Hey, Dr. Axe here, doctor of natural medicine and founder of www.draxe.com.
In this video, I'll be training you on the many benefits of intermittent fasting, what
to do and what not to do, and who should do it when it comes to intermittent fasting.
And also some of the key foods you're going to want to be eating if you're going to be
following intermittent fasting type of diet.
So let's jump right in.
Let me say this, intermittent fasting the benefits can be pretty profound, and what
tends to happen when you look at what it is and how you want to do it . . . First of when
you look at intermittent fasting, you want to typically eating a four-hour to a maximum
eight-hour window, but typically that window is about six hours.
Now, most people eat first thing when they wake up in the morning, so maybe that's 7
o'clock, and also they eat a snack or something even up to till the time of bed, maybe that's
11 o' clock.
So what ends up happening is most people end up eating for about 16 hours a day or at least
12.
And so, your body is kind of always digesting, always processing and it doesn't have a very
long rest period for really cleansing, detoxification, for internal healing.
So, we'll talk about that more in just a minute.
But one of the big benefits is that you have a much longer period where you're not eating
so your body can recover and heal.
Now here's one of the biggest benefits of intermittent fasting.
It promotes human growth hormone.
You know, there was an article written years ago by Herschel Walker, a famous Georgia running
back and also was a very prosperous NFL running back.
In fact, broke the rookie running record in terms of yards per carry.
But it promotes HGH, that's human growth hormone.
You know, most people today as we age, our human growth hormone declines.
And this is why you'll see a lot of men with low testosterone, have low human growth hormone.
When women start to age faster, get brittle bone, their human growth hormones lower.
Naturally having more human growth hormone tends to mean you're younger, you're more
vibrant, you're more energetic.
But again if it's low, that starts leaning toward sickness and disease.
Now, some people as they age will start to try and do testosterone injections and other
things that are synthetic.
The problem is those outside in things that are unnatural also have serious side effects
versus ideally, you want to boost the human growth hormone in your own body and keep it
high, one of the best ways to do that: intermittent fasting.
You know, also if you were working out on an empty stomach first thing in the morning,
boost your human growth hormone by sometimes more than a 1000% can go sky high.
So again, one of the biggest ways you can actually increase human growth hormone is
by intermittent fasting and coupling it with heavy weight training.
It's a great way to stay younger longer.
Number two, as we've talked about anti-aging.
So much of aging is sort of balancing hormones in your body as you age, from human growth
hormone, to cortisol levels, to insulin.
We want to keep your cortisol levels balanced.
Really one of the keys to doing that is intermittent fasting.
An intermittent fasting diet, most people might have their first meal at 1 o'clock.
Maybe they'll do two meals a day.
They'll eat at 1 o'clock and around 5 or 6, and that's what they do.
You're always skipping breakfast when you're intermittent fasting.
Some people eat at noon, 3 and 6.
That's another option if you still want to get three meals.
But in general with intermittent fasting, is you're waiting to eat, and it's really
eating possibly more like our ancestors did.
You know, our ancestors we don't know that they necessarily ate something every morning
and then they might have gone out and worked for a while.
Then when they started getting hungry, then they would eat.
They were really listening to their body.
But again, intermittent fasting can promote anti-aging because of how it balances out
cortisol, human growth hormone, insulin, and other hormones that really affect aging.
Number three, improve sports performance.
You know, a lot of this has to do with again HGH.
You know the best athletes are faster and they are stronger.
Stronger has a lot to do with that human growth hormone, which a lot of people try and cheat
the system and do anabolic steroids.
Here's the truth.
You can boost your own internal natural steroids and your own anabolic system if you follow
intermittent fasting, and especially if you couple that with weightlifting and burst training
or high intensity training.
Doing those things together really helps boost that human growth hormone, which will boost
your strength and help sports performance.
Number four, normalizes insulin sensitivity.
Now, this is huge.
You know, people with diabetes, we know that they have insulin spikes.
We know that they are having issues with their insulin receptor sites with diabetes.
