Most Replayed Moment: Insulin Is The Reason You're Gaining Fat! How To Lower It Now

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/5c361935a5390cab

Uh
So when you say this is an insulin problem, can you explain this to me like I have no idea what glucose and insulin are?
For for any of my listeners out there that have a
inexperienced understanding of these these these terms and what they what they do and mean. It's crucial.
Everybody needs to understand the relationship between sugar
Which is glucose?
An insulum.
When you consume sugar
Or glucose. The body has to get rid of that glucose very quickly from the bloodstream because glucose actually is toxic inside the bloodstream.
Even though it is what the body uses for energy.
In the bloodstream.
it glycates all the blood vessels and the walls and the components in blood and the hemoglobin as well. Glycates it, that means the glucose attaches itself to that molecule.
So now that molecule can't work properly.
That is why the higher your blood glucose
All your chemicals don't work well. Your enzymes don't work well, your hormones don't work well. Nothing works well, and you age prematurely because
You're getting glycation. Glycate a glycated molecule can't work normally. It doesn't function normally.
Mm.
So
When you consume the glucose, the glucose has to come out of the bloodstream and how does the body do it?
It sends a message to the pancreas. The pancreas says aha.
I'll make some insulin.
It pours insulin into the bloodstream.
Insulin comes into the bloodstream.
pushes the glucose into the cells.
And where does it push in it?
Into the liver, into the muscles, into every cell in the body, into
Insulin will push glucose out. Now, how much insulin is the question?
If I'm eating
Every three hours.
And I'm consuming glucose or I'm consuming starchy foods or I'm consuming carbohydrates. Now watch where I'm going with this because you're already beginning to know where I'm going with this.
I'm consuming glucose and carbs every two, three hours. I'm stimulating my pancreas. I'm stimulating my insulin. My insulin goes up.
it comes down, but before he even gets a chance to come down.
It goes up again.
So the repeated consumption of and frequent consumption of glucose
is causing my insulin to stay high because insulin stays a little bit longer in the bloodstream than the glucose. The glucose will come down in about two to three hours, but the insulin stays higher for about four hours.
Now what happens is that you continue this lifestyle for a few years.
Now
The body
Because these are all h hormones.
We'll say, Well, you know, it's
I'm gonna need to make more insulin now. You become insulin resistant. Any hormone that stays in your body for a long time
The body becomes immune to it.
So the next time I eat the sugar, I'm gonna have to make more insulin.
To produce the same effect.
That is call insulin resistance.
So now you got this patient who's been eating
Cobs.
Sugar.
Processed foods.
What does that mean, processed food? That means foods that are
quickly absorbed into the bloodstream.
Processed foods.
These are products.
Without fiber.
So the absorption is very quick.
So the poor pancreas has to react just like that.
produces a whole bunch of insulin.
And then the frequent eating and the frequent consumption makes you insulin resistant. So now you produce a whole bunch of insulin.
in order to bring that sugar level down.
So then you say, Okay, well it doesn't matter because the insul the insulin is bringing the sugar level down. So what's the harm done? Because your A one C is still good, you're not diabetic.
No, but it's that background high insulin
That is destroying your metabolism.
It's that high insulin level in the background. So insulin
Pushes glucose.
into the liver and you develop a fatty liver.
It pushes the calories into production of new fats around your viscera.
Visara means in your belly.
Around your pancreas.
You get visceral fat.
Now this fat is produced from glucose.
It's a different kind of fat.
Look, if I gave you a high calorie diet right now of all sorts of foods, you put on weight everywhere, okay?
But if I give you glucose, you put it on mostly in your stomach.
And your stomach will protrude.
And that's called visceral fat. It's on the inside.
You can't pinch it.
It's on the inside.
Around the organs.
This
is very detrimental fat.
And that's the epidemic that we have today.
And that's a direct result of eating.
You know, starchy, glucose, carbohydrates, which creates insulin, which creates
This downstream effect on the wrong foods?
