Dr. Mindy here and I wanted to leave a video for you guys on fasting and
cortisol because we're getting this question a lot on all my social media
platforms so there are three things I'm going to address in this video I'm gonna
address is fasting raises cortisol and I'm gonna to encourage you to
think a little deeper on that subject I'm gonna talk a little bit about
adrenal fatigue and what is adrenal fatigue does adrenal fatigue actually
exist and then I'm gonna end this video talking about cortisol dysregulation and
how you can start to balance your cortisol with really simple ways that
don't take supplementation that are ways that help your body work in
alignment with your adrenal glands okay so let me start with the first one so
the answer is yes actually fasting does raise cortisol the question I want
you to ask yourself is is that a bad thing because a lot of times there are
things that happen in the body that in the immediate reaction is a
positive adaptation it's actually helping the body out and it can
have a reparative effect so let me use the example of exercise when I go and
lift weights what I'm doing is I'm actually tearing the muscle so if I go
and lift really heavy weights what I'm doing is I'm tearing the muscle and the
body responds by building the muscles stronger again that's why your muscle
will grow so when you're fasting and you get a cortisol spike what happens is
that it encourages the second part second question I'm going to address
here which is it encourages something called the HPA axis so your adrenals are
more than your adrenals there is a whole system a whole team that has to be
working right in order for your adrenals to function well so when you fast
intermittent fasting specific has a tremendous benefit for adrenal
fatigue what you're doing is you're getting a cortisol spike and then you're
forcing your body to start to heal the mitochondria in the adrenals to heal to
the mitochondria in the pituitary and hypothalamus go back to
some of my other videos that I explained that ketones are reparative to the brain
where your hypothalamus and your pituitary is in your brain and so what's
happening is those ketones are going in there and repairing that part of
your brain while you're also getting a reparative effect in your adrenals so
you're literally healing the HPA axis that is so much bigger than an adaptogen
supplement that is such that has so much more long-term benefit to you than
locking yourself in a room and trying to stop stressing so first
part of the question is yes it does raise it but look deeper because there
is what your body is doing when that cortisol goes up is that it'll rush in
and it will start to repair the HPA axis that by the way is a concept called
hormesis you can look it up hormesis it is a concept that's
used with homeopathic medicine which is you give a little bit of the poison to
have a positive result so that's how we look at cortisol when it comes to
fasting when we look at adrenal fatigue we don't just look at the adrenals we
look at the whole picture and we ask ourselves so hypothalamus pituitary how
are you doing adrenals how are you doing and how are
you all communicating this is where something like a Dutch test comes in and
helps you because you can see where all the players are and you can see how your
body is responding okay so that answers those first two pieces of this equation
now the third equation is cortisol dysregulation so one thing that I want
you guys to realize those of you that love keto and you love fasting is that
we come to keto and fasting to heal insulin resistance and in short bursts it
can heal cortisol dysregulation too but it does wonders with insulin resistance and
insulin resistance but that's the only hormone that it's really working on so
we have these other hormones that we've got to deal with cortisol being one
progesterone and estrogen and testosterone being some of the other
ones that I work with with my patients so cortisol dysregulation what happens
many of you who have been under so much stress for so long your cortisol is all
mixed up your adrenals don't know when they should be secreting cortisol and
your cells may be so inflamed that even when cortisol gets released in your body
it's not getting into the cells to have an effect so a couple of ideas that
you've got to look at cortisol should be the highest in the morning when you
first wake up your cortisol should be at a really high point it will actually
peak at 10:00 a.m. and then it's all downhill from there it just starts to
keep on going down so if you're waking up at 2:00 or 3:00 and more in the
morning what's happening to so many of you is that's your peak you're peaking
your cortisol high is that 2 or 3 in the morning so there are a couple things you
can do to start to change that cortisol high and the first thing is that you can
get up in the morning and you can put light on you so you can go outside first
thing in the morning I have a happy light that's a full spectrum light that
I put on me to tell your body hey it's morning time we need to secrete cortisol
the second thing you can do in the morning is like a HIIT training workout
where a really quick one like 10 minutes where you're doing jumping jacks for 30
seconds really quickly or burpees or push-ups something again to tell your
body we move in the morning so you're going to get light in the morning and
we're going to move in the morning and if you do this over
time what you're doing is you're telling your body this is when I need the most
cortisol give it to me now and then you add into that intermittent
fasting and now your first half of your day is really focused in on regulating
this cortisol and managing the cortisol that your body is trying to
give you to help you deal with stress okay so first thing is yes
fasting does help or does secrete cortisol but it's beneficial and your
body will adapt so it's a different type of cortisol than what you're getting on
a day to day basis from stressing out second thing is when you look at your
cortisol management and you look at your adrenals you have to look at the whole
team you've got look at the hypothalamus the pituitary the adrenal and the whole
communication between those okay third step is yes cortisol dysregulation is a
thing and one way to heal it is get sunlight on your face first thing in the
morning do HIIT training first in the morning and start practicing
intermittent fasting if you are one of those people that you have struggled
with your adrenals start slow with fasting this is not the time to jump
into a three-day water fast start slow so that your body can adapt and can
know how to positively adapt and positively change as opposed
to just pushing it against the wall and giving it more stress there's a way to
give a gentle stress so it can adapt to that gentle stress okay and as
always you guys have seen on my other videos I'm a huge fan of the Dutch test
even for men because it tells me what we're seeing with spikes of cortisol it
tells me where your cortisol is being secreted it tells me if you have enough
DHEA which is helps to make cortisol so I can get a deeper look at your adrenals
so if you feel like hormones are a big issue for you if you feel like cortisol
dysregulation is a big challenge just put dutch test in the comments
here and we'll send you a link on where you can find the Dutch
test on my website take it and we'll review it for you so
but I don't shy away from fasting if you have adrenal fatigue please there's
benefit here your body will heal and if you have any questions on this it's
really important to me that you'll understand it so just put it in the
comment section and we'll make sure that we get in there we answer it and that
you we give you a deeper thinking a bigger thinking on cortisol and
adrenal fatigue then perhaps you've heard before so as always I hope that
helps hey Dr. Mindy here and if you enjoyed this video please share it out
to the world I'm trying to get really cutting-edge health information into
people's hands and if you want to see more videos like this just subscribe to
my channel and you'll get updates as to when I go live and new videos that I put
out there every Thursday by the way I do a live video from here and answer your
questions so if there are questions you want me to answer join me then and I'll
make sure that I address them thanks have an awesome day