
basically the process of just breaking
down cleaning up clearing out the stuff
that you the old and in with the new
it's kind of uh you know it's a way of
bringing forth your new year's
resolution so i love
the fact that you've kind of
harnessed this process and and really
interconnected uh everything around how
the body actually
is designed to be able to function so
you're not talking about introducing
something uh abnormal you're talking
about really uncloaking something that's
completely normal and actually using it
um for your own benefits so look uh uh i
wanna i wanna just take a moment to talk
about um uh your your book uh the
obesity code um
uh what does somebody get out of it when
they read the book yeah
sort of a scientific exploration of sort
of what makes us gain weight because
there's this idea that it's just about
calories and i think it's quite mistaken
actually because
the calories argument
sort of completely ignores human
physiology
that is our body has no sensors for
calories or your body doesn't know if
what you're eating has calories or not
what your body does is it responds with
hormones so when you eat two foods one
of which say you eat cookies which is
tends to be fattening or and on the
other side you eat say broccoli which is
not particularly fine
the minute you eat those foods the
hormonal response in your body is
completely and utterly different so
you're going to give instructions
remember hormones are just instructions
you're going to give your body different
instructions so
the cookies instant's going to spike way
up you're telling your body with that to
say hey store all of those calories as
fat because that's what the instructions
you gave it to so if you take 100
calories
your body can choose to burn it or can
store it right you want to give the
instructions to burn it but if you're
eating cookies and you're spiking up
your insulin way up because of the sugar
and all the all the refined
carbohydrates you're actually giving the
body the opposite instructions you eat
the broccoli you don't get those
instructions so your body is just going
to burn it off as energy right and
that's good so all that implication is
is that some foods are more fattening
than other foods which is just pure
common sense right your your grandmother
would have told you you're an idiot if
you think that cookies and broccoli are
the same there's nothing alike about
them because your body responds to them
differently so it's not just about the
calories in fact that's probably the
least important the most important it's
the
um it's the instructions to your body as
to what to do with those calories so
that's that's sort of what i talk about
in the book and that's how you can use
diets like you know cutting out sugar
and cutting out you know refined
carbohydrates and intermittent fasting
to fix those instructions to your bodies
fix that sort of hormonal uh milia that
is going to allow you to lose weight
because the way we've been doing it
which is just purely counting calories
and remember this is the advice that we
grew up on um it didn't work it doesn't
work
yeah no i think that that's that that's
so great that you've been able to share
that so where can people find out more
about you yeah so you can get the book
anywhere uh amazon um is is available at
bookstores it's available and you can
also find out more information you can
follow me on twitter
that's dr jason fung and i have a
youtube channel which has a lot of
videos that anybody can watch on fasting
and weight loss and so on just look
under my name jason fung and you should
be able to find it
well that's great i i love every time
that you talk to me about the way that
you think about fasting the way you
think about obesity the way you think
about disease reversal so i encourage
everybody who's watching to go out and
buy his book the obesity uh code um this
is extremely important because you know
what i always say is when it comes to
food and health it's not just about the
food it's about how your body responds
to what you put in
actually how you eat and i think all
these things you know really at the end
of the day um help us and i'm going to
be talking more about this during my
last master class of the month which is
actually going to be this coming monday
january 31st at 8 00 pm eastern standard
time please register for it it's in a
link in my bio and doctor thank you so
much thank you so much for coming on
bye good to talk to you bye now