And eating too frequently. Too frequently, okay. Because remember, it's also the frequency of eating, because before that insulin gets a chance to come down, you're already popping yourself with more food. And hence you develop insulin resistance. You get a very high insulin. It takes this much insulin now just to bring that sugar level down. And then the one day
When you cannot
Control that sugar.
Now that sugar will go out.
And now your doctor will say you're a diabetic. But by that time
You've already had ten years of hyperinsulinemia.
So what happens if by the time you make a diagnosis of diabetes to say, Well now your sugar is really high. It is high because your body has not had the ability to keep it down. Why? Because even that high insulin
could not keep your sugar level down, you became a diabetic.
you lost that whole opportunity of prevention.
It's those ten years look, by the time you're a diabetic and you come and see Doctor J in his cardiac clinic, you already have coronary artery disease.
Like that twenty eight year old.
The twenty eight year old didn't have diabetes, he already has chronority disease.
By the time you are diagnosed as having diabetes.
You already have cornearter disease. We have a great opportunity here to actually
Start screening these patients with insulin levels very early on. But most doctors don't have the ability or knowledge to do the insulin level testing.
But it should be done.

I'm thirty three years old now.
When
Does the damage begin?
It starts right now.
It starts right now.
As soon as you around thirty, you're already starting to have trouble.
You have to but you know
This is what I do.
I don't look at that patient walking into my room.
And if I see that he's got a belly sticking out.
Already know he's probably got insulin resistance.
Because all the fat is in here.
Because the fat that's in the stomach
Sideways he looks terrible.
From the back he looks great.
His waste is increased.
Mm.
He doesn't have all the fat everywhere else in his body. That's the phenotype of somebody who has hyperinsulinemia.
That same person goes on a cruise
he'll come back five to ten pounds more because he's got so much insulin in his body. Insulin is a storage molecule.
Puts everything away.
And it's very hard for him to lose weight.
W why is it harder?
You the only thing that'll make you lose that fat very quickly is to change your diet, of course.
But you have to do fasting.
Because fasting brings you in See, this is where fasting comes in.
So what does fasting do?
Do you mean fasting or a calorie deficit? Is it or is it the same thing in your view? No, they're not the same thing.
They are not the same thing.
See, when you don't eat, your insulin levels come down.
Because you're not stimulating your pancreas anymore.
So you want to bring your insulin levels down.
The best thing you can do in the world is to do fasting.
Because there's no look, if I just simply cut down on my calories
Then
There's a different physiology that's gonna take place in the body.
And
When you fast there's a totally different physiology.
When you cut down on calories, the body senses that this caloric deficit
Your metabolic rate changes, actually slows down.
And
The body will start breaking down everything.
Muscles
Included.
So you lose fat and you also lose muscles.
On the other hand, when you're fasting
It's a different physiology.
Fasting is I've put on fat, now I'm gonna take it out of the bank.
Now the bank is gonna be available for me to pull out my calories and use it now. And you start burning the fat. So in the first twelve hours of a fast,
You take out all the glucose in the form of glycogen from your muscles and your liver.
After twelve hours?
you start pulling the fat out. And the first place the fat comes out of
is gonna be visceral fat.
That is why
Fasting benefits you so much because it gets rid of that worst fat, the fat that is very inflammatory. You see, if I did a biopsy of your visceral fat,
Versus a biopsy of let's say a fat from on your buttock.
Mm-hmm.
Two different types of fat.
One is full of inflammatory molecules.
The other one is not full of inflammatory molecules.
One is producing interlucan sex
And two minute closest factor.
And this other fat is not.
These are two different fat storages.
Visceral fat is very toxic, it's very inflammatory.
And that is why patients who have visceral fat
make all these molecules. So when I do the blood test, I see that oh you've got so much inflammation. You've got interleukin six is high, tumor necrosis factor is high, your CRP is running high.
