Mar 18

Episode 361: Special Guest: Kyle Berquist, Reputable Health App, Open Source Studies, Health Data Privacy, Self Testing, DIY Scientific Studies, And More!

Intermittent Fasting

Welcome to Episode 361 of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast, hosted by Melanie Avalon, author of What When Wine Diet: Lose Weight And Feel Great With Paleo-Style Meals, Intermittent Fasting, And Wine and Vanessa Spina, author of Keto Essentials: 150 Ketogenic Recipes to Revitalize, Heal, and Shed Weight.

Today's episode of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast is brought to you by:

Blissy: Get cooling, comfortable, sustainable silk pillowcases to revolutionize your -sleep, skin, and hair! Once you get silk pillowcases, you will never look back! Get blissy in tons of colors, and risk-free for 60 nights, at blissy.Com/ifpodcast, with the code ifpodcast for 30% off!

REEL PAPER: Reel paper makes soft, sustainable, eco-friendly, soft, perfume-free, dye-free, plastic-free toilet paper made of 100% bamboo, and they plant one tree for each role you buy! Reel paper is available in easy, hassle-free subscriptions or one-time purchases,  conveniently delivered to your door with free shipping in 100% recyclable, plastic-free packaging. Get 30% OFF reelpaper.com with code IFPodcast, plus FREE shipping! (Works on subscriptions too!)

To submit your own questions, email questions@IFpodcast.com, or submit your questions here!! 

SHOW NOTES

Beautycounter: Keep your fast clean inside and out with safe skincare! Shop with us at melanieavalon.com/beautycounter and use the code CLEANFORALL20 for 20% off, plus something magical might happen after your first order! Find your perfect Beautycounter products with Melanie's quiz: melanieavalon.com/beautycounterquiz
Join Melanie's Facebook group Clean Beauty and Safe Skincare with Melanie Avalon to discuss and learn about all the things clean beauty, Beautycounter, and safe skincare!

BLISSY: Get blissy in tons of colors, and risk-free for 60 nights, at blissy.com/ifpodcast, with the code ifpodcast for 30% off!

REEL PAPER: Get 30% OFF reelpaper.com with code IFPodcast, plus FREE shipping! (Works on subscriptions too!)

Find Reputable Health in the App Store or the Google Play Store and use code IF24 to get access to the open source study!

How Reputable Health works?

Which wearables are connected?

Open source studies

Data unions

Health data biases with AI

Overlapping data in multiple wearables

Epiphanies in using Reputable Health

Joining the open source fasting study

What you can do in the app

Creating your own studies

Our content does not constitute an attempt to practice medicine and does not establish a doctor-patient relationship. Please consult a qualified healthcare provider for medical advice and answers to personal health questions.

TRANSCRIPT

(Note: This is generated by AI with 98% accuracy. However, any errors may cause unintended changes in meaning.) 

Melanie Avalon:
Welcome to Episode 361 of the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. If you want to burn fat, gain energy, and enhance your health by changing when you eat, not what you eat with no calorie counting, then this show is for you. I'm Melanie Avalon, biohacker, author of "What, When, Wine" and creator of the supplement line AvalonX. And I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Spina, sports nutrition specialist, author of "Keto Essentials" and creator of the Tone Breath Ketone Analyzer and Tone Lux Red Light Therapy Bannals. For more on us, check out ifpodcast.com, melanieavalon.com, and ketogenicgirl.com. Please remember, the thoughts and opinions on this show do not constitute medical advice or treatment. To be featured on the show, email us your questions to questions@ifpodcast.com. We would love to hear from you. So pour yourself a mug of black coffee, a cup of tea, or even a glass of wine, if it's that time, and get ready for the Intermittent Fasting Podcast.


Melanie Avalon:
Thank you so much for listening to the Intimation Fasting Podcast. Please remember, everything we discussed on this show does not constitute medical advice and no patient-doctor relationship is formed. If you enjoyed the show, please consider writing a review on iTunes. We couldn't do this without our amazing team. Administration by Sharon Merriman, editing by Podcast Doctors, show notes and artwork by Brianna Joyner, and original theme composed by Leland Cox and recomposed by Steve Saunders.

STUFF WE LIKE

Check out the Stuff We Like page for links to any of the books/supplements/products etc. mentioned on the podcast that we like!

More on Vanessa: ketogenicgirl.com

Theme Music Composed By Leland Cox: LelandCox.com

If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving us a review in Apple Podcasts - it helps more than you know! 

 

 

Mar 11

Episode 360: Pre-Exercise Meals, Fasted Training, Low Carb Meals, HIIT, Weight Training, Mitochondrial Biogenesis, Post Exercise Fat Burning, Vanessa’s New Baby, And More!

Intermittent Fasting

Welcome to Episode 360 of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast, hosted by Melanie Avalon, author of What When Wine Diet: Lose Weight And Feel Great With Paleo-Style Meals, Intermittent Fasting, And Wine and Vanessa Spina, author of Keto Essentials: 150 Ketogenic Recipes to Revitalize, Heal, and Shed Weight.

Today's episode of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast is brought to you by:

Butcherbox: Grass-fed beef, organic chicken, heritage pork, wild-caught seafood, nutrient-rich, raised sustainably the way nature intended, and shipped straight to your door! For a limited time go to butcherbox.com/ifpodcast and get 3 lbs of chicken thighs, 2 lbs of ground beef, or 1 lb of premium steak tips—for free in every order for a whole year! Plus, get $20 off your first order!

LMNT: For fasting or low-carb diets electrolytes are key for relieving hunger, cramps, headaches, tiredness, and dizziness. With no sugar, artificial ingredients, coloring, and only 2 grams of carbs per packet, try LMNT for complete and total hydration. Go to drinklmnt.com/ifpodcast to get a free sample pack with any purchase!

To submit your own questions, email questions@IFpodcast.com, or submit your questions here!! 

SHOW NOTES

Beautycounter: Keep your fast clean inside and out with safe skincare! Shop with us at melanieavalon.com/beautycounter and use the code CLEANFORALL20 for 20% off, plus something magical might happen after your first order! Find your perfect Beautycounter products with Melanie's quiz: melanieavalon.com/beautycounterquiz
Join Melanie's Facebook group Clean Beauty and Safe Skincare with Melanie Avalon to discuss and learn about all the things clean beauty, Beautycounter, and safe skincare!

BUTCHERBOX: For a limited time go to butcherbox.com/ifpodcast and ge4t 3 lbs of chicken thighs, 2 lbs of ground beef, or 1 lb of premium steak tips—for free in every order for a whole year! Plus, get $20 off your first order!

LMNT: Go to drinklmnt.com/ifpodcast to get a free sample pack with any purchase! Learn all about electrolytes in Episode 237 - our interview with Robb Rolf!

Write a review on Apple Podcasts to enter to win a giveaway!

Pre-Exercise Carbohydrate or Protein Ingestion Influences Substrate Oxidation but Not Performance or Hunger Compared with Cycling in the Fasted State

Listener Q&A: Julian - How to deal with fasting as a person who works out early in the mornings.

Listener Q&A: Valory - How do you find the right fasting window (time of day plus duration) for you?

Go to melanieavalon.com/ifquiz to find the right fasting window for you!

Our content does not constitute an attempt to practice medicine and does not establish a doctor-patient relationship. Please consult a qualified healthcare provider for medical advice and answers to personal health questions.

TRANSCRIPT

(Note: This is generated by AI with 98% accuracy. However, any errors may cause unintended changes in meaning.) 

Melanie Avalon:
Welcome to Episode 360 of the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. If you want to burn fat, gain energy, and enhance your health by changing when you eat, not what you eat with no calorie counting, then this show is for you. I'm Melanie Avalon, biohacker, author of "What, When, Wine" and creator of the supplement line AvalonX. And I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Spina, sports nutrition specialist, author of "Keto Essentials" and creator of the Tone Breath Ketone Analyzer and Tone Lux Red Light Therapy Bannals. For more on us, check out ifpodcast.com, melanieavalon.com, and ketogenicgirl.com. Please remember, the thoughts and opinions on this show do not constitute medical advice or treatment. To be featured on the show, email us your questions to questions@ifpodcast.com. We would love to hear from you. So pour yourself a mug of black coffee, a cup of tea, or even a glass of wine, if it's that time, and get ready for the Intermittent Fasting Podcast.


Melanie Avalon:
This is Episode 360 of the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. I'm Melanie Avalon, and I am so excited because I am back here again with Vanessa Spina. It has been so long for us that I literally just forgot the intro, and she had to remind me how to start the show. So, Vanessa.

Vanessa Spina:
Bye everyone.

Melanie Avalon:
Thank you.

Vanessa Spina:
I'm so excited to be back here with you.

Melanie Avalon:
I am so excited. And Vanessa is a champ. She is doing this post pregnancy with her beautiful little boy who might even be like with her while during part of the recordings upcoming. We shall see. We're not sure how it's going to go, but we're just going to go with it. But Vanessa, oh my goodness. I mean, there's so much I want to hear about. How was your pregnancy? Oh my goodness. Yeah.

Vanessa Spina:
I mean, the delivery was great. You know, he was our little Christmas miracle. And we were so excited to be having him at Christmas, even though, you know, I'm a little bit worried he's not going to love his birth date. But it was just incredible. It was such a magical time. The hospital, the birthing place that we were at, it's like a big birthing hospital, just had Christmas trees everywhere. And it was really magical. And my parents were, you know, visiting and staying with Luca. And we were at the hospital for actually quite a long time, almost two weeks. And Luca would come and visit us at the at the baby place. It was so much fun to like, I don't know, the whole thing will always have such an amazing place in my heart because it was such a magical time. Whenever you have a baby, it's such a magical experience. So all of it was incredible. And he's just doing amazing. He's two months old now. He's just the smileiest baby ever. He's so smiley. He makes the cutest little sounds. And every day he's just getting more awake and alert and just with us. And it's so much fun. Like we're just in like baby bliss heaven. It's been amazing. But thank you so much for asking.

Melanie Avalon:
My goodness and sweet to clarify he was born on Christmas

Vanessa Spina:
His due date was Christmas Day, and he ended up being born about six days before that, so right after, but we were in the hospital for a little bit of extended time, so we spent Christmas Day in the hospital, and my mom made a full Christmas dinner, and her and my dad brought it to the hospital, and we had it in our hospital room. We had a really nice room there, so it was spacious, but we were on a small table, like having our Christmas dinner there, but it was like so magical and special, you know. Christmas makes everything, you know, magical, so yeah, it was a whole Christmas baby thing, and yeah, it was really amazing.

Melanie Avalon:
Wow, I'm so happy for you. What was your very first? Because I remember you made a comment about having a drink post delivery. What was your first meal? Or what did you have first after delivering?

Vanessa Spina:
I did have to have sushi. I did order sushi. I was like, it's becoming like a tradition now because I had to do that right after Luca. And then I thought I was going to have like a margarita or something in the hospital. I always kind of say that to myself just to help, you know, the past like the last couple months, you're just like, I just don't want to really be pregnant anymore. So it helps to think about like what you're going to do, you're going to get to do. For me, it's like sleeping on my stomach, because I really miss that when I'm pregnant. I was really excited for and then we had champagne on New Year's, which was like right after we got, it was like two days after we got home from the hospital. So we had New Year's Eve, we had champagne, and it was really nice. It was really, really good. But how, how are you doing? How, you know, how are your holidays? Like, how has everything been like, been so excited to catch up with you on everything.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh my goodness. Wait, and you're a stomach sleeper? Yeah. Oh, that's so interesting. I actually have an episode, I haven't done the interview yet, but it's about, it's with somebody who makes out the neck nest, which is like this pillow that forces you to sleep on your back, which apparently is how you're supposed to sleep. I'm a side sleeper.

Vanessa Spina:
Yeah, back is the ultimate. I do, I'm able to do it for naps. I did today, I was napping with Luca and Damien, but at night I find it hard to do. So yeah, I've looked into actually things. I used to have this pillow I got that was like, it has a space for your head and then it had, the pillow part was on around your head. So it kind of holds your head so that you could sleep on your back. Cause it's hard to do.

Melanie Avalon:
That's what he makes. That's his pillow. And I've had it here because they sent it. I feel so bad. They sent the pillow. And they were like, we really want you to use it before you interview him so you can have your experience. And I was like, okay, I'll do this. And then it came. I just don't like doing it. And also it had down feathers in it, which kind of bothered me. So I was like, I'm sorry, I can't use it down feathers. Oh, well, then they were like, Oh, we'll send you another one special made without down feathers. I was like, Oh, no. I have no excuse.

Vanessa Spina:
Excuse. You must have like so many products, I mean, to test and to sample and I'm sure you have so many things that people want you to try out and stuff.

Melanie Avalon:
Which speaking of I have I promise I've opened it and taken pictures with it your tone device and I'm gonna use it I swear I have like the pictures ready and waiting I promise I'm gonna do it soon I can't wait to try it

Vanessa Spina:
I haven't thought about it, there's no pressure, no rush. Seriously, I just felt like you had to have a black and rose one. I mean a rose gold one, black and rose gold one.

Melanie Avalon:
And what I'm curious about, and so for listeners, the tone device measures the ketone levels in your breath, I'm really curious if I ever blow ketones like ever.

Vanessa Spina:
Yes, I know. I'm curious too, because I remember you said you never really had much.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, actually today would be a good day to try it because last night on occasion, because normally I eat a ton of fruit at night, like a ton. Last night I didn't have any. So today would actually be a good day to see. Yes. It's good to go. Like I just like turn it on and like we're rolling.

Vanessa Spina:
Yeah it's good to calibrate it so that you just turn it on and let it read zero three times and then do a test. So you can do the calibration anytime like anytime you haven't used it in a while anytime it's been sitting just unused it's good to do the calibration so you just turn it on let it count down let it read nothing let it read zero three times and then you do the test and it just warms the sensor up a little bit more because it's a 20 second warm -up so then you'll have a whole minute and 20 seconds of warm -up then and then do it when you first first get it sometimes it takes a little bit like say a few days to warm up to you and your breath and everything but it should be detecting ketones like right from that that first test after the calibration

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, I'm motivated. I'm going to do it. I'm also wearing a CGM right now. That was one reason I wanted to play around with carbs. I was curious to see how it would affect my blood sugar levels ongoing. I actually put it on because announcement, I launched a TikTok channel, which is a whole nother world. Are you on TikTok?

Vanessa Spina:
I tried it when it first came out and it was like maybe four years ago and I made a bunch of videos and I just couldn't get into it and I couldn't figure it out. I was just like, I don't know, I'm just gonna go back to Instagram and they launched Reels. So I was like, I'm gonna stick to the Reels and I'm here because this is where I have the following. But yeah, I mean, good for you if you're doing it and if you get into it and you can reach so many new people.

Melanie Avalon:
We'll see how it goes. It's an intimidating world. I feel like it's like moving to a new school and you're like the new kid. It's a good way to put it. So, but I put on the CGM because I'm going to do monthly shoots with my photographer. So I put it on the CGM during the shoot, but yeah, I'm kind of just like letting her post and then I like go back to Instagram and like hang out. And then I go in and occasionally, and like I posted some Taylor Swift videos and those get like thousands of views. I'm like, Oh, this is the way to go Taylor Swift videos all day.

Vanessa Spina:
That's perfect for you.

Melanie Avalon:
Maybe I should just post Taylor Swift videos over there. So yes, so friends, please follow me so I don't feel alone over there and give up and like leave. It's Melanie Avalon Biohacker is my handle. This airs early March. Exciting things are coming. My spirulina supplement should be launching soon. So I'm very excited about that. That will be at AvalonX .us. EMF Walking Product Line is still coming, I promise. And then very exciting, massive sparkly project of overwhelming awesomeness, hopefully this year. I don't know. It's like, it's the biggest thing I've ever done, I think. So that's coming. Teaser. That's a big tease. That's a big tease. Okay, yeah. Well, I did want to announce, okay, some announcements for listeners. We have been getting requests to have more, this is the Interpreter Fasting Podcast. So requests to have more fasting content. So we are going to start a little format where I'm going to talk very briefly about a fun little study at the beginning of every episode, just to like bounce our thoughts off. And you can let us know if you like that or not, we could adjust accordingly. And then also we would love to do a giveaway for you guys because who doesn't love winning free things? So this giveaway, if you go to Apple Podcasts, subscribe to the show and write a review. If you haven't done this before, you can write a new review. If you've written a review before, thank you so much. Just go and update your review. And in that review, share something that you like about this show or something sparkly or your thoughts, just in general. We would love to hear from you. And those reviews, they really, they really, really help more than most people realize. So the giveaway, we are giving away the entire line of both of our products. So you will get all the avallonic supplements and you'll get Vanessa's tone protein, all of that. And you'll get something from MD Logic. I'm not sure what they're gonna give you. They're gonna pick something. So to enter to win after you write that review, send a screenshot of that review to questions at iapodcast .com and we will enter you to win. So again, just go to Apple Podcasts, subscribe, write a brief new review or longer if you like, longer is fine. Or update your prior review and send a screenshot to questions at iapodcast .com and we will enter you to win. So this is huge. This is like all the things. You'll get serapeptase to break down problematic proteins in your body and clear your sinuses and remove inflammation and take that in the fasted state, very important. It's a great catalyst for your fast. You'll get magnesium breakthrough, which is a full spectrum magnesium blend for all your magnesium needs. You'll get magnesium nightcap, which is a magnesium that crosses the blood -brain barrier, helps with sleep, relaxation, mood and memory. You'll get berberine, which is great for blood sugar control. Wearing a CGM and using avallonix berberine, I really see a huge difference in my blood sugar levels and I hear that from so many people as well. So that's a great way to supplement your diet and your fast. You'll get Vanessa's tone protein. Vanessa, would you like to tell the benefits of your tone protein?

Vanessa Spina:
Absolutely. So tone protein was scientifically optimized to help you initiate muscle protein synthesis and help you build muscle and it's enhanced with leucine. So you will be guaranteed to initiate muscle protein synthesis with every serving that you take. And it also tastes absolutely delicious. It has a vanilla bean flavor and you can put it in pretty much anything. I love putting it in plain yogurt, in shakes, adding fruit, adding cocoa powder, make it into a chocolate shake. There's so many things you can do with it. I even make waffles with it and developed a recipe for that. So it's really, really amazing and a delicious way to help you build muscle and get toned.

Melanie Avalon:
So that's awesome because as you guys know, we are all about the protein and if you want one protein powder, you want Vanessa's protein because you can really trust her about her formulation with the protein. So that's amazing. And then like I said, MD Logic is going to throw in something. I'm not sure what they're going to throw in. I don't know. I love a lot of their supplements. They have a great vitamin D, they have a great new probiotic, they have a melatonin, so they're going to throw in a surprise Fonzie as well. So that is, I should probably have counted up how much that is worth, but that's worth a lot. I mean, hundreds of dollars, maybe, maybe, a couple hundred. So to win that, again, go to Apple Podcasts, subscribe to the show, write a new Apple review or update your existing review, share your thoughts on a show, something you like, something that resonates, all the things, and it will run through the beginning of April. So you have a little bit of time to do that, so go do that now. And we will announce the winner probably a little bit later in April. So thank you so much, guys, for that. Can't wait to see all of your thoughts and all the things and also to give away those supplements. And then in the meantime, if you would like to buy any of the supplements for yourself, you can go to AvalonX .us, use the coupon code Melanie Avalon to get a discount. Vanessa, how can people get your toned protein?

Vanessa Spina:
available at MDLogic's website, so MDLogic .com, and we can link that in the show notes for everyone.

Melanie Avalon:
Perfect. And then you can also get all of MDLogic supplements also at MDLogic .com. Okay. And then one more last announcement before we jump into the fasting study. I just wanted to briefly plug a new sponsor we have on the show. They're not actually sponsoring today's episode, but I'm just so obsessed with them that I wanted to personally talk about them on the show in addition to the ads that we run in the show otherwise. So, real paper, I'm obsessed with them so much. They make toilet paper made out of 100% bamboo, which honestly, I had not optimized my toilet paper usage and consumption for sustainability at all. I mean, if you think about it, normal toilet paper, you're cutting down trees, like you're cutting down trees and then you're using that toilet paper and then it's just like done. Like it's like one and done. Not sustainable, not good for the planet. Bamboo is a grass, which I hadn't really thought about until I had the call with the founder and I was like, oh yeah, you're right. This is kind of mind blowing. So bamboo, it just grows back. Like you cut it down, you mix the toilet paper and it grows right back. It is so cool. And what they've really done is they've really optimized their toilet paper to be super soft and amazing and you don't feel like you're missing out on anything from normal toilet paper and then they are so sustainable that there's zero plastic, oh, there's zero dyes and zero perfumes. That's an experience I've had with toilet paper where I accidentally have bought toilet paper that was scented and I was like, whoa, this is a problem. I do not want all these chemicals down there. So it's completely dye free, completely unscented and plastic free. Their packaging is so plastic free that there's not even plastic in the tape that they use, which that really inspired me. I was like, oh, I got to look into that for shipping my own stuff because that is next level. And then lastly, it comes straight to your door so you don't have to go out and get toilet paper anymore. Like so, so amazing. So we have an amazing discount for you guys. Oh wait, and then one last thing for every order that you buy, they plant a tree. So not only are you not cutting down trees, by buying this toilet paper, you are planting trees. I love it. They sent me free toilet paper, obviously to try so that I could speak to it. And now I'm like a customer, like I'm signing up myself, like I'm buying this. I love it so much. So you can go to realpaper .com slash if podcast and they have an incredible discount. You can use the coupon code IF podcast to get 30% off your first order plus free shipping. And that includes subscriptions. Their subscriptions are discounted. So that means if you get a subscription, which is discounted, you can get another 30% discount on that subscription. So definitely just go ahead and get a subscription. And if you don't like it, cancel, although you probably won't want to because you're going to love it. But either way, that's the way to get the best discount on your first order. So that is realpaper .com R E E L P A P E R .com slash I have podcasts, coupon code I have podcasts to get 30% off your first order plus free shipping. It's with times like these, Vanessa, that I wish you lived in the US so that you could be getting our bamboo toilet paper that I'm obsessed with.

Vanessa Spina:
with. I'm gonna try and see if there's something like that comparable in Europe but definitely when we're back in the U .S. I'm gonna try it.

Melanie Avalon:
Are you going to like, stay in Prague for forever?

Vanessa Spina:
No, not for, I don't think forever, but for the, like for now, this is where we are. But we're definitely going to be back, I think at Christmas towards the holidays. So I'll definitely try it. And whenever I'm back, I have like all the samples waiting at our place. Like I have so many things to try and stuff. So yeah, I'll definitely put that on my list.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh my goodness. I just realized we'll have to talk next episode. We haven't talked on the show since I like went to Europe, right? Oh my goodness. No. Oh my goodness. I have travel takeaway tips. Okay. You told me a little bit about it, but yeah. Okay. Teaser next episode. It has been so long. Okay. So fasting. So I decided to just randomly look up new fasting studies. This will also be really fun for me because it'll force me to really, you know, see what people are writing about with fasting these days. So this study, and I thought it was a great study for this episode because we have a question about it, although we might not get to it, in which case I'll just talk about it next time. But this was a case where I was reading another study, which was actually very new, but then I was like looking at the reference studies and then I found in the reference studies, this fun little study. So it was kind of like a rabbit hole. So this one is actually from 2021 published in new trance and it's called pre -exercise carbohydrate or protein ingestion influences substrate oxidation, but not performance or hunger compared with cycling in the fasted state. And so what they were looking at, they looked at 17 trained male cyclists doing high intensity interval training. So hit training, and they wanted to see how either doing it fasted after an overnight fast or doing it with a carbohydrate rich breakfast or a protein rich breakfast. How did it affect their fat burning as well as everything else going on. So it was really interesting. So the brief takeaways, well, they talked about in general, how like reducing your carb consumption before exercise has been shown pretty consistently in the literature to increase fat burning and also to increase the activation of beneficial cell signaling pathways and also to help with muscle adaptation. So we love that. But then they've talked about how historically as well that it's often recommended that people do eat carbs before exercise. If the exercise is going to be longer or more intense and that on the flip side, that athletes often get a little bit nervous about doing fasted training because they think that it will negatively affect their workout or that they'll get super hungry, even though they do tend to like the increased fat burning and they do tend to find that it improves gut comfort during exercise, which I know personally for me, one of the main reasons I would want to do fasted exercise is I just, the idea of working out with food in my stomach is just so like unpleasant sounding to me. Like Vanessa, do you like or mind working out with food in your stomach compared to an empty stomach?

Vanessa Spina:
I'm someone who likes to work out fasted, for sure, like I, and if I have eaten earlier in the day, it's okay. But there has to be quite a bit of time elapsed between that, but 99% of the time I'm working out fasted and it works the best for me, but I know a lot of people need to eat before. I actually have a question related to this, which will be fun to have this study to refer

Melanie Avalon:
to. Exactly. That's actually the study. I was hinting at before if we get to it, maybe we'll just like bump it up. So what they found was, oh, this is another, this is another something interesting they pointed out because the way this study was set up was that it was done in an overnight fasted state. So it wasn't presumably like a 24 hour fast or anything. It was just they had fasted overnight and then they exercised. And then they, the study pointed out that that sort of fasting would deplete liver glycogen, but not muscle glycogen. So they weren't concerned with performance decreases in the workout from muscle glycogen alone because people would still have that. It's really just the liver glycogen that would have been depleted. So in any case, what did they find? So they found between all of the different arms of the study that there was no difference for average power, oxidative stress, perceived exertion, or hunger. So I mean, that kind of says exactly what it says, but basically the actual ability for them to do the workout, the way it felt, like how hard it felt and whether or not they got hungrier or not wasn't any different based on if they had carbs before, protein before, or were fasted. And again, this was high intensity interval training for cyclists. So that's basically where you go really, really intense for a really short amount of time. Then you rest and then you go intense and then you go slower and then you go intense and then you go slower. That's the sort of workout it was, but it's a type of workout that is a very intense albeit shorter workout. Okay. So what differences did they find? They actually found that the fasted exercise did increase fat burning compared to having carbs. So the athletes burn more if they had fat. However, having a pre -exercise protein meal allowed similarly high levels of fat oxidation. So what I thought was really cool about this is basically, at least in this study, they found that the athletes could go fasted or they could eat protein and they would burn similar amounts of fat, which I think has a lot of implications. Maybe when people are playing around with their exercise performance and whether or not too fast and whether or not, you know, do they feel like they need some food beforehand? There's possibly the possibility that having protein might be a way to still allow you to have that fat burning while having some food in your stomach. And they did find as far as like the gut comfort that we were talking about, they did find that the protein meal did increase gut discomfort a little bit, but they said it was basically modest. So on the scale of 1 to 100, it was around a 21, like change. But it started at a 12. I'm not really sure how this rating system worked, but basically their gut comfort when they started was a 12 and then it only went up to about a 21 with the protein. So they said basically it wasn't like that bad. So it seemed like still viable that people could eat a protein meal beforehand and not have too much gut discomfort. And then they referenced a lot of prior studies that have been done on eating protein as the pre -exercise fuel meal. The results have been mixed. So some studies have found increased discomfort and some have not found that. So I think it's really an individuality when it comes to, you know, what actually best suits your gut and how you feel while exercising. But in any case, that's the basics of the study. It did go into a lot more detail and nuance, but I just found it really interesting, especially for people because we get a lot of questions and maybe we'll just go ahead and read the question that we have from the listener because we get a lot of questions on this show about people struggling to work exercise in with their fasting pattern and feeling like maybe they need to eat something. And it sounds like depending on the exercise, depending on you, there might be this possibility for having a protein -rich meal, a low -carb meal, before your exercise and still burning ample amounts of fat. It's not, you're not going to be in the fasted state, so, you know, don't think it's like magical that way, but it might be an option for people. And like I said, we can maybe read that listener's question. But before we do that, do you have any thoughts or comments, Vanessa?

Vanessa Spina:
So there's a really interesting study that's similar to this that I quote all the time on my podcast, Optimal Protein Podcast, because it's all about how basically if you do facet exercise, one of the main benefits is you get mitochondrial biogenesis. And so a lot of people feel like, well, they need to work out facet even if they don't feel comfortable doing that, because they want the mitochondrial biogenesis or the genesis of more mitochondria. And this study in particular that I'm mentioning talks about how if you actually eat protein meals, high protein meals, but you're not really eating a lot of carb, you basically get two thirds of the same amount of mitochondrial biogenesis. The expression of new mitochondria, you don't get the whole amount, but as much as two thirds. So for people who feel better eating before their meals and they don't like doing facet exercise, I always say if you're doing it low carb, keto -ish, high protein meal, then you're probably going to get the same amount of mitochondrial biogenesis. But now with this awesome study you're talking about, they also can rest assured that they're going to burn probably about the same amount of fat. And that's probably the connection between the two, is that you're relying on your stored body fat and so you have to generate more mitochondria as an adaptation. So I love that you chose this one to start off with and also because it relates back to this question, which I'd love to get to.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, I love that. So thank you. We'll have to put both of these studies in the show notes. And that's actually also similar because they talked about the oxidative stress potential. Yeah, they talked about the reactive oxygen species in exercise and they found that there wasn't any difference between the different arms in this study for oxidative stress markers. So that's really interesting. They actually said that that was surprising. They thought they would see a difference when they're not sure why. They said it might have to do with the fact that the individuals were well trained so that they had similar responses, which that goes into a whole rabbit hole.

Vanessa Spina:
There definitely should be way less if you're being fat -fueled because you don't have as much free radicals being created or generated from burning carbs, so I'm surprised.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh, says they also found a large degree of inter individual variability, which you know what that says to me that coupled with the fact they were saying the well trained individuals that clearly, I mean, I would think that what you're eating, especially if they saw variability, then clearly the different ones are having different effects, but a lot of it probably comes down to your overall, like your overall metabolic state and your exercise potential. And, you know, if you're more attuned to exercise and dealing with oxidative stress, you're probably better at dealing with it, which may sound a little obvious. What I'm trying to say is the oxidative stress potential probably isn't just about what you're eating. It's probably your overall body composition and your health and your, you know, how trained your mitochondria are in general.

Vanessa Spina:
If you have more mitochondria, then you take the burden off a little bit of creating as much as many free radicals. But I find that surprising because still, if you're being carb fueled, you're definitely going to get more, more free radicals. So that's interesting. Maybe it was the way they were measuring it or something. But yeah, thanks for sharing that.

Melanie Avalon:
No, thank you. So again, we will put links to that in the show notes and I'll go ahead and read the question we had kind of related. So the question was from Julianne and this came from Facebook. I've been asking for questions more in Facebook, by the way. So definitely join that group. It's IF Biohackers Intermittent Fasting plus Real Foods plus Life. Tangent, I'm still hacked. So my profile in there is like my fake little baby profile that I just made recently because all my old profiles are being run by who knows random people. So if you see crazy ads for me advertising random stuff, that's not me. So just as a disclaimer, but back to the Facebook group, definitely comment in there things you would like to hear on the show because I find it really great because people can chime in in the meantime on people's comments. So Julianne's question was how to deal with fasting as a person who works out early in the mornings, weight training and cardio. I find that I get extremely tired and hungry after. Is this a sign to shorten my fasting window or is there something I can do to continue fasting after working out but not feel so exhausted? And I will just draw attention to the fact that the study I was talking about again was HIIT HIIT training. So it's really intense but it's shorter and Julianne is talking about doing weight training and cardio. So she's doing like a longer exercise she's doing strength training and she's doing catabolic fat -burning cardio. So it's a little bit of a different situation but do you have any thoughts for Julianne, Vanessa?

Vanessa Spina:
I mean, if you're doing this kind of workout, doing weight training, especially, I would wanna maximize my returns from that by having like a protein shake after my workout and maybe taking in some calories as well, just because you're expending so much energy between the weight training and the cardio, and you're gonna be expending energy with that post -exercise oxygen burn for hours afterwards. You know, right away, when I saw this question, I was like, well, if you feel extremely tired and hungry after you're listening to your body, you definitely should refuel, and the optimal time to take in protein is right after doing weight training. So based on what we were just talking about with that awesome study that you brought in and the one that I mentioned as well, if you're eating a high protein meal, you're not gonna cut down on your fat burning. I'm not gonna say it's like you're fasted, but in a sense, you know, you're getting two thirds as much of the mitochondrial biogenesis, you know, but you're eating, you still did your workout fast, so you're gonna actually get all of the mitochondrial biogenesis, you're gonna get all the fat burning, and you're not gonna reduce any of that in the recovery period afterwards if you're eating a high protein meal that's very low in carb. So like a protein shake would be amazing, I think, optimal after that, and I definitely wouldn't try to force or push fasting if you're feeling extremely tired and hungry after. It's definitely a sign that, you know, you did an amazing workout, and you probably need to refuel, and you know, you wanna take in, it's a great time to take in some amazing nutrients and you know, high quality protein right after that workout. What do you think, Mani? Yeah.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, so I had a few thoughts. My one comment on that is maybe for one of the future studies I'll look because this study was looking at, you know, the protein before the exercise and how it affected fat burning. So I don't know what happens. I don't know how it would affect fat burning after exercise. I wonder if they've done a study on that and I bet they have. So I will try to find one. I just don't want to make that, at least from this study, I don't want to make that assumption. Although in theory, it would make sense if like the mechanics of the protein are not affecting fat burning. Hopefully that would extend to the post exercise fat burning potential period. So I think that's a great idea. What Vanessa said, that would be, you know, refuel with the protein, you could use her, her tone protein, that could be a great way to do it. Some ideas I had were, you're getting really tired and hungry. First of all, I would look at, at your sleep because it sounds like you're somebody you said you work out early in the morning. So it sounds like you're one of those people that gets up really early to work out, which is like literally the most, uh, I just can't do it. So props to you. Are you at all sacrificing your sleep for that workout? Because if you're starting it off in a sleep deprived state already, that can be one way to help with the tiredness that isn't even food or fasting related. So really honoring the sleep and then also, so when is your last meal? So if you don't want to eat, because basically you have kind of three options here that I was thinking you have option one that Vanessa just mentioned, which is to refuel with protein right after, which I really liked that idea. And then kind of playing around with that and maybe adjusting your fasting windows accordingly. So maybe, maybe if you weren't eating that earlier in the day beforehand, but now you are maybe like ending your eating window earlier so that you're still getting a longer fast leader. You're just kind of changing around where your fasting hours are. And again, we don't know when Julian's fasting hours are normally. So it's sort of hard to comment, but that's one idea. Second idea was to do kind of like what that study was that I just mentioned, which would be to have your protein meal, low carb protein meal right before exercising. So you would still get the fat burning and there's the potential that it might help with that tiredness, even though they didn't see any difference in performance between the three different arms, other studies have. And it might be for you that that's like what helps. And especially actually backtracking that study did mention that like studies on longer duration exercise, which it sounds like what Julian is doing, that the meal likely has more of an effect. So that might be a way to solve that, to have that protein meal beforehand. And then again, you could kind of do that trick. I just mentioned where if you were eating later on the day, kind of stopping your eating window earlier in the day. So now you're kind of just shifting around your fasting hours to keep the same amount of fasting hours, but fueling that workout with protein with a low carb meal. Other option I thought of was if you are eating dinner still, so if you're still eating like kind of late at night or dinner, and then you're waking up and doing your workout, maybe, I don't know, this is controversial, maybe eating later or eating more the night before. So really getting in your fuel, ample fuel the night before, maybe that would be enough to carry you through with that morning workout. Because again, I don't know when your normal eating window is. So it might be that you're stopping eating too early in the evening, and so by the time you're fast to workout, you're just too much into the fast. Maybe you need a shorter overnight fast for that. So that's an option as well. Basically, there's a lot of options to play around with. I'm a bad person to ask because I'm like, just don't work out early in the morning because I don't like that. But you do you and I support. So definitely let us know, Julian, if you find something that works for you. Do you have any other comments, Vanessa? No, I think that was great. Awesome. Okay, so I will go ahead and read another question. Valerie wants to know, how do you find the right fasting window, the time of day plus duration for you? And I was really excited to talk about this because I don't think Vanessa and I have talked about this on the show. I was actually going to ask you, Vanessa, how do you recommend people find the fasting window that works for them?

Vanessa Spina:
I think experimentation is really, really useful when it comes to this because you're only really going to be able to dial in what you like best with trying lots of different ways of doing it. So I remember when I first, first started intermittent fasting, you know, I read Oreo Hoffa Makers book, the warrior diet. So I tried, you know, fasting all day and just having the OMAAD, one meal a day at dinner, but I have tried every single variation. And sometimes I think I'll like a certain approach and then I'll try it and I don't like it. And then other times I think I won't like it and I end up liking it. So, you know, I thought that I would love doing breakfast and lunch and not having dinner. Did not like that at all. It didn't work for us as a family and it just was not, you know, convenient or sustainable. And then I thought that I would really not like doing breakfast and then dinner and fasting between breakfast and dinner. But I ended up liking that, you know, and sometimes, you know, I revert back to different, you know, I've actually been going back to doing one meal a day more recently and I'm really enjoying that again. So, you know, I think you have to try out different things and, you know, if you could try out the first one, you could love it and then be done or you could try it out and be like, this doesn't work for me and kind of, you know, try different variations. But it also depends on your goals and, you know, what you're wanting to to achieve. But I think the best way is just by trying different ones and then, you know, starting with something that you think lines up with one of your goals and seeing how that works for you. What about you? Didn't you say you're doing one meal?

