Ask Me Anything Keto + Fasting II – With Ben Azadi

Ben Azadi
Dr. Mindy Pels, welcome back. Well, we’re actually on both of our podcast right now. So for those who didn’t listen to a previous episode that I did with Mindy, we did an Ask Us Anything podcast episode several months ago and it was a super hit. So we’re doing round two. So Mindy, are you excited for round two?

Unknown Speaker
I’m absolutely thrilled for this.

Dr. Mindy
Because the comments on the first one was like it clarified so much for people. And I always think like, if you wanted to sit down and pick our brains, this is what you’re about to do right now. And one of the things I love is that we’ve watched so many people fast and so many people do, keto, that this is really cool. And I’m glad it’s helping so many people.

Ben Azadi
Yeah, it was a big hit and how we set this up if you follow us on Instagram at Dr. Dot, Mindy pals and at the Ben Azadi. We posted our stories that we’re going to be doing this and we had you post your questions in our IG stories. So we Jessica, who works with Mindy gathered all the questions for you. And if you don’t get your question answered, the reason that prize might happen is because we answered on the previous episode. So we have a whole bunch of questions we’re going to get through and it’s going to be a lot of fun. It’s going to be me and Mindy. We have a lot of alignment. The same? Yes. And we want to just help you all so are you ready to get started?

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, the little devil in me was like, if we don’t answer your question, maybe maybe we didn’t like the question is what I originally thought. And then I’m like, no, no, I can’t think of a question I never liked when it comes to keto and fasting. But yeah, well

Dr. Mindy
said I would before we jump in, I would just say that. The questions this unlike any health trend, fasting and keto, is that one health trend that once you understand it, you’re you’re gonna have a bazillion questions like it just is the way it is, don’t you think it’s it’s got so much nuance for the individual and everybody has to find their own way out.

Ben Azadi
That’s so true. The more you learn, the more you want to learn so many intricacies? Look, there’s nothing new about keto or fasting. It’s just nuanced, like you mentioned. So we’re gonna dive deep. And the goal is to give everybody clarity here for those listening or watching on YouTube to give you clarity, actionable steps, you get to pick our brain, which is a rare opportunity. So let’s get right into it. I’m going to start the conversation. Okay, and get the fasting question. So how are we going to do this? We’re going to do one fasting question, one keto question, and then we have some fun questions at the end that I review that are awesome. So the first question in regards to fasting, Monday is going to be can a pregnant woman, practice intermittent fasting? Can pregnant woman practice intermittent fasting?

Dr. Mindy
This is this is the one that I am an absolute no, this is not your time to be fasting. And I think that what I’ve the the nuance of that question that I’ve heard a lot, is, well, what if you’re throwing up in the first trimester, you’re not hungry, fasting feels the best, I would say, yeah, in some sense, you’re fasting because you can’t hold food down. But number one priority for pregnant women is nutrition. And fasting is not the tool. So it you don’t really want to use it. Even if you’re throwing up all the time, you want to find foods that you don’t throw up. And then the second part of that is, there are other tools that once you’re pregnant need to be really magnified. And that is you’re going to pass your microbiome down to your child. So really get to understand what supports a healthy microbiome. I’ve tucked in fast like a girl I talked about the three P’s poly, phenyl, probiotic and prebiotic foods. I think it’s a great time for not just fermented foods for a pregnant woman to drink but or eat, but also what are you putting on your skin because your baby’s going to touch your skin. So making sure that your products on your skin are very clean. I mean, there there are so make sure and making sure your household products are clean. There are so much to unpack for the pregnant woman to have a healthy pregnancy and healthy baby and fasting is not the tool that you want to be leaning into.

Ben Azadi
Well said you know there are seasons where you want to practice fasting and there are seasons where you don’t and if you’re pregnant, you’re in a growing phase or growing a beautiful baby in your, in your in your stomach right now. So you want to get more mTOR more growth. So it’s not ideal to practice fasting, you want to make sure you’re getting your nutrition for you and for the baby. So to Mindy’s point, not right now, but later on. Absolutely,

Dr. Mindy
yeah. Down the road, like to get your pregnancy pre pregnancy body back. It’s a great tool once you stopped nursing. Then the second part of that question often is, what do you know what about nursing women and I always say just don’t stimulate a toffee G because you don’t want any of those dysfunctional cells to be detoxed because they’ll go in your bread, breast milk, so you want to make sure you keep your fat is shorter once you’re nursing, but then you know, in between children, it’s a great way to get your bodyweight back to where you want it. So just not just what are in pregnancy?

Ben Azadi
And what about the a woman who is not pregnant, but she’s aiming to get pregnant? She’s aiming to conceive. Yeah, she practice faster.

Dr. Mindy
I think that’s actually a really good nuance, because the answer is yes. In fact, we’re seeing with the fasting cycle, which is how to time different length fasts, for different times of a woman’s menstrual cycle, when we give them the fasting cycle to step into and to try, we’ve watched, you know, this, we have a small sample size on this particular topic, but I’ve seen five women get pregnant that were struggling to get pregnant, and using the fasting cycle and customizing that for her, she that all five got pregnant. So it’s a great tool for getting pregnant. In fact, I’m really excited when fast like a girl comes out. I’m curious. And those of you that use there’s a whole section on a protocol for specifically for infertility. But I’m really curious to see the kind of responses we get back from the public as they start to fast like a girl on and see what happens to fertility. So it’s an amazing tool before conception, amazing.

Ben Azadi
It makes sense. I mean, when you fast, your hormones are going to become more sensitive, you’re going to down regulate membrane inflammation, so those hormones could get in and do a better job. So it makes sense to me.

Dr. Mindy
Yeah. Okay, so now I gotta ask you this question. This is like you and I get very similar questions throughout our week. But this one I think, is really good, because I’m curious your answer. How often do you check your ketone levels?

Ben Azadi
Me personally, I don’t check them at all anymore. Just because I kind of have an intuition, just doing this for several years since 2013, Kido, that I’m in ketosis, versus I’m not in ketosis. But for the person who wants to know, How often should they check. In the beginning, I do see the value in checking your glucose and ketones. Alright, the first seven to 14 days, are you actually in ketosis? Let’s verify that there’s three different ways to test ketones and a lot of people kind of get this mixed up, because there’s three different types of ketones, so it makes sense. So you have beta hydroxy, butyrate, which is in the blood, and then you have acetone which the breath expels, and then you have acetyl acetate, where the urine expels that. And a lot of people Monday, they go for the urine strips, because it’s the cheapest option that’s on Amazon, the urine strips. But that’s not going to be the best measure to know whether or not you’re actually in ketosis. And the reason is this, when you are actually becoming more efficient, and your cells are actually using those ketones, it’s not going to spill out in the year in the urine. So it could give you a lot of false negatives, and you could beat yourself up and think you’re not doing things right and you know, drop your carbs some more. But in reality, you could just be using those ketones so efficiently that it’s not going to show up in the urine. So I would not recommend urine strips. Now, breath meters, over the years have had their problems they’ve been hit or miss, there is a good device that I like, called biosense. Okay, that does a really good job, and they give you an ACE score. And you could correlate that score to blood measurements. So I do like them. And you don’t have to prick your fingers. But the gold standard still is to this day, blood ketones. And the cool thing about using a blood ketone device is that they typically give you glucose and ketones, and it’s good to get both. So beta hydroxybutyrate. If you’re hitting point five or higher on that blood ketone reading, you’re in ketosis, and the goal is not more ketones. I know you get this all the time, maybe more is better. That’s our culture is not better, just just like glucose is another energy source. But higher glucose is not the goal. It’s optimal glucose, same thing with ketones. So for me, my personal sweetspot, and for a lot of my Keto camp Academy students, for them to feel really good is somewhere around 0.8 to 2.8, beta hydroxybutyrate, it’s a fingerprick. So how often should you test definitely the first two weeks just to verify that I like testing about an hour after waking up, and then also an hour or two hours after eating a meal to see if that meal kicked you out of ketosis or not, you might have a food sensitivity. So those are the times that that I test out. You don’t have to do this for months and years you could do this maybe for like a month or two kind of get a good idea good gauge on where you are with your routine. But for me, I’ve done it so long that I don’t I don’t really test anymore. What about human but

Dr. Mindy
yeah, I think it’s I think it’s you really described it well, because I all the testing around ketones and the chasing ketones has become quite a thing. And if like, we’re not going to count calories, then let me count my blood sugar. Let me count my my Keto or my ketones. If I’m not going to be looking at the scale, then I want to know how deep into ketosis I am because that’s a sign of fat burning, and I don’t believe that it works. It’s not a one to one like that. It’s not like you can swap out those old behaviors for these new ones, where I think those meters are really helpful as in the beginning. When you’re trying to understand, can you get into ketosis? What is ketosis feel like? Because to your point, that’s exactly me. Like, you know, I can feel a click, and then I get my brain goes, whoop, okay, I’m in ketosis. And usually they’re bright before the click is, uh, I’m hungry. Do I want to break my fast? What am I going to do, and sort of thinking about how the day’s gonna unfold, and in the half hour that I’m thinking about it, my body switches over, and now I’m into ketosis, and I’m not hungry anymore. So I think that’s ultimately where we want to get everybody to, we don’t want to get this obsessive rigidity around chasing ketones. The other interesting and this is brand new Ben, I haven’t even told you this. You’re gonna You’re gonna love this. I’ve been really watching how the menstrual cycle affects blood sugar and ketones. And the two times that women really need to opt to change their fasting length and sometimes come out of ketosis is that ovulation and the week before a woman’s cycle? Well, we know we’ve been saying this for the last couple years that you’re more insulin resistant, the week before your cycle. And I will tell you, that is 1,000% true. When I watch a woman with her blood sugar reader, you can see that naturally, the same food she ate earlier in the month, is causing her blood sugar to spike because her body is wanting her to make more progesterone, so it needs that glucose.