And one of the reasons for this
is not just leaky gut and other things that I look at, but in your case it is also because you have a lot of ectopic fat.
It.
Topic facts
A topic that is now we're realizing is not just only around the liver and around your pancreas, it's also around your heart.
So when we look at the corner arteries and we see all those
Fact.
Around the coronary arteries you had a very nice diagram right there.
And you can see that around
Each artery.
Is that yellowness?
That yellow is all black.
Fat.
That's fat around that and it's platforming.
It's platforming.
It stimulates bla it's inflammatory.
And now we can do C T scans.
That will actually detect
How much inflammation is in the fat.
Around the arteries as well.
Ectopic fat
Is in the
Around the corner arteries, it's in your liver and in your pancreas.
And it is very inflammatory.
So if you have someone come to you and they're you know, they have that physique where there's a bit more of that protruding belly fat
You said that fasting is a much better approach than just sort of a calorie restriction. I was looking at some studies that said research shows that calorie deficits of any kind can reduce fissor fat, but fasting
Will give it an edge because of the insulin sensitivity stuff that you talked about as well.
What kind of fast?
should one be doing? Because there's so many different names for these fasts. People do these forty day water fasts and they do intermittent fasting.
It's a great question. So there are many, many different types of fasting.
Depending on your goal.
On
what do you want for that particular patient. So if a patient is just simply looking to reduce his
Visceral fat?
Then I start with twelve twelve, which means
Twelve hours.
You don't eat anything, you just drink
Liquids with no calories in it.
And then twelve hours is your feeding period.
We start with that.
And we do that for about two to three weeks.
Then we quickly move to eighteen six.
eighteen six means six hours.
You get
To eat.
Eighteen hours.
It's only
Water.
Black tea.
Black coffee.
Green tea.
No calories.
eighteen six.
eighteen six. And then
That's one type of fasting.
Now if a patient is very overweight
A patient has diabetes and your goal is to diverse diabetes, the patient needs to lose sixty pounds.
then those patients have a special type of need.
For them I will take them to
A
Forty eight hour fast.
Once a week.
Sometimes I'll go to a three day water fast.
Every nine days
Every nine days you will do OMAD. OMAD means one meal a day only.
Every day for nine days.
And then you're gonna give me a three day water fast.
Is the same advice applicable to women because obviously they're contending with
a variety of hormone fluctuations and
Eastrogen and I know that the
the the female body responds differently to these kinds of stresses like fasts.
I've been asked that question so many times from patients as well.
Most of the women can actually handle it.
The only women that cannot are those who are trying to become pregnant or or they have um
uh they're already pregnant. I I I think that women are not that different when it comes to the fasting programs. So in my
Experience.
I've been able to get women to fast. I just finished a fast on one lady just now for seventy two days.
Seventy two days.
She was
terribly overweight, she had diabetes, she had hypertension,
She had happy.
She was having
Hip replacements, knee replacements, joint problems, she had skin problems, and we fasted her for seventy two days. What did she have in those seventy t two days in terms of drinks, electrolytes, coffee? What what was she?
Great question. So she would have black tea?
Black coffee?
War.
And in the water once a day.
I tell her to put some electrolytes in there.
So there's a electrolyte called Lamenti or sometimes I just have to go buy some Celtic salt.
And put half a teaspoon in there.
And once a day you take that.
If you get cravings.
And you feel really, really hungry.
Take some M C T oil, a teaspoon.
And put it in your water and you can drink that as well.
Think it's worth saying that.
Probably shouldn't try this at home.
Ladies and gentlemen, because obviously medical supervision's cr critical here. But in the case of that lady, what was the before and after?
Of that seventy two day fast.
So
Diabetes gone.
Blood pressure.
Normalized.
Weight loss.
Tremendous weight loss. I mean, I think she lost about fifty five or sixty pounds.
Okay.