Melanie Avalon:
meal a day now.

Vanessa Spina:
Yeah, so recently, I've gone back to doing one meal a day and just trying that on the weekends, I usually go back to doing breakfast and dinner. And that's usually because, you know, we're all together with the family, we're having those meals together. But like Monday to Friday, I have been going back to doing my one meal a day, which is not really one meal, it's more like dinner. And then I have a protein shake a little bit later on. So it's kind of like two meals, but it feels like one meal. And I'm just really finding it works great for me during the day. In terms of like having lots of energy during the day, I end up doing my workout fasted. And, you know, my days right now are not because I'm on maternity leave, they're pretty slow. So, you know, there's I'm not doing a ton of activity. I am like breastfeeding actively, and that's going great. And, you know, it didn't affect my breastfeeding, because I still maintain my hydration, I maintain my calorie level, quite high, and, you know, eat tons of protein and nutrient dense foods. So I think, you know, that's, that's really important. But, you know, playing around with the different windows, like I was saying, that's, that's really how you find what's best for you. And it also depends on what you're optimizing for. Like when I was pregnant, you know, I wasn't able to fast all day and just have one meal a day, you know, that's, that's probably pretty obvious. But, you know, for some people, that might actually still work for them. I don't know, it depends on the person depends on the individual, most people probably wouldn't be able to fast all day while pregnant. I didn't think that I would be able to do OMAD while breastfeeding. And yet, I tried it actually kind of came about accidentally, because we all got the stomach flu. And I had no appetite for several days. And I was, I was a little bit concerned that it would affect my supply, but I maintain my hydration as taking my element the entire time, because I still I wasn't having aversions to that. So even though I didn't want to eat anything, I was able to keep my hydration up. And that really, really helped. And thankfully, it didn't affect my supply, even though I couldn't eat for a few days. And then I was like, I think maybe I'll, you know, try the OMAD and see how that goes. And it also didn't affect my supply. So you know, I think that just works well for me. It's a pattern that I really like. So yeah, that's, that's sort of what I'm doing right now.

Melanie Avalon:
for listeners if they would like to get element electrolytes, which we love. They have an unflavored one, which is clean, fast friendly, and then they have a lot of awesome flavors as well, if you would like to have around your eating window. So you can go to www .drinklmnt .com slash ifpodcast, and that will get you a free sample pack with your purchase, which is awesome. It's funny, I had COVID over the holidays as well, which is not the same thing as the flu. I do, but when I got that, all I wanted was meat, and so I actually did a carnivore stent for 10 days. Wow, that's interesting. Yeah, it was interesting that last time I got COVID, too, it was the same thing. I think I was just so exhausted, and my body was like, I just need pure nutrients, which is meat. So yeah, those were great recommendations. I love how you experiment with so many different windows. We're very different that way.

Vanessa Spina:
like this month I could be back on two meals a day or I could be doing three meals a day or yeah.

Melanie Avalon:
I've been doing the same thing for, you know, a decade, haven't budged, maybe tried something different like once. I was like, nope. My recommendation. So I actually created a quiz for this question. So if you go to Melanie Avalon .com slash if quiz, I totally forgot about this quiz completely until I read this question. I was like, oh my gosh, I forgot that I had this. I should retake it myself right now. So go there and it will make a recommendation for the type of fasting you should do. Like whether you should do like a one meal day type approach, whether you should do where you're counting the hours on the clock, like I just have different options that it'll give you. But the way I formulated it is I always kind of approach it from like, what's important to you in your life. So rather than starting with like, I'm going to do this hours of fasting, I ask questions like what meals are most important to you in general? Like I think that's a good place to start. Are you, you know, are you a breakfast person? Are you a lunch person? Are you a dinner person? Cause that's going to, first of all, that's going to show you which hours of the day you should probably be eating ish. And then beyond that, like once you kind of know the general time of the day that you want it to be, then it's like, do you, like, how do you feel with the counting and the rules aspect of it? So like, do you want to kind of not really count hours and like go by the clock? Do you want to just be more general and vague? So it's like, oh, I'm, I eat lunch and dinner or I eat dinner or I eat breakfast. Like that approach works really well for some people. Some people want like the accountability and the boundaries and they find freedom in the rules. So for them, it's like they want to count the specific hours that they're eating or on the flip side, they want to count the specific hours that they're fasting. I found that there's two types of people. Some people like to count the fasting. Some people like to count the eating. I always, when I started, I like to count the fasting hours. So I would always make sure that I went like a minimum of a certain amount of hours and then I would eat. But it's like Jen, for example, my former co -host, she always counted the eating hours. So like she, she would stop eating by a certain time, for example, and that's what made her feel the best. Whereas to me, that was like really scary because like I, not scary, but I, like when I'm eating, I don't want to like think, oh, I have to be done eating by this certain amount of time. Like I just want to feast and eat and like all the things. So there's a lot of mindset that actually goes into finding your perfect window. And then I think also you can either, you know, if you feel comfortable and think it would work for you, you can start intense with like, you know, one meal a day or a 17, 18, 19 hour fast. Some people need to go more slowly and start with like a 12 hour fast and slowly increase. So basically there's a lot of psychology that goes into it. I really think it's more psychology than maybe not more than anything else, but that's a major part in finding your right eating window. And also just know that you don't have to like get it right the first time. So like Vanessa was saying, if, if you try something and it doesn't work, that's fine. Also make sure that you give it enough time to see if it's working, especially if you're not fat adapted. So like, if you're not fat adapted and you try fasting for a day and you're like, oh, I can't do this, like give it longer. Like commit, commit to, um, I mean, it's hard to put a number on it, but you definitely want to commit to it long enough to make those adaptations and see if it actually is working for you and then tweaking accordingly. But yeah, I would definitely just start with melonyablon .com slash if quiz, and that will be a great starting point for you. You can also get my book, what, when wine, I talk all about this in there as well with much more detail. Yeah. Yeah. Any other thoughts about that, Vanessa?

Vanessa Spina:
No, I think that was amazing. He created a quiz for it. That's so perfect for anyone listening to go and try it.

Melanie Avalon:
I should go make some more quizzes. Have you ever made a quiz?

Vanessa Spina:
I think I yeah I've done I've done them before using I think I used something called monkey survey a long time ago and it was really fun.

Melanie Avalon:
I remember when I was researching it and I remember Monkey Survey being one of the ones I was looking at, it's just so much that you have to think about the questions, how much are they weighted, how much do they affect the outcome, and if you go down this route, does it... It's like a whole thing. I was like, oh, this is like a whole thing. I was really happy with the outcome because I would take it and it works for me, it gives me what I am. I would be curious what it... Ooh, you should take it and see what it gives you, I'd be really curious. Really fun. Okay. Well, this has been absolutely wonderful. So a few things for listeners before we go. The show notes will have a full transcript as well as links to everything that we talked about. Those will be at ifodcast .com slash episode 360. Don't forget to go to Apple Podcasts and subscribe and or write a brief review and or update your review that you wrote in the past for the show and then send a screenshot of that review to questions at ifodcast .com so we can enter you into our giveaway to win the full AvalonX line, Vanessa's Tone Protein, as well as a special surprise from MD Logic. Yeah, you can get all of the stuff that we like at ifpodcast .com slash stuff we like. You can follow us on Instagram, we are ifodcast, I am Melanie Avalon, Vanessa is Katogenic Girl, and I am now on TikTok, Melanie Avalon Biohacker. So I think that is all the things. Anything from you, Vanessa, before we go?

Vanessa Spina:
I had so much fun and can't wait to record the next one with you.

Melanie Avalon:
Me too. This has been so amazing. I will talk to you next week. OK, talk to you then. Bye. Bye. Thank you so much for listening to the Intermission Fasting podcast. Please remember, everything we discussed on this show does not constitute medical advice, and no patient -doctor relationship is formed. See you next week.

Melanie Avalon:
Thank you so much for listening to the Intimation Fasting Podcast. Please remember, everything we discussed on this show does not constitute medical advice and no patient-doctor relationship is formed. If you enjoyed the show, please consider writing a review on iTunes. We couldn't do this without our amazing team. Administration by Sharon Merriman, editing by Podcast Doctors, show notes and artwork by Brianna Joyner, and original theme composed by Leland Cox and recomposed by Steve Saunders.

STUFF WE LIKE

Check out the Stuff We Like page for links to any of the books/supplements/products etc. mentioned on the podcast that we like!

More on Vanessa: ketogenicgirl.com

Theme Music Composed By Leland Cox: LelandCox.com

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Mar 04

Episode 359: Morning Routines, Blue Light, Grounding, Brown Fat, Emotional Conservation, Daily Protein, Natural Flavors, Muscle Loss, And More!

Intermittent Fasting

Welcome to Episode 359 of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast, hosted by Melanie Avalon, author of What When Wine Diet: Lose Weight And Feel Great With Paleo-Style Meals, Intermittent Fasting, And Wine and Vanessa Spina, author of Keto Essentials: 150 Ketogenic Recipes to Revitalize, Heal, and Shed Weight.

Today's episode of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast is brought to you by:

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SHOW NOTES

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Listener Q&A: Sadi - Total protein for the day

Listener Q&A: Karen - Can you speak to ‘natural flavors’?

Listener Q&A: Katie - I am so torn between fasting and eating enough protein

Listener Q&A: Marisa - Can you please address Isoleucine restriction as it relates to longevity?

Dietary restriction of isoleucine increases healthspan and lifespan of genetically heterogeneous mice

Listener Q&A: Stephanie - Thoughts on taking mineral supplements

Listener Q&A: Lori - I’d love ideas on how to firm up my skin after weight loss after the age of 50

Our content does not constitute an attempt to practice medicine and does not establish a doctor-patient relationship. Please consult a qualified healthcare provider for medical advice and answers to personal health questions.

TRANSCRIPT

(Note: This is generated by AI with 98% accuracy. However, any errors may cause unintended changes in meaning.) 

Melanie Avalon:
Welcome to Episode 359 of the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. If you want to burn fat, gain energy, and enhance your health by changing when you eat, not what you eat with no calorie counting, then this show is for you. I'm Melanie Avalon, biohacker, author of "What, When, Wine" and creator of the supplement line AvalonX. And I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Spina, sports nutrition specialist, author of "Keto Essentials" and creator of the Tone Breath Ketone Analyzer and Tone Lux Red Light Therapy Bannals. For more on us, check out ifpodcast.com, melanieavalon.com, and ketogenicgirl.com. Please remember, the thoughts and opinions on this show do not constitute medical advice or treatment. To be featured on the show, email us your questions to questions@ifpodcast.com. We would love to hear from you. So pour yourself a mug of black coffee, a cup of tea, or even a glass of wine, if it's that time, and get ready for the Intermittent Fasting Podcast.


Vanessa Spina:
Hello everyone, and welcome to the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. I'm your host, Vanessa Spina, and I have a wonderful co host joining us again, Scott Emmons from MD Logic. How are you doing today, Scott?

Scott Emmens:
I'm doing wonderful. Pleasure to be back on the show with you, Vanessa. Looking forward to our questions for the day. I always get to learn so much and get a further understanding of what people are concerned with and the questions they have recently. So yeah, super excited.

Vanessa Spina:
Awesome. Yeah, I'm excited too and just can't wait to get into these questions. I had so much fun recording the last one with you. So much fun to have you back here on this one. And it's early March when this episode is coming out, and it's my birthday week, march eigth.

Scott Emmens:
Hey, happy birthday.

Vanessa Spina:
Thanks.

Scott Emmens:
Spring break is coming up. The weather should be breaking soon, so looking forward to that.

Vanessa Spina:
I am too. I'm really excited for just spring in general. I mean, I'm enjoying winter more and more since I have started embracing the cold, learning about circadian health, cold adaptation, which we were just talking about on the last episode, and all the benefits that you get from that. So we could talk actually a little bit about morning routines. But since I've been diving more deeply into this red light is a huge part of my morning routine and also getting out and getting the sun on my body throughout the day, but specifically, especially at two times, and that's at sunrise if I'm up for it, which I usually am. And in the winter, like just standing out there and doing some grounding. Standing out in our garden, doing some grounding. I definitely look like a psychopath if you are not into any of this stuff. But I'm barefoot in the garden, like, walking around just for, like, five to ten minutes, getting some light on my body. And it's amazing to know that that's really signaling the melanopsin in my eyes and skin and initiating these hormonal cascades and also getting a bit of uva light a little bit later in the morning. And it's so important in the winter, I think about so often so many of us work and live in indoor environments now, which is such a contrast to our ancestors. And not only that, but windows that we have filter out most of the red light, and they let in all the blue, and then we're staring at blue screens. It's almost like we're in an experiment designed to see, how bad is blue light for you. Because the way we live our lives, we just get so little natural light. And you think about the time, if you don't live in Hawaii or Australia or other parts, the winter is generally cold, and so we're indoors even more. And I'm one of those people who always used to want to be comfortable all the time. And if I saw someone outside in the morning, in the winter, barefoot, I'd be like, what is going on with that person? But apparently, getting that light exposure during the day is even more important than avoiding blue light at night, which says so much, right?

Scott Emmens:
100%. It is so difficult to do in the winter, but I have really made an effort. Now my son thinks I'm insane because where I ground, he has a sliding basement door. So I'm standing in front of his sliding basement door. So when he opens his curtains every now and then, he sees his dad in shorts in, like, 30 degree weather, standing barefoot out in the sun. He's like, dad, you're mental. And I'm like, listen, kid, when you're 52, you're going to be doing the same thing because you're going to be in worse shape than me, because at least in my 20s, we were outdoors doing things we didn't have computers. You're right. The amount of blue light, and more importantly, the fact that we really don't get much sunlight on our face. Like, you get in your car, you might have a little commute, but even then, your windows might be tinted, and even a non tinted window is preventing some of the natural light from getting to you. You really have to get some direct face and eye and skin exposure. And the earlier in the morning, the better. It's going to reset your clock. And if you don't believe me, go camping for a week. Don't bring any melatonin or sleep aids. Go out there, wake up when the sun goes up, and I promise you, by 930, you will be knocked out dead asleep.

Vanessa Spina:
We spent so much time at our cabin or cottage growing up, and I always used to go to bed at, like, eight whenever we're there, when we're camping, it's the same thing. And I always used to think it was because we didn't have tv, but it's probably that blue light coming from screens and just the routines that are so important. And it's amazing how these simple, free hacks are just aligning ourselves with that circadian rhythm that ancestrally, we would have spent all of our time outdoors. Even if we were sleeping in caves or in different fabricated habitats, we would have been outside all the time. And now we're doing the exact opposite of that. And it's amazing how these really simple things, like grounding like that. It's funny your son laughs at you because Luca loves it. Like, kids have so much brown fat all over their bodies, and we can actually gain it back. So there was this one study where this individual had a tumor on their adrenal glands, and they were constantly secreting adrenaline, and they had brown fat all over their bodies, so we can actually get it back. But when you're born, you have so much of it. So Luca doesn't really feel the cold, much. Like when we're outside in the winter, he loves it, and it's very rare that he'll say to me, like, I'm cold. And it's because it's really cold, and he's, like, dropped a glove or something like that. But kids have so much brown fat, they're constantly outside trying to take clothes off, and we're, like, putting layers on. You know, we can really learn so much from that. They're also in and out of ketosis all the time. And that's been really interesting with Luca because I have the tone device. I can check his ketones, and he loves it. Like, daddy checks his ketones, mommy checks her ketones, and he loves just taking it and blowing into it. And it's kind of fun because it's got graphics on it, and it gives know a number, like a readout, and he's in ketosis all the time. And we're born with that. The brown fat and the metabolic flexibility and our super comfortable lifestyles and environments and convenience food basically gets rid of all of those superpowers that we're born with. And now we're trying to reclaim through these different biohacks and things.

Scott Emmens:
People, they look at biohacking and they sort of think, like, I don't know if they think it's cheating or it's crazy, but really, we're just trying to get our bodies back to the natural state of things. It's because the modern lifestyle makes that know. It's funny, I hadn't even thought of this till you mentioned luca, but I remember being five to, like, eight and outside for five or 6 hours in the snow, making a snowman, like, for literally hours and not getting cold.

Vanessa Spina:
Same. Making a fort.

Scott Emmens:
Yeah, making a fort, which was. God, I used to love that your.

Vanessa Spina:
Parents have to call you in and you're like, no.

Scott Emmens:
Yeah, it was very rare that maybe my feet would get cold or something, or my hands, because the gloves were so. But, like, my body, I don't really recall shivering. I was basically out there building snow forts, having snowball fights, making snowmen for hours. And I think a lot of it was just your body's natural adaptation and the brown fat you develop and have when you're young. So that's an interesting observation with Luca.

Vanessa Spina:
Yes, I notice that, and I hear it from other people who practice similar morning routines with grounding, with red lights. I'll tell you mine, basically, I do that outside, and I turn on red light if I'm up before sunrise and just have it ambiently. So, like, if I'm in the bathroom with Luca or he's having a bath or something, and he know having the red light, and I try to do my red light therapy session sometime in there, and then typically, I'll have a coffee with almond milk. And that's usually how I start, like, the first hour of my day or so. What about you?

Scott Emmens:
My first hour of the day is, typically, I will try to go for either a walk if it's too cold, if it's not too cold, I'll be able to go outside on the grass. Can't be concrete, or it's got to be grass. Barefoot, maybe ten minutes in the sun, not long, just ten minutes in the sun. And then I will be usually drinking my coffee simultaneously. Then, if I still have the time, I'll make some fresh squeezed lemon juice, which is really great to get your bile and your liver kind of going for the day. And then I may wait an hour or two, take a berberine, and then I'll make usually like three to four eggs over easy, and that's pretty much it. I just eat those eggs and that gets me through most of the day to like 132 o'clock. But my morning routine is basically getting light. That's the most important thing. Grounding if possible, and then coffee with some nutrients, electrolytes and hydration. Pretty simple.

Vanessa Spina:
I love hearing people's morning routines. I have this one book, and I think it's called morning rituals of creatives or something like that. And it talks about all the highest producing poets and writers and scientists, and every page is like their morning routine. And sometimes it's their whole day. And it's so funny because it's like some of the most prolific writers that we absolutely adore and revere. They were like sleeping in the day, getting up, smoking a pack of cigarettes, having coffee, staying indoors a lot, just like some really unhealthy situations. But it's like they did whatever they could to preserve their creative energies. And it's just funny because some of them are really healthy, and then others are just like, they're so unhealthy, and yet it was whatever they needed to be able to perform. And I know for myself, in order to be really productive and clear and coherent and creative, especially, I have to protect my mental energy so much. The rest of the time when I'm not preparing to podcast, I have to do nothing. I have to basically do nothing. And I also have to protect myself constantly from negative news and negative, just negativity. And if I do that, then I can be really creative and high producing. And it's almost to the point where I have all these boundaries around me to prevent that stuff from getting in. But I have to be like this, and I have to tell my husband all the time, I don't want to hear that a horrible story, because I have to protect my energy. And it's interesting. Do you have anything like that that you feel like you have to create boundaries around or to get in a flow state or something?

Scott Emmens:
Yeah, so that's fascinating. I had not even mentioned this to you at all, I don't think. But I have been working on some articles and considering. So launching a podcast that's going to be health based, probably January 22 is my goal, but let's just hope it's January 22. But I also have been thinking about launching a podcast called emotional conservation. And it's a combination. Yeah, seriously. So this is so crazy that you're mentioning this, because I haven't mentioned this to anyone.

Vanessa Spina:
Wow.

Scott Emmens:
Yeah. And the whole idea is that, look, you only have so much creative mental energy to output, right? What are the things you can do to help yourself keep both your emotional conservation and your emotional iq functioning? So your emotional iq is how well you're able to empathize, how well you're able to understand what other people are going through and when the right thing to say is something. But when your emotional conservation or your emotional stores are low, your emotional iq by default, even if you know what to do, becomes harder to do it because you're agitated, you're tired, you haven't saved up the energy, you can't be creative. You get overwhelmed. So that's something I've been digging a lot into. And one of the things I found that's been helpful is not just the morning routine, but the nighttime routine helps set up the morning routine. So, for example, I have a jug of water that I put next to my bed before I go to bed. I have an electrolyte pack next to that jug of water. And so sometimes I'll take electrolytes, sometimes I won't, but I will chug the water first thing in the morning when I wake up. That's like the first thing I do. But I have it in the night, my gratitude journal. Instead of writing in the morning when I've already, like, I'm ready to go and get going, I'll kind of write that in the evening. If I've got concerns or worries, I write those down in the evening, shut off my phone, I put it on do not disturb in airplane mode around 930 or 10:00 and then that's it. Then I get in bed and I'm prepared and ready for the next day because I don't have things hanging over me. I know what I want to do. And that helps with the emotional conservancy. And then as far as the news and negative media, yeah, that doesn't go on at all past like 02:00 if ever. I just try to skip through it. Even when I go to my little Microsoft browser and it's got articles that are clickbait, I'm like, skip. No, don't want to hear that. Don't care because you've only got so much emotion to give out. Yeah, really interesting you mentioned that. So you may be seeing the emotional conservation podcast sometime in 2024.

Vanessa Spina:
Well, you're going to have to have me on as a guest because I'm obsessed with this topic.

Scott Emmens:
You're booked. Consider yourself booked.

Vanessa Spina:
It's so funny because I just tell Pete all the time. He's a protector, he's a provider, he's a protector. He's constantly screening information for danger. He's on Twitter or x a lot, and he's like telling me information and I'm like, this information does nothing for me or for my ability to create positivity in the world. And he doesn't fully get it, I think, because he really needs to be informed because that's his primary goal, is, like, protecting and providing for us. But I'm a creative person and that stuff just sucks all my positive energy out and it just kills it. And there's so much negative news that is so like this really disempowering feeling. I'm not saying be ignorant, but you feel so disempowered by it. And so I think maybe I'm sensitive also to other people's states. Anytime I hear about something horrible happening, I'm like, to someone else, I just feel it. I feel it. And then I can't get in a good state to be creative or I can't get in the flow. You really have to protect yourself and your mental energy if you're going to go out and create and have the energy to create. And at the end of the day, I think it's okay to be maybe a little bit ignorant sometimes of the bad things happening in the world because that's what the news is always highlighting. And they're not highlighting the fact that, let's say, 500,000 successful births happened today. And this 95 year old man celebrated his birthday surrounded by all his family. And these people just got a well in their village. Actually, there's some Instagram accounts now that finally have good news. Those are the only ones, like, to follow. But it doesn't get clicks, it doesn't get reactions. And now it seems like so much of the content that we see is like, there's actually accounts that I've heard on podcasts. Their whole mo is just posting stuff that is controversial or gives you a negative reaction because it gets the most engagement. Like they purposely are designing content for people that will make them click or comment. And it's the stuff that makes you feel outraged. And it's like, I don't want to feel outraged. I don't want to feel all this. And then all your energy then goes towards that, and then you don't have it left for yourself and for the good you want to put out for the good you want to put out into the world. So I think it's okay to be conservative. And be protective of your energy.

Scott Emmens:
And I used to be a lot like Pete, right? And I would do dive into research and articles and what's going on in the world and try to spread this information. And what I found was it didn't make my family happier. It didn't help them. It made them feel exactly like you said. And I think the more empathetic you are, the more it negatively affects you because you want to help. But there's very little that you can tangibly do in a lot of these situations. Can you be supportive of people? Can you feel empathy for them? Yes. But the way that it's portrayed is sort of like it's your fault the environment's dying and it's your fault and you should do this. And people, then, they want to pick sides. Look, we pick sides over football teams and politicians and whether this brand is better than that brand, or whether we pick sides over almost anything. And I think that's been weaponized to some extent because it works to your point. It gets clicks, it gets people engaged. It gets engagement, it keeps people on. I don't see people on twitter for 2 hours having, hey, I really like you too. I think your point is wrong. And your point. No, here's my point. And you know what happens at the end of the day, neither one of them has convinced them of anything other than they've spent 2 hours arguing and spending a lot of negative energy. So I just walked away from that because it doesn't do any good. And it does leave you feeling a little bit unempowered. But also for people, like, I think for you and I and other people that are empathetic, it kind of hurts. And it leaves with this sort of sad feeling. So I get where Pete's coming from, and I used to do that same thing, and I just realized it's not helping my family. And frankly, it wasn't helping me either, because I'm like, I started spinning down this negative sort of spiral in my. Got to cut that out. So about three years ago, I just stopped watching the news pretty much altogether. But believe it or not, no matter how much you try to not watch the news, you still get it anyway. So if it's really that important, you're not going to be ignorant. You're going to hear about it, you're going to know about it. It's just not in your face all the time. It's not being presented by me to my family where they're like, is dad losing it? He really seems tense about this stuff. And kids want to feel safe.

Vanessa Spina:
It's designed to make you tense. It's designed to make tense and to react and to get that reaction from you. And I'm so glad that you became aware of it. It's hard sometimes to make people be aware of it. I have this game I play with Pete, so he'll tell me the news of the day, and I'm like, thanks for the daily outrage. We're all addicted to it, and it is very addictive. And I think he'll smile when I say that. But it's true. Your brain starts to become more and more wired a certain way towards getting used to receiving certain feelings and emotions and reactions. And it's definitely being used against us. Like, the fact that we are like that and the fact that we're programmed to always be looking for that tiger in the bush, that the negative stuff, it sticks out. It stands out so much more. And you have to actually deliberately put boundaries around yourself to make sure you cultivate the opposite, because you're always going to be. We are the descendants of the most paranoid, the most conspiracy theorists, like cavemen and women, because the ones who were not looking for the tigers in the bush got pretty much eaten, right?

Scott Emmens:
Yeah, they're right here. Welcome to the Daily ps. Stay with Scott and Vanessa.

Vanessa Spina:
Yeah, I could talk about this stuff for hours. Yeah, I love talking about morning routines. Biohacks. I got all fired up about the biohacks from the last episode that we talked about. We had some really phenomenal questions, as usual. Let's get into some of today's questions. The first one comes to us from Sadie, if you'd like to read it, Scott.

Scott Emmens:
Absolutely. Thank you, Sadie, for the question from Sadie. I understand the concept and goal of consuming x amount of total protein per day. For me, it's desired body weight or lean mass because I have a lot of body fat to lose. And the goal to consume at least 30 to 40 grams of protein at each meal to get enough leucine to activate PMS. I don't think we want to activate PMS. I think we're talking about muscle protein synthesis, or in this case, protein muscle synthesis. But vanessa, I would guess we're not looking to activate PMS anytime.

Vanessa Spina:
I don't want to activate PMS. I definitely want to activate muscle protein synthesis. And we all know Sadie was meaning to say muscle protein synthesis, but she probably had autocorrect on, and it gets me every.

Scott Emmens:
So we had to have a little fun with that.

Vanessa Spina:
I love typos. I love them. They are.

Scott Emmens:
So, yeah, enough leucine to activate muscle protein synthesis. But if I'm doing one to two protein shakes a day to help keep calories low, lose body fat with just one scoop of whey protein, 20 grams of protein with added EA powder to increase the leucine content to activate mps. Doing this until tone protein comes out. Would my total protein for the day decrease since each shake is only 20 grams, but enough leucine to activate? Hope that makes sense. So you think, yes, it does. But vanessa, take it away.

Vanessa Spina:
So this is exactly why we created tone protein is to be able to hit your protein target without having to take down like six chicken breasts all the time, and to be able to eating 100 to 150 grams of protein. I think a lot of people fall in that sort of amount for their daily target, and it's sometimes hard to get that. That's like the number one thing I hear from people is that how do I possibly eat this much protein a day? We're not used to it. Maybe men are more used to it. Women are not used to it. We're used to eating salads and light food, calorie light foods and diet foods and things like that that we were told would help us recompose our bodies. We didn't know we were supposed to be eating the protein and hitting the gym instead of eating the salads and hitting the treadmill. And that's shifting. Now we're understanding what fitness really is from a female perspective as well. And I think just hitting that protein target, it can be difficult because it's a learning curve. There's a learning curve, and I've learned how to do it in different ways. But I wanted to create something that I myself could use so that I could take one serving of a high quality whey protein shake that is enhanced with leucine, similar to what you're doing by adding in some actually essential amino acids. But you could just be adding in bcaas and you'd be enhancing your protein meal or your protein shake, in this case, with the added leucine content. And so you don't need the EAA powder, just bcas. Or you could just take tone protein because you said you were doing this until tone protein comes out, and it's definitely out now. And so you could either do that, keep doing what you're doing, or you could try tone protein because it does the same thing. But to answer your question, your total protein for the day will decrease because you're getting maybe five or six less grams. Doing a scoop of tone protein or the scoop of the whey protein with the added bcaas. So the shakes, like you were saying, they end up being less than that. Like 30 to 35 grams range that I recommend for a protein meal. But it doesn't matter because what matters is you're raising the level leucine in your blood to initiate pms or muscle protein synthesis.

Scott Emmens:
Yeah, we'll call that protein muscle synthesis.

Vanessa Spina:
Yes, exactly.

Scott Emmens:
It is mps, though, for folks who just want to be totally clear on it. By the time folks are hearing this podcast, Vanessa MD Logical have launched a leucine only capsule. So you will not need to have anything other than just the leucine capsule. And you can add it to the whey protein, although you don't need to because you're getting four full grams. But let's say you're traveling and you want to have the chicken breast, but you want to make sure you're getting enough leucine or you want to have just two spikes. You want to have a spike before your workout, but you don't want to have another protein shake. You just want to have a full meal, but you want to just kind of make sure. Am I getting that leucine? You'll get three capsules, will give you 1.5 grams. So if you do four capsules, you'd be close to two. And six capsules give you a full 3 grams of leucine. So if you were to take three capsules with a meal, you'd probably be right in that three to four gram range, depending on the meal you're eating. We will probably also, by this point, have an essential amino acid powder out that's going to be coming out and it will have 2 grams of leucine total. So it's not going to hit that quite that four. But to me, that would be something that I'm going to experiment with pre workout. So it's going to be kind of my pre workout drink. I might add a leucine capsule or two to it prior to my workout. And then my post workout is going to be the tone protein because I'm going to get the full grams of a complete 20 grams of protein plus the 4 grams of leucine. For me, it's hard for me to drink a protein shake and work out, like to be a little lighter in my stomach when I work out. So I'm probably going to do like an EA pre workout, maybe with a leucine cap or not. And then my tone protein shake will either be like in the morning as a substitute for my breakfast. And then that'll be my post workout because I'm really at that age of 52, it's getting more difficult to maintain muscle mass. So that's probably going to be my routine. I'll keep you posted once if I get to come back after March and we'll let you know how that routine is going. But I'm super excited just for the tone. I've seen an improvement with just that, but I think my routine is going to be a tone protein post an EA pre and loosing capsules with meals or when I'm traveling and I just can't bring along the tone or the that.

Vanessa Spina:
I love that. And yeah, I love that you love tone protein, too, and so does Sadie. I hope that you get to try it out and let us know how you are liking it, Sadie. But I love that in the know you crafted your own formulation. That's totally what I've been doing for so. And I know you have been too, Scott. So our next question comes to us from Karen on Facebook, and she says, can you speak to, quote unquote, natural flavors? I have heard and read to steer clear as there isn't much regulation on what they can include. However many products that are endorsed by people that I have come to trust have them. So how do you shift through what is healthy and what is not?

Scott Emmens:
So that's a great question. And I think the reason that you are saying many people you've come to trust have them in their products is in order to make any kind of flavor, you need a natural flavor binder of some kind. For vanilla, for example, it's very hard to extract the flavor out of the bean. And so you need to utilize the natural vanilla flavor and combine it with other natural flavors to make sure that it pops. So if you've got a reputable company that you trust and people that you trust, they're going to have natural flavors that are exactly what they say, right? It's natural flavors to enhance the vanilla flavor or the orange flavor. So if it's a protein drink from a company you trust, or it is a pre workout drink from a company that you trust, and there aren't 18 or 19 different ingredients like silicon dioxides and dyes and flavors and other things, I think you're really safe. Now, they are regulated in terms of grass, meaning the FDA says they have to be generally recognized as safe. You'll often hear that referred to as grass. So they have to be generally recognized as safe to be included in whatever it is you're eating. Where I get concerned on natural flavors is particularly in things like processed foods or processed sugary drinks. For example. Potato chips are a good example. Cheetos are a good example. Fast food is another one where they'll add these natural flavors. And at that point, it could be a cacophony of 19 different ingredients. Whereas typically, when you're looking at something like a whey protein or a pre workout drink, you're looking at two or three ingredients in those natural flavors that are not only grass, but in our case, make sure that they're beyond grass. They're safe for your body to take. So I think if it's someone you trust and a brand you trust and it's in a health product, you can be pretty confident you're in good shape. If it's coming from potato chips or some sort of dorito like or spicy sort of salty thing, or fast food, processed food or frozen pizzas, I'd steer away from those so I wouldn't lump them all in the same bucket. There's definitely a distinction between brands you trust in the health space and your processed foods or sausages and things like that. So hopefully that helps clarify the differences.

Vanessa Spina:
Absolutely. Thank you so much for sharing all that information, Scott. I know being involved in supplement manufacturing for so many years, you are the best person to ask this question to, and it's really helpful and informative. So thank you so much for answering that. And thank you, Karen, for your question. And we have a question from Katie on Facebook.

Scott Emmens:
Okay. Hi Katie, thank you for your question. I am so torn between fasting and eating enough protein. I've been fasting 18 to 20 hours a day, occasionally 20 to 24 for three plus years. It's weird for me to eat before 01:00 p.m. I have such a hard time doing that. I'm usually at work and prefer to eat when I get home. And for years I've heard in your podcast and others that a four to six hour eating window was great for health. But now I'm learning more about the power of eating more protein, especially in menopause. I am almost 53 and have been in menopause for two years. Do I ditch the short eating window for more protein or try to cram it all in in 4 hours? Does Vanessa still fast? Question mark. I think I remember her saying on her podcast she now eats breakfast shortly after waking and then around dinner at six ish. I'm not sure which approach to take, but I'm afraid to stop my fasting. My weight loss has been creeping up ten pounds since last summer. So maybe I need to shift to more protein and a shorter fast. Great question.

Vanessa Spina:
Yes, thank you so much for this question, Katie. Now this is a question where if Melanie was here, we'd probably have a little bit different responses because I know that she has a little bit of a different approach than I do, and she tends to do that shorter eating window, more omad style, but with a long window where she gets all of her protein in in that day. Now, as for me, I do approach it a little bit differently, and I have been changing it up in the last years, I have been trying different approaches. Now, I found that when I'm traveling and we're at a resort, which is kind of where this all started, it was way easier for me to do the half board. That's a really common thing at resorts here in Europe and in Greece, where we go, they have this breakfast option with this incredible breakfast buffet. So I had to get that in. And then I ended up just fasting until dinner because I felt fully satisfied from an amazing, nutrient dense breakfast. And that was a way for me to adapt in that situation. Then I kept doing it for a while we were home, but I naturally started gravitating back towards doing more of the 16 eight, the lunch and dinner. And I've talked to a lot of experts about this, especially Dr. Don Layman. And I am not a big fan personally of Omad, unless someone maybe is using it to either lose the last five to ten pounds and then they just want to maintain and just eat one meal a day because they like that. So some people really like that routine. It frees up your day from having to cook and prepare meals and clean up after. You could just eat once and some people love that. Now, I find that in terms of my personal approach, it's optimal for me to eat around midday. It's usually after my fasted workout and I feel great having a meal then at that time, it works really well for me socially as well. And I am also not hungry, just like you in the mornings. I just don't typically have a big appetite in the morning, so it just suits me better. I find I'm more energetic when I'm out doing errands or working out, and I have found that to work really well for me. So I prefer to have a 16 eight eating window. I don't think you need to get it in four to 6 hours. I think if you are someone who is over the age of 40, I personally believe you should be eating at least twice a day and protein focused meals at both of those meals because our rates of muscle protein breakdown do go up and we have lower levels of hormones as we get older and so we don't have the same anabolic signals or stimulus that we used to with hormones. So instead of having those hormone levels helping us to retain our muscle, now we have to use protein, protein intake to get enough protein at a meal to initiate muscle protein synthesis. And resistance training provides another anabolic signal to tell your body, we need this muscle. She's using it, he's using it. We have to hold on to it and maybe even grow it. And you have to send those signals that way because you don't have those hormones to rely on anymore. I also don't like too much extended fasting past the age of 40 because that muscle is so precious and it's hard to put muscle on. It's really hard to put muscle on and it's hard to maintain it as well, and also to have strong muscles and bones. So resistance training anywhere from two to four times a week, at a minimum two a week and a minimum two meals a day. If you really want to focus on building muscle, minimum three meals a day. And I sometimes do that. I sometimes have lunch, dinner, and I often will have a protein shake after dinner with tone protein. Now I'm having two a day. So you could say I'm up to four a day and I'm not really concerned about the fasting window. So you sort of ended the question saying that your weight has been creeping up about ten pounds. If you're after body recomp, body recomposition, fat loss and retention of your lean mass. I would say to me, this is like a great switch up, going from fasting 18 up to 22, 24 hours a day to now you're eating two meals. I can't tell you how many messages and emails I get from people who say they've added in another protein meal and their fat loss has really ramped up effortlessly because you also get the satiating effect from the protein that's so high, the thermic effect of protein, which helps you burn more calories. I've just get countless messages from people saying that they've added in. Either they've gone from one meal a day to two or they've gone from two to three and they're just eating more protein and suddenly their clothes are fitting better and they've lost ten to 20 pounds. So if you're feeling stuck, there's no better time than to try a different approach to switch it up. And I would not worry about trying to fast the most amount of hours in a day. I think you're going to get better results if you add a protein meal in. What do you think, Scott?