Ben Azadi
So we literally got amazing, crazy innate intelligence, like we literally see

Dr. Mindy
the same meal at different times of the cycle affect a woman differently based off the hormone, right, and then recall. And then the second thing I’ve been really like diving into is ovulation. Because we’ve been saying, keeping going keto and ovulation fasting longer, and ovulation is not horrible. But I have to say now after watching this glucose trend in women, that one of the ways you know that you need to step out of ketosis during ovulation is that if your body is either struggling to get into ketosis, or you’re feeling horrible in ketosis, because that means we’ve got too much detox reaction happening with with that time of an influx of hormones. So I’ve been thinking about how we can really use glucose and ketones to understand estrogen progesterone and testosterone because we don’t have a meter for that yet. Yeah.

Ben Azadi
Yet Mindy’s working on

Unknown Speaker
trying to find somebody who can do that for me,

Dr. Mindy
I am on that hook. But isn’t that

Ben Azadi
super interesting? Not interesting. There’s Oh, so many intricacies. And the more we learn and like the more we can apply this and the innate intelligence, you know, you want to go in the rhythm of the innate intelligence, exactly what you’re speaking about, you know, work with your body, not against it. Yeah. So don’t don’t fight your innate intelligence. If you’re feeling awful during off your ovulation and you’re doing ketosis and longer fast. Try something else and see if that works for you. To your point, Mindy.

Dr. Mindy
Yeah. So I think that’s where we’ll start to see after you do it in the beginning, I think we’ll start. Stay tuned, because as I experiment with these theories a little more with women, I think we can start to use our ketone reader to tell us what hormone is coming in, and then we can change our lifestyle to to suit that hormone. That’ll be cool. Super

Ben Azadi
cool. Yeah, super cool. Okay, another fascinating question.

Dr. Mindy
Yeah, go for it.

Ben Azadi
skin issues like acne, eczema and flare ups. It’s happening during fasting, and this person wants to know, why is fasting causing these flare ups.

Dr. Mindy
So one thing to think about when you think of the skin is if I could take your small and large intestine which has a very Saran Wrap kind of makeup to it, if I could take it and turn it inside out and show you what it looks like. It would look like what you’re looking at in the mirror, it looks that there is a very whatever’s going on in the skin is going on in the large intestine. They are very analogous. So when we see things and this is outside of the ketogenic diet, but when we see a lot of acne, when we see a lot of brown spots, when we see like the call even collagen as menopausal women you know that we can really learn a lot about our what’s going on with our collagen and estrogen production by looking at our skin. So before I answer that, I really want people to know that the skin is diagnostic to what’s going on in the gut. So that would be the first thing now when we fast asked if all of a sudden we get weird skin stuff. That is a blocked pathway that is a block detects detox pathway. And the first pathway I would look at would be the gut. And I would ask the person are you having bowel movements, if you’re not having daily bowel movements that we need to work on that that needs to be the first thing to do. But then beyond looking at the gut, you got to look at the liver, you got to look at, you know, all the lymph above your collarbone the lymph under your arm, there’s a lot of lymphatics that are necessary when a person starts to get any kind of skin lesions with Quito, because that means the body cannot push this out. So it’s pushing it out through the skin, not through the other proper detox pathways.

Ben Azadi
That’s good. Exactly my thought. When I when I read the question, it’s a toxicity issue. So you want to make sure like Mindy said, You want to make sure you haven’t you’re having your bowel movements, something that’s very simple to do in regards to bowel movements is squatty. Potty, do you use one of those?

Dr. Mindy
Oh, my gosh, okay. You want to hear a funny

Unknown Speaker
thing about a squatty? Potty.

Dr. Mindy
Right? Yoga instructor told me about it a couple of years ago. And, and I was like, Okay, that’s a little weird. But okay, so I bought it as a white elephant gift, for those are like the good guys at Christmas. And then whoever bought it was like, Oh, my God, that everybody laughed, and I’m like, This is amazing. So then I got one for our house. And my daughter was over the other day. I’m like, What are you doing here? And she’s like, Well, no, none of my roommates want to use the Squatty Potty. So I like to come over here. And I’m like, Isn’t it amazing? So

Unknown Speaker
we like had this like geek out moment on the Squatty Potty. And it is so cool. So tell everybody what it is. But it is a great, great, great tool.

Ben Azadi
It sure is. I love that geek out moment on the squatty potty, yeah, so it’s really cheap, 2030 bucks on Amazon and you put it right by your toilet, your feet on top of it as you’re sitting on a toilet elevates your knees into more of a get your body into more of a squatting position, which is more of a natural elimination position that we’ve done for ancestors have done for so many years. So elevates your knees, puts you in that natural elimination position. And it really allows people to have a healthy bowel movement. So I have one here I have two bathrooms in my apartment and both of them have a Squatty Potty. So that’s a simple little thing you can do. Add that into the mix. And you know increase magnesium, potassium, but work on getting that bowel movement and to Mindy’s point, what about your other detox pathways? Are they open? Are they clogged, dry brushing, so working on the lymphatic system, moving your body trampoline jumping, you know, doing some calf raises, doing some things to kind of prime your lymphatic system, the liver, like you mentioned, so wearing the castor oil pack could be tremendous. And maybe you’re doing a lot of that and you’re still having those issues, then then it’s probably time to really explore like real detox or use some binders experiment with that. But my thought was the same thing that you thought Monday, toxicity issues happening.

Dr. Mindy
Yeah, and I just did a video on it on YouTube, because it’s so common for people to have stuck lymph, when they’re, and when they start to fast or do keto, they just start to detox. And so, you know, again, I want to go back to how we started the conversation, which is remember that when symptoms show up when you’re doing either the ketogenic diet or fasting, it’s a mirror, it’s telling you what you need to work on, not what you need to run from. And I feel like we run from symptoms all the time. And this is like the most beautiful gift, the body just told you, hey, pathways are closed, you might want to work on opening those up. Well, if you hadn’t gone into that fast if you hadn’t had that symptom, and those pathways stayed close, that’s a that’s a precursor to leading you down the path of cancer or leading you down the path of other chronic diseases. So again, another amazing reason I love fasting is because it tells you what you need. And as long as you’re listening, and you’re not pushing those those symptoms away.

Ben Azadi
So good. We both believe that symptoms are a gift from that innate intelligence. It’s like the check engine light, thank God, there’s a check engine light up, pull the car over open up the hood, let’s see what’s going on is the fasting allows you to see that check engine light and ketosis and detox etc. So it’s a blessing. And I just want to say the reason why that happens if you have a lot of toxins in your body, toxins are stored in fat cells, as you know, Mendy that toxins love that it’s actually a survival mechanism from your innate intelligence to put those toxins in your fat cells so they don’t kill you right away. And when you start to burn fat cells and use fat cells for energy like is what you do when you do keto and intermittent fasting. Now you’re burning fat cells, but you’re not these toxins are released and you can’t really burn these toxins off and those if those detox pathways are closed off symptom occurs and that it’s telling you something that’s really amazing. Okay, let’s work on what’s causing the symptoms. And for the most of the time is what many just said, open up those detox pathways and you should see better response from those symptoms. Yeah,

Dr. Mindy
yeah. 1,000% I had somebody I was interviewing on my podcast the other day and she said she, she’s like I speak many languages. And it was something like I speak English and I speak body. And I was like, Oh, I’m fluent in body to. I didn’t even Ever think about that. I’m multilingual. I’ve always felt that I didn’t know another language, which I should know. I know how bad that is. But I do know the language of the body extremely well. I am fluent in that, aren’t you?

Ben Azadi
I love Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Have you ever thought about learning another language to get your message out there to a different audience? Ah,

Dr. Mindy
I have I would definitely go to Spanish first. In California, I’d like to learn another language for more than just getting it out to the world. I think it would be so good for the brain. And so convenient for so many reasons. So it’s like on that bucket list that I’m gonna have to pull that pulled the plug on doing it one day. I really my sister teaches Spanish at Boston University. So Oh, wow. Yeah, my my niece and nephew are fluent. So I got plenty of people to speak. I live in California.

Ben Azadi
Yeah, maybe Mindy and I will take a Spanish class together learning.

Unknown Speaker
Oh, my gosh, I love that idea. We can we can hold each other accountable. And then we could do an episode like we could maybe do it in very, very basic Spanish. Espanol. Bad. Let’s totally do that. I love it. We can totally hold each other accountable.

Ben Azadi
I love that. If you’re watching on YouTube, and you want Mindy and I to learn Spanish together, let us know.

Unknown Speaker
In the comments, you will you’ll push us for sure.

Dr. Mindy
Okay, here’s my question to you. And I actually am curious what you’re gonna say again on this. If you had to choose between keto or carnivore, which one would you do?