And not only did she lose all that weight, yes, all that weight from her belly was gone,
But even her face.
under the arms. So when you lose weight in a fasting program, it's very different from losing weight.
when you are restricting calories.
You actually retract
Your
Your skin.
So you get real changes.
in your entire body. These pati I had one patient that fasted for one hundred and eighty three days.
Under supervision.
Okay.
He went from four hundred pounds to two hundred and ten pounds.
And when he walked into the office you would not recognize that he's just lost all this weight.
Because
He did not look like skin on top of bones and then having to have surgery to remove all that excess skin.
Fasting is a totally different physiology.
In fasting
You
You you you your the body is doing a whole lot of things that are very different. And we can go into the physiology of fasting because that's fascinating. It's a physiology that has not been used.
by us. We've lost it. So one of the things about modern living
Modern living. We have lost
this physiology of fasting. First of all, why do we still have that physiology in us?
It's because it's supposed to serve a purpose.
'Cause we're supposed to be fasting and feasting.
But now we're only feasting all the time.
And we're not fasting.
In order to go back to normal
You should be fasting.
Fasting is supposed to be a normal part of your existence. That's the way you were designed.
Not this modern industrialized living that we've been doing in the last
fraction of a millisecond in the total existence of the human race.
We've changed our lifestyle so much.
modern man has
But our genetics and our physiology has lagged behind.
We're supposed to use fasting and feasting as part of our normal program, as our normal physiology. That's why we still have it. That is why.
After twelve hours you start making in some more ketones in your body.
The ketones come from fat.
You're moving that fat out of storage. What is a ketone?
Hm.
ketones. So ketones are a energy molecule produced by the liver.
How does it make it? It makes it from fat.
So the fat gets liberalized and by the way, the fats only start moving when your insulin levels are down. So because of fasting, your insulin levels are really low now, okay? Because you've been fasting, right? So
Now
The fat
Start dissolving. So you get free fatty acids. The free fatty acids float into the bloodstream. Free fatty acids are
Fat products.
They float into the bloodstream, they go to your liver.
Your liver converts those into ketones. Now ketones are an energy source of the body.
An alternative source to glucose.
So in general terms, you are either gonna be running on glucose and glucose metabolism.
Or you're running on ketones.
Okay. And so ketones basically show up in the
When
Glucose isn't around.
That's absolutely right. So ketones and ketones are actually a cleaner fuel for the body.
And in terms of producing reactive oxygen species in the metabolism, the way your mitochondria work, you actually produce less reactive oxygen species, which is
damaging to your physiology when you're in ketones. And ketones are signaling molecules that also change your physiology in a number of ways.
Number one.
It causes the production of brain derived neurotropic factor.
That occurs under ketogenesis.
Brain derived neurotropic factor, which means that you become smarter
You're growing new cells, your reflexes are better, your visual acuity is better.
Why? Because nature wants you to become a better specimen so you can go out and get your next kill. So why don't we all just stay in a state of ketosis then if it's so
Miraculous.
Well that's a great question.
you don't want to be in ketosis all the time,'cause that's not what ketosis what what our physiology was made for. Because then you'll just be burning fats, burning fats, burning fats all the time.
And that's not a good state to be in constantly either.
So you want to be able to do both. You're supposed to get your current account
and your deposit account.
You're supposed to work with both of them. That's the normal physiology. So
Not only brain derived neurotropic factor increases, but also stem cells. Stem cells are
Amazing.
And
In my patients.
Of course I see
Yeah.
What what is a stem cell?
Yeah.
Stem cells so stem cells uh we all have stem cells.
And we all still make stem cells.
And they're produced by the bone marrow.
These are
Pluripotent cells. Cells made
that will then go out and become whatever they need to become.
So they can go out into your circulation, become a muscle cell, they can become a retinal cell, a skin cell, they can transform into anything. So what happens, I mean you break your fast.
Mm-hmm.
you get a surge of stem cells coming out of your bone marrow.