Scott Emmens:
I completely agree. I think you're going to get better results by adding in more protein and having a larger eating window. So my wife actually, she's going to kill me if she hears this podcast.

Vanessa Spina:
I remember this.

Scott Emmens:
Yeah, my wife went into menopause about 18 months ago and put on about ten or 15 pounds. And I'm not saying a word, even though I'm not saying anything. But one day she finally says, how could I maybe lose some weight? I feel like I'm gaining a lot of weight since menopause. And I said we could try this. Are you saying I'm fat? I'm like, no, you asked me my opinion. But what we did is we just added protein to her diet in the morning, which helped curb her typically high carbohydrate meal in the afternoon. So I just added in berberine and 20 grams of tonin, the 2 grams of additional leucine. She's lost about six pounds in about six weeks, which she's thrilled about, and that's without any hormone treatment. So she is going to examine maybe some low hormone treatment, including testosterone. I think women underestimate the need for testosterone because you don't just lose estrogen, you lose all of the hormones, including testosterone, which is highly anabolic. And Vanessa brought up a lot of good points. That protein itself is thermogenic, but when you have more muscle mass, you're burning more calories effortlessly because those muscles require a high caloric intake, you're able to do more exercise. But at the end of the day, what you're also doing when you're kind of starving yourself is you're losing your muscle mass and making it harder for your body to lose the fat because you're burning muscle mass and fat equally. When your body is in that sort of starvation mode, if you were to increase your fast to 22 to 24 hours, I think your body would just kind of go into starvation mode and you get what's called skinny fat, right, where you might not be necessarily overweight, but you might not have the muscle mass you need. And we know that as you age, muscle mass, particularly post menopause, is so important for both men and women over the age of 50 to predict their overall health span and their longevity. So I think this is a great timing. It seems like you're gaining some weight with what you're currently doing, I don't think extending your fast is going to do any good. And I know Vanessa has several studies that have also suggested that fasting with additional protein actually has better output in terms of body composition and weight loss. Or at least body composition and fat loss, I should say. Sometimes we get weight and fat confused. It's definitely from the research I've seen that she shared the way to go, I think this is the perfect time to try it. I would definitely go that route.

Vanessa Spina:
Yeah, I'm excited to hear how it goes. If you end up trying that, I think that it would be great. If you want to share, report back and see how it's going. And I definitely recommend getting body composition scans done, like now at this point when you're starting and then checking back. Because oftentimes what happens with a lot of the people that I've worked with or hear from, their weight usually stays the same, or it goes up a little on the scale, but it's because they're burning fat and they are either retaining more muscle or gaining some muscle. So, like with your wife's story, I'm betting that six pounds is, like, all fat, and that's a huge amount of just pure body fat to lose, a fat mass to lose, and probably cut down her body fat percentage by a lot. And it's really motivating when you have a Dexa body scan, say, every six months. So, like, do it now. I would recommend doing one now. Just Google Dexa scan near me and do one in six months or in twelve months. And I think you'll be really happy with the progress that you see. Just to know also how much lean body mass you have is great. The scans usually tell you what your resting metabolic rate is, and then you can figure out how many calories to eat at maintenance. I just find it so motivating to get those done.

Scott Emmens:
Yeah, I agree.

Vanessa Spina:
All right, so our next question comes to us from Marissa, and she says, can you please address isolucine restriction as it relates to longevity? I understand that is a major factor for muscle protein synthesis, but there is also evidence that restriction is beneficial.

Scott Emmens:
So this is a great question. And I actually took the time to look up the study that was connected from Marissa. We could put that in the show notes. It was a study done in mouse, and I just want to take a moment to delineate between isolucine and leucine. Leucine. Isolucine and valine are considered your branch chain amino acids, and they're typically sold in a ratio of two. One. One meaning two of leucine, one of isolucine, one of valine. This study looked at restricting just isolucine, but not leucine, and not valine, just restricting the isolucine, which is not what is in tone and is not what we did. So when we created the leucine capsules, we deliberately did not go with a BCAA, we went with a leucine only capsule. So this study I found particularly interesting because it does suggest that by reducing the isolucine intake, but not the leucine or other amino acids, you have a lower glycemic index. And the mice, both their health span and longevity span increased. Now, I have not seen this data in humans, and I don't think we'll see it for quite some time, but the study in the mice was pretty compelling in terms of their blood sugar, their health span, their longevity and their overall seeming of performance by reducing the isolucine. So the beautiful part about what we're doing is it's just the leucine, right? The leucine capsule and the leucine only. Now, whey protein does have isolucine in it, but not nearly enough that, I think, is going to kind of bump this. Beyond this, I don't have any human data to suggest what that gram per day is. But even in the essential amino acid we created, we went again high on leucine, moderate to low on isolucine, and then actually higher on lysine and some other amino acids in the formula that we've created. So there does seem to be some science behind this, which means you may want to go with just the leucine caps and or the tone protein in leucine caps. And check out our ea blend when that comes out. And for me, though, the other thing I read, I read some additional studies that were linked to this study. It also showed that if you're exercising, particularly weight resistance exercising, that all of these isolucine issues were basically null and void. Right. So as long as you're doing not significant, moderate amounts of both cardio, but in particular weight resistance training, that the isolucine didn't seem to have nearly the impact it did in a non active mouse or non active person. So the studies that I'm referring to were in humans that showed. No, actually, I'm sorry, they were in mice that showed that if the mice were doing active physical workouts, difficult workouts, the isolucine had no impact on their overall longevity or health.

Vanessa Spina:
Yeah, I always go back to the fact that you could add on a few years, maybe live a little bit longer, if your ultimate goal is just to live the longest. But what do you want your quality of life to be at that point? For me, I want to be strong and healthy and vital and energized, and I don't want to just be living as long as possible, but frail. So when it comes to restricting certain amino acids, restricting protein, turning off mtor, which, switching off mtor, which a lot of people are doing with things like rapamycin, I don't know if it's the best idea. If you want to be strong and you want to be running around and enjoying your life as much as possible, I'm okay with not living an extra two years and being frail and unable to do anything. We've all seen family members in that situation, and I don't think it's a really high quality of life. So I'd rather have a higher quality of life and maybe live a year or two less than I possibly could by restricting myself. Like I could fast every day and maybe add on some more time. But what's the point if I have no real muscle mass left and I can't get myself up from the floor or a chair or anything like that, you really want to think about, I think, your quality of life. So there's definitely a lot of research showing that protein restriction, amino acid restriction, mtor suppression can add more years to the lives of rodents. But what is the quality of those years? What's the health span? So I think it's a trade off. I do personally do extended fast a few times a year for autophagy, and there's definitely suppression of mtor that happens then, but it's so tiny, minuscule even compared to my everyday life, where I'm optimizing for optimal protein intake, for taking in all the amino acids to help me stay strong and just go after all my dreams and live the life that I want to. And ultimately, that's what it comes down to for me, is that there are trade offs, and you have to choose which ones you want to optimize for.

Scott Emmens:
It's kind of paradoxical, because every single bit of data we have supports that. Lower leg strength, grip strength, lean muscle mass. All of those are in the top five predictors of both health and lifespan as we age. So it's paradoxical to me that this lower protein concept and this low, eat low calories and you'll live longer. But yet, to your point, you might be living a very frail life and if you do happen to have a slip or a fall and you break a hip because you don't have any muscle mass, you're toast. But you can look this up on Google. You can find dozens and dozens of studies on grip strength, leg strength, lean muscle mass, overall body, always, always in the know five things that are going to predict your longevity and your health span. So it's just a weird paradox to me that this low protein concept or low caloric intake concept over lengthy periods of time works. And there was a monkey study done in, like the, forget it was chimpanzees or what type of primate it was, or monkey, but the monkeys that lived longer were basically kind of miserable and gray, and they didn't look good and they weren't happy. It wasn't a great life. They might have lived six months longer. But to your point, Vanessa, not a great life. So I'm with you on both. Have a healthier health span and maybe give up a year or two. But I'm not sure that that data is going to pan out in the long run because I just see too much data to support muscle strength. Lean muscle mass is critical for longevity and health span.

Vanessa Spina:
Not surprised that we're on the same page about this. And, yeah, I think it's a great question. I think it's definitely something to definitely keep in mind and consider. And the research on life extension and caloric restriction for that is pretty compelling. But again, how do you want the quality of those years to be? And like you said in that those primates sounded like they were not too happy just existing like that.

Scott Emmens:
But as this particular question relates, it was specific to isolucine. So to me, I don't have much of an issue reducing isolucine. I'm going to do a little more digging into it, because if I'm getting my leucine and then just enough isolucine to keep my total protein complete, I wouldn't be opposed to that. Because, again, I think leucine is your main player. As long as you have enough isolucine and complete protein, I think you're fine. So I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing, because by limiting that one amino acid, if it does help, great. I think we're on the same page with just generally more protein. Keeping your muscle mass is the best option.

Vanessa Spina:
Absolutely. All right, so our next question comes to us from Stephanie, and she says, what are your thoughts on taking mineral supplements? Specifically, I've been hearing oodles of information on folvic and humic acids. Just wondering, geez, there are so many supplements out there, it's really hard to know what to take and if we even need minerals.

Scott Emmens:
So, yes, we absolutely need minerals. Minerals, I think, get a bad rap in terms of, because they're sort of kind of thought of as basic. People don't recognize all the different minerals and how important they are. Fulvic acid and humic acid are great ways to get small amounts of trace minerals and modest amounts of some of your larger minerals. Get about 70 to 75 in a fulvic acid. Between 80 and 85 in a humic acid. They're very closely related. You do have to source it properly because they're generally kind of dug up from salts and dirt. I shouldn't say dirt, but basically out of the earth. Right. And so you want to make sure you're getting a high quality source that's not contaminated and it's tested. But those are really good ways to get a lot of nutrients and minerals that you wouldn't otherwise get. Another great way to do it is a multivitamin that has all of your main minerals and your trace minerals. And just to emphasize how important minerals are. So we've all heard about magnesium, right? They're saying now upwards of 600 different enzymatic processes are conducted by magnesium. That is a remarkable amount. You can't make your neurotransmitters properly without magnesium. Zinc is also required for dna, for wound healing. Copper is required for collagen synthesis, wound healing. Let's see. You've got boron that helps with your bone structure. That also helps with some brain function. And fertility. And testosterone in men. Fertility for women. And testosterone and fertility for men. But definitely it's a factor in strong bones. You've also got selenium, which is very important for your immune system. So are minerals important and do we need them? Absolutely. And I think we probably have more of a mineral deficiency in this country than we could possibly imagine. Way beyond just magnesium. We know we're monocropping and our soils are really deplete of minerals. I take a multimineral every day, plus a trace mineral. And I often will seek out products that have a little folvic acid or humic acid in it. Although it's not been my go to because I try to look at a simple way to get multivitamins or multiminerals in like a multivitamin, for example, makes it simple. Or I bought a few products that I'm looking to create that have all the minerals I want in them, along with some trace minerals. So yes, minerals are exceedingly important on their own, right? But then they also act as cofactors for all kinds of things. Protein synthesis, muscle recovery, as electrolytes, which is very important for your heart rate and your brain function and your neurotransmitters. I could go on and on, but yes, they're very important. And I think a wide spectrum general multi mineral will get the job done for the average person. And if you want to go with sulvic humic acid, I think that's a great way to start.

Vanessa Spina:
Awesome. Well, thanks so much for sharing all of that. Now, we have one last question on today's episode from Lori on Facebook, if you'd like to read it.

Scott Emmens:
Absolutely, Lori, thanks for the question. I'd love ideas on how to firm up my skin after weight loss. After the age of 50, I wish I could afford a juve, but are there any more affordable options? Well, absolutely there are. So the first one I'll mention is our wonderful host. Vanessa has multiple red lights now, and I think others in development, and she's got really high quality panels. It matters what the power of those are, it matters what the depth is, and it matters what the nanometers are of those lights. And Vanessa's done all of that research to give you a really affordable, great quality, long lasting product. So I would highly recommend that there are other products you can use for different applications. I do also, beyond Vanessa's panel, also use some pads for my daughter. For example, she runs division one track, so sometimes she'll get like a cramp on her lower back. And I just bought her like this high powered sort of belt that goes around her back so she can get that, or it wraps around her hamstrings if she's having some hamstring issues. And that's really because I know my daughter's not going to take the time to put the panel on. And if I can just strap it on her and let her walk around with it, she's going to use it. So it really depends on what your use is. But there are a lot of other brands. But I would start with Vanessa's because I know she's done the research and I know it works. I wish I could afford a Juve, too, but I don't think it's any better than the products you can get for much less money. I think the big advantage is it's a giant full body board. They're a great company, but I don't think I could afford $1,500 mat. So I'll pass on that. She also said other ideas, so I don't know if you have other ideas on firming up skin, maybe hyaluronic acid or something.

Vanessa Spina:
Yes. So a couple of things. Thank you so much for mentioning the tone Lux line of red light therapy panels. I created them with love, and we definitely love Juve on this podcast. They've been a sponsor for years, and they have amazing full body panels. You also have a lot of alternatives out there. You can check out the tomlex line that I created as well. And there's a lot you can do with a half body panel. You can pretty much target your whole body with a half body panel without needing to have a full body panel. But I have a couple of things that I love. So I think the number one thing that I wish I had learned when I was younger, well, there's two. The first is exfoliation that I actually have been doing for a long time. So once or twice a week, I use a scrub on my face, because one of the main ways to keep your skin looking youthful is to get rid of the old skin cells. So if you use a scrub on your face, there's some great ones out there. You will help your body in clearing out those dead skin cells and help that cellular renewal on your skin. So that one I do and have been doing for a long time, the one that I wish I knew about earlier was serums, because I always thought that moisturizer was what you needed. But actually moisturizer helps you keep and lock moisture in. But what's really helpful is using serums. So vitamin C serums, retinoid serums, serums with retinol in them if you're not pregnant. Of course, I haven't been using the retinol ones, but I'm looking forward to using them again as I get back into my routines. And they can be really powerful, really helpful. I interviewed this amazing plastic surgeon, Dr. Anthony Yoon, and he really was explaining this to me about the power of retinoids and just vitamin C serum. So after cleansing the skin in the morning and night, using some toner if possible, he says it's not necessarily necessary, but definitely using a serum and that really helps, that actually improves your skin, whereas putting a moisturizer, which you do after that is more for comfort. And I think a lot of people have that twisted, like I did for so long. I thought, well, moisturizer makes your skin more moist and more hydrated, but it doesn't. It just locks it in. So it's a good idea to use moisturizer on your body and skin after you shower. When you have a lot of moisture there, you can lock that in. But in terms of actually having beneficial effects, the serums are really important. And the last thing that I do is I mentioned I do a couple of extended fast throughout the year. I find that that is amazing for autophagy. And my skin always feels and looks incredible. And the autophagy really is clearing out those dead skin cells, not only inside our bodies, but also on the skin surface. And so making sure that you have no contraindications for that, if that's something you're interested in, you can definitely get a lot of benefits. You have to be careful. Talk to your care provider, make sure if you're on medication, especially because your levels of medication can change a lot if you're doing an extended fast. But once a year, a 36 hours, two, three day, up to four or five days can do amazing things for not just the whole body. We were talking about how so many of the biohacks that we do today, it's really just to get back to homeostasis, to get out of our own way. And once in a while, I do like those for the skin. I think it can be beneficial, but you really don't want to overdo it. You don't want to go into too much proteolysis and break down your muscle and lose your hard earned muscle. And if you're in a situation where you don't have that much lean body mass or your low body weight, it's probably not the best idea either. So those are just a few things, and I think that they can be really beneficial. And of course, the red light therapy I'm obsessed with. And it's why I recently launched the Telnex crystal red light therapy mask, because it is amazing. There are so many powerful benefits to these different wavelengths of light, especially in the red, near infrared and orange spectrum of the sun. But you can get that therapeutically without the harmful rays that come from the sun. That can actually create sunspots or exposure. And I'm all about getting good amount of sun exposure, but not overdoing it. It's so great for vitamin D and forgetting all those wavelengths. But you have to also, if you overdo it, you can end up with sunspots like I did. I have a couple, and I'm using the crystal mask to help with that. And I'm noticing some big improvements. And I've gotten so much feedback from people who've purchased the tone Lux Sapphire panel who've purchased some of the other panels that their dermatologists are saying, wow, I'm seeing major improvements. So that's like the best validation for me, that the panels are powerful and effective, and it just makes me so happy when I get feedback like that. So thanks again for mentioning those, and thanks again for the wonderful question. We had so many fantastic questions between these two episodes. I so appreciate you being here, Scott, taking the time to answer and opine and share your expertise and knowledge with the guests. So thank you so much for being here and for joining us today. Where can everyone connect with you and follow you online and maybe even connect with you if they have a question?

Scott Emmens:
Well, thank you so much for having me. I always learn a ton. Like I said, I really enjoy getting these questions. They're always really well thought out and very specific, and it really helps keep me informed, and it's my pleasure to help people help themselves. So thank you for having me. If you'd like to reach out to me directly, you can do so on Instagram @longevityprotocol. I also have an account called collagen guru, but I don't check that one that often. But longevity protocol is my main Instagram handle. You can also reach me through our website, mdlogic health. That's www.mdlogichealth.com. If you just go to the contact us and know. I'd like to speak to Scott Emmons about such and such. I don't necessarily take questions just in general, but if you have a specific reason that you're reaching out about a product or something that you'd like to partner with us on, you can reach me there. Or my Dm on Instagram are the two best ways to do that.

Vanessa Spina:
Awesome. Well, thanks again, Scott, for being here. I really, truly appreciate it and I had such a wonderful time and appreciate all the brilliant questions that we received. So thank you to all of you. Now you can catch up with me and follow me on Instagram at Ketogenic Girl. And you can also check out the Optimal Protein podcast, and you can check out the tone device, the tone luxe red light therapy line that I created@ketogenicgirl.com, and we will link everything in the show notes for you all, as usual. So sending you all so much love. Thanks for being here, and we'll catch you guys on the next one.

Scott Emmens:
Much appreciated. Take care. Bye. Vanessa, thank you.

Melanie Avalon:
Thank you so much for listening to the Intimation Fasting Podcast. Please remember, everything we discussed on this show does not constitute medical advice and no patient-doctor relationship is formed. If you enjoyed the show, please consider writing a review on iTunes. We couldn't do this without our amazing team. Administration by Sharon Merriman, editing by Podcast Doctors, show notes and artwork by Brianna Joyner, and original theme composed by Leland Cox and recomposed by Steve Saunders.

STUFF WE LIKE

Check out the Stuff We Like page for links to any of the books/supplements/products etc. mentioned on the podcast that we like!

More on Vanessa: ketogenicgirl.com

Theme Music Composed By Leland Cox: LelandCox.com

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Feb 25

Episode 358: Special Guest: Dave Asprey, Coffee, Minerals, Adrenal Fatigue, Wine, Coffee Enemas, Coffee Shops, Traveling, And More!

Intermittent Fasting

Welcome to Episode 358 of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast, hosted by Melanie Avalon, author of What When Wine Diet: Lose Weight And Feel Great With Paleo-Style Meals, Intermittent Fasting, And Wine and Vanessa Spina, author of Keto Essentials: 150 Ketogenic Recipes to Revitalize, Heal, and Shed Weight.

Today's episode of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast is brought to you by:

Butcherbox: Grass-fed beef, organic chicken, heritage pork, wild-caught seafood, nutrient-rich, raised sustainably the way nature intended, and shipped straight to your door! For a limited time go to butcherbox.com/ifpodcast and get 2 lbs of ground beef, 3 lbs of chicken breasts, or 2 lbs of steak tips—for free in every order for a whole year! Plus, get $20 off your first order!

LMNT: For fasting or low-carb diets electrolytes are key for relieving hunger, cramps, headaches, tiredness, and dizziness. With no sugar, artificial ingredients, coloring, and only 2 grams of carbs per packet, try LMNT for complete and total hydration. Go to drinklmnt.com/ifpodcast to get a free sample pack with any purchase!

Wild Health: Wild Health provides lab work and genetic testing, combined with biometric and lifestyle data, to help you determine what your body needs for health and longevity! Wild Health provides comprehensive cardiovascular disease risk, methylation, insulin resistance, and hormonal panels, as well as genetic data, personal guidance, and so much more! Get 20% off a wild health membership with the Code IFPODCAST at wildhealth.com/ifpodcast!

To submit your own questions, email questions@IFpodcast.com, or submit your questions here!! 

SHOW NOTES

Beautycounter: Keep your fast clean inside and out with safe skincare! Shop with us at melanieavalon.com/beautycounter and use the code CLEANFORALL20 for 20% off, plus something magical might happen after your first order! Find your perfect Beautycounter products with Melanie's quiz: melanieavalon.com/beautycounterquiz
Join Melanie's Facebook group Clean Beauty and Safe Skincare with Melanie Avalon to discuss and learn about all the things clean beauty, Beautycounter, and safe skincare!

BUTCHERBOX: For a limited time go to butcherbox.com/ifpodcast and get 2 lbs of ground beef, 3 lbs of
chicken breasts, or 2 lbs of steak tips—for free in every order for a whole year! Plus, get $20 off your first order!

LMNT: Go to drinklmnt.com/ifpodcast to get a free sample pack with any purchase! Learn all about electrolytes in Episode 237 - our interview with Robb Rolf!

WILD HEALTH: Get 20% off a wild health membership with the Code IFPODCAST at wildhealth.com/ifpodcast!

DANGER COFFEE: Get 10% Off At melanieavalon.com/dangercoffee With The Code MELANIEAVALON!

Listener Q&A: Nancy - Coffee's impact on the gut microbiome

Listener Q&A: Teresa - What are the rules around drinking coffee when you have adrenal issues?

Listener Q&A: Teresa - How do you find the best coffee?

Our content does not constitute an attempt to practice medicine and does not establish a doctor-patient relationship. Please consult a qualified healthcare provider for medical advice and answers to personal health questions.

TRANSCRIPT

(Note: This is generated by AI with 98% accuracy. However, any errors may cause unintended changes in meaning.) 

Melanie Avalon:
Welcome to Episode 358 of the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. If you want to burn fat, gain energy, and enhance your health by changing when you eat, not what you eat with no calorie counting, then this show is for you. I'm Melanie Avalon, biohacker, author of "What, When, Wine" and creator of the supplement line AvalonX. And I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Spina, sports nutrition specialist, author of "Keto Essentials" and creator of the Tone Breath Ketone Analyzer and Tone Lux Red Light Therapy Bannals. For more on us, check out ifpodcast.com, melanieavalon.com, and ketogenicgirl.com. Please remember, the thoughts and opinions on this show do not constitute medical advice or treatment. To be featured on the show, email us your questions to questions@ifpodcast.com. We would love to hear from you. So pour yourself a mug of black coffee, a cup of tea, or even a glass of wine, if it's that time, and get ready for the Intermittent Fasting Podcast.

Hi, friends, you are in for such a special treat with today's episode. It is an in -person episode that I did with the incredible Dave Asprey at his house in Austin. If you want to see what that actually looked like, I will be posting video clips on my Instagram, so definitely check that out. I feel like he needs no introduction. Does he need an introduction? I don't know. Dave is basically the grandfather of biohacking. He's a multiple New York Times bestseller. He has books like The Bulletproof Diet, Headstrong, Fast This Way, which is all about fasting and Smarter Not Harder. And he's just a pretty awesome human being that I am so grateful to call my friend. And we tackled all of your questions about coffee because, oh my goodness, do we get a lot of coffee questions on this show? And who better to ask than Dave? And I think I talked about this in the show, but basically the only coffee I was drinking for years was Dave's Bulletproof Coffee because I really, really trusted him for quality and for it to be free of mold. Some drama went down. Dave is no longer with Bulletproof or at least is not right now. But that's all good because he made something even better, which is Danger Coffee, which I am obsessed with. It's mold free, free of toxins, and it is re -mineralized with ultra trace minerals. Plus it tastes delicious. Friends, I gifted Danger Coffee to so many people over Christmas. It's one of my favorite things. I cannot recommend it enough. You can get 10% off with the coupon code MelanieAvalon at MelanieAvalon.com/DangerCoffee. Make this your go -to coffee. It's my go -to coffee. Join the club. You will love it. I promise. And friends, if you would like to hang out with Dave and me, you can. I will be at Dave's 10th annual biohacking conference in Dallas this year. I went last year to the one in Orlando and it was such a blast. Friends, please come hang out with me. You can get 35% off your tickets with the coupon code BCMelanie. So for that, just go to melanieavalon.com/biohackingconference. Use the coupon code BCMelanie to get 35% off your tickets. Definitely snag those before they sell out. Also, if you go and you see me, please, please come up and say hi. People did that last year and it was so fun. I would love to talk to you. Love to meet you. So definitely don't be a stranger. Be my friend because we are friends. Again, melanieavalon.com/biohackingconference with the coupon code BCMelanie for 35% off your tickets. There will be links to all of this as well as a full transcript in the show notes. Those will be at ifpodcast.com/episode358. All right, without further ado, please enjoy this fabulous conversation with my dear friend Dave Asprey. Hi, friends. Welcome back to the show. So I am so excited to be here today with a legend in the biohacking and the fasting world. Dave Asprey, a man who barely needs any introduction and the topic of today's episode. So on this show, we get so many questions about coffee and my personal background with coffee. I started drinking about a decade ago something called Bulletproof Coffee. Heard of that. And that was because I was following Dave's work in the biohacking world and I was super concerned with things about mold and toxins. And at that part in time in my life, I was experiencing health issues. So I was like really kind of it was a fear mindset. I was scared of everything in any case. Which we evolved from that. Yeah, a little bit. But I was drinking Bulletproof because I honestly truly trusted Dave based on everything I heard about his concerns with his own mold issues. All the things. So I've been drinking Bulletproof Coffee. Well, I was drinking Bulletproof Coffee for about a decade. And then stuff happened, drama happened, and Dave is no longer with Bulletproof Coffee at the moment.

Yeah, I'm no longer working with Bulletproof for a variety of reasons.

Davis no longer working with Bulletproof for a variety of reasons, in his own words, which actually turned out to be to the benefit of everybody because he created something even better, which is Danger Coffee and friends, I've been talking about Danger Coffee a lot because it's amazing. I like the taste way better than Bulletproof and it has something even better in that it is remineralized. In any case, I recommend it to anybody and everybody and I just knew we had to have an episode with Dave on all things coffee. So Dave, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you, and I just want to make it super clear, Bulletproof is my baby, and it's a company that I founded. And when I was running it, Forbes named Bulletproof one of the top 20 most innovative brands in the country, which is unheard of for a company that size and all that. It's nice to be able to go back to my roots and be able to do new innovation, because the things I'm doing at Danger Coffee are things that have never been done in the coffee industry. I definitely made some waves the first time I'm talking about mold, and it made a lot of big coffee brands very angry. And I mean, some of the early comments were almost funny. I'm like, guys, this is back by science.

I'm going off -script now, I have questions, but I just have to ask, so what are you doing that is innovative with Danger Coffee?

Well, Danger Coffee, Older Clean, our mold testing abilities have evolved from 10 years ago. And so I mold test the coffee, and it says right on the bag, lab tested, mold free, that sort of a thing. If you look at some other brands that are out there that used to say mold free, they might not. And so you should be very careful on the label. If it says clean, what does it mean? It's nice to know. And the other thing that I'm doing is I'm an appatent, let's say we filed a patent for it, for remineralizing the coffee. And we're adding ionic and trace and ultra trace minerals in relatively high doses to the coffee so that you don't need to take mineral supplements that have the same things in them because they're in your coffee and the heat activates it. So you can't taste the mineral, but it makes the coffee hit different because of electrolyte presence. So when there's electrolytes in the coffee, you don't taste them, but the coffee, but it goes, wow, this coffee's really good. And for some reason you just want more. And you want more, not because you're craving caffeine, but you want more because your body says, I've been lacking minerals. I chose these minerals because it is the whole food plant -based diet that is stripping minerals from people's bones. And I thought maybe you should put it back in. I can't say that just Danger Coffee does this, but I drink Danger Coffee every day. And I take mineral supplements like the Minerals 101 stuff that I make and I eat my diet and lots of red meat and all that. But I had surgery on a bone. They cut the bone in my foot in half last year. And I was awake for it. And the surgeon, I did an episode on the show about this. The surgeon has the bone saw it's going, and it slows down in the bone. And he says, there's some, having a hard time getting through this guy's foot. Like, is he even human? And we actually have that on video. So I, after I said, David, what is going on here? I'll put it on someone half your age and their bones cut like butter. Like, why are your bones so dense? Like, what is it? Upgrade labs? I think it's the minerals actually that's driving bone density. And if you're eating almonds and kale and spinach and beets and whole grain, whatever stuff and beans, all of those things are pulling minerals out of your body and you get weak bones.

So with all of that context, it's providing minerals, it's providing nutrients. The question from me and from Lizzie, is it a food? Coffee.

I believe coffee is a superfood. The reason for that is coffee, and we'll say danger coffee, but all coffee, if you brew it with a metal filter instead of a paper filter, it has a very meaningful amount of soluble prebiotic fiber in it. It has more polyphenols than kale and spinach and even raspberries, even though they're different polyphenols. It's the number one source of these colored compounds from plants in our diet that are responsible inside your brain, inside your cells for making something called melanin. And we know melanin from suntans and dark skin, but melanin inside your eyes, inside your nervous system, acts electrically within the cells. And melanin is just cross -linked melanoids. Coffee is full of melanoids. They're basically polyphenols. So there you go. You're drinking coffee because it changes your gut bacteria and it extends and multiple studies, all kinds of coffee seem to be correlated with dying less of all causes. So why would you not consider that a superfood?

Well, Nancy actually wanted to know its impact on the gut microbiome, so I'm assuming that's a good impact that you just mentioned. It's a good impact.

Okay. If you look at the various studies and invite you to go out and look them up, just don't go to Google because Google can't do any health stuff anymore. It's like a censorship wasteland. Go to any other search engine and you'll find good information on just microbiome coffee. And it's pretty profound with a little bit of soluble fiber every day that you drink in the morning can do.

We're gonna get a lot of questions about, does that fiber then break your fast?

No, it turns out when I wrote Fast This Way, I also wrote about something else that doesn't break a fast, that really helps. The goal of fasting is not to suffer unless you're into that. The goal of fasting is to get the metabolic benefits of fasting. There is a kind of spiritual fast where you're going really deep and maybe sitting with discomfort as it, but if you got to get shit done today, maybe have some soluble fiber during your fast that doesn't raise mTOR, doesn't raise insulin, but feeds the bacteria in your gut so that they make short chain fatty acids that increase your ability to have ketosis. Well, that's why one of the things you can put in your water or coffee during a fast so you're not hungry and you can be focused and still get the fast would be soluble fiber. So no, it doesn't break a fast. The people who keep saying, if it has calories, it breaks a fast, they do not know science. Straight up, no science there.

We get a lot of questions about adrenal issues. So, Teresa wants to know, what are the rules around drinking coffee when you have adrenal issues? Does drinking coffee when fasted burn out your adrenals as she's heard some functional nutritionists' claim?

I've had stage four adrenal fatigue twice in my life. My body doesn't make enough cortisol, naturally. It's a genetic thing, never have. So I've been really, really burned out of dreamly. The first time I read one of the first books on this, Wilson's book on adrenal fatigue, I went a year and a half without coffee, slowly crawling out. The second time when I knew some of the tenants of longevity and biohacking, took me about six weeks to recover. And I drink coffee every day. Here's the deal, suffering doesn't make you stronger unless it's small doses that you chose. So if you have adrenal fatigue, you cannot function in the world and you hate your life and you need to go to work like I did and you can't get out of bed, but you have to anyway and you whip yourself into it, it sucks. And I feel you if you're there. So when should your cortisol rise? Do you know that's the answer?

Good morning.

Would a cup of coffee, a single cup of coffee for someone with adrenal fatigue help them raise their cortisol in the morning when they need to? Yeah, it does. And it gives you your life back. And you better drink it with a glassful of salt water. Sea salt or salt from a mine, preferably North America without explosives, yada yada. You do that because you need the electrolytes in the blood volume. And should you take it with adrenal cortex? Yes. Should you take it with licorice root? Yes. Do I do all that stuff? Yeah, I do. But to say I'm a purist, so I'm not going to drink coffee because someone says it might quote burn out my adrenals, not understanding even what that means. If you're worried about your adrenals, take an adaptogen, take adrenal cortex extract. In fact, those are longevity substances that I highly recommend, especially when you're traveling, when you're jet lagged, when you over train, when you're getting sick, because then you won't get sick. But to blame coffee for what lifestyle does, given all the studies, hundreds of studies showing all the metabolic and health and even resistance to major diseases like Alzheimer's that comes from coffee, like, oh, focus on adrenals. It doesn't matter how you feel. Just feel like shit, don't drink coffee for a while and maybe then you'll be better. I just feel like you might be paying that functional medicine doctor for a lot longer if you don't have coffee.

I cut out coffee and wine for a year.

I would agree on cutting out wine, that's so spad player.

No, no, no, no. I could have coffee and wine for a year, and then I realized I'm never gonna do that again. Like I'm happier. I'm happier with them in my life than without.

So I don't like to say this. I don't think wine is good for you. Really? But I think that if you drink wine that's older than you, it's good for you.

because it has more.

Just because you can't drink very much, it would be broke. Oh. So I self limit my wine to really, really expensive wine. In other words, I don't drink wine often. You don't? Really?

You don't think there's a hermetic benefit to alcohol?

There's data that says up to maybe half a shot of alcohol in some people can have a hormetic response on some things but not others. It's probably not good for breast cancer, particularly that's one where any amount seems to be not good for you. There are some conditions where a small amount is good for you but not one shot and not one shot every day. And if you monitor your sleep levels and you have a half a shot, even that will likely affect your sleep in a negative way.

My aura ring says I do fine with my wine.

How much do you have?

Like a glass. Every night. Of drag from wines.

So you're saying something cool. Dry farm wine is actually launched on my show. If I'm gonna drink wine that's not older than me, it would be dry farms because dry farms, like the standards I used to have when I was running Bulletproof, it's like, look, let's test for mold, let's test for additives. So if you're drinking wine, it needs to be European for sure because most American wines, and I know some people who run vineyards here that are really good, just most American wines have glyphosate because it's in our groundwater and that can be in your wine. And if they say no additives, you probably are really, really good there, but there's 2 ,000 additives that can be in American wine. So again, should you eat wheat? No, if you're gonna eat wheat, should you eat Italian wheat or American wheat? Don't touch American wheat, eat Italian wheat. So I would say dry farms, the cleanest wine, and I've been friends with them for years, they sponsor my events. If you're gonna drink it, that's what you do. I even tested a half a shot worth of alcohol, or whatever that would be, a half a glass of wine. For me anyway, it creates inflammation, maybe histamine or mast cells or something. Not all bottles do it. Dry farms is the cleanest, but I know I'm gonna feel less good the next day. I did 30 days of doing one glass a night just to test it out of either sake or dry farms wine or something else like vodka. And at the end of that time, just look at the brain, look at Dana Amos research on it. So I think you should save alcohol for special occasions, like once a week max and have at most two glasses when you're gonna do that, and take glutathione, take the Z -biotics and things like that. But sorry, it's not super healthy, but you can get away with it, but protect yourself. It's the acetaldehyde in the gut really is aging. So it's one of those things I want it to be good for me. I've tried, I just haven't figured out how.

Dr. Aiman on my show as well and I know that he's what you just said not a fan.

Well, on his board of directors, his work changed my life really helped to lead to biohacking the movement. So I would just say, does brain science support coffee? Yes. Does it support alcohol? Probably not.

Why do you think the mind diet includes a glass of wine as part of to drink, not optional? It's part of the diet and that's the official diet for preventing Alzheimer's.

than might and who published that?

It's like the mind diet.

Is that from the Alzheimer's Association?

I have to fact check, but it's like the diet associated with.

So like if you go to the American Diet... It would be the thing record...

or commented by...

Alzheimer's. Sorry guys. Go to the American Dietetic Association. They're the ones who do like school lunches and hospital meals that cause diabetes. Literally, their recommendations cause the problem. The American Heart Association, their diet with omega -6s, all their weird nonsense high carbs causes heart disease. You mentioned Nina Takelts in another interview. There was a time when I was considering a class action lawsuit about certain claims against the AHA. And then the next day I spoke to an executive from the AHA and it turns out they'd already changed their mind and I just didn't know it. I was like, thank you. They've shown they can evolve. I still think a lot of the recommendations are wrong, but there is moving in the right direction. So, bottom line, sorry. You better show some evidence. If you wanna know who to go to for Alzheimer's, it's Daniel Amon and Dale Bredesen, both of whom are friends who've been on my show. I hope Dale launches book. Those are the guys who know.