Ben Azadi
Both? Well, carnivore, technically is keto. A lot of people don’t get that, like you’re doing carnivore, you’re in ketosis. Now, which one would I choose? First, I think would be a better a better question than what I do both is a good option. But I would do keto first. Because the reason I say that is because keto is low, low carb, very low carb, but it’s not zero carb like carnivore. And if you go from whatever carb intake you’re doing, now, the average American is 300 grams, maybe you’re at 150. But if you go to 150 to zero, that’s gonna feel pretty, pretty challenging for maybe a couple of weeks that transition. But if you go from keto, to carnivore, much easier transition. And that’s kind of how I thought about it when I put together my four pillars in keto flex. So number one is adept getting fat adapted to intermittent fasting and three phase phasing out anti nutrients and doing carnivore. So I think doing keto first for a period of time, maybe it’s a month, and then transitioning to carnivore would be the better approach. And it’s interesting. I don’t know if you’ve seen this too. But a lot of people have naturally done that, like they stopped getting results with keto. And they’re like, How can I take it to another level and then they transition to carnivore and then they continue to get more results. So that would be my recommendation carnivore then keto. And I’m guessing by you know, your movements, you’re fishing.

Dr. Mindy
So I recently thought about this because I had, I was at a seminar and a man came up to me, and asked me some fasting advice. And he was significantly overweight, and he knew it. And I said, Well, before I give you fast advice, tell me why you want to get healthy. And he said, I need to get healthy to save my life. And I know you, you were in those shoes as well. And so then when we started to break down all the things that he was doing, it was the typical Western diet with processed foods, lots of fast food, restaurants, lots of soda. So the first thing I did with him is I said, Let’s just take all this food you’re eating, and let’s just compress it into an eating window. And he’s like, you don’t want me to change any food. I said, No, I don’t want you to fail it another diet, I want you to just to compress and learn how to become a use time restricted eating. So I pushed back his breakfast, two hours, we gave, we put some boundaries around soda. I just spoke with him yesterday and he’s lost 13 pounds just doing that he didn’t change his food at all. So then the second thing I did instead of going okay, now we got to count macros, and get you into ketosis is I’m having him count protein. And I’m having an add in protein and looking at hitting that 3030 gram amino acid sensor spot having him I asked him what his ideal body weight was, and could we eat one gram of protein per ideal bodyweight. So now we’re adding something in. So we’ve totally mixed up that part of his brain that has said, I fail at every diet. And we’ve totally like Sideswipe that part of the brain that wants to eat all the wrong foods. So I have been focusing on something else. And I would say and then once a month, I’m meeting with him and I’ll do the same thing again. It’s just keep tweaking it until his body craves. Be In a state of ketosis, and what I’m thinking about, what you were saying is, it’s the same thing. We have to we don’t need motivation, we need more momentum. So you’ve got to do what gives you momentum. So if going from your example of the Western diet to carnivore feels like you’re not in total deprivation, then do that, and then go into more restricted eating and more ketosis. But we will always bite off more than we can chew when it comes to our health goals. And carnivore is to me the easiest version of keto.

Ben Azadi
Yeah, it’s very straightforward eating meat. And that’s it. I think that’s brilliant. Mindy, what you just the example you gave with this gentleman, because keeps things so simple for this gentleman, he didn’t even change what he was eating, he just changed the time that he had those meals. So that was an easy little thing to do. And then by focusing on the protein, naturally, when you increase your dietary protein, you’re going to feel full and satiated. So naturally, you’re going to drop your carbs. And eventually, you’ll just naturally get into ketosis. And so I think that’s brilliant. And I just love what you just said, I haven’t heard it before. We don’t need to seek motivation, we need to seek momentum that is so true. Motivation is short lived momentum builds tremendously into credible results. So many that is brilliant.

Dr. Mindy
Yeah, I really feel like each step of momentum gives us more motivation. So but motivation without momentum, you just get frustration. So we, you know, you’re motivated one day, and then three weeks later, nothing’s changed. And now you’re frustrated. So whenever I’m coaching somebody, or we’re looking at our group in general or educating on on YouTube is like, Okay, what is going to be the most concise information that I can give somebody right now that’s going to get them a result. Because once they get that result, now, they want to know more. But if we failed so many times at our diets, our brain is looking for that failure. Again, it’s it’s trying to prove you, right? So if you come into keto and fasting, and you’re like, Okay, well, everybody says, this is the thing I can do that no diets ever done for them before. You’re coming in are ready set up setting yourself up for failure if you’re not looking for the little wins, because each one of those little wins starts to change the experience that you’re having with your diet. And you know, Dr. Pompa said this a couple of weeks ago, and I loved it, which was, in order to change a belief you have to change in the experience with that person, or that that belief that is surrounding you. Well, gosh, we have so many weird beliefs around food and dieting and weight loss. So we need a totally different experience. And this is and because your body wants to fast it wants this lower carb, once you give it that it will slowly crave it. And then there’s nothing new and I can say that they’re off and running.

Ben Azadi
Absolutely, yeah. small tweaks leads to giant peaks, right, small little changes, habit stacking. I love that, Mindy, I have a question for you. And it sort of brings me to the next fasting question. And it’s about children do children naturally fast, and then I’ll add something to that. Should children fast, right.

Dr. Mindy
This is also a good one. You know what, here’s what I would say we need to start looking at fasting not as a fad. But as a primal way our body approached food that we fell asleep to. So what that means is that for children, they’re living in the same human body. So they have the same primal need to go periods of time without food. But what we do is we beat that out of them. And we beat out of them and intuitive sentence of what they need to do to be able or when they should eat, we say breakfast, lunch, dinner, kitchens closed, if you don’t, if you don’t eat dinner, we’re closing the kitchen. So if I was doing it all over again and starting parenting all over again, I would watch really closely what the natural rhythms of my child’s hunger levels are. They may not be hungry in the morning. So if they’re wake up happy, they’re not crazy hungry. Where is that point at which maybe you could go an hour two hours before you feed them. Now, some, some parents might say, Well, no, no, that’s not going to happen for my child. Okay, fine. So just make sure you are learning their natural rhythms. I can tell you for me, my son when he was in high school, and this I know we’re talking about little kids, but I got so exhausted trying to throw breakfast, Adam, this is before I knew all the fasting. And finally one day I sat down I’m like, this is not working. Can you tell me when you’re hungry? And you said at noon Mission, you know, a couple hours in, and I was like, Great, okay, that’s when you need to eat, let’s make sure you’ve got healthy food. When my kids were in preschool, and I would pick them up at noon, I was I would, I was asking for serious trouble. If I didn’t have food in the car when I picked them up at school, because I knew they needed to eat, we couldn’t make the 20 minute drive home. So that’s what we need to tap to look at is that kids naturally time restrict eating, they do time restricted eating, but each kid is different. So let’s stop pushing food on them at times, they may not be hungry. Well

Ben Azadi
said, I remember when I was a kid, I snacked a lot out of boredom, right? So I think a child that naturally has activities and things to do, and they have an amazing life, they’re going to naturally probably not snack and practice some sort of fasting, right? I mean, they can still do their lunch and dinner. But time restricted feeding, I think where we get into trouble with all these childhood issues that we’re seeing these days, I mean, type two diabetes, we used to be used to be called adult onset diabetes until all these children started getting it and now they renamed it to type two diabetes and children are getting insulin resistance. So the problem with that is the snacking the Gatorade, the high processed foods that are in between meals with meals. So if you’re naturally going to do three meals a day and focus on whole foods for that child, it’s going to they’re naturally going to have their feeding window and their fasting window, like to your point. So for me, boredom was the thing that really clicked on hunger or clicked on just eating something to deal with the boredom.

Dr. Mindy
Yeah, well, and it’s a, it’s a tricky wicket to really navigate, because you’ve got to get to know your child. And as a parent, I can tell you, there’s nothing worse than your child going to the other side where they’re hungry, and now they’re having a tantrum. So making sure they’re getting good quality meals, and that you’re looking at where their activity is. So if they’re, if this is why having food in the car when I picked them up from kindergarten works so well, is because I knew mentally they and physically, they had been doing a lot and they needed refueling. The night before, if they had a big day, or they’re going on a field trip or or something like that, I made sure they had a protein and fat rich meal, so that we would stabilize their blood sugar. So to me, this is the nuance we need to get with kids is really looking at the timing of meals, the quality of meals and how they tie in to what the natural rhythm of that child is. We’re just well pretty. We’re pretty far off from that.

Ben Azadi
So hopefully this your answer will make a difference with that. I think it’s a great answer. Yeah,

Dr. Mindy
thank you. Um, okay. Ooh, this is a good one too. Should I do keto? If I don’t have a gallbladder?