Some of them become immunocytes. That is why we know that fasting also boosts your immunity.
People who fast get less infections, get less sore throats and coughs and colds and the viruses that are going around.
The immunity is better.
The stem cells are not
I'm particularly interested in the stem cells because

The progenitor cells endothelial progenitor cells.
Progenitor cells are you see, you're always hurting your blood vessels, the lining of the blood vessels, and the lining of your blood vessels have to be constantly repaired, and they be they are repaired by the progenitor cells. When you do intermittent fasting and time restricted feeding,
You will produce more
And this has been shown in numerous studies.
More progenitor cells.
And these progenitic cells go and repair your blood vessels.
So I do what why am I interested in this? Because I'm a vascular doctor. I want my blood vessels to constantly be repairing themselves from the damage that we do.
In day to day life.
So
Stem cell mobilization.
Brain derived neurotropic factor.
Growth hormone.
You make more growth hormone in fasting.
So
When should you exercise when you're fasting?

peak of your fast.
So if I'm gonna break my fast at six PM
I tell patients to go out to the gym at four o'clock in the afternoon.
But I said, but Doc, how can I do that?
you will find that you will put on more muscle and you will retain more muscle as well.
The fastest way and the best way to actually increase your growth hormone production
When I swear to the
Doctor Stacy Sims, who does a lot lot of um
work on women's physiology and women's performance. One of the things she said to me is that
If a woman in particular
tries to do a work out fast it the
Body will break down the muscle.
In a woman because uh she said a woman's body's much more the hyp hypothalamus? It's much more sensitive to changes in
a woman's glucose levels'cause it's trying to defend against, you know, pregnancy and you know, all these kinds of things. So it shuts down the menstrual cycle if there's not enough glucose in the blood and
And so she said for women in particular, you do you do want to have eat something before you work out or it will y your body will
take from the muscle and it would definitely won't s the body's very sensitive. It won't want to to help you build muscle if there's not enough glucose energy in the body. She said for men it's slightly different because we're a little bit more robust and we were meant to hunt, so
If we were fast, our body is, you know, designed to
kind of keep up its normal processes to help us complete a hunt per se.
So
I guess I threw this question out to you about about women exercise and fasting. Yeah. I I think that's a great observation. So again is what kind of exercise is the woman doing? You see? Now there's two kinds of basic exercises. One is aerobic activity and one is
uh resistance exercises. So and you can also throw into that
High intensity interval training.
Mm-hmm.
When it comes to the training that I'm talking about in a fasting state
I like resistance training.
So in resistance training, that glucose issue is not going to become a problem. Now, if you're gonna put that female patient on a treadmill and make her run for a long period of time, let's say you're gonna make a run for forty minutes on the treadmill, I think that yes, you're absolutely right. You are gonna deplete her glucose and you may cause some problems and then the muscle will start breaking down. But I do believe
from all the experience that I've had with my patients that when I turn to the hit
Which is
High intensity
Intel training.
All the women do just as well as the men.
Because all you're doing is you're intensely m working the muscles and you're doing some resistance exercise and then you're totally resting as well.
And I see fantastic results with that.
In terms of ketosis.
Do you
Cycle in and out of a ketogenic diet.
And just for anyone that doesn't know what know a ketogenic diet is a diet that's very, very low in carbohydrates, so
Less than fifty grams of carbohydrates a day, typically.
Do you cycle in and out of that diet?
Yes.
Yes, you have to.
Because
I don't want them to stay in a ketogenic state all the time.
So I do, I do, I do. I tell them look look
What is your goal here? What is your goal? If your goal is that okay, I need to lose seventy pounds.
Then you're gonna do this till you get to your goal. Once you get to your goal, then you're gonna go back to time restricted feeding, which means 186. So you'll still make some ketones. And then intermittently, you can still do a 36 hour fast.
That means
Normal healthy people, you and me.
We should still be doing one thirty six hour
Fast at least once a month.