So obviously, this helps that.
But a lot of people don't also realize that insulin has a lot to do with weight gain.
Also insulin has to lot to do with other hormones being balanced in the body like progesterone
and estrogen.
And oftentimes what happens if insulin stays imbalanced, progesterone gets low, estrogen
gets high.
That can lead to issues like infertility in women.
It can lead to PCOS, that's polycystic ovary syndrome, severe PMS symptoms.
A number of hormonal health conditions are related to insulin imbalance.
So again, insulin . . . your energy levels all day should kind of be like this, okay?
They should just be high, they should be feeling good.
What happens to a lot of people who eat these carby breakfasts, which your body can deal
with because you fasted for eight hours.
But then for lunch, we do a lot more carbs.
So what happens is you hit that like 2 or 3 o'clock coma, you want to go into a nap.
You know, that's what happens when you have insulin levels that aren't balance.
So ideally what you do is, you miss breakfast and then you're eating a diet that's high
in protein, fiber, healthy fat, and other antioxidants, okay?
So again, notice I didn't say carbs in there.
You want to keep insulin levels balanced?
Do intermittent fasting and follow a diet that has protein, fiber, healthy fat, some
other antioxidants in it, and that's what's going keep you really leveled and energized
all day long and help normalize insulin sensitivity.
Number five, it helps regulate hormones in your body like leptin and ghrelin.
Now, ghrelin is known as your body's hunger hormone, so maybe you've been in that position
where you are just hungry, you're famished, and your body says, "I need more food."
Well, when you start intermittent fasting, you might have that for about three days.
But after three days, that starts to go away.
When you do intermittent fasting the right way and eating foods that are high in fat,
protein and fiber like an example of a meal would be for breakfast, doing a smoothie,
doing bone broth protein with some coconut milk with maybe a little bit of fiber like
a chia seed or flaxseed, you can do a few berries in there.
I'm sorry.
And by the way, your breakfast is at noon, okay?
And then at 3 o'clock, maybe you're eating another meal a 3 o'clock lunch and you're
doing like a big salad with lettuce and chicken breast and olive oil and that type of thing.
And for dinner, organic meat like triple dose of vegetables, some more healthy fat like
an avocado.
That's the ideal meal plan.
If you eat meals like noon, 3 and 6, it's going to help kill off that hunger hormone
or balance that out.
And also there's another hormone intermittent fasting helps balance out called leptin.
And leptin is really released by some of your fat cells and it's really what tells your
body that you need to burn fat or to store fat, more fat in your system.
So again, intermittent fasting can also help in a major way with balancing out those hormones
that cause cravings.
Also it can lower triglycerides.
You know, it's interesting, there's this debate between the holistic natural health community
and the medical community, and the medical community is saying cholesterol is what causes
heart disease.
Really, it's not cholesterol.
It's high LDL cholesterol and low HDL cholesterol.
But one of the things you want to do look at with your heart health is overall triglycerides.
We know, triglycerides, when those get high, those can actually increase your likelihood
of having clogged arteries and a heart attack or stroke.
So what we want to do is balance out those triglyceride levels.
You lower triglycerides by consuming a lot of herbs, okay?
Things like cinnamon and ginger and turmeric, and also by intermittent fasting.
Doing those things together is going to help bring those triglyceride levels back into
balance.
Number seven here, detoxification.
This is probably one of the greatest benefits of intermittent fasting.
So think about this, when you wake up and eat first thing in the morning, that's 7 a.m.
and you eat another little snack at 8 or 9 your body's only getting about maybe 8 to
10 hours of rest while you sleep at night.
If you eat a meal, let's say at 1, and your next meal at 6, where your body's digesting
for about five hours there or maybe let's say six even while your body's have an extra
eight hours, let's say 18 hours for your liver to detox, for your colon to cleanse, for your
lungs to filter, for your kidneys to balance out these fluids in your system.
It's giving your body more time to not have to work.
Here's the thing.
This is really important thing to remember, foods don't heal you, your body heals itself.