Well, if you do drink, drink, drink from wines. I agree with you 100%. Bring it into events like I do.

You know, I bring it, same thing, in my events. You sneak it in if you have to. You will see dry farm wine at my events, and I've, because people are gonna drink, I totally support you, you're right, and ability to drink, just drink this up without toxins in it. And, am I, can I ethically say that drinking a glass a night is in science good for you? No, can I say half a glass a night? If you don't have any other sensitivities, might be good for you, if there's no toxins, probably. So, there you go.

Well, we can circle back to that, but I will say that at your biohacking conference most recently, it was Dry Bar Wine. I always had Dry Bar Wine, it's good wine. It was so good, I contacted them, and I was like, I love the one that they had, and then they sent me a case of what you had at, it was a Pino. No, it was really good.

They're good people and they really do test their wine. So I was like, someone had to fix wine and they did it. Yeah. That's how they're still in three glasses. This is good for you. Sorry.

Well, so back to coffee, April, if you drink high quality coffee like Danger Coffee, should you drink it daily or should you consider cycling?

Well, if you have a compound that makes you feel good every day, that seems to, in multiple studies, reduce, at least it's associated with a reduction in all cause mortality, and the benefits increase up to either three cups a day or up to five cups a day, depending on which study you believe in, why would you not drink it some days? Is this like self -loathing or like what, what would the motivation be? Maybe a desire to die more quickly? I'm just confused. Here's what it is.

people have the questions that you've been talking about through this episode of not knowing if maybe it's better a different way.

Yeah, I don't, I can't see any reason to do that. People are like, but it's addictive. I'm like, look, if you have something to do every day, and you feel good when you do it, and if you don't do it for a day or two, you start feeling worse, then it's an addiction. They go, yeah, I'm talking about exercise. So food's addictive too. So it's breathing, like things that make you feel good and perform better and feel better, the great preponderance of evidence is that coffee is good for us. I mean, there's thousands and thousands of studies out there, and it's a bit more edgy for something like nicotine. We had a question about that. Like nicotine smoking, we know that's bad for you, but we know smokers don't get Parkinson's and Alzheimer's because it's protective. So can you use nicotine apart from smoking as a cognitive enhancer on a longevity substance? I've written about that, took a lot of heat for it, but the science is real, but it's more nuanced. With coffee, it's not very nuanced. There's really good evidence that says coffee's good for you, and there's also evidence that says moldy coffee is not as good for you. I even published a study on it myself, but I have 36 studies that back it up that I didn't pay for or publish from around the world. So coffee's a thing, clean coffee's a bigger thing. Wine's a thing, clean wine's a bigger thing.

I think you can make the same argument with wine with all the studies, possibly.

You could, although they study vodka as well, which is basically the alcohol and wine without all the toxins.

to use nicotine every day.

Not every day. I go through phases. I've gone through phases. I'm like, I really like nicotine. It is one of my favorite cognitive enhancers. Like if you want to write a really, really nice, like 10 ,000 words in a night, which is what I do when I go into the flow state for writing. I'm like, a little bit, I do decaf danger and I'll put a little MCT and butter in it and I'll turn the lights to red and I'll take a spray or two of nicotine.

A spray, so you're doing.

I do one milligram spray. You can buy it anywhere in the US, anywhere in the world except for the US. It's just not approved here. That's the way it works. Or buy it on eBay, because people import it and then resell it. But you do it and then you just feel like your brain go, and then literally I can integrate 10 ,000 words a second right, and they're good words.

I'm a fan. I like the patches. But don't overdo it because you'll get sick.

Yeah, and too much nicotine is bad for your vascular system. You need like, it's a, that's a micro dose. So that's a tough one. But when it comes to coffee, three to five cups a day, depending on your caffeine processing ability in your liver, it's just good for you. Three to five cups? The studies show increasing, it can be decaf too. It's not the caffeine, it's the polyphenols. So three to five cups a day, even instant coffee works, which is the moldiest, worst coffee you could possibly get. Even that shows benefits that increase. And in one major set of data, it's up to three cups a day. And in the other older and bigger set of data, it's up to five cups a day. So I do about three cups in the morning of normal danger coffee. And if I'm really disciplined, I might do a decaf that night, but I don't always do decaf at night.

I will say if you don't have that much and then you need it so you have like a cup of coffee, you feel like you can conquer the world. Or if you do a copy in a month.

in that tweak you.

tweak me? Yeah. What does that mean? I try.

I'm like, it is so hot. Oh.

No, you just pour it down a little bit. That's fine.

Yeah, okay. But the caffeine hits me hard when I do... It does.

I did that and I was like, oh, this is what it means to feel alive. This is life right here. And then I started doing them every day and I was like, I got to stop this.

You can overdo them. And by the way, functional medicine, people love them. There's good stuff for the liver. There is a pretty good paper from some traditional colon doctor guy who went through a lot of research and including ER visits. And people do perforate their colons with coffee enemas and you can disrupt your microbiome. So it's like, go. Wait, the actual... Maybe they're putting too much in. I don't know. But they had a few case reports that were not really nice. So I would say be cautious and maybe every day might be too much. But doing that a couple times a week, depending on what you're detoxing and why, I think it could be a good thing. But I would just say, I hear mixed results, but in the functional medicine detox community, it's very popular and I think there's good evidence for it.

Well, to wrap it all up, I brought my enema bucket with me when I travel.

You bring a bucket? Do you check it separately? Like it's a big sticker. Get them a bucket. It's stainless steel. Like it let it rattle through the custom. No, it's not.

I don't like a whole colonic system. I do have one of those at home. But no, it's like the space. You just put in your suitcase.

Yeah, but why did you just use the toilet? What do you need a bucket?

A bucket if you want to do an enema.

Oh, to get it in.

Yeah, to do an NMI requires equipment.

But you're in a bucket, then I have like squeezy like... Oh, but like...

I don't like that.

Okay, got it. No, no. I'm less anime experienced than you. The way?

That relates last question to bring it all together. Teresa wants to know, how do you find the best coffee? And I know you've talked about this, so I kind of know your answer, but how do you find the best coffee when you are traveling? Is there something to look for that is less likely to be moldy or full of bad ingredients? Is a place like, this is a good question, is a place like Starbucks that serves high volume, likely to be fresher than a mom and pop?

the freshness of your coffee does not determine whether it has mold or not. The mold is forming during the growth of the coffee in small part and mostly during the fermentation of the coffee. And after the mold is grown, then they wash the coffee and they strip off the outer layers, but the parts per million of the toxins that matter are already in the beans. Studies show, and these are published on my website, you go to daveaspery.com and search for one ugly mug is the name of the post. I can always remember that. And when you look on there, you go, oh wait, are there studies that show that these toxins survive roasting the beans they do? Are there studies that show they're present in brewed coffee? Yes, there are studies. And the studies that don't find them are using the techniques where you actually can't find them because coffee can mask toxins in certain kinds of tests. So it's complex. So how do you find it? I'm at a coffee shop and I want good coffee. I know I might take a hit, but I'm willing to try. And this is one of the things that led me to start making mold -free coffee is I followed the algorithm. I'm in Denver. I'm going to give a big keynote about antivirus software. Very exciting, like my tech career. So I drive 40 minutes in a taxi to get clean coffee because I'm like, I'm dying here. I need it. And I go to the shop and I say I want single estate. This means coffee from one plantation. And Central America at that time had the best climate for less toxins in it. Just it depends on how much rain, how much drought, and things like that. And Guatemala, back when I started the company was a good source for it. And I've since found different sources for danger. But I said, okay, I'm going to try that coffee. I didn't know any of this other than single estate, Guatemala. And I get the coffee and I drink and it tastes really good. And I'm on my way to give my keynote direct from the coffee shop. And then the mold toxins hit me and I wouldn't even hit you. Guys, I lived in a toxic mold bedroom as a kid. I've had multiple damage on clinical scans that Daniel Aiman did. And I've done a documentary on toxic mold. People have been exposed to mold. If you're one of them, you know, I'm talking about you feel mold. And it feels like someone's shutting off your brain. It feels like your body is like jittery and anxious and cranky. And it's, it's hitting me. Somebody even get pain in your joints or in your back. And I'm like, I feel like I just took bad drugs. And I'm on the way to give a keynote. I have no idea what I said in the keynote. It probably didn't suck that bad. But it wasn't that happy of a day. And I'm just like, this is unacceptable. I spent 50 bucks on cab fare to get a frickin cup of coffee. And I got the most nice expensive, probably good. But that's how you do it. It's single estate, Central American washed coffee. It's like a 5050 throw you don't know. Right. And the reason I do danger coffee is it is lab tested. You're not 5050, you know, it's clean. And then the minerals that I use, they actually can clean mold because they bind to it. So there you go. You've got something you know what you're getting. I have traveled around the world carrying danger coffee. And I've gone to Starbucks in every continent that I've been to and said, Hey, can I have a vent a hot water, please? And I pour my ground danger coffee in, I stir it with a spoon. And eventually when it's brooded, drops to the bottom and I pour it into my flask and I'm good to go. I literally brew coffee every day I'm on the road. I travel at least 200 days a year, because I don't want to feel like crap. And I have tried gold metal award winning coffee, most amazing flavorful ever. And then you feel like garbage afterwards. And I don't like feeling like garbage. That's why I did danger coffee and the name danger coffee. It's because who knows what you might do. The idea that we're going to do something for your own safety. You can be like humbled and doled by people just trying to keep you safe. And I don't want to be around people like that. I want to be around people who are dangerous, because they're the people who start companies, they're the people who asked her out finally. They're the people who took a risk because it was worth it. They had a dream and they reached for the dream. So here's to having dangerous people in the world who choose to be peaceful, because that's what makes an amazing world. And people who are scared, so they're peaceful. They're not dangerous people. They're boring people. And they'll probably do evil. So be dangerous. And who knows what you might do. You might have fun.

I'll give you my endorsement. Like I said in the beginning, I really do. I love Danger Coffee. I have only heard good things from listeners who have bought it and reported back. People love it. It tastes amazing. And like I said, it's mold -free, and then it's one step better with all of the remilorization and everything. It replaces.

This is expensive supplements for minerals. If you have the amount of minerals that are in it, it is more expensive than regular coffee. But you're getting a therapeutic dose of minerals when you drink it at every time. And I feel different. And so it's also delicious. It's my latest and greatest.

Do you know how much I love it?

And you tell.

I gave it as a Christmas gift to my assistants, like a massive shipment of it.

Oh my gosh.

So that's how you know. Do you know? Because I'm a gift, like gift giving is my love language. So that, that's how you know.

Well, guess what I have for you? What? I was gonna give it to you after the show, but I don't know how, in the room with me. Have you heard of our new ceremonial grade, Danger Coffee?

I saw it on the website.

So there are levels of coffee that most people have never experienced because they're microlots that they may only have, you know, 1200 bags. And they're like the finest wine, but they're coffee. So finding a microlot that's clean that we can lab test and remineralize, we did it. And it's now a subscription thing where maybe once a quarter we're going to be doing this. And I have one of those for you. And it's amazing. Thank you. You're welcome.

Well, it's a good day. It's a good day. It's worth the trip. Yes.

And thanks for having me as your first ever live podcast guest. And thanks for coming to Austin. So I didn't have to come to Atlanta. That would be a lot of work.

No, thank you. And well, this has been so amazing. And like I said, I am really, really obsessed with Danger Coffee. It takes things to the next level, tastes amazing, mold -free, remineralized. So friends, go to melanieavalon.com/danger. Use the coupon code MelanieAvalon that will get you 10% off site -wide. I promise you, you will not regret it. It's one of my favorite things in my life. I cannot recommend it enough. melanieavalon.com/danger. Coupon code MelanieAvalon for 10% off. Thank you, by the way, for that discount. I really appreciate it. I appreciate it. Thank you. And thank you, Dave, for everything that you have done. You are truly changing the world. You talk the talk and walk the walk. You do the things. Why? Thank you very much. I like you're very genuine and I can say that everything that you say and endorse is just coming from a real place of honesty. And thank you.

You're very welcome. And keep supporting the Biohockey movement, keep talking about all the stuff you find that works, and every day, more people are joining.

Alright, talk to you later.

Thanks guys for tuning in.

Melanie Avalon:
Thank you so much for listening to the Intimation Fasting Podcast. Please remember, everything we discussed on this show does not constitute medical advice and no patient-doctor relationship is formed. If you enjoyed the show, please consider writing a review on iTunes. We couldn't do this without our amazing team. Administration by Sharon Merriman, editing by Podcast Doctors, show notes and artwork by Brianna Joyner, and original theme composed by Leland Cox and recomposed by Steve Saunders.

STUFF WE LIKE

Check out the Stuff We Like page for links to any of the books/supplements/products etc. mentioned on the podcast that we like!

More on Vanessa: ketogenicgirl.com

Theme Music Composed By Leland Cox: LelandCox.com

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Feb 18

Episode 357: Optimizing Your Fast, Peptides, Creatine, Protein Supplements, Collagen Misinformation, The Best Biohacks, Red Light Devices, And More!

Intermittent Fasting

Welcome to Episode 357 of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast, hosted by Melanie Avalon, author of What When Wine Diet: Lose Weight And Feel Great With Paleo-Style Meals, Intermittent Fasting, And Wine and Vanessa Spina, author of Keto Essentials: 150 Ketogenic Recipes to Revitalize, Heal, and Shed Weight.

Today's episode of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast is brought to you by:

REEL PAPER: Reel paper makes soft, sustainable, eco-friendly, soft, perfume-free, dye-free, plastic-free toilet paper made of 100% bamboo, and they plant one tree for each role you buy! Reel paper is available in easy, hassle-free subscriptions or one-time purchases,  conveniently delivered to your door with free shipping in 100% recyclable, plastic-free packaging. Get 30% OFF reelpaper.com with code IFPodcast, plus FREE shipping! (Works on subscriptions too!)

To submit your own questions, email questions@IFpodcast.com, or submit your questions here!! 

SHOW NOTES

Beautycounter: Keep your fast clean inside and out with safe skincare! Shop with us at melanieavalon.com/beautycounter and use the code CLEANFORALL20 for 20% off, plus something magical might happen after your first order! Find your perfect Beautycounter products with Melanie's quiz: melanieavalon.com/beautycounterquiz

Join Melanie's Facebook group Clean Beauty and Safe Skincare with Melanie Avalon to discuss and learn about all the things clean beauty, Beautycounter, and safe skincare!

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TONE PROTEIN: Get on the exclusive VIP list and receive the launch discount at toneprotein.com!

Listener Q&A: Nicole - How often should you vary your fasting window?

Listener Q&A: Candice - Peptides! What are they?

Listener Q&A: Niki - Red Light Devices

Listener Q&A: Lauri - If you could select your top 2-3 biohack items what would they be?

Our content does not constitute an attempt to practice medicine and does not establish a doctor-patient relationship. Please consult a qualified healthcare provider for medical advice and answers to personal health questions.

TRANSCRIPT

(Note: This is generated by AI with 98% accuracy. However, any errors may cause unintended changes in meaning.) 

Melanie Avalon:
Welcome to Episode 357 of the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. If you want to burn fat, gain energy, and enhance your health by changing when you eat, not what you eat with no calorie counting, then this show is for you. I'm Melanie Avalon, biohacker, author of "What, When, Wine" and creator of the supplement line AvalonX. And I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Spina, sports nutrition specialist, author of "Keto Essentials" and creator of the Tone Breath Ketone Analyzer and Tone Lux Red Light Therapy Bannals. For more on us, check out ifpodcast.com, melanieavalon.com, and ketogenicgirl.com. Please remember, the thoughts and opinions on this show do not constitute medical advice or treatment. To be featured on the show, email us your questions to questions@ifpodcast.com. We would love to hear from you. So pour yourself a mug of black coffee, a cup of tea, or even a glass of wine, if it's that time, and get ready for the Intermittent Fasting Podcast.

Vanessa Spina:
All right, well, hello everyone and welcome. I am your host today, Vanessa Spina, and I have a wonderful co -host joining us today, special guest, Scott Emmons. Many of you are probably familiar with him.

Vanessa Spina:
Scott is the COO of MDLogic Health. He is a biohacker and former bodybuilder, and he brings a wealth of knowledge and perspective. His previous experience as a biotech executive for over 20 years helped send him on his voyage to co -found MDLogic Health, a wellness company.

Vanessa Spina:
So welcome, Scott. It's great to have you back here on the Interim Ritten Fasting Podcast.

Scott Emmens:
My pleasure, Vanessa. It's always great to be at the IF podcast and I'm excited for our questions today. Thank you for having me.

Vanessa Spina:
Yeah, I always appreciate when you can join and share a different perspective. And I think we have some wonderful, brilliant questions as always to get to. But how have you been doing?

Scott Emmens:
Life has been good. Right now, I am just wrapping up from Valentine's Day, which was fun with the wife. So that was good. I'm really thrilled. I think by the time folks are hearing this, we'll be well into our subscription model for Tone Protein.

Scott Emmens:
Got tremendous feedback initially during the pre -launch. And I would be remiss if I didn't just mention to folks, if you're listening to this now and you have not received either an automatic conversion to your 20% for life, if you bought during the pre -sale, if you did not sign up and receive an email or you're not automatically converted over, please reach out to MDLogic Customer Service.

Scott Emmens:
And Vanessa can put that email in the show notes. But at this point, the special is available. And you should be seeing that in your inbox. If you have not received that email from either MDLogic or Vanessa, again, please reach out to us at MDLogic and you will be rolled into that 20% for life program.

Scott Emmens:
So keep an eye out for that. Looking forward to that. I think the subscriptions run through the 1st of March, if I'm not mistaken, but more details will come via email. So just wanted to let that out there, but things are going great.

Scott Emmens:
We actually have two new Co -brands that are launching and MDLogic is working on a large new pipeline for plant proteins, some pre -workout drink, and specifically some skin, hair, and beauty products that we're pretty excited about.

Scott Emmens:
So lots of new developments happening in our world, and lots of things going on with my kids as always. So it's been an adventurous 2023 and we're off to a great start in 2024.

Vanessa Spina:
I'm so glad you brought up the launch of Tone Protein, which we launched together. It was so much fun and just so wonderful to see the support. I know a lot of members of this community and of the Optone Protein podcast community were really excited to finally have a super clean, super high quality whey protein isolate, the product that I wanted so badly to exist on the market, I had to go and create it myself.

Vanessa Spina:
And like you, I was making, you know, formulations in my kitchen. And now finally, I don't have to, I can just use, you know, Tone Protein and put a scoop in there. And now I'm actually doing two a day.

Vanessa Spina:
I was doing one protein shake for the longest time, but my fueling needs went up. My fueling needs were actually higher during pregnancy because they are higher, especially for protein, but they went up even more breastfeeding.

Vanessa Spina:
So I'm now up to two protein shakes a day. And I love using Tone Protein. I love that it is so high quality. It's so clean. It's one of the cleanest protein powders on the market. And the fact that it's also enhanced with leucine, I love that you can just initiate muscle protein synthesis in every serving.

Vanessa Spina:
So that enhancement with the leucine really makes a difference to get four grams of leucine in every serving. And I'm just so thrilled with how the launch has gone. I'm so excited to make new flavors.

Vanessa Spina:
As you know, I've been begging you to make cookies and cream from the beginning.

Scott Emmens:
Cookies and Cream is, I know, first on the list.

Vanessa Spina:
Yes, unflavored. I've been getting a lot of requests actually for unflavored and just for all the flavors. So I'm really excited to expand on that. And I'm also excited about the collagen you were just talking about was we're going to come out with.

Vanessa Spina:
We're going to be coming out with a collagen. And that's something that I've always been really interested in. But again, hit that same issue where I just wasn't happy with the products that were on the market.

Vanessa Spina:
So have to go and create my own. That's been the same thing with all the products. The tone device, the red light therapy, create the products that you want to see in the world that you selfishly want to use yourself but that you think other people may enjoy as well.

Vanessa Spina:
So I'm excited about the collagen too.

Scott Emmens:
you know, with the whey protein unflavored, that's the first I'm hearing that you were getting lots of requests for that. So that actually is pretty simple to make, right? Because flavor is complex and it's got to have the right blends and certain things to make the flavor pop.

Scott Emmens:
So in a completely unflavored way, we'd probably not be able to put the leucine in that, but we do, we are launching leucine capsules. So the reason for that is if you do an unflavored whey with leucine, it can be relatively bitter.

Scott Emmens:
Leucine is a very bitter amino acid, which is why it took so long for us to get your formula just right with that perfect blend of flavors. But the unflavored, I think we can get that out pretty quickly.

Scott Emmens:
So we can work on that as we're working on cookies and cream in the background. And we have done extensive research. I don't know how much I've told you about this, Vanessa, but we've been researching about seven different collagen testing them, looking at the clinical data.

Scott Emmens:
So we have three bovine collagen we've narrowed it down to. And I don't think you want to do marine, but we've also been doing a deep dive into marine collagen, particularly testing them for mercury and heavy metals, because I know that's a big issue for folks.

Scott Emmens:
The other thing we've looked into is the molecular weight and the different kinds of patented peptides. So low molecular weight collagen seems to be really good for absorption and for gut health, whereas the higher molecular weight is better on taste, texture, and better for your skin tone.

Scott Emmens:
So we've done a deep dive on what the differences are in these collagen, what the peptides are, why one might be better than the other. And again, as we've mentioned many times, we've also looked extensively at the five nutrients that are called cofactors, which we initially added to our embryologic collagen.

Scott Emmens:
The issue is copper is a highly reactive molecule, but it's also essential along with zinc and vitamin C. Those three are really key cofactors, out which you just can't make collagen in your body. So you kind of don't really, you digest the collagen, but you're not really getting and creating collagen from it without those cofactors.

Scott Emmens:
So we're going to take that out of that, just make pure collagen and then have the collagen cofactors as these separate nutrients that has all of the five cofactors you need and all of the right ratios to maximize your collagen creation from the collagen you're taking.

Vanessa Spina:
Yeah, I'm excited because when we launch the college and we can do some educational content around college. And I've been learning so much from you about those cofactors. And I think a lot of people don't know that about college.

Vanessa Spina:
And there's just in general, I think with everything from protein to college in, there is a lot of maybe misinformation out there or, you know, as we, we discovered one website that we were looking at that had some really interesting facts.

Vanessa Spina:
Quote unquote fact that were all completely made up. There's just a lot to learn about these things. And I've really enjoyed doing those educational podcasts that we did about how to select a high -quality whey protein.

Vanessa Spina:
And I'm looking forward to doing one about how to select high -quality collagen, also how to supplement with it. Because there's even collagen being marketed as protein supplements, which is one of the worst offenders that I've seen.

Vanessa Spina:
Because people don't know and people are so trusting. I know I'm like that myself. I see something advertised in a certain way. I'm like, oh, so this must be a great protein. It looks like it's got a nice chocolate flavor or whatever.

Vanessa Spina:
And if you don't know, you will fall for that. And you realize that you're basically taking collagen and thinking that it's going to help you initiate muscle protein synthesis. One is the furthest thing from that because it's not even a complete protein.

Vanessa Spina:
So there's so much to learn about quality of protein, protein rankings in terms of their score, their bioavailability, and just to understand and help people wade through the marketing noise. Because there is so much noise and it's easy to be flashy and grab people's attention.

Vanessa Spina:
And then you really do have to put a little bit more work into it to understand some of these concepts. Because I used to be one of those people. I watched Netflix documentaries and I thought that being vegan was optimal.

Vanessa Spina:
I thought that there was enough protein in cucumbers when people would ask me about protein. I was like, cucumbers, there's in vegan propaganda and I saw it in marketing and believed it until I went back to school to study biochem.

Vanessa Spina:
And then I realized that I was being sold a lot of stuff that was really not accurate at all.

Scott Emmens:
Yeah, we'll do a real deep dive on proteins and collagen as a protein specifically, the cofactors. That'll be a great episode. And I think that's what I love most is helping people way through all of the marketing pieces and for lack of a better word, the propaganda or just the company trying to push a narrative.

Scott Emmens:
So I really enjoy pulling the veil back on that and letting people understand exactly what you're getting. And I'm looking forward to that one.

Vanessa Spina:
What did it say they were telling people that if they had whey protein, was it that it was acidic, that there was something

Scott Emmens:
Basically, we say that all of the additional things beyond the essential amino acids were wasted in calories in terms of fat, which is completely

Vanessa Spina:
Yeah, that's what it was. And they had some charts that looked very scientific, but sometimes even when there's charts on there, it's not legit at all.

Scott Emmens:
Yeah, it looked very legit. But then when you went to the source, that actually didn't say anything like that. In fact, I don't think there even was a source. It was their own creation. Not to say that that product doesn't have some benefits, but the way that they couched it was like, oh yeah, if you take away your, it's bad.

Scott Emmens:
No, that was very, we'll call it inaccurate.

Vanessa Spina:
I get it because I hear from people constantly who have the same questions. And I'm like, where is this information coming from? And then you find out, wow, it's a company that's putting this out. And I'm not sure why they're doing that.

Vanessa Spina:
But yeah, it's great to be able to learn. I'm learning so much myself and have been learning so much myself over the years and also to be able to share. And I just love that you have so much experience, especially with supplementation.

Vanessa Spina:
Like I've been learning so much since we started working on tone protein. And it's been great. Well, speaking of learning, I'd love to jump into some questions. What do you think?

Scott Emmens:
Let's jump into some questions. I'm excited. All right.

Vanessa Spina:
So the first question comes to us from Nicole on Facebook if you'd like to start off with that one.

Scott Emmens:
Absolutely. So this question is from Nicole. Nicole, thank you for your question. And it is, how often should you vary your fasting window? Is it necessary to go longer than 18 hours to get the benefits?

Scott Emmens:
I'm super active and do two different forms of exercise in the morning and definitely need food after. I range from 14 to 18 hours typically. So Vanessa, what do you think?

Vanessa Spina:
So I love this question, Nicole. I think it definitely is a great idea to modify or vary your fasting window, but always go back to what are you optimizing for in the moment? What goals are you optimizing for?

Vanessa Spina:
Because I can switch up my goals three, four times a year, depending on what season it is or what it is that I'm currently optimizing for. And you may have a few goals when it comes to your health, but there's definitely one that's sort of the prime goal that that's the one you want to, you know, figure out how to optimize, you know, your fasting window, your protein intake, all these things.

Vanessa Spina:
So I would say that the main benefits that come from intermittent fasting are typically caloric restriction, which you, you know, you get sort of more effortlessly doing it in an intermittent fasting window.

Vanessa Spina:
You also get a lot of benefits on your metabolic health. You get digestive rest. So, you know, I think that you can still get a lot of those benefits. Even if you don't go longer than 18 hours, you know, I think then it's sort of a different category.

Vanessa Spina:
It's like, well, if you're trying to get a topology, I would put that in a different category where I would say, well, you want to do maybe a fast once a year, 36 to 72 hours, like a water fast or supervised fast, something like that, because that's going to really crank up the topology.

Vanessa Spina:
Or if your goal is topology, you want to make sure you're getting in that resistance training and exercise in and maybe doing fasted exercise. You get mitochondrial biogenesis. So it kind of just depends on what you're looking for.

Vanessa Spina:
I find most people come to intermittent fasting because they want to recompose their bodies, cut some fat, do it effortlessly. And also because they want to get some of the longevity and health spend benefits.

Vanessa Spina:
So I don't think you need to go to 18 hours or more. I think anywhere 14, you said you range between 14 and 18. Typically, you can definitely be able to do your fasted workout. It sounds like you do two different forms of exercise in the morning fasted.

Vanessa Spina:
And then you want to break your fast right after. And that's the best time to break your fast, especially if you're having, you know, a meal that has an optimal amount of protein in it. So you can help your body repair and restore itself.

Vanessa Spina:
And I definitely would not be pushing to try and get those, you know, higher numbers or to be pushing when you've just worked out fasted. And you feel that you need to refuel, to nourish your body and provide those building blocks to help your muscle repair and recover as well.

Vanessa Spina:
So I think that at the end of the day, you got to find the window that works the best for you, because that's going to be what's sustainable. A 68 is more than enough to get a lot of the benefits, the main benefits of intermittent fasting.

Vanessa Spina:
What do you think Scott?

Scott Emmens:
Yeah, I agree, especially I'd be curious to know the two different forms. I'm sort of thinking that it's an aerobic and maybe some weight training, but either way, if you're doing two different forms of exercise in the morning and you don't have a high protein meal and or a meal with either half a shake or full shake of protein, you're going to do a lot of, you know, catapultation of your muscle because your body is going to be starving.

Scott Emmens:
It's going to have just worked out in these two different forms, particularly if you're doing weight resistance training, your body is going to be, you know, really starving for those proteins and nutrients.

Scott Emmens:
And I think you said it really well. Like that's the perfect time to break your fast is immediately post some intense exercise, which I would say two different forms of exercise in the morning is. And I think going past 18 hours again, if your goal is to stay really physically fit, which obviously if you're working out every morning, two different forms, I would, I would assume that's the goal.

Scott Emmens:
I wouldn't go beyond the 18 hours. I think that's more than enough and sufficient. And I would definitely eat an hour or sooner after the exercise for sure. And of course, make sure it includes both a hydration and a good bit of high quality protein between 20 and 30 grams, whether that's, you know, eggs, which is a great source of protein, some sort of meat and, and or a high quality shake, I eat some, I think would be the way to go.

Vanessa Spina:
love the plug on tone. I can't find myself, I can't help but mentioning it all the time, because it's what I use every day. And I don't know a way protein that's, that's better. So I love to have a protein shake with tone protein right after working out other times, you know, if I'm not feeling that so much, then, you know, make a different kind of high protein meal.

Vanessa Spina:
I tend to recommend 30 to 35 grams of protein at each meal. And especially if you're doing intermittent fasting, you want to make sure that you're hitting your protein target in that shorter window. So I like to go a little bit more on, on the protein just to make sure that you get enough for muscle protein synthesis.

Vanessa Spina:
And especially if you are plant based, you know, you definitely more closer to 35 grams at a meal. But I know that wasn't specifically about your question. So let's move on to the next one. Thank you for the question, Nicole.

Vanessa Spina:
So Candice from Facebook says, peptides, what are they? Why are people using them? Do they work? And by work, I mean for improving health, weight loss, etc. I've seen them in powder form. And my dad is getting injections of several different formulas from a doctor's office that practices regenerative medicine.

Vanessa Spina:
Are injections better? Are there any studies? Also, thank you for the deep dive on semi -gluteid on the, I believe that was the December 4th podcast. That was absolutely fascinating. Thank you so much, Candice.

Vanessa Spina:
I love getting to do that deep dive. It was so much fun to talk about how semi -gluteid works in the body and the half -life and everything. So I'm really glad you enjoyed it. What do you think, Scott?

Scott Emmens:
So peptides are highly effective in both powder and injection forms, but they're kind of two different things and they're used for two different ways. I think peptides are going to continue to become more and more popular in both supplemental powdered forms, capsule forms, and injection forms.

Scott Emmens:
So you have pharmaceutical grade peptides like semi -gluteide, which is OZEPIC or bogovie. There's a number of those peptides in the market. There are other peptides for things like eczema and you'll see those advertised and those are either injectable or pharmaceutical grade peptides.

Scott Emmens:
Then there's this sort of gray area injectable peptides, which things like BP157, which you really should have a physician that understands what each of these new peptides are, that they have a really good source for those peptides.

Scott Emmens:
Because when you're injecting a peptide into your body, A, you want to make sure it's really pure and you really want to make sure it's a physician that's worked with peptides extensively, taking some training on them.

Scott Emmens:
There's a lot of evidence for a number of different peptides. The one that's probably most popular is the BP157, which is often used for generation of limbs or arthritic pain. They work really well. I've had a couple of those injections for some knee and shoulder issues.

Scott Emmens:
When I say a couple, I mean two, just because they're very expensive and they're very effective. They work really well. I'm a big fan of both the injectable and the oral. From an oral peptide, you'd be surprised at some of the things that are peptides that you hear every day.

Scott Emmens:
Creatine, for example, that's a peptide. A peptide is nothing more than a chain of amino acids that are linked together in a certain form. That form of amino acids tells your body to do something. It's like an instruction panel or the building block of something really important in your body.

Scott Emmens:
When it's already in that peptide form, it spares your body from having to take all of the amino acids and create it by itself, along with all the cofactors needed. It's almost a biohacking way to get these peptides that your body creates on their own in a powder form.

Scott Emmens:
Another peptide I love is carnicine. That peptide is an amino acid. I think it's two different amino acids. It works really well to help pull in electrolytes into your cells. It has some antioxidant properties for things like helping prevent issues with your eyes.

Scott Emmens:
It also is great for performance enhancement in terms of athletes. A lot of athletes will use carnicine as one of their peptides of choice. Then collagen, those collagen peptides, because what they've done is taken that native, fibular collagen, which is what creates your skin, your ligaments.

Scott Emmens:
They've broken that down into an amino acid, but not quite down to the amino acid level, but they've broken it down into peptides. That makes it much more digestible. That's why we talk about those cofactors, because those collagen peptides then have to be rebuilt into your body to create the collagen itself.

Scott Emmens:
That's what those cofactors come into. Creatine, carnicine, and collagen peptides are three peptides you hear about all the time. They're all very effective that I use all the time.

Vanessa Spina:
Thank you for covering those. I actually am fascinated by peptides and I recently had a doctor who actually works with a lot of celebrities. He's out of New York, Dr. Neil Palvin, on the Opsaline Protein Podcast.

Vanessa Spina:
That's all we talked about for an hour. Every single peptide, all the injectables, what they're for, and it's amazing the different applications that they have because that really does seem to be where we are going and trending is towards personalized medicine with people having the ability to analyze their genetics, find out if they have these single nucleotide polymorphisms or SNPs or different mutations.

Vanessa Spina:
There's all these different kinds of mutations that people can have that turn out to really affect how the body really functions overall. It's really amazing that you can correct some of those things with these peptides, these injectables.

Vanessa Spina:
Obviously, the Wacovi, Osempic ones are getting a lot of attention. I think that is bringing just more attention in general to peptides and the fact that they're all these injectables. If you want to hear the A to Z on all those injectable peptides and all the different ones, you covered a lot of the key ones there.

Vanessa Spina:
Look out for that episode with Dr. Neil Palvin that's going to be coming out early in 2024. It could be up as the airing of this, but it'll be around this time. Thank you for covering all of that.

Scott Emmens:
Absolutely. So we've got another question here from Nikki on red light devices. Hi, Melanie and Vanessa. Vanessa, I just preordered your red light device and face mask. I'm so excited to try it. I am too, actually.

Scott Emmens:
I am also trying to use red light to encourage hair growth. Oh, we just talked about that. But it is difficult to target my scalp with the regular devices because it can't face your scalp and at the same time, it faces the rest of your body.

Scott Emmens:
Are you planning on making a helmet device for hair growth anytime soon? If not, are there any you would recommend? I know iris stores are popular, but I wouldn't purchase it without your silver approval.

Scott Emmens:
Thanks for all that you both do. Nikki, let me include the exo, Nikki.

Vanessa Spina:
Hi, Nikki. It's so nice to hear from you. I really love this question. And first of all, thank you so much for supporting my work and what I'm doing in creating wellness products. So I'm so excited that you pre -ordered the new Tonelux Crystal Red Light Therapy Mask.

Vanessa Spina:
And I really can't wait to hear what you think of it. I absolutely love it because I was finding that I like to do my red light therapy on my face in the morning. And I'm with Luca in the morning and lately, especially the last six months.

Vanessa Spina:
He needs me to be focused on him. Like he will grab my face, turn it towards him. Like I cannot look any other direction than him. But he doesn't mind when I put the mask on because we can still read books and do stickers and, you know, we can, you know, do activities together.

Vanessa Spina:
And it's not that long. I usually do a 15 minute session. I can do anywhere from 10, 15, 20, 25 minutes. And I've been noticing some differences with my sunspots already on my face. So I'm really excited for that and to see the differences.

Vanessa Spina:
And the thing with red light therapy is you really have to be consistent at the beginning. I would say, especially the first eight to 12 weeks. And I know you're going to be able to speak to this a little bit from your personal experience, Scott.

Vanessa Spina:
But after you get the results, you can do maybe one session a week or something like that. So you just have to be really consistent at the beginning and you'll get some amazing benefits. And then after that, you just maintain your benefits and your results after that.

Vanessa Spina:
So I'm super excited for you. You to try it. Now, when it comes to encouraging hair growth, this is one of the coolest things about red light therapy because when Russian scientists were first studying red light, they were doing tests on mice to see if lasers would be safe for humans.

Vanessa Spina:
So a lot of the times you look up research on red light, it's photo biomodulation. A lot of the research comes from these laser studies. And one of the first things they saw is that it was regrowing hair on the mice.

Vanessa Spina:
And that's when they started to go, Oh, maybe there's actually some benefits to lasers and red light and photo biomodulation, as opposed to being concerned about the safety of them. So I think hair growth is a huge potential area with the face.

