Hello Health Champions.
Today I want to talk about what really happens in the body when you’re fasting.
Coming Right Up.
Hey I'm Dr. Ekberg I'm a holistic doctor and a former Olympic Decathlete and if you want to
truly Master Health by understanding how the body really works make sure you subscribe
and hit that notification Bell so you don't miss anything we've been told for so long
that it's so important to eat to keep your energy up that if you don't have breakfast
you won't have any focus in school or at work but if that was true then anytime we try to
fast we would just get weaker and weaker and energy would fade away until we just
had nothing any time we try to fast but that's not how it works so instead how it works is
the body has these amazing mechanisms a backup to provide a constant supply of energy pretty
much no matter what happens because our food supply has not always been as consistent it
is today the first thing that happens when you eat something is that that food has to
be processed you put it in the stomach and now it has to be digested and absorbed. It's in
the bloodstream then it gets into the cells and some of that fuel gets used up in the
moment and some of it get stored so if we eat a lot of carbohydrates then most of that
in the beginning is going to be glucose so we're going to use a lot we're going to use
as much as 40 grams per hour of glucose and part of that is just to get rid of the glucose
and part of it is to process through it quickly so that we can store whatever we're not using
in the moment and the storage form for glucose is called glycogen and most of that is going
to end up in the muscles and some of it is going to also be stored in the liver for the
first 12 to16 hours after a meal if we don't eat again then glycogen is going to be broken
down and it's going to provide most of the glucose for the body for the brain and the
tissues But as time goes on the body is going to start looking for another source it's going
to start making glucose from scratch that's called gluconeogenesis and if we add up those
two sources the glycogen and the gluconeogenesis how much were using from each then you'll
see with this pink line that it's pretty constant in the beginning we just kind of breaking
it down but from 6 hours on up to about thirty hours then we're depending mostly on glucose
unless we are fat adapted so this example the initial example is for someone who's eating
a modern diet with high carb and frequent meals and then this is what it's going to look like
Over time though the body is going to start using more fat in the beginning it's
pretty low fat consumption But as time goes that we're not eating then insulin goes down
and we're going to start breaking down some of that fat and then also we're going to start
making more ketones as the glucose goes down as glucose becomes less and less available
now is when the ketones really kick in because that's the alternative fuel for the brain
to initially all the tissues in the body use glucose they use as much as they can firstly
just basically to get rid of the stuff but also because it's so widely available it's
so abundant then in Phase 2 and 3 we're relying on glycogen and gluconeogenesis and now the
body is still using mostly glucose but it's starting to turn more into fat burning gradually
the brain red blood cells and a portion of the kidney called the renal medulla is still
using pretty much 100% glucose the brain because it hasn't adapted to ketones yet and the red
blood cells and the kidney because they don't have any mitochondria They can't burn
fat for fuel but then as we get into the second day and beyond now the body has shifted and
it's burning almost exclusively fat Almost 100% of the liver and muscles and the other
tissues are using fat for fuel because the glucose is being spared for those tissues
that can't use fat so the red blood cells and the renal medulla are still using glucose only
the brain however it is gradually starting to shift. So in the beginning of this phase when we just get into day 2
and if you're not already fat adapted then it's still uses mostly glucose but toward
the end of it as we get in today 3 4 and 5 now the ketones have become dominant and if
you're fat adapted and you go beyond 72 hours now your ketones are going to provide about
75% of the fuel for the brain so how does the body do gluconeogenesis where does that
new sugar come from well there's different glucose sources so first we have glycogen
and that's not really gluconeogenesis because it's already glucose is just stored in another
form. Then we have lactic acid and pyruvate and those are byproducts of breaking down
glucose for energy when we don't have enough oxygen so either those tissues the red blood
cells or the kidney when they can't use fat or when muscles are working at a high intensity
when there's not enough oxygen then we're using glycolysis and we get lactic acid and
pyruvate so even though this is classified as gluconeogenesis in the textbook I don't
think of it strictly as gluconeogenesis it's not making glucose from scratch because
this stuff was already glucose it is sort of a net-zero game where it's just being hauled
around and converted in different tissues when I talk about true gluconeogenesis that
way I look at it is when the body makes glucose from something that was never glucose and
now it's making it from amino acids or glycerol amino acids is from protein and glycerol is
the backbone of fat it's a portion of fat so when we're burning fat we get some glycerol
freed up and that can be converted into glucose and this is what a lot of people are afraid
of with fasting they hear that when making glucose from protein and they think wow now
we're breaking down muscle I don't want that to happen but it's not really what's happening