Your liver detoxes, so milk thistle or turmeric or beets or . . . none of those things actually
heal you.
They support your organ in functioning.
Your liver detoxes, your body heals itself.
So the important thing to remember is, the best thing you can do for your body is practice
fasting and really resting your body.
This is why fasting itself has been practiced for thousands of years.
If it's referenced throughout the Bible, for fasting, for spiritual insights and for overall
health, it's referenced in Chinese medicine, fasting, Ayurvedic medicine, so we know that
fasting was recommended by Hippocrates and Galen, the fathers of Western medicine, so
we know there are many benefits of fasting.
One of the biggest reasons is it supports detoxification of your organs.
Number eight here, weight loss.
Probably, one of the biggest reasons people will use it is, when you're intermittent fasting,
again, you're experiencing the benefits of killing off your hunger hormones, balancing
out insulin levels, having more anti-aging hormones, detoxification.
All of these things benefit weight loss.
And also, when people tend to eat less meals or closer meals together, they tend to eat
less calories.
Overall, it supports weight loss in a major way.
Also doing this combination of a diet where you mix intermittent fasting with a ketogenic
diet for 30 days, marrying those two diets together is the fastest way to burn fat and
lose weight you could ever imagine.
That's a combination of a ketogenic diet plus intermittent fasting for about a 30 day to
a 90 day period really leads to rapid weight loss.
So who should do it?
Anybody's who's looking for these benefits.
If you want to experience the benefits of intermittent fasting . . . Again, if you're
a person who wants to lose weight, you want to balance insulin levels, you want to balance
hormones, you want to age slower, you want to get rid of brain fog for a lot of people,
you want to support detoxification, that's who should do it.
People that shouldn't do it are potentially women that are pregnant.
You know, you want to just make sure that you're eating when hungry.
You're listening to your body during pregnancy, of course.
And anybody where it's been contraindicated.
If you have diabetes, you want to work with a practitioner on this to make sure at least
you're getting some food so you're not having these spikes.
But over time, most people with diabetes can start to see that reverse by practicing that
diet that I talked about, fiber, fat, protein, get rid of the sugar and carbs.
Consuming a diet like that with intermittent fasting over time can really help with those
insulin levels and the blood sugar levels.
And then, how to do it.
Ideally with intermittent fasting, I kind of went through this earlier.
Again, you want to start eating your first meal around noon or 1, last meal around 5
or 6.
I typically recommend like a six hour window of when you can eat, okay?
And then the rest the day, you don't eat.
Now, you can drink fluids during that time, get plenty of water.
But that's really what you want to do on an intermittent fasting diet is not eat during
those six hours.
And remember, when you're doing intermittent fasting, eat a diet that's high in protein,
fiber, healthy fat, and lots of nutrients from herbs.
When I say herbs throwing turmeric in with your chicken or with your hummus or something
like that that you're eating.
If you're making an Italian chicken dish, lots of basil, lots of oregano, lots of rosemary.
You know, if you're making a smoothie, a big teaspoon of cinnamon in there.
You know, using lots of herbs, lots of vegetables as well on this diet is something you absolutely
want to do as well.
And again you can see all of these benefits here.
So hey, if you want to experience the benefits of intermittent fasting, go ahead and I would
just simply just know that there's really nothing complex about it.
You're eating less during a six hour window during the day.
It's really that simple to following the diet.
Hey, the first three days, you start to have a lot of those cravings.
But listen, after a few days, you don't even get hungry in the morning and you won't even
be hungry till lunch.
So again, try out an intermittent fasting diet.
I know you're going to see benefits.
And hey, if you've enjoyed this video, make sure you're subscribed here to my YouTube
channel.
And hey, we've got a lot of great content coming out about essential oils, other advanced
diets like to ketogenic diets, and really just teaching you how to use food as medicine.
I hope you've enjoyed this video.
Hi, Dr. Axe here.
I want to say thanks so much for checking out this You Tube video.
And also don't forget to subscribe if you want to get more great content on things like
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Thanks for watching.