Ben Azadi
Yeah, this is a very I’m sure you get it all the time. All the Tiree common question. Well, first of all, this episode is not medical advice. And none of this is medical advice. But I can share with you this. The gallbladder removal surgery is one of the top performing surgeries in the United States. Unfortunately, it’s like gallbladder, gallstones, gall gall bladder issues, let’s remove it in order to deal with that symptom. But that’s not the right approach. But hey, it was done. What’s done, it’s done. What can you do? A lot of people think that the gallbladder is what produces bile to break down fat and detoxify. But in reality, it’s more of like a storage house for the bile. It’s the liver. As you know, Mindy that actually produces that bile, which is this beautiful green substance, I call it liquid gold that helps you break down fat helps you detoxify. It’s really important, especially on keto, as you increase your fat. So here’s what happens if you don’t have a gallbladder. And you start to do keto, and you start to increase your dietary fat, the liver needs to make up for the absence of the gallbladder. So it’s going to be like a little drip. But there’s not a storage house to kind of drip that out continuously to break down the fat. So if your liver can’t keep up with the fat, that’s where issues start to occur. And those issues are going to be commonly diarrhea, some stomach issues, stomach pain. So what can you do? The main thing is to go low and slow and support the liver. So here’s what I’ve done with my students and it might work for you. I have them actually, don’t. I tell them not to practice intermittent fasting yet I tell them to actually have smaller meals with fat and spread them out throughout the day for about 14 days. So more frequent meals that are smaller, so the liver could adjust to dripping out the bile.

Dr. Mindy
This would be if you don’t have a gallbladder,

Ben Azadi
yeah, this is if you don’t have a gallbladder correct in the beginning, and eventually the liver adapts and you could do you know regular keto intermittent fasting, all that then beginning we want to let that liver adapt, so smaller meals instead of a big meal with all this fat, spread it out throughout the day, maybe four or five meals for the first two weeks at the same time. Sorry, you’re gonna say something?

Dr. Mindy
No, no, no, no, I just want to make sure people are clear. I mean, it sounds like a good thing to do on a beginner for Our beginner plan as well, but I love what you’re saying. Keep keep going.

Ben Azadi
Yeah, and at the same time the name of the game was just what else can you do to support the liver? Right. So we love bitters. incorporate more bitters with those meals, arugula, dandelion greens, Ginger, Ginger tea artichokes, apple cider vinegar. Terrific. Yeah.

Dr. Mindy
My favorite you do it makes good little lettuce wrap.

Ben Azadi
You share that last time. It’s a great biohack for keto. So yeah, radicchio, and then add seasonings to your food like rosemary, thyme, rosemary, thyme, and basil. Those are great bitters for the liver as well stimulate bile production. A lot of people who don’t have a gallbladder probably need bile salts or ox bile. So some sort of supplementation with bile. And then eventually your liver starts to adapt. And then you could take the five to six meals that you’re spreading out to three meals and increase the fats a little bit. And as the liver liver adapts to that you should be able to continuously do keto and fasting without any diarrhea or dietary issues, right and stomach issues that are going on.

Dr. Mindy
What do you think about things like castor oil packs and coffee enemas for some went for somebody who doesn’t have a gallbladder and is really wanting to take on the ketogenic diet in a big way?

Ben Azadi
I think those are two amazing, amazing tool. So explain what they are and how you do that.

Dr. Mindy
Yeah, I’m a castor oil pack, castor oil just dilates everything. And here’s my thought my thought process on the gallbladder removal. There are three, four organs that really work together the liver, the gallbladder, the common bile duct and your small intestine. So when you have a gallbladder removed, it meant that something or in that team of body parts wasn’t working so well. So we need to still address why the gallbladder was removed in the first place. Yeah, and that’s where a castor oil to me is very, very simple. And when you rub castor oil on your skin, it dilates everything. So a lot of times the reason the gallbladder didn’t function well in the first place was because this common bile duct that’s like a thin straw has was so congested. So it didn’t allow the gallbladder to be able to release the toxins. Most people don’t realize that the gallbladder has storage for toxins. So you weren’t able to get that into the common bile duct and out through your gut. So it eventually malfunctions. But that common bile duct is still traffic jammed, so putting castor oil on it opens that up and gets it to drain into the small intestine. When you put a PAC over it, now you’re putting some heat and you’re letting it should sit there for about two hours so that you open all of that up, but then we can go over and look at okay, well coffee enema. The coffee is a dilator and it’s one of the best ways to get to that liver and the common bile duct to open it up. I even we’ve been using Xena plaques a lot. I

Ben Azadi
use that today actually. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker
What do you think?

Ben Azadi
I feel great with it.

Dr. Mindy
Yeah, I love it. I love many. We’re experimenting in our group with a bunch of their stuff. But But my point is, is that we have to remember that just because we removed an Oregon didn’t mean we solved the problem. So we come back to these principles fasting and keto are a mirror. So if you start fasting and doing keto and more fat isn’t included in your diet, higher protein and you’re getting diarrhea, the mirror says common bile duct open that up and that’s where these packs and enemas and Xena Plex can come in.

Ben Azadi
So good. I love the castor oil pack. I have a question for you. Because I wear mine at night and my fiance Natasha gets mad at me because it spills over into my bedsheet and then we have to watch the wash the bedsheet How do I how do I wear the pack without

Unknown Speaker
I thought you were gonna say and my fiance doesn’t want anything to do with me which be the part of the process.

Ben Azadi
I think that’s part of it.

Dr. Mindy
Okay, so I’m experimenting with this because I lost my favorite pair of PJs to castor oil. So I understand that. So these you can get on remedy link site and for those of you that can’t see it, it’s just a plastic like sticker and they’re clear. And what they’ve created is a castor oil that you can just kind of rub let’s say I wanted it on a lymph node in my neck. I would just rub it there and then I cut the specific size of this clear waterproof sticker bandaid and I’d put it right over the area. So

Ben Azadi
the castor oil on there on the area and then put that on top. Yes,

Dr. Mindy
yes. So let’s see if I can peel it off for you. So that Yeah, see, it just peels off like right like this.

Ben Azadi
That’s awesome. I didn’t know they had that.

Dr. Mindy
So we can just take this one and this is this part can stick right to the area. So brilliant. Oh, it’s really it’s so it’s like a bar First, like it’ll just stick right there and it’s like a buffer that you could use underneath the pack. And then yeah, not cool.

Ben Azadi
Do you recommend putting castor oil on your limp there that How about we put

Dr. Mindy
it everywhere. So if you go back to the to the ideas of castor oil, it’s a dilator. So if I have a lymph node that’s that swollen What if I’ve got like above my clavicle I’m detoxing and that swollen or under my armpit is swollen, you know there, those are areas that rubbing castor oil is going to open it up, we put it over the ovaries when a woman’s ovulating. So I’ve done the castor oil pack over my gut and over some of our community members when they when they’re not having bowel movements. So it’s not just for the common bile duct, you can really put it on these other areas and benefit from them.

Ben Azadi
Fascinating. You just opened up a whole new castor oil.

Unknown Speaker
Yeah. Like a casserole movement, right?

Ben Azadi
Seriously, I love it. And it’s easy, like, leave it there for a couple hours or go to bed with it. And it’s good. It’s gonna do his job, you don’t have to think about it.

Dr. Mindy
And on the easy part, this is one thing that I’ve been really deeply thinking about is there are so many free resources to get get healthy. And I feel like if we’re going to change the health of the world, health can’t be expensive. Now, I will tell you the sicker you are, the more resources you’re going to need, the more coaching you’re going to need and that’s just sort of part of the of the deal. But in order to stay healthy once we speak the language of our body once we learn keto and fasting, when we see a swollen lymph node instead of ignoring it rubbing some castor oil on it or we get a rash instead of ignoring it putting some castor oil over our liver. I feel like everybody can do that castor oil is not that expensive. Yeah, so I love these hacks that everybody can do you don’t need money to be able to do him.

Ben Azadi
I love it so true. That’s so true. There you go biohack free

Dr. Mindy
bio frugal biohacking one on one

Ben Azadi
do it is acts like a free guide you could give to people seven frugal bio hacks to improve your health then the next 30 days.

Unknown Speaker
Oh my god, we’re doing it Ben. That’s a great idea.

Ben Azadi
Vitamin G’s in there. Gratitude. Yes. grounding. Fasting. Asleep. Yeah. castor oil pack. What are other two we could add in there. Um,

Dr. Mindy
well eating fat the night before the like you’re gonna go into longer fast so upping your good fat would be amazing. The knowing when to fast at what part of your cycle would be really good. So it’s there’s a lot of little dip. Oh, you know what one of my favorite hacks This is a weird hack that works really well for me in a fasting window is you yerba Mata tea. I love it kills hunger and there’s research that it stimulates autophagy and kills hunger. So I’ve been doing Yeah. Unsweetened yerba Mata tea, and my fasting window is my new go to

Ben Azadi
interesting. That’s a good tip for those who struggle with hunger during a fast and hey, you want to increase your autophagy unsweetened yerba monta tea. Do you get it from Whole Foods? Or is your specific Yeah, I

Dr. Mindy
do the why? Brand I don’t know how to pronounce it. But I do it and sweet and my kids love the other ones that are sweetened, but I do the unsweetened when it comes in a jar which is really, really nice.

Ben Azadi
That’s a good tip. I like that I’m I’m adding that to my arsenal. Thank you, Mindy.

Unknown Speaker
Oh, of course. It’s it’s really,

Dr. Mindy
really a good thing. I’ll send you the research on it. So

Ben Azadi
awesome. Am I up? Are you up?

Dr. Mindy
Okay, I think that Oh, okay. This is a really good one. And actually, I really want to talk about this. Can you see ketones go up? And blood sugar go up at the same time? And if you do, what what is that a sign of?