Vanessa Spina:
You know, it's a collagen, a lasso and production, youthfulness, sunspots, you know, can make you look younger. And it can do also systemic benefits from the self remitocondria. But when it comes to hair growth, I think that that can be really, really helpful.

Vanessa Spina:
So my personal recommendation would not be to use the face mask on your scalp. I would use a panel. And the reason for that is the panels are much more powerful in terms of their power density and irradiance.

Vanessa Spina:
It's much stronger. The amount of jewels that you get in terms of the, you know, square centimeters or scranges is much higher with the panels. So I would, if I was doing this for myself, I'd put the panel on the side of the screen.

Vanessa Spina:
And I would put a panel, a powerful panel and prop it up on the floor. And then I would lay down in front of it so that the top of my head would be facing the panel. If that makes sense. So I would definitely do that.

Vanessa Spina:
So when it comes to the face masks and the helmets, the power density and irradiance is much lower than the panels because it's right on your skin. So for safety and, you know, just because you're getting exposure right close to your skin in general, they're not as powerful as the panels can be.

Vanessa Spina:
So I would do that. I also think it would be probably pretty comfortable to just lay on the floor and do your red light therapy. What's been your experience, Scott, because I know, I mean, you were showing me before we started recording your progress.

Vanessa Spina:
It's amazing to see. So I know you've been really doing it consistently and you've been doing some different things. So what would you recommend?

Scott Emmens:
Yeah, so I have a whole protocol that I was following when I was like, so I'm 52, right? So when I was in my 40s, I was like, really, I got to keep this hair. And I was very diligent about it. This was just before red light.

Scott Emmens:
So it was more like Rogaine and a little bit of myconeedling biotin collagen. And that kind of kept the hair I had, but it really wasn't helping grow there. So then I discovered red light and I was using that for a long time.

Scott Emmens:
At first, I was doing about 15 minutes, probably five to six times a week. And I definitely saw a difference that was like around 45. Then I kind of said, eh, you know, the heck with it. And I let it go.

Scott Emmens:
And it just, my hair just wasn't like gone. I'm like, wait a second, I wasn't prepared for this. Over the last three months, I have really begun to use both a panel and a pad. And the pad is just because it's easier and simple.

Scott Emmens:
I don't always have the panel, but the way that I do my panel, I don't, not really much of a lay down kind of guy. So I put it on, I've got a big leg massage chair and I put your panel like on a really firm camera, a mounted, like a tripod mounted camera.

Scott Emmens:
And then I sit on the barcalauner. It's like a, not a barcalauner, but it's like a massage chair and it hovers just about an inch over my head. And then I'll just sit and watch a TV show or listen to a podcast or read a book.

Scott Emmens:
And the 15 minutes goes by super fast. But I also, I think for my age and for how kind of far my hair had gone, I needed to include some other things. So my routine consists of a micro needling in the morning, a light one, then an aggressive micro needling along with a blend of keratin and rogaine.

Scott Emmens:
So it's pure 100% keratin. I said keratin, keratin, which is what your hair is actually really made from. And then biotin, I take it because your hair stacks those little biotin amino acids on top of each other.

Scott Emmens:
So that's more for like the hair growth and length. The keratin is what the hair kind of is actually made out of. It's the primary ingredient in the hair. And then once the micro needling and the keratin are on, I will do the red light therapy for about 15 minutes while that's not a recommendation.

Scott Emmens:
This is my protocol. I also do take biotin and I take collagen along with cofactors. And the final thing I've added in recently, and again, I'm not recommending this, but it's just my protocol. Check with your doctor, make sure this is safe.

Scott Emmens:
But I put a couple of drops of 1% methylene blue on my head before the red light. There's a lot of data to suggest that methylene blue particularly ingested, which is not even, I don't need to think legal.

Scott Emmens:
So I'd never do that. But a topic I put it on along with those other things I do, then do the red light therapy, either the pad, which I'll use downstairs if I'm like watching TV downstairs or in my office where I have the panel set up.

Scott Emmens:
I'll do 15 minutes, probably three to five times a week, depending on how busy my week is. And I was literally just showing Vanessa, I'm like, Hey, I really think this protocol is working. What do you think?

Scott Emmens:
And I pulled my little headphones down and she's like, actually, I see a big difference from the first time we met. No, I don't have a lot of hair, but it is definitely gone from totally bald to like, you know, there's some actual hair there.

Scott Emmens:
So I'm feeling like another three months of this protocol is going to work great. And there is a plethora of evidence on red light, both for hair growth, eye support, skin tone, mitochondrial support.

Scott Emmens:
So look into that red light research. There's just, there's plenty of it. And I think, you know, if you're not doing some sort of red light, you're missing out on a tremendous easy opportunity that's relatively cost light because you can keep the device for months, if not years.

Vanessa Spina:
I definitely see a big difference and I'm a painfully honest person. So like if you were showing me and I didn't see anything, I'd be like, sorry, no. So yeah, I definitely see a big difference, which is really cool because like I remember when we were talking about this when I first told you that I was thinking about coming out with a mask.

Vanessa Spina:
Maybe eight months ago or something like that in the spring and you were yeah, you're showing me that you're wanting to, you know, have some red light therapy benefits there and it's so cool because it's just endless.

Vanessa Spina:
The amount of things that red light does is endless. Like we almost should have like a shower because I keep saying I think in 10 years everyone's going to have one like a hairdryer, like a panel in their bathroom.

Vanessa Spina:
But you almost have like a shower booth with red light and have it go all over your entire body for maybe like five minutes after you are done your shower and you can also warm up.

Scott Emmens:
I'm sorry, they used to have, not red light, but they used to have infrared lights in a lot of bathrooms with a timer. Do you remember those?

Vanessa Spina:
don't, but it sounds like similar. And I've seen in Prague, there's some solariums, the sunbeds that are like marketing themselves as like sun plus collagen. So you can go lay down in tanning bed, and you can get super damaging tanning rays.

Vanessa Spina:
And you can also get some red light while you're there, which I'm not. Yeah. But I would do it if they could just do like the red light, that would be kind of cool. Yeah, I'm sure there's some like, sort of a bond type of, you know, character out there who's got like a red light shower thing that I'm talking about already, or some athlete pro athletes, they're the ones who, you know, really got into this because they're always looking for that edge.

Vanessa Spina:
And, and they've all been doing the red light, you know, for years. And now it's just sort of becoming like, I wouldn't say it's mainstream, but it's in the biohacking community. It's like, if you don't have a red light, like, who are you?

Scott Emmens:
Yeah, you have you'd have a red light. You can't even call yourself a bio hacker. But you're right on a pro athlete. I was talking to someone who we were engaged in some discussions with. And they had mentioned there's a red light like spas and saunas where they either do a sauna of infrared plus red light or just, you know, red light and near infrared light.

Scott Emmens:
And I think that's important that I think yours is both red light and near infrared light, right? I think it's got both the 660 and then the 830 nanometers. I'm not sure what your nanometers are, but basically you want a red light combined with a near infrared light.

Scott Emmens:
So just so people are clear that we call it red light, but it's really both the red light and the near infrared light. And if half your bulb looks like they're not working, that's just because it's near infrared light and you can't see it.

Scott Emmens:
That one penetrates a little deeper. They both serve slightly different purposes, but combined, they work really well. But he was saying that there's like a two week wait to get into these red light, you know, saunas.

Scott Emmens:
I was like, holy moly. And that's at LA. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.

Vanessa Spina:
That's a big business. Yeah, it's really interesting too because I have one wavelength in the sapphire, I put four wavelengths that I found to be the most associated with benefits in the research. And one of them is orange light.

Vanessa Spina:
And I did the same thing with the mask because it's actually so close to red that it's considered like photovol modulation with red light, but it's called orange. And if you look at the light, sometimes the sapphire, if you're using it in the dark, sometimes you'll see it's a bit orangey and it's same.

Vanessa Spina:
It's just one of the wavelengths, but it has a lot of benefits too. And actually all the wavelengths have different benefits, which is really interesting. But red, fascinatingly activates this chromavore on the electron transport chain in the mitochondria.

Vanessa Spina:
So even when you're doing a hair treatment or you're doing a treatment for muscle repair and growth, or you're doing a treatment for like stubborn body fat or whatever it is you're doing it for, you're getting systemic benefits because we have mitochondria floating around in the blood that self -humidicondria.

Vanessa Spina:
So it just amazes me. And it's like, it's not, whoa, right? Like there's an insane amount of research showing this stuff. Well, I first started finding out about it. I was getting so excited because I'm like, there's so many who products out there.

Vanessa Spina:
There's like these mats with frequencies and there's crystals and there's all this stuff. And I love a crystal. Like crystals are cool, but to have something that has like tens of thousands of scientific studies, clinical studies behind it showing, my favorite one is actually the one in Denmark, where they had women who were infertile to the point where they were like completely resistant to everything, like IVF, like assisted fertility, everything.

Vanessa Spina:
And they used this thing called the gigalaser. And it's like this crazy powerful machine that they put over women's abdomens. And over half of the participants went on to successfully become pregnant and deliver healthy babies.

Vanessa Spina:
And one of them was 50. And they were blasting their ovaries with, like it's the most mitochondrial dense area in a women's body. They're blasting their ovaries with these jewels. And it's so exciting to see research like that.

Vanessa Spina:
And Japan and Denmark have been putting a lot of funding towards red light therapy research because they have really low fertility rates. And it's like for someone to see research like that. And maybe they've been going on a fertility journey and having fertility struggles, one of the most painful things that couples deal with, to see that like someone at 50 is using red light to become pregnant and have a healthy baby is just amazing.

Vanessa Spina:
So that's one of my favorite studies on it, but there's so much research behind it.

Scott Emmens:
That's why I love red light. And now do you feel it like relatively quickly the research is there? Absolutely.

Vanessa Spina:
So our last question for today comes to us from Laurie on Facebook and she says, if you could select your top three biohack items, what would they be? It gets overwhelming when listening to podcasts and wanting to try everything.

Vanessa Spina:
I love this question and I completely agree. I feel the same Laurie. So thank you so much for sharing that. What are your top three biohack items,

Scott Emmens:
Okay, so from three to one, I'll use items and then I'm going to include one practice, even though it says items and I'm not sure if items being supplements, so I'm going to probably leave supplements out.

Scott Emmens:
Maybe I'll mention one, but from an item standpoint, number three would probably be some type of heart variability monitor. I really feel strongly that if you're getting ill or not an optimal performance for a workout, like if you see your heart variability drop precipitously in an evening, you probably might want to skip your workout for that day.

Scott Emmens:
You're likely heading for an injury or an illness, so your body is telling you it needs a rest. Heart rate variability has been demonstrated time and time again to kind of be a leading indicator before you're even physically aware of either an illness or an injury that's upcoming, and it's so easy to track.

Scott Emmens:
You could do it with an oar ring, an apple watch, you can do it if you want the most accurate form. They have chest ones that go across your chest that will measure that, so that would be my number three.

Scott Emmens:
My number two biohacking item would probably be my cups, my cupping methods. I just got into this recently and I have found it incredibly powerful in combination with Redlight too because I was having just kind of like old man problems, like cramping in my thighs and cramping in my traps, and I was hydrated and had plenty of potassium and I was working out and like, what's going on here?

Scott Emmens:
What I started to discover was you have this layer of skin between your muscle and your skin. It's called fascia, and it's this really, really thick material that helps keep your muscle structure in place, but what can happen over time if you're an athlete particularly and you're always working out, you can get the scar tissue or layers of tissue between the fascia and the muscle where the fascia is either gripping muscle or scarring up or vice versa.

Scott Emmens:
I don't know all of the science behind it because at little, I just started this a couple of months ago, but I have had like again, this on my left leg, a cramp in my left leg that no matter how much I used those little guns to vibrate it out, it would just hurt more the next day.

Scott Emmens:
I started using these cups on my lats, my lower back and my thigh, and it was like within three days, I felt an unbelievable difference. The cramps were gone, the muscle felt stronger. It just was just like kind of a miracle maker.

Scott Emmens:
I was really surprised. These were my initial cups were just like little rubber cups with a suction on them that you kind of pumped and I could not believe how powerful they were. So now I've upgraded to like the more sophisticated ones and I'm a big fan of those cups.

Scott Emmens:
I think if you've got any kind of muscle aches or pains, that's a must have. And then I could not say number one is because of its versatility, its effect and this, it's got to be red light for sure.

Scott Emmens:
And curious to learn more about this orange light because I hadn't done that. I have heard about purple light. So I'm dying to know more about this orange light when we get done. But red light would be my number one.

Scott Emmens:
And then my item that I would mention in terms of the simple thing you could do is either cold plunge or ice bath. Use your way into it. Make sure that you have someone there. Make sure you check with your position that your heart and your body are ready for.

Scott Emmens:
If you're in the northeast or in a cold country like Prague, for example, you can use the water coming out of your shower and start that way. That's going to be like about 50 degrees, 55 coming out of your shower.

Scott Emmens:
And trust me, that's going to feel cold enough for your first exposure. The first time I ever got an ice bath, it was about 48 degrees and I lasted about 30 seconds. That's okay. And you do want to submerge all the way into a tub.

Scott Emmens:
If you can put your head under, that's great. But again, you can pass out and you have to be careful. So you want someone with you when you're doing this and you definitely want to be checked out by a physician.

Scott Emmens:
But cold immersion or ice baths for just a few minutes every other day, three to five minutes every other day between 55 and 45 degrees, it's going to get the job done. I've never been more ache -free in my joints and body, in my body than I was when I was regularly doing that.

Scott Emmens:
I just started doing it again because I was preparing for the polar bear plunge in January, which you may see some pictures of me on Facebook or on the IndieLogic page, running into the ocean like a maniac in January.

Scott Emmens:
But I figured I'd better get prepared for that. But that has got me re -hooked on it, as Vanessa will tell you, it is a very addictive but super powerful process. So those are my three items and my one free easy to do.

Vanessa Spina:
I love all of those. So in terms of items, like I think more of bio hacks, but in terms of items, I have to say, the number one for me is the tone device. That's why I created it, because I love getting biofeedback and keto is one of the most powerful bio hacks in terms of things you can do to reverse aging.

Vanessa Spina:
I know reverse aging is a kind of a controversial term, but it's really amazing how you can actually reprogram your genetics through epigenetics. Ketone's signal to your body to either unravel or not unravel certain genes and express those genes.

Vanessa Spina:
It's really amazing how they act as histone deacetylase inhibitors. There's so many things that keto does for us. Ketone's actually signal to our mitochondria to uncouple. And that helps in so many different ways to help support our mitochondria because we are uncoupling heat production from energy production and we have more mitochondria.

Vanessa Spina:
And so the biogenesis of mitochondria, it does so many things for the body in terms of health span. So it's the number one bio hack. And so I like to check my ketones to see how I'm doing in terms of getting ketosis.

Vanessa Spina:
And that's why I created the tone because I so tired of pricking my finger using those expensive test strips. And it's just really inconvenient. Like if you want to check your ketones and you're like on the go or you're at someone's house, like you don't just pull out like this kid and like prick your finger and all that.

Vanessa Spina:
But with the tone, you don't have to buy those expensive test strips. You just invest in one device and you can test an unlimited amount of times. And the other drawback with the blood is that you're only seeing a picture of what's circulating in that moment.

Vanessa Spina:
You're not seeing what's been produced and what's been used. So that was always my issue with that as well. And I don't like urine strip testing. I find that to be the most unreliable because once you basically keto adapt, you're not excreting these additional ketones anymore.

Vanessa Spina:
But the breath is not like the urine. The breath is showing you a byproduct of utilization. So about 20% of the ketones that your body produces from your stored body fat goes out in the form of BHB and acetoacetate.

Vanessa Spina:
And during that conversion, 20% of that then spontaneously decarboxylates or degrades into acetone. And acetone is so tiny that it goes out through your lungs. So when you're testing your breath, using a breath ketone analyzer, you're actually reading how many carbons are, those carbons are coming from your fat, from your stored fat.

Vanessa Spina:
So you're getting biofeedback on the level of ketosis you're at and you can also look at some interesting data between your blood and your breath and the ratios and correlation there and it'll show you how much you're using.

Vanessa Spina:
And so I find it fascinating. It's like my number one product for sure you use it every single day, no matter what. Second would definitely be red light therapy panels. And that's why I created the tone luxe line of red light therapy panels because red light is just so amazing as we've been gushing and gushing about.

Vanessa Spina:
And I would say the third is probably tone protein. It's my three favorite things that I use every day. But what better biohack is there than, recomposing your body, getting effortless, sort of recomposition, burning more fat.

Vanessa Spina:
There's so many research studies showing that people eating more calories than a control group when those extra calories are coming from protein, especially weight protein, you're burning more fat. Like it's such an amazing biohack to me if you wanna recompose your body.

Vanessa Spina:
And one of the best things you can do for your body is basically to get rid of excess, unneeded body fat and improve your metabolic health. And then gain muscle and become stronger and have stronger bones.

Vanessa Spina:
So definitely those are my three in terms of items. And I concur with you on the free one, ice baths. I cannot wait to do ice baths in sauna again. Once, you know, I'm back in the groove of doing that stuff because in the winter, it's cold enough in Prague that I just put bathwater, cold bathwater.

Vanessa Spina:
And it gets to between 10 and 15 Celsius, which is the equivalent of what you need. I'm not sure what it is in Fahrenheit, but what you need to be basically in an ice bath. And my hack, my free hack is that when you immerse yourself, and like you said, take all the precautions, check with your doctor, make sure you don't have a heart condition, make sure you're supervised, all those things that if you do find it's appropriate for you and not contraindicated, and you're sort of easing yourself into it, I like to get in there all the way as quickly as possible to my chin because we have brown fat that's around our collarbone.

Vanessa Spina:
And this thing called the turnover effect happens where it switches on our brown fat. And so within 30 to 60 seconds, I'm warm in the water, as long as I don't move much. Then when you get out again, it's freezing.

Vanessa Spina:
It's freezing when you get in, it's freezing when you get up. But once you're in and you're into your chin, you actually feel warm, you feel fine. And it's easy to stay in there and actually overdo it.

Vanessa Spina:
Dr. Susan Soberg, who was on the Huberman podcast, she did some studies showing what is the minimum effective dose, and she found it was 11 minutes a week. So you don't even need to do that much. Like if you're doing three or four sessions a week, it's only a few minutes.

Vanessa Spina:
And I find that way easier than a cold shower. Like cold shower is not, I find that much harder to do than to just sort of like put my arms on both side of the tub and get in and then just stay until here.

Vanessa Spina:
But that is one of the most powerful things I think you can do for your body as well is become cold adapted. And you'll notice it's extremely addictive. You feel amazing after, but you need less and less clothes when you go outside in the cold, which is like, you know, I'm starting to become that weirdo in the shorts.

Vanessa Spina:
And all my friends talk about it now.

Scott Emmens:
It's 30 degrees and you're out there like we're in shorts.

Vanessa Spina:
Yeah, because between the thermic effective protein and the cold adaptation, I'm a warm person now. I was always that cold person. But once you really rev up your metabolism with, you know, good focus on protein, and you're also becoming cold adapted, like you start to become like really, really comfortable all the time.

Vanessa Spina:
And when you're always a person that's cold, it sucks. Like I just love being the person that I way rather be warm all the time. So it's a great combination. And yeah, that's my number one, just like the free hack.

Vanessa Spina:
But again, as Scott said, you know, make sure it's it's safe for you, your supervisor doing it with a friend or, you know, you made sure that it's it's fine for your heart and all that because it is it is intense, like it's really intense hack.

Vanessa Spina:
And you want to not be doing all the things all the time over functioning, over biohacking, I think you can get into a situation just like with red light, you don't want too little, you don't want too much, you got to find that that sweet spot.

Vanessa Spina:
So it was so much fun to talk about favorite biohacks with these God, I love doing this episode. And we had so many great questions. I'm super excited to record the next one with you, which are also co hosting with me.

Vanessa Spina:
And we have some more phenomenal questions in there. So thank you all so much for sending in these questions. And can't wait to chat with you on the next one, Scott.

Scott Emmens:
That sounds wonderful. Can't wait to do it. And thank you so much for bringing up the brown fat. I forgot about that. Not only that, you know, you're going to lose weight because that you're burning so many calories to stay warm.

Scott Emmens:
Like I never had less love handles than I did when I'm, you know, doing the ice bath three to four times a week. And I think you're right. Don't overdo it three to four times a week, three minutes time is good.

Scott Emmens:
I one time went 12 minutes at an hypothermia for like two and a half hours. So you can't overdo it. But it's been so much fun. Thank you for having me on. I hope we answered all the questions to the audience satisfaction.

Scott Emmens:
And I'm looking forward to the next one.

Vanessa Spina:
Awesome. Thank you so much, Scott. And thank you everyone for your fantastic questions. Be sure to follow me on Instagram at Ketogenic Girl and Scott, what is the MD logic handle for Instagram and yours?

Scott Emmens:
So MDLogic is a MDLogic Health is the Instagram. My personal one is at longevity protocol. So you can reach me there. You can get me there if you'd like. If you're interested in partnering in any way or you just have some questions or just wanna follow me, you can do that.

Scott Emmens:
And you can always reach me or MDLogic through. I think it's, I wanna say contact at MDLogicHealth.com. That's our email. But if you just go to our site, www.mdlogichealth.com, all our information is there including tone protein.

Vanessa Spina:
Excellent. Well, thanks so much and catch you on the next one.

Scott Emmens:
Thanks Vanessa.

Melanie Avalon:
Thank you so much for listening to the Intimation Fasting Podcast. Please remember, everything we discussed on this show does not constitute medical advice and no patient-doctor relationship is formed. If you enjoyed the show, please consider writing a review on iTunes. We couldn't do this without our amazing team. Administration by Sharon Merriman, editing by Podcast Doctors, show notes and artwork by Brianna Joyner, and original theme composed by Leland Cox and recomposed by Steve Saunders.

STUFF WE LIKE

Check out the Stuff We Like page for links to any of the books/supplements/products etc. mentioned on the podcast that we like!

More on Vanessa: ketogenicgirl.com

Theme Music Composed By Leland Cox: LelandCox.com

If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving us a review in Apple Podcasts - it helps more than you know! 

 

 

Feb 11

Episode 356: Special Guest: Glenn Livingston, Ph.D., Cravings, Bingeing, Overeating, Variable Ratio Intermittent Reinforcement, Mindful Eating, Extinction Curve Timeline, And More!

Intermittent Fasting

Welcome to Episode 356 of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast, hosted by Melanie Avalon, author of What When Wine Diet: Lose Weight And Feel Great With Paleo-Style Meals, Intermittent Fasting, And Wine and Vanessa Spina, author of Keto Essentials: 150 Ketogenic Recipes to Revitalize, Heal, and Shed Weight.

Today's episode of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast is brought to you by:

Butcherbox: Grass-fed beef, organic chicken, heritage pork, wild-caught seafood, nutrient-rich, raised sustainably the way nature intended, and shipped straight to your door! For a limited time go to butcherbox.com/ifpodcast and get Chicken Thighs, Ground Beef, or Steak tips for a YEAR for free in every order for a whole year! Plus, get $20 off your first order!

To submit your own questions, email questions@IFpodcast.com, or submit your questions here!! 

SHOW NOTES

Beautycounter: Keep your fast clean inside and out with safe skincare! Shop with us at melanieavalon.com/beautycounter and use the code CLEANFORALL20 for 20% off, plus something magical might happen after your first order! Find your perfect Beautycounter products with Melanie's quiz: melanieavalon.com/beautycounterquiz

Join Melanie's Facebook group Clean Beauty and Safe Skincare with Melanie Avalon to discuss and learn about all the things clean beauty, Beautycounter, and safe skincare!

BUTCHERBOX: For a limited time go to butcherbox.com/ifpodcast and get chicken thighs, ground beef, or steak tips for a YEAR for free in every order for a whole year! Plus, get $20 off your first order!

Go to Defeat Your Cravings for a free copy of Defeat Your Cravings!

The lessons learned since the first book

What is "the pig"?

Loving yourself thin?

Mindful eating myth

Food rules and rebellion

Intermittent fasting

Extinction curve timeline

Eating by design

Hacking your cravings

Our content does not constitute an attempt to practice medicine and does not establish a doctor-patient relationship. Please consult a qualified healthcare provider for medical advice and answers to personal health questions.

TRANSCRIPT

(Note: This is generated by AI with 98% accuracy. However, any errors may cause unintended changes in meaning.) 

Melanie Avalon:
Welcome to Episode 356 of the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. If you want to burn fat, gain energy, and enhance your health by changing when you eat, not what you eat with no calorie counting, then this show is for you. I'm Melanie Avalon, biohacker, author of "What, When, Wine" and creator of the supplement line AvalonX. And I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Spina, sports nutrition specialist, author of "Keto Essentials" and creator of the Tone Breath Ketone Analyzer and Tone Lux Red Light Therapy Bannals. For more on us, check out ifpodcast.com, melanieavalon.com, and ketogenicgirl.com. Please remember, the thoughts and opinions on this show do not constitute medical advice or treatment. To be featured on the show, email us your questions to questions@ifpodcast.com. We would love to hear from you. So pour yourself a mug of black coffee, a cup of tea, or even a glass of wine, if it's that time, and get ready for the Intermittent Fasting Podcast.

Melanie Avalon:
Hi friends, this is a very special episode today with Dr. Glenn Livingston. We don't even remotely touch on everything in his book, which is such a valuable resource. I cannot recommend enough. Everybody get it. And it's completely free, which is insane. So just go to freecravingsbook.com.

Melanie Avalon:
That's freecravingsbook.com. You can download the book completely free. It is such a valuable tool. It goes into the science of cravings, the science of overeating and bingeing, provides step by step plans to tackle the inner voice, your inner pig, that's telling you to eat all the things.

Melanie Avalon:
It has troubleshooting recovery plans, refutations for everything your inner pig might say and all the excuses it might make. So many things cannot recommend it enough. Freecravingsbook.com. Pause the podcast.

Melanie Avalon:
Go download it now. You will not regret it. All right. Now enjoy this fabulous conversation with my dear, dear friend, Dr. Glenn Livingston. Hi friends, welcome back to the intermittent fasting podcast.

Melanie Avalon:
This is episode 356. And this is a very, very special episode, very long time coming. I am here with my dear, dear friend, Dr. Glenn Livingston friends. I have talked about Glenn so much on this show.

Melanie Avalon:
So a lot of you are probably already familiar through me mentioning it or through reading his prior work. Glenn is the author of a book that had thousands of reviews about overeating issues, binging issues, craving issues.

Melanie Avalon:
And since then he has released a new iteration of the book, updated it, added the latest science, added his latest thoughts. And I cannot recommend enough this book. It is called Defeat Your Cravings, The Back Door to Weight Loss.

Melanie Avalon:
And friends, the reason I've talked about Glenn so much on this show before is because he has a, if you're not familiar with it, a paradigm shifting mindset approach tool technique thing, which I'm sure we'll talk about in order to really address those moments of food temptation and cravings, especially with you guys doing intermittent fasting.

Melanie Avalon:
You might have these moments where you really want to eat these things that you're used to eating or that you're craving. And Glenn has a brilliant, simple, effective method that has helped so many people.

Melanie Avalon:
I personally have implemented it. Glenn, we were talking right before this about how we got connected, which was through your publicist, I believe. But did you know, I'd been reading your books way before that.

Melanie Avalon:
Did you know that? I've been following you for years. I did not know that. Yeah. Since like 20, when did you publish your first book? What year?

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
2015.

Melanie Avalon:
Since then. Really? Yeah. Because I can remember where I was when I first read your book and it was in the apartment that I lived in like 2016. So right after that.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
I'm honored. You were a very young lady at that time.

Melanie Avalon:
I was. Those were the days.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
You still look pretty young, lady.

Melanie Avalon:
Thank you. Thank you. Wow, that's crazy. And even at that time, when I read it, it had a lot of... I mean, that was in the beginning and it had a lot of reviews and a lot of fanfare. So, I'm super curious.

Melanie Avalon:
And again, we need to talk about your system and everything, but this new book, Defeat Your Cravings, what inspired you to write it? Well, I think it's a great book.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
The whole system, I wrote the first book, which had almost 20 ,000 reviews now, I think, in 2015 while I was getting divorced, basically about how I personally overcame overeating. It was different than the standard approach out there, although I've come to learn that it actually resonates with what the evidence says works for overcoming overeating, which is cognitive behavioral therapy and maybe some SSRI medication.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
But I wrote it in the absence of a deep knowledge of the science of cravings formation and extinction. Since I wrote that book, I've had experience with over a million readers of the first book and over a million readers in psychology today, and over 2 ,000 paying clients who came through my group and individual programs.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
I feel like I have a much more comprehensive understanding of how to overcome overeating now than I did way back when. Also, Melanie, while I was getting divorced, I was in a pretty angry state of mind, and I feel like it came through in the book.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
I wrote it like a pissed -off middle -aged guy getting divorced. I think that in some ways, that's why it became so popular because it was a radically different way of looking at it's a tough love approach to taking control of your own mind.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
But I don't think it had the same level of compassion that I really have for over -readers. I also don't think it was nearly as comprehensive or doctor -like. Like I am a psychologist. I do think in a comprehensive way, and there are pieces and parts that come together.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
The old book was really about fixing your thinking to stop overeating and how I fixed my thinking by keeping a journal, and it took me a while. And then we worked with all these clients, and I had all these coaches working with me.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
We got really good at fixing people's thinking quickly. But what would happen is, I can give examples of all this if you want to, but what would happen is, no matter how well I help people to disempower their excuses about overeating, they would still get to this point where they said, screw it, just do it.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
I know you can't really start tomorrow because tomorrow never comes. If you say start tomorrow and you eat a bar of chocolate, that you're going to reinforce both the craving and the thought about starting tomorrow.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
So you are more likely to say start tomorrow again tomorrow and have a stronger craving. And so you can only ever use the present moment to be healthy, and if you're in a hole, you better stop digging.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
That would be an example of fixing your thinking. And that's what the whole old program was about. But it was very, very effective. We got by like 2022, we were to the point that after one month, people would have reduced their overeating self -reported episodes by about 89 .4%.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
But if the six -month market was more like 55% and the year market was a little lower, and that really bothered me, and I don't know if I'm giving you a long -winded answer to your very first question.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
And so then we saw the screw it, just do it, response, and that's when I realized I had to update the book and put in everything I knew about overcoming that response, which has more to do with overcoming organismic distress and understanding the science of craving that it does with fixing your thinking.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
So that's why I wrote the new book.

Melanie Avalon:
Awesome. I did not know that about you going through. I knew about your divorce, but I didn't know that that was during that time of writing that first book. I can totally see the change in tone in the second one.

Melanie Avalon:
I loved how you go deep into the science of everything in this new iteration. I thought it was so fascinating. And that's so interesting about that second phase response. So now, because you open the book with a really, you know, it sounds like a pipe dream, salesy, almost too good to be true.

Melanie Avalon:
Do you really help 85% now perpetually?

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
We don't have data on the perpetual level. We just opened the new program a couple of months ago. So I could tell you that it's more. It's, I don't have a statistically reliable sample yet, but I can tell you that it's more.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
That's what I can tell you. And just, you know, anecdotally, qualitatively, my experience in working with people like this is that it's easier to hold onto than just fixing your thinking.

Melanie Avalon:
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Okay. So I'm trying to decide because I have so many specific nuanced questions about the approach, but can we just tell listeners a little bit about the actual concept? So what is the pig?

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
Let me first say, I had a very serious over -reading problem myself that I tried everything you could imagine to fix it for about 20 years. I come from a family of 17 psychotherapists, and when something breaks in the house, everybody knows how to ask it, how it feels, and nobody knows how to fix it.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
And so, for the first 20 years of my trying to overcome over -reading, I was trying to love myself then. I thought there was a hole in my heart, and if I could fix that hole in my heart, then I could probably fix the hole in my stomach, or I wouldn't have to keep trying to fill the hole in my stomach.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
And I went to a psychologist and psychiatrist, and over it is anonymous, and I cried and I screamed, and I had a spiritual journey, and it made me a very soulful person, but it really didn't fix the problem.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
I get a little thinner and a lot fatter every time I tried something new. And during that time, I was also consulting for industry. I was married to a woman who commuted, who traveled for business most of the week, and I had time for a second career.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
I was a child and family psychologist with a big practice, but I also started doing advertising research for the food industry and the pharma industry, but most of the food industry. And in the course of doing that, while I was going through all of these love yourself thin rituals, I started to notice that they were spending millions of dollars to get these rocket scientists to engineer hyperpalatable concentrations of starch and sugar and fat and salt and exciter toxins, and it was all geared at hitting the bliss point in the reptilian brain without giving you enough nutrition to feel satisfied.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
And eventually, looking at that got through to me, it made me realize that maybe it's not about the fact that my mama dropped me on my head or her mama dropped her in her head or that she didn't love me enough or she was going through something of her own when I was little.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
Maybe it has more to do with what these big companies are doing and they're hitting these evolutionary buttons and creating addiction. And the hitting these evolutionary buttons that exist in the reptilian brain, it's not the higher brain where love lives and long -term goals and achievement live and strategic planning and rational thinking.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
They're hitting our primitive survival buttons. And I eventually thought to myself, maybe I need a more of a tough love approach. Maybe you can't really love yourself thin because the part of the brain that they're targeting doesn't really know love and kind of bringing you up to speed about what is the pig.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
I did something a little crazy. I decided that I had to create a kind of tripwire. If I was going to be the alpha wolf of my own brain when this lower part of my brain was trying to take control, I said, I need to create a kind of a tripwire so that I know when it's active.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
And so I would make a rule, like I will never have chocolate on a weekday again. And that way, if I was in a Starbucks and there was a big old chocolate bar on the counter, and it was calling to me and I heard a little voice in my head that said, you know what, Glenn, you worked out hard enough and you're not going to gain any weight if you have a couple of ounces of chocolate.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
Go ahead and start your silly rule tomorrow. Let's just get some of the chocolate right now. Yippee, feed me. I would say, wait a minute, that's not me. That's my inner pig squealing for pig slap. And chocolate is pig slap on a Wednesday.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
I don't eat pig slap. And I don't let farm animals tell me what to do. And Melanie, I was not going to teach this. I was not going to publish this. This was a very private thing internally. I will tell everyone you don't have to call it a pig.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
You can call it a food monster or anything that's just a little bit aversive to you that you don't want to take control. But you do need to have something that wakes you up at that moment of impulse and makes you say, well, wait a minute to hear who's in charge because you're going to need to research yourself at that point.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
And if you think that you need to love yourself more at that point, it's going to leave you very vulnerable to the to the pig taking control. So what I'd done back then was I established a tripwire and it would wake me up and I'd have these extra microseconds to make a better choice.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
And I wouldn't always make the right choice. I wasn't instantly cured, but sometimes I did more so than I did before I made the tripwire. And over time, I experimented with different rules. I would start to fix what the pig was saying.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
So if it said, you know, oh, one bite is not going to make a difference, I would say, well, it's never just a bite. And one bite is the difference between whether you're in charge or I'm in charge, which is a totally different way of life.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
It's a difference between making important food decisions with my head and my intellect versus making them with my emotions and whims and impulses. And so, you know, one bite is a tragedy. And I would disempower that thought.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
And over the course of about eight years, I got better by fixing my thinking about food, fixing my thinking about food. So that's what the pig is. The pig is the, it's the sum total of all the thoughts that suggest you're going to break very specific rules that you lay out for yourself.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
You know, we define it as that, which is also a good definition of your lower self. And then you are all the, all the thoughts and feelings that suggest that you're going to stick to your plans. And by, by accomplishing that separation, what I know now that we're, we were doing was interfering with the automatic habit loops that the brain is so good at implementing in order to acquire calories and nutrition.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
It just opened up the space between stimulus and response where I could start to, I could start to have an impact, whereas nothing else did. When I would be thinking about, you know, like earlier on I'd be thinking about, well, maybe I really need a hug or maybe I need to cry about, you know, what my mother did to me when I was a kid or, you know, maybe I need to assert myself in some way with someone that bothered me when I was thinking about all these emotional needs.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
It didn't give me the clarity to figure out the choices that I could make. And also there's, those emotional needs are pretty hard to fulfill. And it's, it's hard to fix the traumas that you went through as a kid.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
And it's hard to, you make yourself dependent upon, dependent upon what happens with these other people in relationships if you feel like you've got to solve all of those conflicts before you stop with reading.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
When I just started focusing on that space between stimulus and response and what I could do, that's when I started to get better.

Melanie Avalon:
So I love two big myths that you dismantled there. One is the loving yourself, then the emotional role of it. And you even mentioned in the book, you said that you talk about how your work with clients and how some clients do still insist on starting with the emotional work first.

Melanie Avalon:
And you say that when that's the order that less than half of the time, are they ultimately successful and everything? But you also draw attention to the fact that people can still, you know, work on their emotional connection and the reasons and everything, but it's not like the actionable step that you can implement now that can actually make the change and change the habits and, you know, address those habit loops.