So we'll go to that.
We'll go to that.
Fasting must still become part of your problem. But you don't need to stay in ketogenesis all the time.

That when you are in ketosis, you are
You're also in autophagy.
How much autophagy can you do?
That means you recycling all your
Your partic or all your organelles inside your cells. What does that mean in in simple terms for someone that doesn't know the term or talk to you?
Bottom line is
The cell senses
That
There is no new parts coming in here, so it takes the redundant.
Organelles inside the cells.
And breaks them down.
packages them up into these little
packets and exports them out of the cells. So these cells, all your cells in the body,
now a functioning
at a much more efficient level.
So mitochondria.
Also have autophagy.
So you're getting new mitochondria, you're repairing your mitochondria. And you know it's all about mitochondria, right? Your energy mitochondria are those organs.
Organelles inside each cell.
And we just think of them as only an energy source that oh yeah, my mitochondria they make ATP.
That's not the whole story.
Yes, they produce ATP.
But
They also produce this thing called reactive oxygen species.
And thereby they influence
the metabolism
Of your h of your cell as well. They send signals.
They send signals to your
to your chromosomes. So you start producing new proteins, you start producing new molecules. So your mitochondria are very important. If you have old mitochondria, you're gonna have fatigue, tiredness,
But when you get mitophagy, one reason why you feel so good after a fast, because you have new mitochondria, they're much more efficient in producing ATP and less reactive oxygen species. So you have mitophagy.
Recycling of your parts.
Cellular function improves.
Toxins get out of the cells as well.
Tell us.
Do you think there's a
preferable or a best exercise for heart health.
If you were gonna say Steven.
To make you know, my my I think my family has a history of heart related issues. One of my my uncle died from a heart attack. So I'm very aware of
my own susceptibility to heart related illnesses. I think there's other people in my family um that have heart related issues as well.
Is there a particular exercise that is best for the heart?
'Cause I'm guessing resistance training, i.e. strength training.
Might not be there.
The number one.
Recommendation for good heart health?
You mentioned hit. I'm wondering if that's
Yes.
So I'm just gonna tell you broadly speaking what I see in my practice.
I see that
People who do a
overly do a uh aerobic activity. That means a cycle
A hundred miles a day.
or they're running on their treadmill for two hours at a time every day, or they're doing a lot a lot of marathon training all the time, they actually end up with more inflammation in the body and they end up with more corner artery disease than patients who do short sprints
And patients who do
Resistance exercises and patients who do hits.
So
In terms of cardiology, you look, you need some aerobic training. Why? Because you want to develop some endurance, right? You don't want to be running behind the bus and and get short of breath just in a few hundred feet. So
For some interns you do aerobic activity.
how much aerobic activity, which is running on the treadmill, for example, or just sprinting
Only about fifteen to twenty minutes.
That's it.
So I tell patients, you want to run on that treadmill, you want to bicycle
Fifteen to twenty minutes.
And then you gotta go into resistance exercises. The resistance exercises that I have seen work best in my patients is simple things. You don't have to go crazy. You do flow exercises, you use your own body weight.
As resistance.
So you can do the planks and leg lifts and all this other exercise and you can do hit.
But
They have to be very specific.
So you exercise really hard for about
thirty seconds to forty five seconds and then you completely rest.
For another thirty to forty five seconds.
Okay. And that's allowing your body
to clean up the reactive oxygen species you just created through that exercise. Because your rate limiting step
in cleaning up the metabolic mess that you get when you get too much exercise. It's a rate limiting step. Your glutathione production, your superoxide dismutase production.
These are chemicals that
Clean up.
the metabolic mess that you get when you eat too much activity, that's a rate limiting step.
So when you rest
You exercise and you rest, you exercise you rest.
you are gonna get a cleaner physiology.
What you just listened to was a most replayed moment from a previous episode. If you want to listen to that full episode, I've linked it down below. Check the description. Thank you.
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