Ben Azadi
That’s a good question. Yes, it can happen. So when will that happen? Typically, sometimes during exercise that can happen. And the reason is, because when you exercise a couple of reasons. Number one, when you exercise, you’re activating your sympathetic nervous system. So there’s an increase in cortisol to give you energy for the workout. Glucose follows cortisol and at that time, ketones could still be you could still be burning body fat and producing ketones. So there could be they could both go up at the same time. And at the same time of exercise, you are releasing the stored sugars in your liver and muscle cells. So there’s this release to be burned for energy so you could see an increase in both that after an hour after a workout two hours you should see glucose drop and ketone should be up. That’s totally fine. A lot of people freakout Why is Max’s eyes raising my glucose, right? That is absolutely normal, nothing to worry about test an hour or two later, and you should see some balance numbers. Somebody who’s under a lot of stress might see both of them rise at the same time because again, stress raises cortisol, or glucose falls cortisol. So even though you’re burning fat and producing ketones, which are going up, your stress could be raising your glucose. So that could be another scenario. Another scenario could be somebody who has insulin resistance, and they’re a type two diabetic. They high glucose and high ketones at the same time as well. So the the goal is, in general, when you’re in a fasted state to see your glucose between 70 and 90, which is, you know, 80 milligrams per deciliter is about one teaspoon of sugar in your bloodstream, which is considered optimal. So that’s like 80, but 80 to 90. So those are the scenarios that came to mind. But I’m sure Mindy, you could add to the conversation. Right?

Dr. Mindy
Well, I’m seeing it more often lately. And I And I’m curious. So the first thing I would say is that, I think for sure exercise, that is a no brainer, you’re gonna see blood sugar go up or and ketones go up at the same time. I also think when you go into ketosis, if you’re new to ketosis, that there’s going to be a natural dumping of the sugar, it’s just going to naturally because the body’s cleaning itself up so when those ketones are in, remember, we still need 50% glucose 50% ketones. So I think what happens is your body goes okay, hmm, blood sugar’s down, I’m gonna make some ketones, but I remember storing some sugar somewhere else. So I’m gonna go grab that other sugar. Okay, that works for the beginner person, or the person who might be overweight. But what about a smaller person who’s been doing this for a while, and we’re seeing glucose go up and ketones go up? And this is where I think stress comes in. That it’s, and I wonder, like, I, of course, timing it to women cycles. But I feel like when stress goes up, you can still stay in ketosis and you can also have your blood sugar rise. And is that the next question is, is that a bad thing?

Ben Azadi
Right, yeah. Well, I mean,

Dr. Mindy
bad thing.

Ben Azadi
Or Rhesus, right? Maybe, maybe it is, maybe it’s not, it could be a positive, beneficial thing. person feels really great. And it’s more of like a cyclical thing that’s happening versus a chronic thing. I think it’s not a bad thing. Potentially. It could be a hormetic benefit. But what are your thoughts? What do you think it’s bad?

Dr. Mindy
I don’t know. I mean, it’s a new thing I’m seeing. So I’m also this leads to another question that I’d be curious your opinion on, is when we get ketones, we there there’s repair that happens, neurons get repaired in the brain, which can spit out some heavy metals. So maybe as this as people are going into ketosis, there’s a detox reaction, and that detox reaction is spiking cortisol and then causing the blood sugar to come up. Now, in that scenario, that’s not a bad thing. That’s your body doing what it needs to do. So I think it’s probably overall just fine.

Ben Azadi
That’s an interesting thought process. And I agree, I didn’t even think about that. Something else that came to mind as we were having this conversation about the high glucose or glucose rising and ketones at the same time would be I would ask the person, how long have you been doing keto? Right? We know that with long term continues, so I’m going to categorize long term ketosis as four months or longer. And I am looking at my notes here, because this is from Dr. Gundry. When I interviewed him, he said long term ketosis and insulin resistance. So continuous, ketosis tells the mitochondria to protect themselves at all costs, and to stop making muscle protein. And number two, to produce insulin resistance. So the muscle doesn’t steal any glucose that the brain needs. That’s why hardcore keto dieters have higher glucose. So in this scenario, not a good thing. Need to flex out. So depends also on how long you’ve been doing ketosis. So that can be a thing that’s going on if you’ve been doing long term keto.

Dr. Mindy
Interesting. Yeah. Which is we’re back at variation. Exactly. Yeah. And this is why we do an episode like this, because there’s so much nuance, but what you know, I always come back to the principle of what’s the body doing? Why is it doing that? And if you can crawl inside your body and ask that question, I feel like this is how we learn more and more because the body is always doing the right thing at the right time, whether we acknowledge it or not. Have you have you ever this leads me to another question that I’ve wondered, which is, have you ever do you think ketosis is dangerous for people? I mean, we talk about the danger to a diabetic but I’m talking like 1.5 2.0 ketosis, nutritional ketosis, we’re getting ketones, but the person is not feeling amazing, like they want to feel in ketosis. Is that do you feel like that’s a bad thing? Have you ever seen that happen?

Ben Azadi
I have. I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I think it’s all part of the changes that are happening, right? The fact that you’re hitting 2.5 3.0 ketones is a great thing. You know, you’re because we know ketones are communicating with your mitochondria to make more mitochondria, and more energy, and lower free radicals. So it’s a win win. Yeah. So that’s great. Now the reason you might not be feeling well goes back to this conversation that we’re having throughout the podcast, a toxicity issue, your body’s dumping a lot of toxins, probably. So feedback mechanism. It’s an amazing gift. If you don’t feel great, even though you’re in ketosis, you could be dumping a lot of toxins. So it goes back to what Mindy said. Alright, let’s look at the downstream Oregon downstream detox organs that we could support, castor oil pack, coffee enemas, lymphatic system, so you do those things and then eventually, maybe go upstream. So I don’t think it’s a bad thing. It’s feedback to your point. And it’s probably a toxicity issue. You’re just burning so many fat, so much fat, you’re releasing all these toxins, and that’s probably why you don’t feel good. But it’s feedback to make some changes with the detox. Yeah,

Dr. Mindy
yeah. And you can use it like a hormetic stress, you know, you go into ketosis, you’re uncomfortable. How long do you want to stay there? If you if it gets too uncomfortable? Eat, now you’re out of ketosis. Okay, two days later, well, now, you know, you need to detox more, we’re gonna try going back into ketosis again. And let’s see, each time you go in and out of that and use it like a detox tool, then you’re going to notice that that slowly slips away, along with like using binders and things like that, which is a way more complicated topic. But for the person just using ketosis and not feeling good. And ketosis. I think it’s important to realize that that’s not a bad thing. It’s just a detox thing.

Ben Azadi
Absolutely. Yeah. This is great conversation,

Unknown Speaker
right? This is like what you and I would talk about at a bar. Yeah,

Ben Azadi
seriously, and I are at dinner. Right. When we

Unknown Speaker
have dinner over dinner. I feel like we’ve had this conversation.

Ben Azadi
Okay, before I get to the next question. I think I think we would be remiss if we didn’t give a shout out, because I know he’s going to be listening to Doug fierce. And this gentleman, Doug, who, Admiral for the United States Coast Guard, 40 plus years, he served our country, worked with many presidents Air Force One, just an amazing guy. And he discovered, so let me rewind for a second, about three or four years ago, he was very unhealthy, inflammation, insomnia, body was aching, he was overweight, and he knew he had to make a change. And he discovered that actually, most Americans are very unhealthy. He actually ran that University of North Carolina Chapel Hill study. And he came he was desperately searching for help. Went on YouTube University and who does he discover? Dr. Mindy pals. And he started watching Mindy’s videos learning about fasting and detoxification and ancient healing strategies. And he started to apply it. And it started to work. And through Mindy, he discovered me and my podcast and he started listening to my podcast, doing keto now learning about keto and losing weight, lowering inflammation and through me, he discovers Dr. John Lawrence, who’s our mutual friend, and he started going to Dr. John Lawrence’s clinic in Sarasota, Florida, and then he discovered Dr. Pompa and the reason we bring this up is because Doug fears he retired two days ago from this recording, he had a ceremony in Washington, DC, beautiful ceremony was acknowledged by the President of the United States, and he gave a nice speech. And in that speech, he acknowledged Dr. Mindy Pels. He acknowledged me, Dr. John Lawrence and Dr. Pompa so we want to say, Doug, we love and appreciate you, thank you so much for the kind words, and thank you for serving our country. I know Mindy wants to say something as

Dr. Mindy
well. Yeah, in fact, I’ve, it’s been so busy since I saw the clip and the video. And so I’m actually gonna go do an Instagram today to talk about it. And here’s what I would say. And Doug, I don’t even know if you realize what you did is he Oh, and I got chills thinking about it. He looked at the patterns of his family. And he decided he didn’t want to repeat that pattern. He took a hard look at himself and said, I’m about to retire soon. So I need to make sure that I’m in the best health that I possibly can. And I’ve seen a lot of people do this when they approach retirement. And then he went and solved his own health problem. And what I think is so interesting, there’s a great book out by William Davis called undoctored. And this was the first time I realized the power of the internet in the healing process. And in undoctored, William Davis says that we have now hit a point in time that when a patient walks into their doctor’s office, they actually may be more educated than that doctor on their topic, Dr. William Davis, cardiologist I know he’s been on your podcast, we he was on our call this week for our group of Doc’s. But let’s just stop and talk about the power of that. When doctors are, are rising above this really dysfunctional healthcare system and saying, hey, you’ve got the power to heal yourself. You just have to find your own custom path. That’s to me what Doug did, Doug, Doug healed himself. And that, you know, thank you, Doug, for the shout out to us. That was so sweet. And I never want you to lose sight that you did the healing. We just were your cheerleaders and assisting you on that process. But that was that was like you I was in tears. I that was so cool.