Melanie Avalon:
So, so effective.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
I remember a guy that told me that if I really wanted to know what my psychological traumas were, that I should stop overeating and then I would know, as opposed to trying to fix all my traumas before I stopped overeating.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
Right? And it's true. If you, the brain has difficulty conducting the emotions when the digestive system is overloaded with food. And so when you're constantly overeating, you're not really aware of all the thoughts and feelings surrounding your traumas.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
So it actually works better to focus on these very practical techniques to stop overeating and then go hire a good therapist to help you with them or psychologist or psychiatrist to help you process the traumas.

Melanie Avalon:
And then sort of related the second huge paradigm shift myth busting that happens. There's the whole mindful eating world. And there's this idea that we should be able to mindfully eat these foods in small amounts.

Melanie Avalon:
And it's funny because I listened to so many podcasts. And I was listening to a podcast once, and I got so angry, which kind of says something about me. Like, clearly, I was being triggered by the episode, so I'm not sure what that means.

Melanie Avalon:
But basically, the girl being interviewed was making this very elaborate case for why we should always be able to eat a little bit of anything. And if we don't, if we feel like we're not able to, or if we have like a quote restriction rule around it, that means that we are not in touch with ourselves.

Melanie Avalon:
And it means that we, you know, it means there's work still for us to do if we can't have just like a little piece of the chocolate. When for me, I'm like, well, chocolate, I don't really have a problem with.

Melanie Avalon:
But if it's like Fun Fetti Cake, if I have one piece of that, it's not food. It's like a processed drug thing that is programmed to make me crave it and want it more. So I don't feel like I should have to mindfully eat that.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, what are your thoughts on mindful eating?

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
Well, I think 100 ,000 years ago, we wouldn't have needed food rules and we could have eaten when we were hungry and stopped when we were full. And I think that eating mindfully is a good idea, but it's not sufficient to help you eat healthy in today's modern food environment.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
So the food industry is manufacturing things which can turn off your ability to know when you're hungry and full. And I mean, literally there are, you know, hormone, there's hormone interference in some of the packaging.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
And so if what you're eating has broken your ability to know when you're mind, when you're hungry and full, then how can you rely on your ability to know when you're hungry and full entirely to control it?

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
So my metaphor would be more like driving. I think it's really important to drive mindfully to be present while you're driving and pay attention. But you also need to pay attention to the lights and the stop signs and the yield signs.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
And, you know, in a city without stop signs and yield signs and traffic lights, you wouldn't really, really be safe to drive around. So I think that the controls actually expand your freedom and make it possible to navigate a larger radius of locomotion.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
You know, have the free flow of commerce and socialization in a city or, you know, like the metaphor we go back to making it possible to enjoy more foods and more taste satisfaction and more freedom.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
I think that the rules make it possible to do that versus the you've got to be able to eat everything approach. Some people respond negative. Well, let me see one more thing about it before I go into how some people respond.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
I think that a good food rule is like a kitchen knife and you could use it to over restrict or you could use it to chop vegetables. So I don't think the problem is the knife. I think the problem is the way that the rules are used.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
I mean, I would refer that people use it to chop vegetables. Some people are overtaken by a feeling of rebelliousness and response to rules. And so either they make rules that are way too strict. And, you know, like if you say, I'm only going to eat 500 calories a day, your survival systems are going to be on overload, trying to press you to have a lot more.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
And they're going to say, forget about your silly rule. So it's really hard to maintain that. You know, so there's some rules you can't make. I always joke and say you couldn't make a rule that say I'll never pee again because your bladder is going to tell you otherwise.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
You need to authentically nourish yourself. But let's just seem to have a reasonable rule. There are some people who are thrown by the rebellious feelings that the rules engender. And I would say that the goal in my system is to sever the link between all emotions and overeating and make important food decisions with your head.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
And rebellion is just another emotion. Why do you want to reify the rebel inside of you? Or can't you just understand that as another emotion, like anxiety or anger or, you know, or sadness or... You don't need to eat because you feel too angry.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
You don't need to eat because you feel too sad. You don't need to eat because you feel too anxious. Why do you have to eat because you feel too rebellious? Why can't you follow the rule anyway? So I'm in favor of teaching people to eat by design rather than to eat on impulse.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
I have a disagreement with the mindfully community that it says that you have to allow all foods. I do have a disagreement with that. I think it's very possible to use rules to be over restrictive. And if you are physically over restrictive, your body will rebel for you.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
Those aren't the kind of rules that we encourage people to make. We actually try to get people to make weight loss kind of a secondary goal. And the first goal is to have a normal, calmer, easier, more peaceful relationship with food.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
You know, where you're flooding your body with nutrition and a slight caloric deficit if you want to lose weight and you're not going through these tremendous ups and downs. And really the primary purpose is to be able to make decisions about foods and foods behaviors that were previously under the control of your impulses and emotions instead.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
So does that answer your question?

Melanie Avalon:
Yes, it does. And you know what's really interesting? It's actually, well, first of all, I'm very much a rules -oriented person. So to me, it works really well right off the bat because I see rules as freedom.

Melanie Avalon:
Like I can live my life when I have the rules in place and you answer my question because I was gonna ask about people who are rebellious or have you read Gretchen Rubin's Fortunes?

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
No.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh, you would like it. Are you familiar with it? A little. It's like basically, do you fulfill inner or outer or a blend or neither expectations? So which rules do you follow or which rules do you rebel against?

Melanie Avalon:
And she has it, four different types of people.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
as I can need to read that.

Melanie Avalon:
Yes, probably. I mean, it goes so well with your work. But interestingly, it's actually very similar. So the example you're making about the knife and how it's used, and then also the rules, it's actually very similar to me hearing it to intermittent fasting because you're basically setting up these rules about when you eat or don't eat.

Melanie Avalon:
It's not personal, it's not emotional, at least it's not supposed to be. Then you just exist within that frame. And anything during the fasting window, any voice you would hear telling you to eat is, it would be quote, pig squeal, with the assumption that those rules, those fasting rules aren't being made from an overrestrictive place.

Melanie Avalon:
So they aren't using the knife like you said to. What did you say? What was the bad way to use it?

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
Well, you could imagine bad ways to use a knife but just use a knife to chop vegetables. We find the best results when people start with a 12 hour window to begin with. And then after a couple of months, if they want to have a tighter window, then it can work out.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
But you and I want to talk about this. And you explained to me why that might be. I just know that it is. I find that if people, unless they've been intermittent fasting for a long time or they're not eating a lot of processed food.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
But I think that when people have been, especially if they've been binging or just eating a lot of bags and boxes and containers of stuff, I find that we do better if they'll start with a 12 hour window before they tighten that up.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
Do you have thoughts about that?

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, I mean, I can definitely see that working. And for a lot of people, easing in to intermittent fasting is the approach that really works for them. And I can see how, especially if they're coming from a sort of binging type background or overeating type background, that that would be, you know, a really powerful approach.

Melanie Avalon:
And again, then it wouldn't be just relying on intermittent fasting to, quote, fix everything. It's this really, really powerful mindset tool, you know, psychological tool that you've created. So, I mean, if it's working in your clients, sounds like a plan to me.

Melanie Avalon:
And 1212 is, I don't want to make assumptions, but I think a lot of people on the standard American diet eating system, if they haven't thought about it before and they were randomly asked how much do they eat during the day, they might think it's like 1212.

Melanie Avalon:
But when they've done studies where they actually see what people are eating, people are eating like constantly, like most people eat once they wake up and then they snack throughout the day and then they snack right before bed.

Melanie Avalon:
So most people aren't, you know, are not doing a 1212 thing. So, you know, that's a great place to start.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
Okay, good. That's a good intersection of our work then. Melanie, you know that the last thing I want to see about them, the allow everything approach is that it does work for some people. I don't want to discourage people from doing that if it really works for you.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
We get complaints from the people that come to us who that was working for. They'll say, I'm not binging because I allow everything. So I don't ever feel rebellious, but I don't feel like I can eat as healthy as I want to.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
They're trying to achieve a higher level of health. And I think that's a benefit of our system is helping you to get there.

Melanie Avalon:
So basically they can use the system to make these new choices surrounding what they're eating within that mosaic of eating everything. Awesome. Awesome. And listeners, I really, really cannot recommend enough getting the book.

Melanie Avalon:
Just get it now. Get it now. If you've ever experienced anything with cravings or overeating or any struggles with food, it's crazy. I just think this is a reason that your work has had such an incredible response.

Melanie Avalon:
It's crazy how much people will identify with it. You get so specific and you list off things and it's like, oh yeah, I've literally heard that exact thing in my head. It's kind of like Taylor Swift.

Melanie Avalon:
How she relates to everybody for the people who like Taylor Swift.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
The book is free on the website, by the way, for Ken O 'Nilkin PDF.

Melanie Avalon:
So you can get it free at freecravingsbook.com. Okay, get it now. Freecravingsbook.com. So I have a few questions, specific questions that I liked with content that you had in this book specifically.

Melanie Avalon:
And it's been a while since I read your first one. I actually read a lot of, because you had quite a few. I've written eight books. Eight books, okay. I probably read, I probably read half of those probably.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
Most of them were written in the early years though. I hadn't written a book since 2019.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, in the early years, I remember I read your first book and then I was like, oh, I got to read all of them. So but in any case, so I think the things I'm going to ask you about right now are new to this book, but they might have been touched on in previous books.

Melanie Avalon:
So one of the things I found so fascinating was you talk about the extinction curve timeline. So the actual process that well, first of all, you talk about the science of a habit and a craving and what the brain actually goes through.

Melanie Avalon:
And then when you stop indulging that, what the brain goes through and what that looks like and what that timeline looks like, which is probably very helpful to people because apparently it's got some twists and turns and you think you're you think you're through it and then you're not.

Melanie Avalon:
Was this the first time we're talking about the extinction curve timeline?

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
This is the first thing I'm talking about it with you, yeah.

Melanie Avalon:
Do you talk about it in the previous books?

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
No, no, no, we had a webinar once about it, but that's not available anymore.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, so it was new. So one of the things I found so fascinating is, because I think a lot of times people will, you know, be working on a specific craving or not eating a certain food, and then they'll be doing pretty good, and then they'll wanna have it, you know, like a slip up, like just this one time, like it'll just be this one time, but even if it is just that one time, you point out the role of randomness and that if you, and I'll let you explain it better, but basically this idea that the uncertainty surrounding whether or not you're going to have something makes the brain want it even more.

Melanie Avalon:
So if you randomly do indulge, you're actually making it much worse, even if it's just that quote one time. I was wondering if you could expand on that a little bit more. I find this so fascinating.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
Rather than jumping into the middle to make that one particular point, I'd like to give you some background about how cravings are formed and extinguished in the first place. And then it'll be easier to explain why randomly reinforcing a craving is about the worst thing you could do.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
Is that okay? That's perfect. So let's start with the understanding that if you have a strong craving, if you have stronger cravings than other people, that's actually a sign that you have a healthier mind than other people, a healthier brain than other people, not a sick mind.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
You need to know that 100 ,000 years ago, food was not nearly as abundant as it is now. And as a consequence, we had to work for it a lot. As a matter of fact, the bulk of our day was probably involved in sourcing and finding and motivating in ourselves to go find food.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
And if we, if we didn't have strong cravings, we would have died because we wouldn't have been motivated to, you know, go hunt and gather and, you know, organize and bring food back and feed our family.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
And so the brain evolved this system for motivating us to do what was necessary to go find food. And it does that through the use mostly of dopamine. And it, it does that through the same mechanism to form the craving and extinguish the craving.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
So this is important also, because people think that they must be broken. They can form cravings, but they can't extinguish them. But it's not true. If you have a strong craving, it means your brain is working, which means that the extinction process will work also.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
So that's very important to overcome any notion that your brain is broken like that. If you don't have lesions in your ventromedial hypothalamus, or, you know, if you haven't had a serious brain trauma, and sometimes even if you have it, it's very unlikely that you can't extinguish a craving.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
Okay. So let's, let's imagine there is a caveman. I'll call him Thag, T -H -A -G, Thag. And I just like the name. It's a random. I love it. It's a really random name. And let's say that Thag is out looking for food and he sees a monkey.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
And he follows a monkey to a banana tree. And Thag is so happy that he gorges himself on bananas. He would have eaten mass quantities because remember food was scarce back then. And it would have taken as many as he could back to his wife and family.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
What would then happen is that the next time Thag saw a monkey, his brain would secrete a bunch of dopamine and try to get Thag to follow the monkey because he was more likely to find food if he followed a monkey than if he was just randomly searching.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
So the monkey had some utility. We'll call the monkey a food signal. And in today's modern environment, that would be akin to seeing a sign for a donut store or a hamburger place or, you know, a convenience store that you're familiar with, all of the branding and signage.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
Their food signals also, they lead you to the acquisition of calories and nutrition and sometimes just calories. Now, suppose that I decide that I'm eating too many donuts. I'm stopping at this one particular donut store on the way home from work.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
And I'm having three or four donuts every time. And so I'm developing a little punch and I decide I have to extinguish that. So I decide to make a rule that says, I will never stop for donuts on the way home from work again.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
And what most people think will happen at that point, and I'm going to go back to Thag in a minute to explain why, but most people think what will happen is that you're going to have the worst cravings on day one.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
It's going to be hardest on day one. Then it'll be a little less hard on day two, a little less hard on day three, all the way until you get to the point that the donut store doesn't bother you anymore.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
But that's not actually what happens. What happens is you have a little honeymoon period right away. So it's actually easier than you think it's going to be for the first couple of days or exposures, which are an exposure is passing the donut store and not having the donut.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
And then the brain does something which is called an extinction burst. I call it the worthy effort of my donuts reaction. It says, I used to get donuts whenever I passed the store and I don't get donuts anymore.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
Where am I calories? See, the brain thinks that this is keeping you alive. It thinks that the acquisition of massive amounts of calories is necessary to keep you alive. It thinks you're going to die if you don't stop for donuts.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
That's why this is so difficult. Why does it do that? Let's go back to Thag. Thag follows a monkey the next day, and at least to a tree with bananas, he's really happy. And then the next thing, and the next thing, and the next day, and it becomes a really solid habit.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
He gets so excited when he sees monkeys. But then one day, Thag follows a monkey. It's later in the season, the bananas will become scarce, and they get to a tree without any bananas on it. Thag was really sad and disappointed.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
Many people think that at that point, in fact, his brain would give up and would stop motivating him to follow monkeys to trees. But what it does instead is it doubles down, it secretes even more dopamine, and makes Thag even more motivated to go follow monkeys to trees.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
And the reason for that is that it would be more beneficial, more of a survival advantage, to hold on to a food signal, to find a monkey that led you to a tree with bananas 70% of the time, or 50% or even 20% of the time.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
It would still be a survival advantage as opposed to having no monkey at all. Your brain is a calorie acquisition machine, and when it's learned that there's a signal that makes it more likely you're going to find food than if you didn't have that signal, it doesn't wanna let go of that, and it's gonna motivate you to engage in the behavior that led to the calorie acquisition before.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
So what that corresponds to in the extinction curve is this extraordinary effort to test whether the reward has become available at random. It's called intermittent variable ratio, intermittent reinforcement.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
It's like what happens with a slot machine. You don't know when it's gonna pay off. So you know you have to be there pulling the lever. This is why those little ladies get stuck at the Las Vegas slot machines, because they don't know when it's gonna pay off.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
And sometimes they'll even fight if they go to the bathroom and someone takes their spot for a second. There's this feeling of compulsion that you have to get the reward. And that's you have to be there to get the reward.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
You have to engage in the behavior to get the reward. And that's what the extinction burst or the worthy effort in my donuts reaction is about, your brain is testing to see whether the reward has become intermittently available at random.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
Now, if you push through that, what most people do is they say, oh my God, this is too hard. And their inner pigs say, well, this torture is gonna last forever. You obviously can't do it. What most people do at that point is they give up and they reward the craving.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
They reward the food signal. And so now they've proven to the brain that it was intermittently available at random. And the brain goes, oh, good, I did the right thing. I generated this extinction burst.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
I generated this horrible craving. And the extinction curve resets and people start to feel like they're powerless over the problem. But it's really just because they don't understand what's happening.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
And if you can tell yourself, you don't have to do anything about that craving. What you want to do is plan out these extinction curves, pick a very particular craving, plan out the extinction curve, and plan to take extra good care of yourself over the course of the whole curve.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
So what reinforces people's willpower is having good enough nutrition and good enough sleep and good enough hydration and feeling like they're part of a tribe and they're not isolated and minimizing their other decisions they have to make over the course of the day.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
And what you want to do is take this all very seriously. Don't go into battle wearing a plastic helmet. Tell yourself this is going to be hard. The brain doesn't want to give up the calorie acquisition learning, but you can push through it.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
Once you do, then you start to enter a more or less linear reduction in cravings. But the brain is going to throw out a couple of mini tantrums at the very end of the extinction curve. Somewhere around the 20 to 30 exposure mark, you're going to get a couple of little tries, little cravings for donuts.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
If you push through that and you allow you know, allow the full extinction curve to take place, you will then hardly be bothered at all because the brain will then say, okay, it's obviously a waste of energy to follow the monkeys.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
It's obviously just a waste of energy to get you all motivated when you see the donut sign. I'm going to label this as dormant. It's not gonna erase the craving. It's not gonna erase the learning because what if monkeys lead to banana trees again someday, but it's gonna label it dormant so it won't bother you unless and until you reinforce it again?

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
Does that make sense, Melanie? Yes, it does. So then, if you don't want to give up donuts entirely and two or three people are capable of doing this, and if you've gone too far down the, you know, the automation loop and you've dug too deep of a groove, then it might be you have to give up, but I give it up.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
But I find that two or three people can moderate rather than abstain. The way you do that is to very specifically bind the reward to a particular context.

Melanie Avalon:
I just love this concept so much.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
much? Well, yeah, because it makes it possible for you to have what you want without having to, you know, give up your freedom. We call it eating by design. So if you were to say, I will only ever have donuts on Saturday mornings after my workout and no more than two.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
What you're really doing is setting up a set of food signals that have to work in concert and your brain is smart. It knows how to recognize the particular contacts. It'll say, okay, I need to have experience the workout.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
It's got to be Saturday. It's got to be morning. And there's a limit of two. And it's kind of like if you were to have a slot machine in a casino that only paid off on Saturday mornings at 10am, the casino would be empty all week long.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
The little old ladies would suddenly not be there after a week or two, they would not be there because it only paid off on Saturday. And then there'd be a mad rush on Saturdays. And so that's how cravings work.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
If you haven't gone too far down the rabbit hole. The last thing I would tell you about cravings, which is important, is that, well, two more things. One is that at the end of the extinction curve, when things are starting to be labeled dormant, a lot of people make the mistake of becoming overconfident and saying, I've got this.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
So now let me try just stopping at random at the donut store again. And boom, they reset the extinction curve, they simulate the variable ratio, intermittent reinforcement schedule, and they're bringing lights up and reignites the craving.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
So once you break out of prison, don't go back to see your friends. If you want to re -experience the food, do it by design, don't do it at random because you're feeling cocky. Okay, the last thing to remember about cravings, I lie, there might be two last things.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
But the most important last thing to remember about cravings is that they're tied to specific food signals. So let's say I go through 30 days, even 60 days, and I'm just really not bothered. I don't even think about stopping at the donut store on the way back from work.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
I don't, I don't, I don't obsess about it during the day. It's just not really part of my life. It's where I wanted to be. I'm really happy. And then I go to my mom's house. I haven't seen her for a couple of months and she invites me over for breakfast.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
And there's a big old plate of donuts like she always has when I go for breakfast at mom's house. And I've got cravings like I've never had before. I'm thinking, what's wrong? I must have failed. This is too hard.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
I must have failed. But you didn't fail. You succeeded at extinguishing the donuts from the donut store sign. You didn't succeed at extinguishing your mom's house on Saturday mornings, you know, when, when you go to her place and you hadn't been there in a while.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
So as a practical matter, when you really want to, when you have a food that's troubling you or craving that's troubling you, you want to think about all of the different stimuli that it's attached to and make a plan for it.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
And if there are infrequent stimuli like going to your mom's house that it's attached to, then you want to write yourself reminders like actually plan out an email to arrive to yourself just before you go into mom's house and what the day that you're going to be there in the day after.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
And maybe in that email, it will remind you to eat a little more healthy food before you go. It reminds you what your pig is going to say and what's wrong with what your pig is going to say, like just a little more hurt.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
And then you'll, you write out the refutation for that, the answer to why the pig is wrong about that. It'll remind you to drink more water, it'll remind you to get a little more sleep. And then you can extinguish those exposures as well.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
Don't get thrown if the craving comes back in response to another stimuli. Just understand it's a little bit like a game of whack -a -mole.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, yes.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
These things are going to pop up because there are other stimuli that you won't have experienced. But if you keep whacking them down and keep going through the extension curves for them, you get to the point that they just don't bother you at all anymore.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
Your pig will say it's going to go on forever. As a practical matter, usually about 80% of cravings for a given substance is related to one or two daily food signals, and then the remaining 20% are with these infrequent signals that come over the course of time.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
That is, I think, the answer to your question.

Melanie Avalon:
Super amazing. Some quick follow -up questions. So that extinction curve timeline that you just went through, is it a set amount of time regardless of what the person is trying to tackle, or is it longer for some, shorter for others?

Melanie Avalon:
I know you talk about the role of the counterintuitive idea that it takes longer for cravings that we were more intermittently dealing with, compared to every day. So is there like a general amount of time that it takes, or is it random?

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
It's a number of exposures, not a specific amount of time. Most cravings are daily habits, and those can usually be extinguished in about 30 days, 30 exposures. If it's something you do every week, let's say you're playing poker every Saturday and you're eating pretzels every Saturday, that's gonna take longer.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
That could take 30 weeks to get through. And so you're gonna need a little more support to do that. And so that's, so you'll set up emails and friends to call you and things for 30 weeks. So you can really get through that.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
So yeah, it's, I mean, and it also varies depending upon how long the craving was reinforced in the first place and how strong it is, but varies depending upon how pleasurable the experience was for you.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
So these are principles, not hard and fast rules, but generally spanking for a daily habit, somewhere in the first four to 10 days, you're gonna have that extinction burst, which is the hardest part to get through.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
And then you're gonna have very strong relief right around the corner. And the only way out is through. You should be excited when you have the craving because the only way to kill a craving is to have a craving and not reinforce it.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
You know, and once you understand this, you kind of prioritize your extinction curve and get at it, man. There's no use dilly -dallying around. You can make this happen.

Melanie Avalon:
Nice. And if you do indulge, let's say you're at like day 29, does it reset to the very beginning or?

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
It kind of does. Yes. I mean, people have had the experience, so they'll find it a little easier to get through, but please don't shoot the messenger. Don't reset it at day 29, please. Please don't do that.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, another question. You mentioned in the book and you mentioned it here as well, that cravings are never extinguished, they just go dormant. If you had a craving and you successfully went through the curve and now it's dormant and it's in the past, is there the possibility of having it again and not enjoying it as much for whatever reason and rewriting how your brain interprets that food item?

Melanie Avalon:
And the reason I'm asking, I'll just elaborate really quickly, is because when Jin used to host this show with me, we would often talk about Fun Fetty Cake because like I said, that's my thing. She would swear up and down that my food buds had changed and if I were to try it now, I would not like it.

Melanie Avalon:
And she said that she had tried things like that now and she didn't like them, like things she used to crave, that she no longer crave them and she could eat them now. I was like, nope, that's not me.

Melanie Avalon:
I was like, I know if I have it again, it will taste amazing. And yeah, and it did. I actually tried some gluten -free Fun Fetty Cake and it was like the most amazing thing I've ever tasted. I was like, okay, we're not going down this rabbit hole at all, but I feel like I did have something similar where I don't know the context of, it's really vague in my memory, but I feel like I had an experience where I did rehab something and I just didn't like it as much now and that actually helped me want it less.

Melanie Avalon:
So is there that possibility of retrying something from the past and actually having that help you not want it more or is it like once it's a craving, keep it in the past?

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
There is that possibility. First of all, there is the possibility of going through the extinction curve. You know, like a lot of people will go through a 90 day period where they have no sugar, flour or alcohol.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
But that's one of the best resets you could do if you're really struggling. Go through 90 days with no sugar, flour or alcohol and then look at the difference in how you're thinking and what rules you want to set and how you want to eat at the end of that versus the beginning.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
It's a very freeing thing to do. And I've seen a lot of people do that and then say, I think that I will allow sugar once a week at a restaurant for one serving of dessert or something like that. A lot of times that's possible.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
I'm not guaranteeing it. It's at your own risk. A lot of times that is possible, especially when people really study this stuff hard. So they're not part of what allows the habit automation loop to take hold is this idea of powerlessness or that it's a disease or if there's something wrong with you.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
And when you get rid of those ideas and you really understand what's going on, it's often possible to moderate something that you couldn't moderate before because you say, all that's happening is my brain's really excited.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
I'm just, I really, really like this. That doesn't mean I have to do it. I can just extinguish it again. So I have seen people come up with conditional rules to bind their pleasures to certain contexts after needing to not have them at all for a long time.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
I feel like it's safer in most cases if you decided you didn't, you really couldn't have it. It's probably safer not to have it. But let's go to the specific question you're asking. Could you have a toxic experience with a previously pleasurable substance?

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
The answer to that is yes, because of the phenomenon of down regulation and up regulation. So your being is designed to avoid overloading your brain with stimulation if that stimulation is not relevant to the acquisition of what it wants.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
When I used to sleep underneath the subway, when I went to graduate school, my parents got me an apartment with these crazy pediatrics students that slept just about underneath the subway. And I could not understand how anybody slept.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
But three weeks later, I didn't even hear the subway and I slept like a baby. And the reason for that is that my brain down regulated or habituated to the noise. It decided that stimuli was not relevant anymore.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
Let's say you really like super salty things that your desire for super salty things probably didn't occur. I'm sorry, let me back up for a second. The same process would happen if you would eat something salty every day.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
Like if you eat something a little bit salty, it would be interesting then you put a little more salt on it, a little more salt on it. Because in order to get the same pleasure response from the salt, you need a little more, a little more, a little more because your brain is down regulating in the same way that it down regulated that's response to the subway.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
Because it's not going to respond to salt in the way that it normally does. Okay, so now you get to the point that you're eating these nacho chips that have two grams of salt in them in a bag and you hardly even taste the salt.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
It just tastes it tastes good to you, but not as good as the first time you had it maybe. And you need more and more salt to make it taste good. So you're eating super, super salty nacho chips, then you decide to extinguish that.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
If you then go back 90 days later and you have one of those super salty nacho chips, it's going to taste too salty to you because over the course of that 90 days, your brain would have up regulated, it would have reestablished the responsiveness.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
Just like if I went out to the country for a couple of months and then I went back and slept under the subway, I wouldn't be able to sleep again because my brain would have up regulated again. So provided that you went back and had the same level of intensity of stimulation, you would have a toxic experience and you wouldn't want that thing.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
And I've experienced that with salty stuff. I stopped having salty soup. And then one day I decided I just give it a shot and I couldn't imagine how I ever got it in my body. So it can, but it depends upon a number of things.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, that totally makes sense. I've definitely experienced that with salt as well. Salt's one where it's like very, at least for me, very telling, like, because I've gone through low carb keto periods where I was eating much higher salt and then cutting out the salt and then having it.

Melanie Avalon:
I'm like, whoa, I don't have, how in the world was I eating this? The sweet thing though, I don't know that Fun Fetti cake. It's always, it's always gonna call to me. Well, something I also love in the book.

Melanie Avalon:
And again, I will just prefer listeners to the book because there's so much we didn't even remotely touch on. So, you know, you talk about, like I said, the specific squeals and how to refute them. And those are the ones where I think people will really resonate and be like, okay, I've literally heard that exact phrase in my head.

Melanie Avalon:
And here's how you can, you know, combat it. You talk about how to, how you can use all of this to actually create healthy habits that you want. So kind of like hacking the, you know, the variety and the randomness and everything to make yourself crave healthy foods.

Melanie Avalon:
You really read the book. Oh yes, oh yes. Most definitely, I loved it. It was so great. So much, like I said, so much science. I loved all the updates. You have your ritual mantra, your 100% optional tool people can use that they can possibly integrate if it resonates with them.

Melanie Avalon:
So it's completely free. Get it now, freecravingsbook.com. Completely free.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
Press the big blue button.

Melanie Avalon:
press the big blue button. Is there anything you want to talk about specifically before we go from the book for listeners?

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
just because we went into depth so much about the science of cravings that it's how to say one more thing about it. It's helpful to understand that it was so important to be able to locate food sources, that the brain has the capacity to form a new craving, a new automation loop, from one particularly unexpected, rich, and delicious experience.

Melanie Avalon:
I'm just gonna ask that. I'm glad you're talking about this. Yes.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
I had a friend in my 30s, his name was Hank, and once we went out to a diner and he took a bite of a sandwich, I think it was. And he said, Oh, Glenn, I can't eat this. This is too good. And Glenn, if it's too good, then it's no good.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
That that was his understanding of how to avoid getting a craving. If he had something that was too delicious and unexpected, he knew his brain was going to start making him want to go to that diner all the time.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
And so he decided right away that he wasn't going to do that. So if you find yourself having an unexpectedly delicious experience that you don't want, like I don't want to take anything away from you that you do want.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
But if you feel like it's going to be trouble, then make a rule for it right away. Don't don't let it take hold. On the other hand, you can use that phenomenon to crave the things that you want to crave.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
So if you research a half dozen or a dozen recipes that are entirely on your plan, like one of my favorite things is this vegan, flowerless, you know, cheeseless lasagna. I got it from Dr. Furman. And you have like a half a dozen or a dozen of those things, and you rotate them through your diet.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
So you don't have them every day, or even every month, you allow, you know, allow yourself to wait for them. Then you're constantly having these unexpected, delicious experiences, and your mind will keep craving that.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
And it is an awful lot for the satisfaction on your plan. And that's one of the ways you can hack your brain to want the things you wanted to want to not want the things that you don't want it to want.

Melanie Avalon:
I love it. I love it so much. So if somebody had that delicious experience where they're like, oh no, this could be a problem, what sort of rule would they create around that?

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
Well, let's say it was a particular sandwich. It could be very particular. I feel like I will only ever have a half of this particular sandwich at such and such restaurant with my spouse on the weekends, right?

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
Or maybe it's just so strong, they feel like they can't deal with it at all. And so they'll say, I won't ever do that. It's up to you and it's a matter of judgment. And I have to interview people about their experience with it to really know what to tell them about that.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
I err towards conditional rules where you don't have to give things up entirely because people like more freedom than less, something like that.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, I was going to say intuitively, I think the reason I really loved the binding concept is it's something I've historically done, like I would, without even realizing it, I would, especially when I was still fine tuning my diet and what I eat, I would say I could only have certain things on like a holiday and only on a holiday and not if it wasn't a holiday.

Melanie Avalon:
And then interestingly, the farther I got in life and time, then I didn't even want those things on the holiday. It's like the longer I went.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
A very common condition or rule people will make is, you know, I can have one serving at dinner, of any dinner I want, a one serving of dessert, of any dessert that I want on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
I know I know a lot of people that do that. It works out well.

Melanie Avalon:
I also like just to throw it out there. I like your ambiguity asset test. So basically, because people might make their rules a little bit too vague and then, you know, what does that really mean? And so what is your test?

Melanie Avalon:
If how many people followed you around?

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
You want your rules to be operationally defined so that 10 people following you around for a month would know whether you followed it or not. So you can't say, I'm going to avoid chocolate 90% of the time because probably by the end of the month people would be arguing about whether you did or you didn't.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
Right? Or you especially you can't say I'm just going to avoid chocolate or I'll try not to eat chocolate. But you could say I'm only ever going to have chocolate on the last three days of the calendar month.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
And that would accomplish the same thing. But it's very, very specific so that there's no ambiguity for the pig to barrel through.

Melanie Avalon:
I love it. Clear and specific.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
because you want it to function as a trip wire so you know the moment the pyrrhoxylmbran is awake.

Melanie Avalon:
It's funny because one of my good friends who is a major fan of your work, she would experience something that you would talk about in your book that I never personally experienced, but she would talk about like getting into overeating and not even realizing what led to it.

Melanie Avalon:
Like for me, whenever I would have issues with overeating, I was very much aware going in like from the first bite, I was like, Oh no. But for her, she would say that she would just realize that she was, she would just like find herself overeating.

Melanie Avalon:
And I was like, a lot of people say that it's just so interesting to see how, you know, how different things manifest in different people's minds. And you address all of it with your books and with your clients.

Melanie Avalon:
So yes, free cravings book .com. I cannot recommend it enough. And friends, Glenn not only is he making this incredible work accessible to so many people and changing thousands of lives, but he's also one of my dearest friends.

Melanie Avalon:
And I genuinely mean this. Like, Glenn, you're just such a treasure and one of the most kind, empathetic, savvy, knowledgeable, funny, awesome, incredible human beings that I know. And I'm so grateful that we're friends and thank you for what you're doing.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
Could you tell my dad that please? Sure. Thank you, Melanie. That's really sweet.

Melanie Avalon:
Well, I have enjoyed this so, so much. We'll have to have you back on the show. Maybe we can have you on the show in the future for a Q &A if you're open to it.

Dr. Glenn Livingston:
Absolutely, anytime. You tell me when.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, I think listeners would love that. So we'll have to do that. Okay, so again, the show notes for today's show will be at ifpodcast.com/episode356. There will be a full transcript there as well as links to everything that we talked about.

Melanie Avalon:
And I will see everybody next week and have a good rest of your day, Glenn. Thank you, dear. Bye. Thank you so much for listening to the Intramission Fasting Podcast. Please remember, everything we discussed on this show does not constitute medical advice.

Melanie Avalon:
Thank you so much for listening to the Intimation Fasting Podcast. Please remember, everything we discussed on this show does not constitute medical advice and no patient-doctor relationship is formed. If you enjoyed the show, please consider writing a review on iTunes. We couldn't do this without our amazing team. Administration by Sharon Merriman, editing by Podcast Doctors, show notes and artwork by Brianna Joyner, and original theme composed by Leland Cox and recomposed by Steve Saunders.

STUFF WE LIKE

Check out the Stuff We Like page for links to any of the books/supplements/products etc. mentioned on the podcast that we like!

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Feb 04

Episode 355: Keto Cake, Bingeing, Bioimpedance Analysis, Smart Scales, DEXA Scans, Body Composition, Deuterated Creatine, NMN, NR, And More!

Intermittent Fasting

Welcome to Episode 355 of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast, hosted by Melanie Avalon, author of What When Wine Diet: Lose Weight And Feel Great With Paleo-Style Meals, Intermittent Fasting, And Wine and Vanessa Spina, author of Keto Essentials: 150 Ketogenic Recipes to Revitalize, Heal, and Shed Weight.

Today's episode of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast is brought to you by:

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SHOW NOTES

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LMNT: *NEW* LMNT Chocolate Medley is available! Go to drinklmnt.com/ifpodcast to get a free sample pack with any purchase! Learn all about electrolytes in Episode 237 - our interview with Robb Rolf!

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Listener Q&A: Lori - Could you take a deep dive in the data that can be gained by smart scales ?

Episode 352: Special Guest: Dr. Valter Longo, Fasting Mimicking, Nutritional Science, Cellular Rejuvenation, Reproduction & Lifespan, Calorie Restriction, Autophagy And More!

Accuracy of Smart Scales on Weight and Body Composition: Observational Study

Listener Q&A: Leslie - Does NMN break your fast?

Ion Layer: Get $100 off with the code melanieavalon at melanieavalon.com/ionlayer!

Our content does not constitute an attempt to practice medicine and does not establish a doctor-patient relationship. Please consult a qualified healthcare provider for medical advice and answers to personal health questions.

TRANSCRIPT

(Note: This is generated by AI with 98% accuracy. However, any errors may cause unintended changes in meaning.) 

Melanie Avalon:
Welcome to Episode 355 of the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. If you want to burn fat, gain energy, and enhance your health by changing when you eat, not what you eat with no calorie counting, then this show is for you. I'm Melanie Avalon, biohacker, author of "What, When, Wine" and creator of the supplement line AvalonX. And I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Spina, sports nutrition specialist, author of "Keto Essentials" and creator of the Tone Breath Ketone Analyzer and Tone Lux Red Light Therapy Bannals. For more on us, check out ifpodcast.com, melanieavalon.com, and ketogenicgirl.com. Please remember, the thoughts and opinions on this show do not constitute medical advice or treatment. To be featured on the show, email us your questions to questions@ifpodcast.com. We would love to hear from you. So pour yourself a mug of black coffee, a cup of tea, or even a glass of wine, if it's that time, and get ready for the Intermittent Fasting Podcast.

Melanie Avalon:
This is episode number 355 of the Intramurton Fasting Podcast. I'm Melanie Avalon, and I'm here with Vanessa Spina. Hi everyone. Vanessa, I have two things I wanna talk to you about. Okay. One is a story about pharmacies and compounding pharmacies and taking agency with your health.

Melanie Avalon:
And the other one is about birthdays. Which one should we do?

Vanessa Spina:
birthdays.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, because my birthday is approaching. By the time this comes out, it will be way in the past. But I'm super curious when you have like your birthday or you're celebrating anything in general. And we might have talked about this on the show before.