can happen a little bit but it doesn't happen much and there's ways to avoid it so in the
beginning before we are fat adapted now there is going to be between eight hours and into
24 hours or so then we are mostly going to break down amino acids for glucose because
we're not fat adapted yet so the glycerol is not really available but first of all it's
a limited-time and secondly it's not all muscle tissue some of this is loose skin and some
of it is old dead cells and some of it is just junk and debris and pathogens in the
body that we're trying to get rid of and then something else happens which is autophagy
and an increase in growth hormone so already after about twelve hours we have a significant
increase in growth hormone and this keeps growing over the next week so that after two
days we already have a five-fold increase in growth hormone and this does two things
both autophagy and growth hormone kind of work together and they make the body better at
recycling and they also promote fat burning and when we burn more fat we make more
glycerol available so now we have that to make glucose from but growth hormone also build muscle
it is muscle sparing and autophagy and growth hormone put together prioritizes using protein
for structural tissue not for fuel so even though we can burn a little bit of muscle
for the first few hours of gluconeogenesis that's not an ongoing process and in the long
run there is very very little loss of muscle the body is way too smart to be burning
protein for fuel when there is any fat available and then in Phase 4 and 5 some other really
cool things happen these are all the benefits from fasting we get an increase in brain derived
neurotrophic factor BDNF which together with growth hormone is like Miracle Grow for the
brain what that means is anytime you learn something you make new connections you rewire
your brain anytime you repair something you rewire your brain and this happens exponentially better
when we have more of these hormones
so fasting and autophagy is some of the best things that we can have for repairing and
improving the brain, We further improve immunity and once we get past the 48 into 72 hours
now the stem cell production which is involved in body repair and healing increases tremendously
they eat a bunch of carbs they eat frequent meals. They're probably a little overweight and insulin resistant
this is how long it's going to take them to get truly fat adapted to where their systems
are really stable and just going on in a steady-state
but it's going to take that long whether you fast or whether you get fat adapted some other way
so if you do a low-carb diet or keto diet then you're going to get fat adapted
this this keto curve this keto production curve of ketones it's going to be pretty high
it's going to be readily available on an ongoing basis so if you are fat adapted and you're keto-adapted
then you're pretty much never going to leave phase 4
you're going to eat here and there your body is going to build up some glycogen for emergencies
but you're still going to have that metabolic flexibility that you're pretty much just going to exist in Phase 4
so what I recommend people do based on our knowledge of all these benefits
is if you have reached a health state if you reached a weight that you're happy with then
you're looking for maintenance and now what you do if you maintain a low-carb high-fat
diet which again where you are on that scale is low carb 30 grams or 50 or 80 it's going
to depend on you and you got to figure out where you are I also recommend that you do
some form of intermittent fasting it could be a 16/8 or an 18-6 meaning you eat for 6
hours during the day and you fast the other 18 and depending on how easy or hard it
is for you to gain weight or lose weight some people lose too much weight and some people
put weight back on so therefore you're going to probably alternate somewhere between 18-6
and omad depending on the person I can't do omad all the time because I lose too much
weight but I want the benefits of this extended fasting so I alternate between these two and
then what you can do is make a longer fast once or twice a month so if you have dinner
at 6 and then you don't eat at all the next day and then you have breakfast you had a
36-hour fast if you skip breakfast go to lunch you got a 42 hour fast and I think it's a great
idea to do this once or twice a month then a couple of times a year maybe once a quarter
maybe twice a year you do a longer fast because if you go beyond 3 days now you're getting
into some serious stem cell production some deep states of autophagy and repair.
And this is pretty much what I do this is what I would recommend for maintenance however if you are
looking to reverse a condition maybe you have a disease maybe you have some obesity maybe
you have some cancer or some autoimmunity now you just want to do maybe a little bit
more you don't have to if this does the trick for you then just do that but if you notice
that that weight still won't budge then you do a little more as needed so now maybe you
do more OMAD maybe you skip the 18:6 altogether maybe you do 18:6 once a week
maybe you do the 36 to 42 hour fast once a week instead twice a month and maybe you do
the three to five days all the way up to seven or ten days and you do that once a month or
every six weeks or something like that. So there's no hard and set rule for how to do this.
You gotta figure out how your body works and how are you feeling when you do these things and most
importantly don't rush into it do this gradually learn how your body functions learn how it
feels and then you move on from there
if you enjoy this video you're really going to love that one next thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time.