Ben Azadi
So special, Doug. Yeah, Doug, you’re the hero, honestly. And he, I don’t know if you saw but he also referenced that University of North Carolina, ready in front of all those people, like that’s so important to understand that most Americans are very unhealthy. So,

Dr. Mindy
and he sent me said I was going to be one of those people. And I think, Doug, I also want to say to you like that takes, that takes courage to stand up and realize just like this man that said, he to me, he needed to lose weight, otherwise, he was going to die. Like, I thought that takes courage. And in a time when we’re trying to use fasting and keto to look better. But when you actually look yourself in the mirror, and you say, I’m not my best version, I may be on the path to death quicker than I realize I better do something. And then you do something and you get a result like Doug got. That’s my dream for every American. And and I agree with you, Ben. Thank you for your service, Doug. I think he’s actually a Rear Admiral, which is even higher than an admiral from what I understand. But he’s an overall badass is the way I look at it. Yeah. So, so, so honored to be a part of that healing journey.

Ben Azadi
Yeah, me too. So Doug, thank you. And I can’t wait to have dinner with you and your wife, Kate, sometime soon. So let’s continue the conversation. Another fasting question. This is kind of relevant to the cortisol and stress issue, but can fasting spike your cortisol levels?

Dr. Mindy
Yeah, it definitely can, such as same as exercise can spike your cortisol levels. So we have to know when to faster when not to fast when it comes to cortisol. And there’s two things to think about. Knowing that it spikes your cortisol, we can use that as a hormetic stress. So we use it as a little bit of cortisol can actually help the body adapt. Where we don’t want to use it is if we’re already so stressed out, like we have already got so much on our plate that we are barely hanging on. We don’t really want to go into super long fasts because you’re going to stay with your stress levels, making cortisol and you’re fast making cortisol. And I would say the same thing to the person who’s so stressed and they want to run a marathon. I just don’t think that’s the right time to be training for a marathon, maybe a 10k. And I would say the same thing with fasting. If you’re so stressed, try the lower level fast. 13 hours 1517 But not a three day, not even a two day. And then the other place that we really don’t like to see cortisol spike too much as the week before a woman cycle. My new phrase that I say is, you know, progesterone is very bashful in the presence of cortisol. She does not reveal herself. She doesn’t come out. She’s not there to support you. If cortisol is around, it’s almost like cortisol is the bully to progesterone.

Ben Azadi
Hmm. That’s good. That’s, that’s makes total sense to me. I love that.

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, like the one liners.

Ben Azadi
You’re right. I mean, fasting is a stress to the body. And it could be a great, amazing stress to help your body adapt to that stress and get stronger like exercise, but to Mindy’s point, if you’re asleep is crap. And you’ve got a lot of work stress, relationship, stress, toxicity, stress, men, that could be too much for your body to adapt to, and you’re not going to get all the amazing benefits we want you to get from fasting. So you know, cut your fasting window, work on the fundamentals, work on gratitude, work on journaling, move your body, get quality sleep, and then get your body to a point where it’s ready to adapt to that additional stress of fasting, and that’s where you maximize those incredible benefits. You know, Dr. Pompa says good cells get stronger. That’s those don’t adapt. But that only that’s only going to happen when you could actually get into that hermetic zone that we want to get you into. So yeah, fundamentals come into play here. As usual. Get those fundamentals built, get that foundation build strong, and then you could add things like fasting, ketosis, bio hacks and all the other cool things that we could do. Yeah,

Dr. Mindy
yeah. And it’s funny how we want to trick everything out first, right? Yeah. Or like, I want to go to the fancy and like the fat like, How can I do this the fastest and really, it’s coming back to the principles gives you the best the best result?

Unknown Speaker
Oh, yeah. Fundamentals. Right, right.

Dr. Mindy
Yeah, exactly. Okay. I want to see because there were some good ones. Oh, okay. This is good. Well, I have two questions. So one is how do you know when you should change from ketosis? Like if is the goal to stay in ketosis all the time? And if the answer’s no, then how do you know when to switch out of it?

Ben Azadi
The goal is not to be in ketosis forever. The goal is health, not dogma. The goal is metabolic flexibility, not long term rigidity. Just like our ancestors all practice ketosis because they practice intermittent fasting, and by default, they needed those ketones to survive. They also anytime they had the opportunity, they took that opportunity to get themselves adequate doses and feast and flex and eat those carbs, whatever it was. So we want to follow that rule of thumb and we want to achieve metabolic flexibility. And we kind of spoke about this on the last ama that we did. One form of metabolic inflexibility and rigidity is just burning sugar all the time, high carbs, eating frequently. That’s what 88% Plus of American adults do, and that’s not a good thing. So they really need ketosis. They really need intermittent fasting. But then there’s another side to this of only burning fat and staying in ketosis. That’s another form of metabolic inflexibility. And yeah, so we don’t want any extremes on both sides. The magic and you talk about this all the time, Mandy is that metabolic switching, you call it that I love that term metabolic switching, right? But your question was, okay, at what point do I know, I need to switch? Well, I would say this first things first. If you’re feeling amazing, like you’re continuously like, your brain is turned on, you’re still losing weight, your joint pain is gone, like you’re getting amazing results, even though you’re three months into ketosis, but you’re feeling really great. And you’re not a woman who needs to do more flexing, then go ahead and keep doing keto. But it’s going to get to a point where, hey, you know, the body has now adapted to what you’re doing. And it’s a little bit too much stress because ptosis is a stress and you want to flex out, the general rule of thumb that I teach my male students in my academy is three months and then flex if you’re a woman and Mindy will give you a masterclass right now, there’s a lot of more intricacies with that as menstrual cycle versus post menopause. So for men, I’ll address you, three months, start flexing, if you’re doing a little bit longer. How do you feel and let that be the gauge? So what about humanity? What would you

Dr. Mindy
say? Yeah, I think that’s so well said. And I liked the structure of what you said, because I know that a lot of what we give are these kind of general ideas because everybody has to find their own path. But I think that rule for men is really really solid. I’ll make the woman one really simple. If you’re new to the ketogenic diet, you can tri state being in ketosis, you know, pretty much the first three weeks of your of the month. The first goal is to get into ketosis. And if you can get in there, you can stay there for three weeks, but you are not meant to be in ketosis the week before your period. It’s not the state in which progesterone can shine. So you want to step out that week. Now, what I again, going back to some of the things that I said before, if you’re feeling horrible during ovulation, then you’re going to want to step out of ketosis then. So it’s but for simplicity sake, the week before your period, no ketosis if you feel horrible in ovulation, then no ketosis step out. The other. Yeah, go ahead.

Ben Azadi
Yeah, I mean, before you transition to the next thought process there, don’t forget that thought. Keep that. Yeah, no, I got it. What do you say to because I get these comments from my YouTube channel primarily. When we talk about flexing for women, we prefer your period of getting out of ketosis. They give me I get these examples of this woman, Dr. Are women influencer has been doing keto for four years or carnivore for six years, and they never get out of ketosis and they’re doing amazing like, how would you address those comments?

Dr. Mindy
Yeah, you know, it’s funny because there are some conflicting opinions on I think thank you for asking that because there are some conflicting opinions about women and fasting and ketosis and pre workout and post workout and there’s some experts out there that I strongly disagree with. And the first thing I would say is you you don’t know hormonally what’s going on for that woman. And this This honestly dives into a deeper issue that that I feel like as people who are on social media trying to teach health, one of the rules that that I set up for myself the values is that I will always show you my authentic self. I will not plasticize me I will not over exaggerate the my results. I will tell you when something I teach is working well when it’s not working. out. And yet, unfortunately, we do still have a little smoke and mirrors in the, in the health influencer realm. So I say all that to say we just don’t know what’s hormonally going on. Under the under the hood, there are some of these influencers that have been doing carnivore females forever. And I all I want to do is run a Dutch test on him and say, let’s just look at your hormones. Because I can tell you that I have played so much with in and out of Quito in and out of carnivore, fast, long, fast, no fast and I watch my hormones meticulously. And so I see what’s works. Whereas you can look at somebody on social and say they’re beautiful, they’re fit. They’ve been doing X, Y and Z forever. They don’t vary it. I want I say, let me see their hormone test. I’d like to see their hormones.

Ben Azadi
That’s a fair fair statement. Okay.

Unknown Speaker
So, so I just think we can’t You know,

Dr. Mindy
I was somewhere years ago, I heard a pastor say, Don’t compare your life to somebody else’s highlight reel. Yep. And, you know, socials, a lot of highlight reels. No. So I like, you know, just in your this is, I think one of the things you and I really connect on, it’s like, we I can tell you knowing you, everything you put out on social is so you it’s so authentic. And we want to just make sure that we’re not trying to strive for something that is not it appears to be beautiful, and appears to be good, but it’s not in our best health interest.