Melanie Avalon:
I don't think we have. Do you eat something celebratory that you wouldn't normally eat? Cause food is like such a big part of this show.

Vanessa Spina:
So I definitely do, but these days I don't go that crazy for me. Like if I have it all my way, Pete and I will go to one of our favorite restaurants that's like, you know, elevated dining and I'll have an amazing steak.

Vanessa Spina:
Like that's like what I want usually. So there's a couple places that in the city that we really love and that's usually what we do for my birthday. And one is like a French bistro and they have this incredible aged steaks that are absolutely amazing.

Vanessa Spina:
There's another one that's like right on the river and it's like super romantic and beautiful. And it's yeah, like we will splurge a little bit on those nights. But the food that I want is usually like an amazing steak.

Vanessa Spina:
Even though we have amazing steak at home too, it's just, you know, restaurants will have like amazing sauces with it and stuff like that. But I don't really do anything like sweet. Like I don't really get excited about anything like that.

Vanessa Spina:
Oh my goodness. I have so much.

Melanie Avalon:
many thoughts. Okay, one, elevated dining. That is such an interesting phrase. I've never heard it called that before.

Vanessa Spina:
I don't know where that came from. Oh, you just made that up. Yeah, I was just like, it's an elevated dining store. I was like, what is it? White tablecloth. Like fine dining? Yeah, but like we'll go to a place that has like, yeah, fine dining and, you know, they'll have like an amazing tenderline with like a hollandaise sauce or something.

Vanessa Spina:
Like that's my treat. And similar with like the other place that we like to go. Or they'll have like an amazing truffle sauce or something like that. That's like really like a big indulgence, I guess.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, this is a complete tangent. I was just thinking, I'm so sorry. I was just thinking about you and Prague and these restaurants and how I want to go with you. Is Taylor Swift going on the Ares tour to Prague?

Melanie Avalon:
I don't know, but that would be amazing. Okay, because listen, if I go to Austin to record with Dave and then London for Thanksgiving and I get these travel skills, and if I maintain these travel skills, maybe I'll come to Prague.

Melanie Avalon:
If Taylor is going to Prague,

Vanessa Spina:
Yeah, that would be incredible. So is she doing an international tour now? Yes.

Melanie Avalon:
Yes. I was actually just talking last night with Rebecca Rudish, who I've had on the show, the founder of Yummers, who side note plug. I adore Yummers. If listeners want delicious pet food toppers for their dogs and cats, cannot recommend it enough.

Melanie Avalon:
Listeners can get 20% off, which is awesome at yummerspets.com/IFpodcast with the coupon code IFPodcast. I don't know if this will still be running, but they did have a special as well to get free dog food.

Melanie Avalon:
Side note, she's a dear friend of mine. My birthday is approaching. I just said that, which is why I'm talking about the birthdays, but we were talking about stuff to do and she was like, we should go see Taylor somewhere internationally.

Melanie Avalon:
So maybe I'll just like blend this all together into some magical adventure. Okay. And we're back. So Prague stakes.

Vanessa Spina:
What's your indulgence? Birthday.

Melanie Avalon:
I just love the food that I normally eat, but I love going, like you said, I love going to a really nice restaurant. I'm such a, I love like fine dining restaurant experiences or like thematic restaurants.

Melanie Avalon:
I just, I'm all about it. I love it. So kind of similar to you. I love going and I love getting like a multi course entree with multiple meat manifestations, meat and fish.

Vanessa Spina:
That's the most exciting part. I'm like, I don't really care about the dessert, to be honest. Like, I just want.

Melanie Avalon:
all the meats, bonus points, if you can get a different type of meat in multiple courses, like major bonus points. So if I can get like a shrimp cocktail, carpaccio, sashimi, a steak, and then maybe get one of the appetizers that I didn't have for dessert.

Melanie Avalon:
And I talk about this all the time, but I literally have gotten entrees as my dessert, which side note, Barry Conrad, who I've also, who we've also had on this show, who lives in Australia, we were talking, did you know that?

Melanie Avalon:
Oh wait, actually, maybe in Prague, what is an entre? Oh, but it's a different link.

Vanessa Spina:
Like there's appetizer and then entree is the main meal. Yeah.

Melanie Avalon:
So that's the way it is in the US. Apparently in Australia and other places, the entree is the appetizer.

Vanessa Spina:
I know I've heard this before and it's, that's what it means in French. You know, it's like the first dish, but yeah, I find it really confusing. Entree to me is like the main dish. But yeah, I also love like a big treat.

Vanessa Spina:
Like I'm the same if I get like a surf and turf. So like steak with like a side of shrimp or I'll order, you know, a lot of steak houses, they'll have like sides and extras and things. We're definitely on the same page with that.

Vanessa Spina:
It's fun to get dressed up, you know, get a little glam on and, you know, go to your favorite restaurant. That's actually what we did for my most recent birthday. We went to our favorite restaurant on the water and I had like the best ever.

Vanessa Spina:
I had a tartare for api with like a truffle mousse and then a tenderloin with like an amazing hollandaise and, you know, had some, some greens with it or something. And it was, it was incredible. I was just so satisfied.

Vanessa Spina:
Sometimes I'll get like a cheese, like a cheese plate or something like that. If I really want dessert, but most of the time I'm fine. And then if I, we get home and I still like want something, I'll make like some kind of yogurt, something like that.

Vanessa Spina:
And I'm just happy with that.

Melanie Avalon:
It's so great. I'm normally torn between fish and steak, so that's why I really like getting two entrees.

Vanessa Spina:
Yeah, and also if like sometimes you can get to and like share it's fun too. But yeah, I'm, I'm all about it. The sake and the seafood too. It's so.

Melanie Avalon:
good. I used to, like, because I do, it just speaks to me like birthday cake. It really does. Like that, it's just something, it's overwhelmingly lights up my dopamine centers. Like the concept of, you know, unless there's no this like fun, fatty cake or birthday cake.

Melanie Avalon:
So I used to get keto versions online and sort of make like these sugar -free versions, which honestly taste amazing to me and taste very similar because I haven't had real sugar in eons. But it's just too much of a slippery slope for me.

Melanie Avalon:
I think some people are moderationists and some people are like extremists and I'm an extremist and I would just rather not have that than have a little bit.

Vanessa Spina:
Yeah, same. I find it is a little bit different now. So when I make Luca's birthday cake, I make it with all the sugar -free icing and the sugar -free sprinkles and all that. And I'll have a piece. And usually when it's, I know it's like, we still have it.

Vanessa Spina:
I'm aware of it. I'm aware that there's cake in the fridge. Not a feeling I normally have. And then, you know, I'll usually like, just basically, I'll have like a piece maybe the next day and then I'll just like cut it off because I don't want to like keep having it every night.

Vanessa Spina:
It's like it should be that for that special occasion. And it's a same. I noticed like when I, we were in the U .S. when I was pregnant with Luca, I tried out some of those keto ice creams because I'd never tried them.

Vanessa Spina:
And I was like aware that they were in the fridge. Like when I walked by the kitchen, like it was like, they were like, hello, like where are we in there? And I was like, why am I aware of this? Like I don't have that feeling normally.

Vanessa Spina:
And I way prefer to just not like, I don't want to think about it. I don't want to waste mental energy thinking about something or being like, oh, I'm going to have that later. Like I just don't like that feeling.

Vanessa Spina:
I prefer to just not have it at all. And just like enjoy a tea after dinner or something like that that just works for me now. And yeah, I'm an obscener for sure.

Melanie Avalon:
I've read about that. It's a very real psychological thing. So like if your brain, I totally read about it. So if your brain knows the potential of this thing that it wants is there, it doesn't forget.

Melanie Avalon:
It like keeps it very present until it's no longer an option. It talks to you like, hello, I mean, when you're so that's why it can be so important, especially if people are starting like intermittent fasting, for example, and they think they're going to be tempted by certain things to get it out of the house.

Melanie Avalon:
Like it doesn't matter if it's like closed and in the pantry, like it needs to not be accessible because it's not about you and your willpower so much as what I just said that your brain, as long as it's there, your brain's going to be wanting it.

Melanie Avalon:
And then once it's gone, it won't.

Vanessa Spina:
Yes, and it's gonna drain your willpower. I remember reading about that too with like, if you work in an office and someone has like a bowl of M &Ms or whatever your favorite, for me it would be like hard candy.

Vanessa Spina:
If someone had like a bowl of hard candy or something at the front, like that you suck on, like do you remember like nerds or rents or things like that? Like I love those like the fruit shaped ones. If someone had a bowl of that or if I had, what was your favorite runt?

Vanessa Spina:
Oh, I love the red ones and the banana. The banana was magical. And nerds, I loved also like, if I had to walk by a bowl of that, like an open accessible bowl of that every day, it would drain so much of my willpower.

Vanessa Spina:
But like I haven't thought about rents in like five years, you know, because like they're just not in my environment. Like, and it's such a good point you bring up, like just having it there, it's draining and it does take up your willpower and it does take up mental energy that you could use for more productive things, I think.

Melanie Avalon:
Laffy taffy. Did you ever have Laffy taffy? I remember it though. So good. They had this version called tanky taffy. And it was like the, it was like a massive version of the Laffy taffy, but they had this watermelon one with like watermelon seeds.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh, so good. Comment though about the fasting. So I think a way that fasting is sort of a hack on this. I still think get the stuff out of the house. What's so amazing with willpower and fasting is that when you, you get this window and then you no longer have this debate with yourself about to eat or not to eat.

Melanie Avalon:
Cause like, if you're not doing intermittent fasting and you're dieting, it's like, do I eat this? Do I not eat this? Do I eat some more? Do I not eat some more? Like it's like that constantly, which is exhausting.

Melanie Avalon:
But with fasting, it's like, okay, not my window. So then you don't have to like think about

Vanessa Spina:
But yeah, I call it the noise. Like it's just like sort of in the background noise or this like distraction that's there. And when you cut it out, it's like a laser. Like you can just focus so much more on what you want to focus on and just take that out of the equation.

Vanessa Spina:
And I think that's probably the biggest thing for me with intermittent fasting is just having that having that framework that it just like, I don't know. I think maybe some people thrive on it more than others.

Vanessa Spina:
You know, some people, if you're not an obscener, if you're a moderator, then I wonder it would be really interesting to see if obsceners gravitate more to intermittent fasting, I would bet that they do.

Vanessa Spina:
Whereas moderators, you know, don't gravitate as much to this kind of lifestyle. That's so yeah.

Melanie Avalon:
I bet. And also a bit of encouragement. I think a lot of people will use the clear out the kitchen thing as like the, oh, this is the last time to like eat all the things. I think it can be a spiral where people think they need to like get rid of all the things and eat all of the things.

Melanie Avalon:
There's like this idea, especially like, and I think we will have recently had Glenn Livingston on the, oh, so next episode, perfect timing. Next episode should be with Glenn Livingston. He wrote the book, Never Binge Again, which it's not just about binging.

Melanie Avalon:
It's really about anybody who's struggling with what he calls like the inner pig, which is like this voice that like wants the things. He's amazing for dealing with the psychology of dealing with your food cravings and choices and such.

Melanie Avalon:
But one of the things he does talk about is like all the excuses that this, this pig voice in your head will make about eating and like how one of them is like, oh, this is like the last time, you know, like I'll just eat all these and this will be like the last time when really it's, it's not, that's just like a lie.

Melanie Avalon:
Like it just like, it just lies to you, this voice. So don't listen to it. His solution is basically don't argue. So like when you have this voice in your head that's like, you know, wanting you to, to break your diet rules that you came up with.

Melanie Avalon:
And I don't want to make this sound like overly restrictive or, or disordered or anything like that. But, but basically you have a healthy plan that you've set out to do a diet, fasting, whatever it may be.

Melanie Avalon:
And if you're struggling with this voice in your head that is trying to get you to not engage in that pattern that you believe will be healthy for you and that you would like to do, his solution is you don't argue with it.

Melanie Avalon:
You don't debate with it. You just like don't listen to it. It sounds really simple, but it can be life changing. Basically like you, you isolate it as like the pig voice and you just don't listen to it.

Melanie Avalon:
So check out next week's episode. I think it'd be very helpful for people. Okay. Yes. Next time we talk, I will tell you my crazy story about the compounding pharmacy. Okay. Sounds good. It's crazy. People have you just as a teaser, how do I say this?

Melanie Avalon:
Like, how do I say this? Have you ever had an experience where you are smart and intelligent and have information and know what you're doing and you're just being completely talked down to by somebody who believes they're in a power of position?

Melanie Avalon:
This happened to me with a compounding pharmacy and it's a crazy story. So teaser. Okay. Anything from you before we jump in the questions?

Vanessa Spina:
Can I share something I'm really excited about? Oh yes, please do. It has to do with red light therapy and something new that I'm launching, but I just, I'm so, I'm just buzzing about it because I've been working on it all week.

Vanessa Spina:
So, you know, I use the red light therapy panels. I'm starting to embrace the cold more because it helps activate more brown fat, generate more brown fat. And I also, I'm using my red light therapy panels more these days because it's getting colder outside and I'm not outside all day.

Vanessa Spina:
Before I was getting red light at sunrise and all throughout the day and then in the evening, I'm not anymore because the seasons are changing. So, I brought out all my red light therapy panels. They're all in the bathroom and around the house because my husband and I both use them.

Vanessa Spina:
But one thing that I was noticing is I wasn't doing my face protocol or my face treatment as much and it's because I'm usually with Luca and that's my two year old toddler. And he, you know, he doesn't want me to be like holding this red light therapy panel in front of my face.

Vanessa Spina:
He wants me to play with him and play with his choo choo train or make, you know, Play -Doh butterflies or whatever we're doing. So, I realized that I should use the red light therapy masks because I, a year ago, I customized a couple of them because I was gonna launch them as a product.

Vanessa Spina:
So, I just been so busy with other stuff that I kind of like left them on the shelf. So, I started, you know, I pulled them out, I started wearing them like, this is amazing. I can get a full red light therapy session on my face while I'm still playing with Luca.

Vanessa Spina:
Like he doesn't care that I have a mask on and he actually likes it. He likes like playing with the remote and changing the colors on me. But I can get a full session in and I have my hands free. And, you know what?

Vanessa Spina:
When usually you're doing a face treatment, your eyes are closed because you're not gonna like stare into these powerful lights unless you're specifically doing that for like an eye treatment. Usually your eyes are closed and you can't really do much, right?

Vanessa Spina:
But with the mask, like you've got your hands free, you can see things, you can like watch things, you can read things, you can just interact normally. So, it's like the ultimate multitasking. So, then I posted about it as a kind of a joke for Halloween and I was like, this is my Halloween mask.

Vanessa Spina:
And so many people in my community and like listeners of the podcast were like, this is amazing, I want one, like can I order one? Just like, okay, let's do this. So, I've been having so much fun creating the new mask.

Vanessa Spina:
So, I've created the new Tonelux Crystal red light therapy mask and it is amazing and it's so easy to use. You just like put it on, strap it on your face and then you can set the program on the remote to, there's all kinds of different programs, but set it on and just relax.

Vanessa Spina:
Like you can, if you don't have a toddler that you're playing with, you can lay in bed and relax. You can read a book, you know, you can watch a show, you can listen to podcasts and, you know, it's just the ultimate multitasking.

Vanessa Spina:
So, I'm super excited about it and it's an amazing product and I've just been having so much fun doing like the box design, working on the box design, the manual and customizing like the bag, there's like a travel bag with it that goes with it and all the stuff.

Vanessa Spina:
So, I just been buzzing because as we've talked about so many times before, like this is the most fun part of like creating products is like actually creating the designs and the customization and also just because so many people are excited about the masks, I think they'll be a really fun like Christmas gift and just something awesome that people can use and there's just so much interest in the masks, it's really, really exciting.

Vanessa Spina:
So, that's my latest update.

Melanie Avalon:
A while ago, the closest thing I've been using to this was Saluma. Do you know that brand? I don't know. They make a, it's basically like a dome and when you're laying down, you set it over your head so you can't be moving around with it like this.

Melanie Avalon:
I would go in the infrared sauna and I would lay down and I would put it over my head and it would do red light and it also had near infrared and blue light as well for acne, which you said, you changed the colors on it.

Melanie Avalon:
So is it red light and other lights as well on yours? Thank you.

Vanessa Spina:
So it's got four wavelengths in it, and it has these programs. So you can have it go between the main light. So it's got a 630 nanometer red light. It's got a 590 nanometer. It's actually orange light, but it's in the red light family.

Vanessa Spina:
And then it has two 830 and 850 nanometer for near infrared. And so it has these programs where it'll do like five minutes of each, or you can just create your own program or set it to how you want. Or you could just have it be on red light the whole time or in a combination and you can set the time and all of that.

Vanessa Spina:
But yeah, those are the main wavelengths in it.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, because I've been, like I said, I was using that sluma wine and I've been wanting to get something like that for when I was laying down in the sauna. But the issue with that, what I liked about it was it wasn't actually touching your skin.

Melanie Avalon:
So, does this actually touch your skin or does it?

Vanessa Spina:
Yeah, it goes on your face. Like it goes, it's like any other mask, but it's made of silicone, so it's quite comfortable. Oh, cool.

Melanie Avalon:
I love that you can see and you can breathe through it and looking at the pictures and see through it. This is so cool.

Vanessa Spina:
that. I was testing another one, which was like, they call it the Iron Man mask, and it's a full, like it's gold, and it's a full mask. And at first I thought that I was going to like that one more. But when I had it on, I just felt like I couldn't breathe.

Vanessa Spina:
I just didn't feel good. Whereas this one, the silicone one is like so light and easy to wear that, you know, you can put it on and you can still like breathe normally, you can still see normally, you know, and it's got to be comfortable if you're going to, you know, do it.

Vanessa Spina:
And you only have to do it three, four times a week, like 10 minutes, or you can do longer ones if you want like 15 to 25. But I'm just so excited that I can get back on track with my red light therapy sessions, because it's so amazing for boosting collagen and elastin factors and just improving, you know, overall skin health.

Vanessa Spina:
And I just like had kind of stopped because it was too hard, you know, to do it with Luke and then for a while I would like wait until he would go to bed and then I would do it like at night and that's not optimal either.

Vanessa Spina:
So yeah, it's, it's just, you know, great to have your hands free and your eyes free and still be able to do other things.

Melanie Avalon:
This is so cool. So how does it attach behind it?

Vanessa Spina:
to you? It's got actually three straps. So each strap is like on each side, and then it attaches in the back. And then there's another one on the top, which goes and attaches to those two. So it's quite secure.

Vanessa Spina:
And yeah, it's just like Velcro straps. And you designed this? Yeah, I mean, the like the, the one that hit the one that is on my Instagram that I think you're looking at is actually not the one that we are doing, but it's a newer model.

Vanessa Spina:
That was like an older model that I had that I was just like testing out. And then I was like, okay, I want to go with this. But it's a newer model that features the infrared as well, which is what I was kind of waiting for.

Vanessa Spina:
Yeah, it's, it's, yeah, really, I'm so excited about it.

Melanie Avalon:
Is it on the website now?

Vanessa Spina:
Yes, yeah, if you go to ketogenic girl, I just was setting that up today. Yeah. And we're still working on the design as of today. I might do a fuller like print on the face and everything. This is so.

Melanie Avalon:
Cool. Yeah, this would be an amazing gift for people. People don't talk about the orange light.

Vanessa Spina:
Yeah, it's interesting. So my SAFAR panel, which has four wavelengths of light also, one of the wavelengths is also orange, and it has some other benefits, like for the skin. I think it complements the red.

Vanessa Spina:
And some of the masks that they have, they have every wavelength. They've got all the colors, because apparently they do different things. But not all of them are things, I think, that people would be interested in.

Vanessa Spina:
Some of them are skin whitening. I'm like, it's not something that I'm interested in. What light does that? I think it's cyan.

Melanie Avalon:
How interesting.

Vanessa Spina:
Yeah, so all the wavelengths have different properties to them. But red light therapy obviously has all the really well -documented benefits. So I don't think there's as much research behind the other ones.

Vanessa Spina:
But yeah, there are some masks you can get that have all kinds of different colors in them.

Melanie Avalon:
Like I said, the one I was using did the red near and front and then the blue for the acne, which I could see that being the blue being really helpful for people if they have acne.

Vanessa Spina:
Yes, that's a sign, yeah.

Melanie Avalon:
Wow, well, super cool. So what's the link for people to get this? Thank you.

Vanessa Spina:
Oh yeah, they can check it out at ketogenicirl.com if they just navigate to the website and then look up the Tone Luxe Red Light Therapy. There's basically just two things on the website. That's the, you know, the tone, breath ketone meters and the tone red light therapy.

Vanessa Spina:
So yeah, it's right under there if you want to check it out there.

Melanie Avalon:
Awesome. Yeah, that would make a great gift for people. Although by the time this comes out, it will be past the holidays, but always giving gifts to people. So, do you, that's a question. Do you, for like Christmas and things like that, do you get presents throughout the year or do you wait until right before?

Vanessa Spina:
Christmas shopping, I usually do, like I probably should start now, but I usually do it around Christmas time. What about you?

Melanie Avalon:
I'm pretty intense. I'm like looking all year. I'm like, gift giving is my love language, so I'm really intense about it. And I got a fact check this. My mom, I think, said this year that we're quote, not doing presents or something.

Melanie Avalon:
I was like, wait, what? I understand not wanting to feel the need to like have to spend a lot of money on people, but I really express love through giving gifts. So even if we're not doing gifts,

Vanessa Spina:
My brother is also gifts, his love language. Ever since we were a kid, he would get so excited about Christmas gifts and he still does. Like giving them? Giving them, receiving them, it's definitely his love language and it's really cute how excited he gets about it.

Vanessa Spina:
So it's like, you know, you have to get Matt something really thoughtful because it's his love language. You really want him to feel loved. So it's like, yeah, it's so cute.

Melanie Avalon:
Well, what's funny is it's my giving, but it's not my receiving. So, words of affirmation. Yeah. Lights me up. How about you? Do you know yours?

Vanessa Spina:
Yes, some mine are words of affirmation and affection. Receiving or for both? I think giving is affection and then words of affirmation and receiving. Affection and physical touch, you mean? Yes, and receiving is words of affirmation and then physical touch.

Vanessa Spina:
That when my husband and I were dating, we realized we had really different ones. Oh, what are his? So we both have affection as a main one, but his number one way of showing love is acts of service.

Vanessa Spina:
And for me, it wasn't even on my radar. We had to learn each other's because obviously the first couple of years you're together, you're just on this dopamine high and everything is amazing and you feel loved and you shower each other with so much of everything, affection, words, all that stuff.

Vanessa Spina:
But it took me a long time to realize that he was doing things for me. He would carry my suitcase for me and that was his way of showing me. He's taking care of me, protecting me, loving me. But I didn't feel love through it for a long time and we had to learn each other's.

Vanessa Spina:
So I had to learn how to show him love through acts of service, which was not in my vocabulary. So it's really cool and you understand each other's and you kind of have to learn them. And he's had to learn to be more expressive with words of affirmation because it's not one on his radar.

Vanessa Spina:
So yeah, I have to kind of learn how you both are wired to make sure the other person feels loved all the time.

Melanie Avalon:
I think it's so important. It should be mandatory, because there are so many different quizzes out there and profiles and compatibility reports, but this one is pretty, I don't know, I think it would benefit everybody to know they're giving and receiving and their partner's giving and receiving.

Vanessa Spina:
Yes, it's huge. It's really huge. You want to be, obviously it's great if you can be the same. And I'm glad my husband, I have one in common. But if we didn't know that about each other and we didn't learn each other's, then I don't think we would feel loved.

Vanessa Spina:
And it's just, it's critically important. I think a lot of people are aware now about love languages and they're so accurate. It's really amazing. So yours expressing is the gifts.

Melanie Avalon:
gifts, yeah, and then the receiving is words of affirmation.

Vanessa Spina:
Yeah, I think also women tend to have words more often and men tend to have acts of service more often. Like it's interesting to see, I see that pattern come up. Like and men are often more like action oriented and women are more words like when it comes to relationships but that's not saying that's everyone but I've just noticed that a lot.

Melanie Avalon:
I've noticed that as well. The other one I guess we're leaving out is time. Quality time. Yeah, so quality time, physical touch, words of affirmation, acts of service.

Vanessa Spina:
quality time I know and

Melanie Avalon:
Oh gifts and gifts. Is that all of them? I think there's five. Yeah. So gifts, time, access service, words of affirmation, and touch. Yeah. Which my like anti one, are any of those anti ones for you?

Melanie Avalon:
Because like I don't like

Vanessa Spina:
I'm not big on gifts. I don't like it. I always tell people, don't buy me anything, just write me something. But, you know, of course, if he gives me a gift, I'm like, okay, that's really nice. But I'm like the person who's like, let's not do gifts this year, guys.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, so you're like my mom. And I'm like, wait a minute. When you said that?

Vanessa Spina:
I was laughing like every year. I'm like, I think my mom is actually maybe gifts too. So every year I'm like, can we not do gifts this year? My mom's like, no. And my brother also, right? So yeah, I don't usually win.

Vanessa Spina:
I've never won that we always end up doing gifts. And it's fine. Like once I get into it, I'm like, okay, this is fun. But I have moments where I get, I feel like it's being pushed on us. Like you have to give gifts to your loved ones or you don't love them.

Vanessa Spina:
Like I get this feeling like this commercialization of the holiday that I don't like. You know, I'd rather just give a gift because I saw something spontaneously and it made me think of that person. But you know, once you get into it, you're like, okay, it's fine.

Vanessa Spina:
And it definitely would feel really weird a Christmas morning to like not open anything or do anything. So the last few years I've asked for donations to things cause that like feels like a more, a less commercialized gift.

Melanie Avalon:
my experience of it is it's the way I show, the way I can show love because it's like, I have to really know the person. And then I like take the time to think about like, what would they like, what is like perfect for them?

Melanie Avalon:
So it's like me, it's kind of like, it's not an active service, but it's me like doing this thing to like show how much I like care about you and want to like give you this thing that represents that in a way.

Melanie Avalon:
I totally get it. It totally makes sense. So my mom though gives really good gifts. She goes, yeah, she finds stuff like, like so unique and special. I'm like, where did that come from? So yeah, she's sweet.

Melanie Avalon:
Well, on that note, shall we answer some listener questions? Yes, I would love to. Okay, doke, would you like to read the first question from Lori?

Vanessa Spina:
So, Lori on Facebook asks, could you take a deep dive into the data that can be gained by smart skills? I have a GE fit profile and I really like it. I'm wondering what the healthy target ranges are for visceral fat, bone mass, muscle mass, dot, dot, dot.

Vanessa Spina:
I have found the information fascinating. I am a 54 -year -old perimenopausal woman who practices one to two 36 to 42 hour fasts a week. I have a protein forward diet getting on average 100 grams a day.

Vanessa Spina:
I would love to learn more. I'm interested to see if my muscle mass and my fat -free mass changes much after the fasts and if they go down. Trends over time show things are really about the same and I think I am at a plateau.

Vanessa Spina:
I would like to get rid of some more fat in my thighs but my belly fat is mostly all gone. I fluctuate between mostly a four sometimes a five on visceral fat. My bone mass isn't budging staying at 6 .2 but I never had a DEXA scan.

Vanessa Spina:
I'm not sure what the 6 .2 means or if it is low or good. I would love to hear what you can find out.

Melanie Avalon:
All right, Lori, thank you so much for your question. And this made me remember something that we did not discuss the episode before last, where we were talking about Valter Longo, which I will put a link to that episode in the show notes, which was ipodcast.com/episode352.

Melanie Avalon:
I asked him about the fasting mimicking diets effects on muscle loss. And he said in their studies, they found that basically there was a transient muscle loss from the five day fasting mimicking diet, but it all came back within a day, which was interesting.

Melanie Avalon:
I don't know if you have any thoughts on that. It all came back within a day. So basically they were, I have to double check what he said exactly, but basically there wasn't any long term muscle loss from the fasting mimicking diet.

Melanie Avalon:
So that's super low calorie, low protein, five days. That there was transient, but he said it came back after the study. And then after they stopped. And so I asked him, how long did it take to come back?

Melanie Avalon:
And he said it was 24 hours. Do you have thoughts on that, Vanessa?

Vanessa Spina:
So, yes, actually just released an episode on my podcast yesterday where we were talking about this because Dr. Bill Campbell, who's a physique scientist in Florida, he actually just changed his opinion on rapid fat loss protocols because he just did one in his lab and he found that what was happening is they weren't measuring total body water and that a lot of times these studies were showing that rapid fat loss protocols were actually causing a huge loss in lean body mass, but within two weeks it would come back and it was actually water and because our muscles store the most water in the body and that's one of the ways that you can actually game the system if you're doing like a dexa scan.

Vanessa Spina:
If you chug like a gallon of water before having a body, a dexa scan, it'll look like you added 10 or 20 pounds of muscle mass and it's because the dexa is just measuring the dry mass so water can conflate the lean body mass measurements.

Melanie Avalon:
Yes. And I think so. I think that's huge. I'll have to, I want to fact check if he said it was 24 hours that it came back, but it was relatively short. And I would need to check, he made it sound like they were checking the difference between, you know, body composition.

Melanie Avalon:
But I would need to read the actual studies, which speaks into this whole question about the scale and measuring all of these different things because it can get so convoluted, like Vanessa was just saying, especially because of the role of water.

Melanie Avalon:
So the way these smart scales work, they use something called bioelectrical impedance analysis, or it's also called bioimpedance analysis, BIA. And basically what it does is you have your feet on the scale, it puts a current, a not harmful current.

Melanie Avalon:
But if you have a pacemaker, they do recommend that you, you know, speak to a doctor or it could interfere with pacemakers. The current runs up one leg through your torso, and then down the other leg.

Melanie Avalon:
And then because of the way this electrical current travels through water versus fatty tissue versus muscle, it guesstimates, it guesses based on the level of resistance, how much water, fat and muscle you have.

Melanie Avalon:
And there are just so many potential issues here. So basically I did find a study, it was 2021, it was called Accuracy of Smart Scales on Weight and Body Composition, an Observational Study. It did not look at the scale that Laurie was using, the GE fit profile, but all these scales are essentially using the same technology.

Melanie Avalon:
And so they looked at three scales, they looked at the body partner by Tefal, the diet pack by Torellion and the body cardio by Nokia withings. They found that all of the scales, oh, and then they compare, basically they did the, they weighed the people and they compared it to Dexa scan, which I have comments on Dexa as well.

Melanie Avalon:
They found that all of them were accurate for weight. So just your basic weight were accurate. However, fat and muscle were not accurate, like at all. So fat mass was off, and this isn't kilograms, but was off by between 2 .2 to 3 .7 pounds.

Melanie Avalon:
And the negative, so basically it said that they weighed, they had less fat than they did. So it was underestimated. And then for muscle mass, it was off by 4 .5 pounds. So in the positive, negative 6 .6 pounds.

Melanie Avalon:
So negative saying they had less than they did and four pounds. So saying they had more than they did. So all over the place. And their conclusion was that this technology and smart skills is not accurate for determining muscle and fat, but the scales are probably accurate for weight, like just weight.

Melanie Avalon:
And so a lot of factors, and there are a lot of reasons for that. There's a lot of factors that can influence just the system. So your body setup, your feet, where your feet are on the scale, whether you're standing up straight or not, the current isn't even like measuring upper body.

Melanie Avalon:
So it's kind of extrapolating from there. It's just not, and her question says that it's measuring visceral fat. Specifically, I have no idea how it thinks it's figuring that out. Like that's something that I don't think even Dexa shows that.

Melanie Avalon:
You'd have to have an ultrasound. Yeah. So that, no, it's it, no. And then bone mass, again, I don't know how it would be determining that. And something that's interesting. So Dexa scan is what is used for bone mass.

Melanie Avalon:
But I talked with Gabrielle Lyon about using Dexa for muscle. She doesn't even think that it Dexa is super valid for measuring muscle mass. She recommends deuterated creatine.

Vanessa Spina:
Yeah, which you ingest, I guess, and then measure after.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah. She says DEXA, I'm just quoting from the transcript that I had with her. She says, it's not a direct measure of skeletal muscle mass. It's an extrapolation. It's directly measuring body fat and it is looking at bone.

Melanie Avalon:
The rest is extrapolated. So if we're comparing this to the scale, for example, so scale is basically getting your weight and then the smart skills, getting your weight and then using this current to kind of guess at things based on a level of persistence.

Melanie Avalon:
But it's just not accurate, probably compared to DEXA, which is accurate for body fat. So it is actually giving you body fat. It is actually giving you bone. But then the muscle mass, it's extrapolating.

Melanie Avalon:
It's not actually measuring muscle mass. And that goes back to what Vanessa was saying, like the amount of water you have, your hydration levels can all affect that. So she says that the way of the future is deuterated creatine, which is actually tagging skeletal muscle, looking at the creatine, because creatine is found in skeletal muscle, and then that's going to be the way to really get an accurate picture of muscle.

Melanie Avalon:
So all of that to say, Lori, I wouldn't make any recommendations about the scale because you just can't know if it's accurate. I wouldn't look at it. What are your thoughts, Vanessa?

Vanessa Spina:
So my, I love everything that you shared about it. I am not a big fan of these kinds of scales because I just don't think the technology is there yet. I think they can be used for trends. And some people, like I know, physique competitors will use them to assess their body fat at home and they'll look at the trends.

Vanessa Spina:
But I do think, as you said, they could be accurate for weight. In terms of body composition, I'm a big fan of Dexabody scans. They are the gold standard of what we have now. And I know what we were talking about with the D3 creatine.

Vanessa Spina:
It's coming. It's just not there yet. And I would be interested to try it for sure myself and, you know, potentially recommend it. If it's, if it's something that turns out great. I was actually talking to Dr.

Vanessa Spina:
Bill Campbell about this yesterday or on the episode that came out yesterday because, you know, I was asking him about these different methodologies. So they have a physique lab and mostly what they study is his fat loss.

Vanessa Spina:
And so they use ultrasound often for that, even, which is like they have one in their lab, which is amazing. He loves Dexa. Like he thinks it's fantastic. And I agree with him. I know it can be manipulated, but for the most part, I do think it gives us the best picture out of the options that we currently have.

Vanessa Spina:
And I'm sure better options are coming, but I found it to be very accurate when I myself go for scans, when I recommend scans to other people. And it can even show you, you know, where your fat is, you know, where you carry it, you know, exactly how much you have in different parts of your body.

Vanessa Spina:
You can learn exactly how much pounds of fat, fat mass you have on your body. You can also, you know, learn your resting metabolic rate from it and your bone density. So I have no idea how a smart scale is purporting to be able to analyze bone density or visceral fat.

Vanessa Spina:
Like that's just not possible. So I wouldn't put much weight on that at all. I would just use it for trends, possibly with your body fat. You could look at, you know, what the trends are. Does it look like it's going up or going down?

Vanessa Spina:
And I do think the technology is coming. I've seen some different models of this on the at home smart scales where they basically would have these like wands that surround you and scan your body. You know, so that is like more like a dexter, right?

Vanessa Spina:
That that makes sense to me that it could give you accurate information in your home. But in terms of like even bioimpedance, air displacement, the pod pods, I'm not as much a big fan of those. But Dr.

Vanessa Spina:
Campbell says, if you're using one method, whatever it is, just make sure you control the conditions and use the same method when you're doing the before and afters. So yeah, I unfortunately, I just don't think that any at home skills right now have the technology that that'll really give you the accuracy.

Melanie Avalon:
And even with the DEXA, I think it can be important to make sure that you go in in the same sort of conditions when you get it, because the water can influence that a little bit as well, like with the muscles specifically.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah. And a nice thing about DEXA as well is it's pretty low on the EMF, or sorry, on the radiation exposure compared to other potential things. So I think that information gained from it is very valuable.

Melanie Avalon:
That's great. No, yeah. So, I mean, it's not minimal. I mean, it's not, you know, non -existent, but it is relatively low. Shall we answer one more question? Yes, I would love to. All right. So, yes.

Melanie Avalon:
So we have a question from Leslie, also from Facebook about does NMN break your fast? And I have a lot of thoughts on this, but Vanessa, have you played around with NMN?

Vanessa Spina:
So I have some in my fridge and I haven't actually taken it yet, probably partly because I'm pregnant, but also because it's really hard to know how effective NMN is, you know, because we'll never really have the data in humans, you know, to see whether or not it really does affect our longevity.

Vanessa Spina:
But I do have some, but I do not believe it breaks so fast. What about you?

Melanie Avalon:
Yes. So if it's pure NMN, it shouldn't break the fast. I'll be curious how it goes in the future, because it's in a gray zone right now with the FDA in the US as of this recording. I was actually going to release an NMN and then it became a whole thing, which is, and I think the reasoning behind it is because pharmaceutical companies potentially want to, you know, patent it, which I will not go in that soapbox.

Melanie Avalon:
But in any case, no, it should not break your fast. I do take a pure powder form of it at present. I will say that, so NMN, just briefly, it's a precursor, stands for nicotinamide mononucleotide. It's a precursor to NAD, which is a master coenzyme in our body involved in all of our metabolic processes.