Ben Azadi
Yeah, well said. And I can say the same about you. You show up authentically and I, I watch a lot of your videos, and I know you personally and you’re the same person on video versus in person. So I love that then what was the thought process?

Dr. Mindy
This is the thought process because it ties into my second question, which is fruit? Where does fruit fit into this? And this is where I actually think our friend Paul Saladino actually has some interesting new ideas because he now is saying that when you want to, you want to expand beyond straight carnivore. Just make sure that you’re avoiding the low and medium toxic foods. Well, I don’t know if you’ve seen his list, his animal based diet list. When you go and you look at these low and medium toxic foods, they’re the fruits, there are a lot of tropical fruits. There are a lot of berries, there’s a lot of sweet potatoes and squashes, a lot of meats, sauerkraut, I look at that. And I go, Oh my gosh, that’s perfect for a woman the week before her cycle or maybe perfect at ovulation. And it’s low in toxicity. So it doesn’t have as many oxalates and lectins. So therefore, you know, it’s gonna be easier on the gut. So to me, that’s the perfect time to start to use the proper fruit at the proper time. What are your thoughts on that?

Ben Azadi
No, I agree. And so my thoughts on on it are this like, where are you are? Where are you at with your metabolic health? If you’re somebody who’s still you know, your metabolism is severely disrupted, you still have insulin resistance, type two diabetes, then you probably want to monitor, monitor and modify the amount of fruit you have. It doesn’t mean you can’t have fruit. I think there’s a you know, and I asked this question, by the way to Dr. David perma Perlmutter, Dr. Richard Johnson, who wrote books on uric acid. So I asked him like, what about diabetics? What about those who are insulin resistant? Can they still do fruit? And they think yes, just you know, modify it. Right? I do. Personally, I do really well, with kinda like what Paul says, you know, does animal based, and a lot of fruit especially on the days that I’m very active, like I do really well with fruit? And

Dr. Mindy
I actually do, too. I actually, yeah, I actually feel my best in exactly what you just said.

Ben Azadi
Yeah, so works really well for me, but me and Mindy have done a lot of work on our metabolism over the years, and we have metabolic flexibility. We don’t have things like insulin resistant diabetes, so there’s not really I don’t think there’s a cap for you to have. I mean, I eat as much food as I want, especially on active days, and I feel really good, my body’s able to handle that, too. Paul Saladino has point, fruit don’t really have these anti nutrients and plant toxins, and you know, they’re very bioavailable. It’s different having the actual whole fruit versus fruit juices. So that’s important to distinguish. We’re not really talking about juicing your fruits all day long, that can be problematic because you’re stripping away the fibers and a lot of the other other compounds that are going to actually help your body process that fruit more efficiently. So I love things like watermelons and organic apples and bananas and coconut water. I do really well with that, and it works really well for me, but where are you at with your journey? If you’re still working into metabolism? Maybe not so much. If you want to remain in ketosis, maybe not so much. You could get away with some berries and some low glycemic fruits, but it depends on where you’re at with your journey.

Unknown Speaker
You know, I was thinking I could kind of equate it to when you and I learned Spanish together. That was the first time we’re gonna speak in Spanish. It’s gonna be like four words, and we’re not gonna say a lot. And then hopefully a couple years down the road, we can have a whole podcast

Ben Azadi
analogy. Yeah. Right. So it’s the same thing. You

Unknown Speaker
get into key,

Dr. Mindy
you know that you’ve come to fasting and the ketogenic diet, just figure out how to get into ketosis. Then from there, figure out how to vary it. And then from there, now you got to get into the nuance of like, what we’re talking about where we’re looking at where fruit serves us, and honestly, the person whoever who asked this question, I feel like probably went through what I went through. Our friend Andrea asked me one day when we were eating somewhere, and we both had been doing the ketogenic diet for so long, she asked me, okay, tell me the truth. Are you scared of

Unknown Speaker
fruit? And I stopped for a moment and I was like,

Dr. Mindy
Oh, my God, you’re I am. How this was like five years ago. I’m like, that’s not good. Nature made fruit. There’s so many good things about fruit. I don’t want to be scared of fruit. Which is why when Paul put that chart out, I was like, yes. Thank you, Paul. You gave me some sensibilities around fruit.

Ben Azadi
I love that. Yeah, absolutely. And that you know, I changed my mind over and over the years to because I like us to limit my fruit and say, you really don’t want too much fruit, the fructose fructose, uric acid. I don’t believe that anymore. I think it’s really the juice, high fructose corn syrup and the juicing that really is going to cause issues. But when I asked Dr. Perlmutter, what are the top five things that lead to high uric acid levels and we want to uric acid under 5.5. Most of the time, he said there’s five things that lead to uric acid levels being too high gout, flare ups, etc. He said number one, fructose, number two fructose, fructose number four alcohol and five high purine foods. But when he says fructose, he’s not talking really about the fruit. The whole fruit, he’s talking about high fructose corn syrup and juicing. That’s the issue. So I hope that

Dr. Mindy
explain why. Cuz I think that that is important for it’s confirmed toast that word is so confusing to people. Because when I hear fructose, I hear high fructose corn syrup. And I think about what they add into our processed foods. But I also think about fructose in fruit. And why, why is that better?

Ben Azadi
Yeah, it’s a completely different complex, you have the natural. In fruit, you have the natural antioxidants that are put there. You have the fiber, you have things that slow down the digestion, and you’re not getting this high glucose spike, it’s not processed with high fructose corn syrup, heavily processed, no fiber, no antioxidants, completely different process. And when I interviewed Dr. Bruce Lipton, have you interviewed him yet?

Unknown Speaker
I did. I did. Yes. What a

Ben Azadi
brilliant guy. So when I interviewed him, he was talking about what high fructose corn syrup does to the brain. And he was referencing that when you consume high fructose corn syrup, it takes blood flow away from your prefrontal cortex, which is your decision making part of your brain, and it delivers it to your amygdala putting you in a stressful fearful state. And then he said, unfortunately, high fructose corn syrup is primarily found in these poor neighborhoods, right? Fast foods, grocery stores and convenience stores. And it’s a shame because that stuff is super toxic.

Dr. Mindy
You know, I think a lot of this ties in when we look at the our youth and all of the mental health challenges that they’re struggling with, I mean, one of the greatest things we could do is get high fructose corn syrup out of out of our food system and get the inflammatory oils out. Let’s just start there, just don’t make them accessible for people anymore. And we already start to see a shift. And it’s your the neuroscience behind is exactly what you just said, we do we want, do we want our 13 year olds to be eating these high fructose corn syrup all day long, locking them in their amygdala. And then you know, giving them access to all kinds of things that are not appropriate for children. So it’s really it’s an interesting dilemma. This is I was on an interview this morning, where the woman asked me everything. She was asking all kinds of questions about chronic disease and fasting. And she at the end of the interview says to me, you know, I see a general theme, what I hear you saying is if we resolve insulin resistance, that we can pretty much resolve any disease. And I was like, yep, any health condition I a lot of the mental health conditions that we’re battling in this world. Let’s just handle insulin resistance. And then let’s step back and see what’s left. And I think we’re going to notice that like 90% of the things cleared up.

Ben Azadi
Yeah, fair. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it is crazy. And then Dr. bickman His book is all about that right? Why we get sick insulin being that driving force. So there’s a lot we can do. You know, that’s why these conversations are so important, share it, you know, leave reviews, etc. I want to get to one more question before we wrap this up. I don’t have one more here because this is actually from one of my Kido camp Academy students. I recognize the question she messaged me on Instagram. You probably know I think you’ve commented on her story. So her name is Kelly. She was diagnosed with stage four thymoma cancer, thymus gland cancer, very rare. She had her baby Maverick during COVID and then got diagnosed with this cancer. Isn’t that correct? Yeah. Beautiful name, right Maverick great name.

Unknown Speaker
Neva child again, Maverick would be there.

Ben Azadi
So she was diagnosed with cancer by MoMA, right after having Maverick during COVID. Imagine that. And she went down the conventional route and had surgery and all that and she kept getting scans, and it kept showing that cancer still is there. So then she discovered keto intermittent fasting, she discovered your work Mindy, and my work and Thomas Seyfried and Naisha winters and amazing, amazing resources that are out there. And she came into my Kido camp Academy, and I started giving her some resources. And she recently had a scan two weeks ago, three weeks ago, and she was telling me she had her appointment. I’m like, let me know as soon as you get the results. And then I get the results. I get her feedback. Her message, she said, zero evidence of disease completely on Monday. Oh,

Unknown Speaker
my God, I’ve chills.

Dr. Mindy
I’m like, I couldn’t tell what direction you’re going in there with this. I’m like, because I thought it was a question. So I thought you were gonna say it was a question. Okay. But okay, we that has to be highlighted, because that is the body healing itself when it was given the right environment. So this is where I go to you stop giving your power away. Because these fancy diagnosis like, look at the diagnosis, you’re talking about, like, you know, nobody remembers it, nobody can really even pronounce it. But thyroid of the cancer or cancer of the thigh of the thymus. Okay, well, why? What did the body do in that organ? What was that organ doing? And why did it start to accumulate more cancer cells? Every time we ask why? Why is the body doing this? We will be led to the right answer. And that is amazing. So tell her congratulations. I mean, that’s Yeah, that. Ah, that is so cool.

Ben Azadi
She’s listening. So she she heard you say that? And yeah, I actually interviewed her and Oh, and another gentleman Oh, and who had the same cancer. I interviewed them both on my podcast, we got to bring her back, because now we have the results. So anyways, her question is this. And this would be our final question is finally got my period post partum? What would you prioritize to ensure optimal health for someone who has been without a period for so long?

Dr. Mindy
Yeah. So here’s what here’s where I wish I had my book to put in her hand. Because what I did, it’s soon soon it’s coming. And what I did is I created two resources. One is called the fasting cycle. And one is actually a three day fasting reset that all women can can do. And each day, it tells you different length, fast and different eating style. What I’m what I would say and what I’m seeing is that when we apply the principles of fasting and keto to the menstrual cycle, the way that I teach it the way we discussed it here, when you do that, for 90 days, within that 90 days, you’re going to get your cycle will sync back up. If your cycle doesn’t sync back up, using those principles, I will be as bold as to say then your cycle irregularities is a toxic issue. And you need to look at detoxing. But every time I say that to a woman and I just say follow the fasting cycle, follow the 30 day fasting reset, make sure you’re you’re varying your fast and your foods within 30 to 60 days, their cycles are back to normal.

Ben Azadi
That’s amazing. Yeah, there you go. Book. And the book is an outline that which is fast like a girl out. December Correct?

Dr. Mindy
Yep. Yep, it’s out. It’s out December 27. And what I will say is that we do have a free course giveaway for those people that buy preorder the book. But so I explain in more detail what I just said. So if you preorder the book, we’ll leave links in both of our podcasts on how you can get that

Ben Azadi
free resource. Oh, so where did they preorder it in the knee?

Dr. Mindy
So it’s on Amazon right now. But what I would say is the best place to go is to fast like a girl.com and order it from there. It’s I don’t know if we’ve talked recently on this but I am shocked at how many women are like coming out of the woodwork to help support this book. And how many women are like Thank you. Thank you. Thank you and I met with the CEO Reed Tracy of hey, how A couple of weeks ago, and he like saw so clearly how women need their own fasting resource like this that is got this variety of fast i. Yeah, I mean, it’s just been crazy. So many celebrities, doctors, like, everybody’s like, Yes, can we please learn how to fast like a girl. It’s so exciting.

Ben Azadi
I love it. So exciting. I preorder my book and we’re going to bring him in the back for an episode where we’re going to dive deep into the book together. Do you want to go real quick, rapid fire with the fun questions. There’s three. Yeah, let’s

Dr. Mindy
do this. Oh, of course, let’s do the fun ones. I don’t want to miss out on that.

Ben Azadi
So, first one is, what do you wish you had known 10 years ago?

Dr. Mindy
Oh, gosh, 10 years ago. I wish I had known to not work so hard. I mean, 10 years ago, I just was a 60 hour a week working machine. And if I could go back, I would have I would have paced myself differently. I would have grabbed more moments with my children, I would have, I would have done a different workspace. That’s what I wish I had known 10 years ago. And I do that now. I apply that now. It’s

Ben Azadi
beautiful. I love that. What about you? Yeah, for me would be for me would be to practice self love, and gratitude every day. And when and also when things get rough. Do anything possible to find the gifts in that lesson that life is trying to teach me so always looking at the opposite side of things and not just focusing on what’s going wrong. But the mutual benefit that I’m just blunt, I used to be blind to see that. So for me, nowadays, I practice gratitude, self love, and I’m always looking for the gifts and the challenging lessons that I’m learning each day.

Unknown Speaker
Oh, I love that. Okay. Those are some fun questions. I’m curious if Jessica thought these up or if they’re actually real questions. I think

Dr. Mindy
one of the most interesting guests you’ve interviewed, and I’m going to add in there, why?

Ben Azadi
Dr. John Demartini. Yeah, I actually just interviewed him for the second time again yesterday. And both were amazing. He’s such an interesting guy. He’s read over 30,000 books. And he kind of like synthesizes all of the things he learns. And he’s just got quite the brain, quite the mind. These are amazing. And, and I love I love the way he thinks about things very similar to us. I mean, he’s a chiropractor, right. But he also believes symptoms are a gift. He also believes symptoms are the innate intelligence showing you something is wrong, don’t chase the symptoms, figure out what’s going on inside the body. And he has a heavy focus on the universal law of polarity meaning, up, down, left, right, black wise, there’s always a positive and a negative. And that relates to the nervous system, the autonomic nervous system. So if you’re too much sympathetic, you’ll get certain symptoms versus too much parasympathetic. And the goal is not to be too much on either way, but to get a nice balance. And he relates that to all the symptoms people face. So he just blows my mind with his research and how he shows up. So for me, it’s Dr. John Demartini. What about human

Dr. Mindy
beings? I love that it’s really it’s just like asking me to pick between my children. I know. It’s too hard. And I would say that everybody I’ve interviewed I’ve learned something from and I love podcasting. Because of that. I too, have two of them that really have like, left a mark on me long term. One is, have you interviewed Dr. Zack Bush before? Yes, yeah. You just in his presence, you hear him speak. And you’re like, I like everything makes sense. Again, like health makes sense. The world makes sense. You understand why things fell apart, you see what we need to do to get them back on track. So I love that man’s it for his heart and how he’s blazing a trail for us. My favorite spiritual wise has been Michael Beckwith. My mom studied at his ministerial school in agape in LA. And so I’ve heard a lot of his teachings, I bet he’s actually come to our home. And we’ve been around him a lot and spiritually, he is also another one when he I brought him on at the height of the pandemic. And I was like, Michael makes sense of this all helped me understand what is going on. And both Jessica and I got off that interview. And we were like, lifted up, we felt great. Again, kept it very simple, very easy to understand how we got in the mess we were in and how we would get out. So I think those are my two favorite.

Ben Azadi
Yeah, that’s amazing. You cheated by the way you gave to. We said one. We’ll have we’ll put we’ll have Rachel our podcast notes person, put those episodes down below if you want to listen to the next. Last question is, if you had 30 seconds to blast a message to the world, Mindy. What would that what is that one thing you would say?

Dr. Mindy
Oh, I’m Take your power back, take your health power back and start believing in yourself again, because you are the miracle you are the hero. It’s not the doctor. It’s not the pill. It’s not the supplement. It’s not the diet. You are the hero, and it’s time to start believing in yourself again.

Ben Azadi
That was like 15 seconds. You nailed it.

Unknown Speaker
I’ve been on a lot of podcasts lately talking about the book. Can you tell?

Ben Azadi
I could tell you. You’re revved up. I love it.

Unknown Speaker
I am revved up. I’m like, I’m so I’m so entire tired of the health disempowerment? Like.

Dr. Mindy
Yeah, let’s stop. We are the healing tool that we need. We just need to know how to sharpen it and use it. So yeah.

Unknown Speaker
There. Yeah, there’s

Ben Azadi
no, I mean, I would echo exactly what what you just said. And I said on the last episode, if you treat your health casually, you end up a casualty goes back to what you said, take your power back, the power is within. And then next thing I would say is, you don’t get what you want in life, you get what you are. And what you are, are those thoughts that you have every single day and mindset needs to be plugged into anything you’re doing in life, health, finances, relationships, work on the mindset, take your power back, like Mindy said, and don’t treat your health casually make it a priority, and everything else will fill its place in your life.

Dr. Mindy
Yeah, wow, boom, Mic drop. That was amazing. So I know, every once a while, during this conversation, I had to remind myself, we weren’t just doing this for fun,

Unknown Speaker
that there was a recording going on. That was it’s really interesting.

Dr. Mindy
I just, there’s something very unique about having a conversation with somebody who thinks very similar, similarly. But it’s also seen the 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of comments of struggle and successes that people are having the bird’s eye view that we have, you know, I spoke to a group of doctors a couple of weeks ago, and when I got up there, the conversation was about how we can change health care for women. And I really made the first point for them to understand that I’m an individual up here speaking, but there are 1000s of women behind me that want you to hear what I’m about to tell you. And I will say the same thing that as we close this up, you know, you and I have this very unique view on health because we are in the trenches with all of these people. So, you know, thank you for being in the trenches with me because it gets a little gets a little muddy and bloody in there some days. It sure

Ben Azadi
does. You know, I’m honored to learn from you and have this relationship and my audience loves when we get together. They’re always like, what are you interviewing Mindy again? Or what are you going to do an AMA? So it’s such a blessing. And by the way, Mindy, and I have a challenge we’re gonna do against each other, which is Ping Pong. Mindy is yes, a ping pong champ. And we have challenged each other to a ping pong match. So if you’re watching on YouTube, let us know in the comment section, who do you think would win in a ping pong match Mindy, or me? Down below,

Dr. Mindy
Oh, God. Yeah. And you might want to Google some of my past activities

Unknown Speaker
before you bet on Dad. Yeah, you know, this was so fun when we when that challenge came down because I was like, Oh, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know. It’s okay. We’ll just get on the ping pong table. So that’s all I’m gonna say. All right. And November, my friend November at livet to lead it. We’re doing it. There you go. We’ll record it and bring it on social.

Ben Azadi
There you go. Maybe thank you for doing this. I love and appreciate you.

Unknown Speaker
Thank you, Ben. love and appreciate yo