Melanie Avalon:
So important for health and it gets depleted with things like aging and stress and sickness and boosting your NAD levels can be really good for health and longevity. And since NMN is a precursor to NAD, that's why people take it.

Melanie Avalon:
You can also get NAD straight as an IV or an intramuscular injection. I was doing those for a while. There needs to be more research, but theoretically, I'm pretty, I find the studies pretty compelling.

Melanie Avalon:
And I have some good friends in the sphere who believe in it a lot, like James Clement, who I really love. The thing about those is your mileage may vary, but for me, they A, they're very expensive and B, they always make me feel a little bit sick, which is like, it's like a lot of money to spend to not feel very well, but it's temporary.

Melanie Avalon:
It's only like 10 minutes that you don't feel well. But for me, I do not feel well after those injections, even though I know the long -term benefits are probably there. I did get really excited recently because I found a new brand that makes NAD patches and I am obsessed.

Melanie Avalon:
So out of all the options, like the NMN, the NR, which is another precursor to NAD, the IV is the injections. My favorite now is the NAD patches. Friends, this has changed my life because it gives you the access to putting NAD into your bloodstream, but it's transdermal.

Melanie Avalon:
And you have it at home. I made a video recently on Instagram about how to put on the patches, because you have to activate the NAD and you pour it on this patch and there's like saline solution. It's like a whole thing.

Melanie Avalon:
It's easy to do once you learn how to do it. They last for 14 hours, and then you can just have them at home and use them when you need. So I'm basically, because I usually go out once a week, so I'm kind of using them once a week the day after going out to boost my NAD levels after a night out on the town.

Melanie Avalon:
So I love them. They're called Ion Layer. And if you go to Melanieavalon.com/ionlayer and use the code MelanieAvalon, you get $100 off, which is crazy. So that's Melanieavalon.com/ionlayer with the code MelanieAvalon for $100 off.

Melanie Avalon:
But yes, to recap, NMN should not break your fast, NR should not break your fast. I like supporting NAD levels and my favorite now are NAD patches. Okay. Anything from you Vanessa, before we wrap up this episode?

Vanessa Spina:
episode. I had so much fun with you. I love the questions. As always, keep them coming and I can't wait for the next one. Me too. I had a lot of fun.

Melanie Avalon:
But so, so much fun for listeners. If you'd like to submit your own questions to the show, you can directly email questions@ifpodcast.com or you can go to ifpodcast.com and you can submit questions there.

Melanie Avalon:
These show notes will have links to everything that we talked about, like those studies, and those will be at ifpodcast.com/episode355. And you can get all the stuff that we like at ifpodcast.com/stuffwelike.

Melanie Avalon:
And you can follow us on Instagram where I have podcast. I'm Melanie Avalon. Vanessa is ketogenic girl. And I think that's all the things. Anything from you, Vanessa, before we go.

Vanessa Spina:
I just had so much fun. Yeah, just love getting to talk about all these topics with you. And I can't wait for the next episode.

Melanie Avalon:
Likewise, I will... talk to you in the future. Bye. Bye.

Melanie Avalon:
Thank you so much for listening to the Intimation Fasting Podcast. Please remember, everything we discussed on this show does not constitute medical advice and no patient-doctor relationship is formed. If you enjoyed the show, please consider writing a review on iTunes. We couldn't do this without our amazing team. Administration by Sharon Merriman, editing by Podcast Doctors, show notes and artwork by Brianna Joyner, and original theme composed by Leland Cox and recomposed by Steve Saunders.

STUFF WE LIKE

Check out the Stuff We Like page for links to any of the books/supplements/products etc. mentioned on the podcast that we like!

More on Vanessa: ketogenicgirl.com

Theme Music Composed By Leland Cox: LelandCox.com

If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving us a review in Apple Podcasts - it helps more than you know! 

 

 

Jan 28

Episode 354: Special Guest: Dave Asprey, Cold Plunges, Dopamine Fasting, Spermidine, Follistatin Gene Therapy, Sex, Fertility, And More!

Intermittent Fasting

Welcome to Episode 354 of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast, hosted by Melanie Avalon, author of What When Wine Diet: Lose Weight And Feel Great With Paleo-Style Meals, Intermittent Fasting, And Wine and Vanessa Spina, author of Keto Essentials: 150 Ketogenic Recipes to Revitalize, Heal, and Shed Weight.

Today's episode of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast is brought to you by:

Butcherbox: Grass-fed beef, organic chicken, heritage pork, wild-caught seafood, nutrient-rich, raised sustainably the way nature intended, and shipped straight to your door! For a limited time go to butcherbox.com/ifpodcast and get 2 lbs of ground beef, 3 lbs of chicken breasts, or 2 lbs of salmon—for free in every order for a whole year! Plus, get $20 off your first order!

Solshine: While too much indoor limited-spectrum light can disrupt our health, natural full-spectrum light supports mood, immunity, and the circadian rhythm. Unlike common SAD lights and conventional full-spectrum lights, SolShine's light systems include the ‘fullest’ spectrum visible, as well as essential, invisible near infrared light (NIR) and trace ultra violet (UV) light. Use these devices to fix your circadian rhythm and properly stimulate your brain's SCN, in a manner like that of the natural spectral diet that’s essential for optimum metabolic function! Get 10% off with the code melanieavalon at melanieavalon.com/solshine!

To submit your own questions, email questions@IFpodcast.com, or submit your questions here!! 

SHOW NOTES

Beautycounter: Keep your fast clean inside and out with safe skincare! Shop with us at melanieavalon.com/beautycounter and use the code CLEANFORALL20 for 20% off, plus something magical might happen after your first order! Find your perfect Beautycounter products with Melanie's quiz: melanieavalon.com/beautycounterquiz

Join Melanie's Facebook group Clean Beauty and Safe Skincare with Melanie Avalon to discuss and learn about all the things clean beauty, Beautycounter, and safe skincare!

BUTCHERBOX: For a limited time go to butcherbox.com/ifpodcast and get 2 lbs of ground beef, 3 lbs of chicken breasts, or 2 lbs of salmon—for free in every order for a whole year! Plus, get $20 off your first order!

SOLSHINE: Get 10% off with the code melanieavalon at melanieavalon.com/solshine!

DANGER COFFEE: Get 10% off at melanieavalon.com/dangercoffee with the code MELANIEAVALON!

Get 40% OFF Dave’s 10th Annual Biohacking Conference in Dallas with the code BCMelanie at melanieavalon.com/biohackingconference! This special ends January 31st!

Listener Q&A: Nancy - Have him make you danger coffee and do some cold plunge Q&A question...

Listener Q&A: Vanessa - What is his favorite emoji and why? Think carefully.

Listener Q&A: Lizzie - How come we're allowed to drink black coffee and tea on a fast?

Listener Q&A: Tracy - Can you humor us and take the clean, fast challenge and not have anything but black coffee and water during your fast for 30 days and report back if you notice any difference?

Listener Q&A: Susie - He has said he will take spermedine for the rest of his life. Why didn't he recommend it in his book, Smarter Not Harder?

Listener Q&A: Jean - Has biohacking turned into a holistic movement for rich people?.

Listener Q&ATracy - Is an Upgrade Lab is coming to Raleigh?

Listener Q&A: Stephanie - He has a much different way of sharing information. I've recently been seeing posts about sex. He was discussing orgasms. What does he think about orgasms?

Listener Q&A: Scott - By restraining ejaculation, does that increase your vitality?

Listener Q&A: Renee - If you are on a date, what is the biggest turn on to you for a girl to order at the restaurant?  

Listener Q&A: - Why does he keep referring to raw vegan as his gripe with veganism?

Listener Q&A: James - Will you be talking to Dave about the Follistatin gene therapy?

Listener Q&A: Leah - What have you changed your mind on based off of new information that you once believed strongly?

Listener Q&A: Teresa - Is there anything he's written about in his books that makes him cringe because he doesn't agree with it today?

Our content does not constitute an attempt to practice medicine and does not establish a doctor-patient relationship. Please consult a qualified healthcare provider for medical advice and answers to personal health questions.

TRANSCRIPT

(Note: This is generated by AI with 98% accuracy. However, any errors may cause unintended changes in meaning.) 

Melanie Avalon:
Welcome to Episode 354 of the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. If you want to burn fat, gain energy, and enhance your health by changing when you eat, not what you eat with no calorie counting, then this show is for you. I'm Melanie Avalon, biohacker, author of "What, When, Wine" and creator of the supplement line AvalonX. And I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Spina, sports nutrition specialist, author of "Keto Essentials" and creator of the Tone Breath Ketone Analyzer and Tone Lux Red Light Therapy Bannals. For more on us, check out ifpodcast.com, melanieavalon.com, and ketogenicgirl.com. Please remember, the thoughts and opinions on this show do not constitute medical advice or treatment. To be featured on the show, email us your questions to questions@ifpodcast.com. We would love to hear from you. So pour yourself a mug of black coffee, a cup of tea, or even a glass of wine, if it's that time, and get ready for the Intermittent Fasting Podcast.

Melanie Avalon:
You are in for such a special treat with today's episode. I actually recorded today's episode in person with Dave Asprey in Austin at his house. It was so incredibly surreal. It was my first live podcast ever.

Melanie Avalon:
So talk about a way to start with that. Of course, I will be posting video clips on my Instagram. So if you want to see what this actually looked like going down, check that out. And in this conversation, we got to do a spicy AMA.

Melanie Avalon:
You guys had such incredible questions and Dave's answers were, well, they were pretty much what I would expect from Dave. And by the way, we get a lot of coffee questions on this show. We talk about it in this episode.

Melanie Avalon:
I cannot recommend Danger Coffee enough. It will not break your fast. It is remineralized. It is tested to be free of mold and toxins. And it tastes delicious. I love Danger Coffee. So go to melanieavalon.com/danger.

Melanie Avalon:
You see coupon code MelanieAvalon that will get you 10% off Danger Coffee. If you want to have the best coffee for your fast, you want Danger Coffee. And of course, we will put links to everything as well as have a full transcript in the show notes.

Melanie Avalon:
Those will be at ifpodcast.com/episode354. All right, so on that note, please enjoy my fabulous conversation with Dave Asprey. Hi friends, welcome back to the show. So this is a moment for me.

Melanie Avalon:
This is actually my first in -person podcast. Ever? Ever. God, I'm so nervous. You're first? When are we gonna do? I'm nervous. I've done like 500 episodes and I've never done one in person. So I like don't even know what to do.

Melanie Avalon:
I have to like have my notes, all the things.

Dave Asprey:
I was trying not to judge you out loud.

Melanie Avalon:
But if you're going to do it.

Dave Asprey:
They're way more fun in person. I've been really working out more on my show in person. So it's like literally the same as going out to dinner, but now it's a conversation in person instead of a Zoom call and just millions of people get to listen in.

Melanie Avalon:
So the agenda for right now, I wanted to do an AMA with you. I asked the audience for questions. I'm going to tell them who I am. I got a lot of questions for Dave Asprey, who I am here with. Some of them came in, I was like, oh, some of these are kind of spicy.

Melanie Avalon:
So then I did a follow -up, and I was like, can I get spicy questions for Dave Asprey? Absolutely.

Dave Asprey:
is like butt hole signing and all that.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, it's all the things. I can't wait. So I hope you're ready. Can we jump in?

Dave Asprey:
Let's do it, ask me anything.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, so to start things off, we have from Nancy. Oh, how exciting. That's all caps with like exclamation. Hey, Nancy. Nancy, she says, have him make you danger coffee.

Dave Asprey:
I already kind of did that for the photo shoot.

Melanie Avalon:
and do some cold plunge Q &A question style like Rachel Varga. Those inspired me right into the cold river by her house. So you got her into the cold river. Side note, I actually have never done a cold plunge even though I do cryotherapy every day.

Dave Asprey:
Oh my gosh, you know, the sun was still up when you came over for the copy photo shoot. We could have hopped in the cold plunge. I know, but we did not. But you just kind of didn't, and now it's dark so we couldn't do it.

Dave Asprey:
I say you got out of that. Guys, I think you should leave a comment and just encourage cold plunges with all sorts of reasons, like scientific reasons as well as, what motivates you best? Like motivational or like, Motivation.

Dave Asprey:
Like shameful, like what's kind of motivation? It's like, you're a bad person if you don't do it or like, you're a better person to do it.

Melanie Avalon:
to all of that. Okay, good.

Dave Asprey:
You know what she doesn't deal. So do this stuff she doesn't deal well with until she gets in the co -plunge and then you win. Possibly.

Melanie Avalon:
I do well with like- Don't do that, be nice. I do well with like, this'll make you an amazing person. You'll be a very good girl if you do this, that's what I do.

Dave Asprey:
You don't have a huge amount of body fat. So for you, a very cold plunge is going to be more effective than a long one. Like normally it's three to six minutes that you would do. In the water. In the water.

Dave Asprey:
And for you, it's probably just 90 seconds, right? And it's enough to get your body so you're doping levels of where you want them to be, but you don't need to turn on more calibrating, right? So it depends on how much lean mass you have and then the percentage of body fat.

Dave Asprey:
And if you're super lean, doing a long cold plunge is harder than someone who has padding. I'm down to about six and a half percent body fat right now. And I can do, you know, 10 minute cold plunge, but I probably shouldn't.

Dave Asprey:
And six minutes is really the upper limit where you see most of the benefits.

Melanie Avalon:
so I can go for like a minute. Yeah.

Dave Asprey:
Just get an oesanus, you're nice and warm, and then do one minute. That's easy. If I get hot first. Do that. And for you, that's fine. What you're doing is there's a dopamine response and then there's a cold shock protein and burning more calories and more brown fat.

Dave Asprey:
For you, it's the dopamine response that's going to be most important. So, brief and unpleasant equals good. Okay.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, I'll do it. To -do list, I'll go back. Okay, very important question. This comes from Vanessa. Vanessa Spina, go host of the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. Hey, Vanessa. This might be the most important question you've ever been asked.

Melanie Avalon:
Are you ready? What is his favorite emoji and why? Think carefully.

Dave Asprey:
Hmm. I am a huge fan of emojis that can be misinterpreted. Okay. So you just don't exactly know what the person meant. So they cause more trouble than they actually solve. So what emoji is that? All the ones you would send in seventh grade.

Dave Asprey:
Such as certain types of nightshade vegetable fruits, vegetables. It's a nightshade. It's purple. Well, what's not what could that be? Eggplants. That's a good idea. Okay. Yeah, that one. Yeah, I didn't think of it, but okay.

Melanie Avalon:
This priest's favorite emoji is an eggplant.

Dave Asprey:
I always say it's one of mine, but anytime you can say something, you're like, wait a minute, and you just aren't quite sure. Yeah. Those are the fun ones. So it depends on context, but it has to be one that's unclear and probably could have a bad connotation.

Melanie Avalon:
Have you noticed that the little twin girl emojis, they're Playboy bunnies?

Dave Asprey:
No, there's a twin playboy buddy.

Melanie Avalon:
It's like two girls and it's supposed to be like kids or twins or girls, but they're wearing playboy bunny ears

Dave Asprey:
Is it screaming? This thing at my bit, this like Disney did that, didn't they?

Melanie Avalon:
No, yes. Like kind of how like Disney sneaks in all the stuff. Yeah.

Dave Asprey:
Yeah. Pretty sure. Fun facts. Like even going back to like Snow White and stuff like that. Yeah.

Melanie Avalon:
My favorite emoji is the sparkles.

Dave Asprey:
Of course. You know, I use those sparkles a lot actually. Oh, sparkles. And also there's another magical one. Oh, and then like the crown ones, I use those a lot. Crown? For friends. Like the regal crown, those are good.

Melanie Avalon:
I like the fog one. Oh, that's cool. It's like a smile.

Dave Asprey:
That was not a question I've ever answered before.

Melanie Avalon:
Really? Yep. Oh yeah, okay, I'm excited, okay. Okay, so we have to answer, this is the intermittent fasting podcast in case you were wondering. Okay. So we have fasting questions.

Dave Asprey:
for you. But just tell me sometimes, right? Because it's intermittent. You said that. When you're in a relationship, you're in a relationship.

Melanie Avalon:
when you're on the Melannie. No, Dave was on the Melannie Evelyn biohacking podcast and you...

Dave Asprey:
pointed that out. I did. You did. I repeated that joke but I'm knowing it. It's all good. I'm out of drugs.

Melanie Avalon:
Smart drugs. So this is something I've actually thought about a lot. This comes from Lizzie. She says, how come we're allowed to drink black coffee and tea on a fast? Surely only water. I always felt that it's a loophole for coffee drinkers or at least if we're able to drink coffee and tea, there must be other substances available.

Melanie Avalon:
I have thought about this so much. Thought about this?

Dave Asprey:
I have and one of the really important things that I've been asked myself is why are you allowed to drink water during a fast?

Melanie Avalon:
because it's nonchloric, it's just H2O, it's your body.

Dave Asprey:
So not having calories is a tea and coffee. Not having calories. I'm getting really confused already. I know. And why are you allowed to breathe out fast? That's a good question. Well, nutrients. Breathwork is pretty much intermittent fasting.

Dave Asprey:
Yes. For your lungs. True. Right, but strangely, we have all these weird rules about what we're allowed and not allowed to do while we're fasting that are based on nothing that's about science or thinking.

Dave Asprey:
They're just, I don't know, there was a lab test where the mice only had water because mice don't have espresso machines and they were locked in little mouse prisons. So because of scientists in the 1950s, probably, wearing a white lab coat and weird goggles was mean to mice, then you should only have water.

Dave Asprey:
Sounds good to me. Or you could say, what are the hallmarks of things that cause a fast and break a fast? And what will cause a fast is a rise in mTOR or a rise in insulin. Since coffee and tea don't do either one of those, and by the way, neither do butter or MCT oil, you can have them during a fast in moderate amounts, which makes fasting much easier, especially for women.

Dave Asprey:
And it doesn't change mTOR. It doesn't change insulin and you feel good. And this very much angers a few people who are what I'm going to call fasting. Fasting obsessives, fasting. Then it's not about being pure because they're not being scientific.

Dave Asprey:
Oh, they're fasting dogmatics is what they are.

Melanie Avalon:
to challenge you on that.

Dave Asprey:
You can challenge me on this.

Melanie Avalon:
So you could do something in your life, like just get excited and it would affect your insulin or your insulin, your cortisol.

Dave Asprey:
Because it turns out cortisol goes up when you intermittent fast anyway because that's what happens when you're hungry. It's how your body liberates glucose from muscle tissue. So I don't worry about cortisol going up.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, back to, okay, I could be in the mall and smell something delicious, like those cinnamon roll fun things, and affect my insulin. That is cool.

Dave Asprey:
That's correct.

Melanie Avalon:
So does that break my fast?

Dave Asprey:
If you were doing something called a dopamine fast, technically it would. And there is a kind of fasting that my friend, Camsepa, coined a few years ago called dopamine fasting. And I wrote about it in Fast This Way, which is my big intermittent fasting book on the psychology and the science of fasting.

Dave Asprey:
And what Cam talked about, by the way, he runs Maximus Tribe, which is a new company I'm backing that has a testosterone enhancement tech firm and that's super cool. What Cam said is, well, anything that raises dopamine is going to basically make your dopamine receptors less sensitive, just like anything that raises insulin can make your insulin receptors less sensitive.

Dave Asprey:
Therefore, to do a dopamine fast, be really bored. Like no social media, no color, sit in a couch and basically lay there for a day or for a weekend with like no people, no stimulation, no music. And by doing that, you can increase your happiness levels.

Dave Asprey:
You can, I just think it's easier to do a cold plunge because that has a similar effect.

Melanie Avalon:
This is literally the book I'm reading right now is about this. So with the dopamine, because it comes in and waves. So is he saying that if you stop, then the spike you get will be bigger?

Dave Asprey:
Not that the spike will be bigger, but that when there is a spike, you'll feel it better. So it'll be the same size spike as before, but since your receptors are more open to it, it'll feel bigger. It's almost identical to what happens during a cold plunge.

Melanie Avalon:
It's the same amount of dopamine, but you feel it more. Yeah. Even though it's literally what you're feeling. So who's feeling it more? Like, who is the part of you that's feeling that dopamine more?

Melanie Avalon:
If it's your dopamine?

Dave Asprey:
receptors.

Melanie Avalon:
It's the same amount of dopamine. You're saying intuitively the person, the real you.

Dave Asprey:
Sometimes you need three pieces of pizza to feel satisfied and sometimes you need one Yeah, so your dopamine receptors will feel satisfied on one piece of dopamine pizza instead of three

Melanie Avalon:
Have you done a dopamine fast?

Dave Asprey:
I have, because I read a book about it. I do everything. How long? It's just for a weekend. It's just basically being bored. You don't eat, you get water. On a dopamine fast, you probably shouldn't have coffee or tea because they're flavors.

Dave Asprey:
And you shouldn't use the central. Oh, that was a question. You want to use bored. Like it kind of sucks. It's probably not worth it. Like I said, I do cold plunders because they have the similar dopamine sensitizing effect.

Melanie Avalon:
Tracy, she wants to know, can you humor us and take the clean, fast challenge and not have anything but black coffee and water during your fast for 30 days and report back if you notice any difference?

Dave Asprey:
You want me to do a 30 day fast?

Melanie Avalon:
No, 30 day clean fast. So like during your fasting time, only black coffee and water. No supplements, no nothing, no. No. you

Dave Asprey:
That would be dumb. I thought that was gonna be the answer. So I don't know, like clean fast challenge, how about less effective fast challenge? We could just rebrand it that way. Because if you're not taking fasting memetics while you're fasting, you're not getting the same benefits.

Dave Asprey:
Why would you not take spermedine during a fast? That's insane. Why would you not have electrolytes during a fast? That's insane. Why would you not amplify the benefits you get from your fast? Because, oh, I know.

Dave Asprey:
Because working hard and suffering bring you moral turpitude, is actually the word for it. But they bring you moral goodness. They make you a good person. I just wrote a whole book called Smarter Not Harder about why doing things the hard way and working hard and suffering actually don't get to results.

Dave Asprey:
In fact, the guy with the shovel digging a ditch who works really hard, doesn't get paid as much as the guy with the tractor who gets it done in five minutes. So if you wanna live in the past, you need to get rid of all your clothes so you didn't grow yourself and live in a cave and it's dumb.

Dave Asprey:
And working hard sucks. The ability to work hard with all the best tools will get you thousands of times the results in your life. So no, I'm not doing some dumb, sorry guys, clean fast challenge, because it doesn't work as well as doing it with tools.

Dave Asprey:
Right, I just don't get it. Like, why do we have Luddite fasting out here? I'm triggered right now. I identify as getting shit done.

Melanie Avalon:
and what does it mean if you're being triggered?

Dave Asprey:
That means I need more coffee, danger coffee obviously. Yeah, danger coffee. Who knows what I might do? Well, you- Sorry guys. I wanna be like real nice about that one, but seriously, why is that clean?

Dave Asprey:
Like where do your standards come from? And also tea, tea is full oxalic acid. You probably don't want that during your fast. Like why are you doing this to yourself? Do you know the components of what you're putting in and what you're not putting in?

Dave Asprey:
And I also wanna know, are you using an air filter? Cause if you're not, 30 pounds of air and your body fat and some protein you're gonna lose, I kinda think that might be dirty. So, could be better.

Melanie Avalon:
Dave Asprey is not going to take the clean fast challenge, is the takeaway for

Dave Asprey:
I love it that your challenge would be able to fast.

Melanie Avalon:
Susie, you mentioned this, and I thought about this. I read Smarter Not Harder, which I highly recommend. And Susie said, he has said he will take sperm redeem for the rest of his life. Why didn't he recommend it in his book, Smarter Not Harder?

Melanie Avalon:
I was thinking that too.

Dave Asprey:
I didn't recommend it in Smarter Not Harder because if you read Superhuman, my book on longevity, I talked about how spermidine was a very promising longevity compound, but you couldn't buy it. And so what I did is I illegally imported probiotics from Japan that would make spermidine for me.

Dave Asprey:
And then when it came on the market, the first company I bring into the US, I had to run my podcast to launch the company because I could finally buy it. And because of all that, and because I also wrote about it in my fasting book called Fast This Way, they came out after that, I didn't feel like repeating it for people in Smarter Not Harder was there because it's not a book on fasting.

Dave Asprey:
It's a book on tools that give you really these five states of longevity or fitness or putting on muscle or losing weight very, very quickly. Kind of like the opposite of the Clean Fast Challenge, where you do the stuff that works even faster instead of even slower.

Melanie Avalon:
solid answer, getting more controversial. So biohacking, Jean, who you might know him, he has two questions. Question one, has biohacking turned into a holtish movement for rich people?

Dave Asprey:
I was just talking with Molina, who wrote the first book on biohacking in Spanish for the entire Latin American market. And it's in its fifth edition. It's not for Latin American millionaires. In fact, my books are in 16 languages.

Dave Asprey:
All of the books have, here's what you can do for free using a principle of biohacking. Here's what you can do that's moderately expensive, like 50 bucks a month. And here's what you can do that the crazy billionaires do.

Dave Asprey:
And I do my best to take the crazy billionaire stuff and I put it at Upgrade Labs. We're opening 27 locations and counting. You can go to ownanupgradelabs.com and you can open a franchise in your neighborhood to bring biohacking at an affordable level.

Dave Asprey:
So yeah, there's crazy billionaire types who oftentimes are buying the same kind of equipment I've tested for years at home because they can afford it. And I bless that because they're the ones who are funding things that are changing the world for all of us.

Dave Asprey:
And if you don't believe that, look at the history of mobile phones. They used to cost $50 ,000 and $20 a minute. And now they're like free, even in Africa. They're a dollar a month in some places. So biohacking is a movement about control of our own biology where you control your own biology, not your government, not your doctor, not your mommy.

Dave Asprey:
You get to be in control. And that's not just for billionaires. That is for all humans. And as a side note, 60% of biohackers have always been women.

Melanie Avalon:
That's a good segue. But before that, because you mentioned Upgrade Labs, Tracy wants to know if an Upgrade Lab is coming to Raleigh.

Dave Asprey:
Ooh, I think we've talked with someone in Raleigh, but I don't think we've signed it yet. Wouldn't surprise me. If not, go to ownanupgradelabs .com. Could be you.

Melanie Avalon:
might be coming. Okay, segue to women. Got a lot of questions about women and sex. If you're good with that.

Dave Asprey:
Like I said, it's an ask me anything, right? Right.

Melanie Avalon:
Stephanie, she says, I'm very excited for this one. He intrigues me. He has a much different way of sharing information. I've recently been seeing posts about sex. He was discussing orgasms. What does he think about orgasms?

Melanie Avalon:
I read more orgasms are better for women, but less for men, kind of ironic. And I will comment on that, like me, I'll comment. I've had John Gray on my other show a few times and I believe he is a proponent of this idea that women, all the orgasms all the time and men, not so much.

Dave Asprey:
That's actually not Jones' perspective.

Melanie Avalon:
Is that John's perspective? No. Are you sure?

Dave Asprey:
I don't know the inference for years John Gray, the Mars and Venus guy. What he says is, and I'm gonna correct it, ejaculation for men is not good for them, but orgasms are good for them. And most men listening and most women actually believe that orgasm and ejaculation and men are the same thing.

Dave Asprey:
Men can orgasm and not ejaculate. So it turns out this isn't new sharing for me. If you read my book, Game Changers, going back to I think 2015 maybe, I took 400 episodes of the Human Upgrade podcast and I used the statistician because we didn't have AI that could do it at the time to figure out the common elements that all of these people had done to focus on in a structured interview about how do you, the question was, what are the three pieces of advice you have for someone who wants to perform better at every part of being a human being?

Dave Asprey:
And after 400 answers, I came up with a set of roughly 50 laws that came out of this. So don't follow me, I don't wanna be a guru. I curate gurus and I learn from them and then I structure it so you can learn it better.

Dave Asprey:
And what I did is I published my ejaculation and orgasm data for an entire year in the book. There's a graph and there's an equation. An equation looks like this. This is for men only, women do not do this, it would be bad for you.

Dave Asprey:
You take your age in years, minus seven, and then you divide that by four. So let's say you're like 40. So age in years, 40 minus seven is 33 divided by four. How many times is four going to 33? I was doing my own.

Dave Asprey:
Okay, it should be eight. So what's your age? Six. Six, okay, so if you're a guy, so people can do the math, you just disclosed. So if you're 40, that's just about eight, so you're under 40. So then your answer is about six.

Dave Asprey:
That's the number of days between ejaculations for guys. So don't ejaculate more often than that. Oh, for men. For me. And this is really important. If you're a woman, there's a different equation that's never been written in all of Taoism.

Dave Asprey:
I searched everywhere, but I did make up the equation for you. So what this means, guys, is that if you want, and this equation is to maintain your health. If you want to live a long time, this is written.

Dave Asprey:
And I've interviewed, no, I've written, I've interviewed John Gray, I've interviewed Montauk Chia, who's a very famous guy who teaches this stuff. This is Tantra, this is Qi Gong, and I've studied these esoteric practices.

Dave Asprey:
So what you end up with is you go, okay, if you want to live forever, and that's what all these sciences are about, was longevity. It's ejaculate once every 30 days, and keep your orgasm for men to less than an hour.

Dave Asprey:
So I'm like, this is bullshit. I'm going to test this. So for a year, I gathered my data. I did my happiness number every day. How much do I like my life, my career, my job, my company, family life, just how good is life?

Dave Asprey:
And I also tracked carefully on a graph, ejaculation versus orgasm, versus masturbation versus sex. And it pissed me off, but absolutely there is an ejaculation hangover, and over -exaculating does deplete what they used to call your Qi.

Dave Asprey:
So only for men. But then for women, because a lot of these practices, they didn't talk about women very much. So like, all right, let's look into the research. And I did talk to John Gray about this, and he wasn't public with his comments about this at the time, but we had private conversations.

Dave Asprey:
John and many others will say, okay, and now science supports this as well, that for women, orgasms are not depleting. They're actually enhancing. Your EQ goes up, your oxytocin goes up, and things like that.

Dave Asprey:
And there's actually seven to nine different kinds of orgasms women can have.

Melanie Avalon:
Seven to nine.

Dave Asprey:
It depends on who you listen to, but there's probably not. I always go with the bigger hand.

Melanie Avalon:
which are debated.

Dave Asprey:
I'm not going to go there on this. I don't think I have time because I have to finish telling you the equation for limit. Okay. Plus, you don't want to get this banned on whatever platform it'll be on.

Dave Asprey:
So, here's the equation for a minute. Are you ready? It's the number of orgasms until you feel like you're going to die. Plus two.

Melanie Avalon:
is how many orgasms.

Dave Asprey:
you live in the long run. Okay. Regularly.

Melanie Avalon:
I will make a note of that.

Dave Asprey:
And by the way guys, there's no way you're going to be able to do that for your partner unless you learn how to not ejaculate all the time. So right now for guys, if you're getting to the end of the act, it's going to feel like you're going to die.

Dave Asprey:
Because you're like, if I do not finish right now and then your body convinced you to finish and you go, okay, why did I do that? So what you do is you break that just like intermittent fasting. Oh, I'm not going to starve to death if I don't eat for a day.

Dave Asprey:
You're not going to die if you don't finish. And what happens is once you decouple that, then you are always ready to do it again and do it again. And what does that do? It raises your oxytocin and it raises your partner's oxytocin and you don't get the 24 to 48 hour well documented testosterone drop after you ejaculate.

Dave Asprey:
But online, you want to be a powerful man, you shouldn't be at the mercy of ejaculating and your partnership will probably improve as a result of that.

Melanie Avalon:
So were you at the mercy of ejaculating when you did not make your goal?

Dave Asprey:
You know, I guess technically I will tell you that when I was trying to do 30 days without a jackpot, and that was really hard when you were learning to do something like that. So I remember a few times like on day 23, I'm like, I'm publishing my data.

Dave Asprey:
It's like, okay, you know, none, none, none. And then oops, okay, start over again. So it was a practice to be able to get to 30 days while having your regular sex, right? And you know, it's a massive improvement in quality of life.

Dave Asprey:
And that's why John Gray is real public about it now as well.

Melanie Avalon:
Congratulations. You answered Scott's question. He went to know by restraining ejaculation, does that increase your vitality? So I'm guessing yes.

Dave Asprey:
It does. And you know, the eject that once every 30 days or less is the the Qigong master's perspective on that. There's probably like a once a month is probably a good number. And also if you're younger, that's probably about right.

Dave Asprey:
But at least the equation do that.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, we'll put that in the show notes. Couldn't. Renee wants to know, if you are on a date, what is the biggest turn on to you for a girl to order at the restaurant? Is there a food that a woman could order on a date that would turn you on?

Dave Asprey:
I would just say a woman who orders a grass -fed rabbi is by definition an attractive woman.

Melanie Avalon:
what temperature.

Dave Asprey:
Hmm. Probably rare, maybe medium rare. But if it's above that, it's like, oh my God, like I try not to judge anything out loud. What about blue? Blue is good. Just if it's burned, you're like, oh, how sad.

Dave Asprey:
But honestly, I don't judge people based on what they eat. It's how you show up in the world. That's really kind of you. For real. I mean, I might tease them and people tease me too. But if whatever you're eating, you can't be teased by someone who cares about you and designs you, then you probably have a problem.

Dave Asprey:
Like I am dating someone who is, let's say, wannabe vegan. She's not a vegan. She eats, you know, dairy and chicken and fish, but I'm just like, I'm gonna get her to eat today. Is that pescatine? She doesn't eat that much chicken and fish.

Dave Asprey:
And she sort of says, I kind of wanna be vegan, but I don't think she really does. I think she's teasing me. But regardless, I don't care what you eat as long as it works for you. But when people say, I'm eating this and I'm in pain all the time and my brain doesn't work.

Dave Asprey:
And like maybe it's the MSG and like, no, it's not the MSG. Okay, fine, whatever.

Melanie Avalon:
So we have a question about that. I have a really quick question though. Have you found a way to make the restaurant actually give you a rare steak?

Dave Asprey:
Order it blue and you'll get it rare usually.

Melanie Avalon:
I found out a way. I asked to order a steak for dessert, and it was when the kitchen was closed, so they were not about it. I was like, listen, you can just get the raw steak, just put it on for a second, I'll be good in that work.

Dave Asprey:
I would work. Then the guys are gonna eat lay. You probably could just say you want one minute per side and you're good. Yeah, I'm still working on that one. Yeah, blue is good.

Melanie Avalon:
Speaking of Nancy, she wants to know why does he keep referring to raw vegan as his gripe with veganism? Whole foods plant-based has some impressive results in science, particularly without oils. And this is vastly different from a raw diet.

Melanie Avalon:
Is it a running joke? Is it residual trauma from too many sprouts? I can do without kale, but I'm very tired of my cozy meals being lumped into a small fringe, extreme lifestyle. By the way, I am a Dave fan.

Melanie Avalon:
I drink danger coffee every morning, no shade here, can't wait to hear the interview. So, I've thought of that.

Dave Asprey:
I love the honest questions there. I talk about how I've been vegan and a raw vegan because I've done both. And being a raw vegan shows a devout commitment to a cult -like belief system. It's like being in the inner circle of priests of the vegan cult.

Dave Asprey:
So I just use that as like a proof that I'm one of you and my sprouters and juicers and blenders and dehydrators and all that stuff that's probably in the garage somewhere. I don't know, I don't use it anymore.

Dave Asprey:
So I wasn't just a raw vegan. I wouldn't be really cloned that. The problem is that all of these staple, cozy vegan foods are full of oxalates. They're full of phytic acid. They're full of carbohydrates.

Dave Asprey:
They're full of lectins. You can't get oil -free. You just get plant oils. You can eat corn. It's got corn oil in it. You can eat soy, which is full of all those bad things, plus some estrogen mimics.

Dave Asprey:
It's also got soybean oil in it. You can eat nuts. It's got omega -6's in it. So it's not oil -free. And if you're talking about a really radical friend the zero -fat 1970s vegan movement might be even more extreme than the raw vegan movement.

Dave Asprey:
So that said, is there an argument for a zero -fat, relatively high -starch, low -toxin diet that contains plants that are not full of oxalates, phytates, or lectins that are bad for you? Nobody knows, because they've never tried it.

Dave Asprey:
But metabolically, there probably is a case for that. It'll be used for a brief period. As there's a case for being a vegan for a brief period. If you listen to the Human Upgrade, I did a podcast with James Clements about a book called The Switch from James.

Dave Asprey:
Cool. Do you want it? In a minute. James is a friend and a fellow longevity enthusiast I've known for 25 years. This is a guy who flew around and got all these really, really old centenarian people's DNA.

Dave Asprey:
So James actually says be a vegan and then be carnivore. Be vegan, then carnivore on a monthly basis to live forever. It's a good argument, good book, and cool guy.

Melanie Avalon:
I would posit the Kempner diet might be what you were saying.

Dave Asprey:
a Kempner diet remind you. How about this?

Melanie Avalon:
It's like rice and sugar and you reverse people's diabetes.

Dave Asprey:
I believe that's the same thing. It's the zero fat, high starch sugar diet. I do not believe anymore that sugar causes diabetes. I think excess sugar is bad for you from a dopamine perspective and a gut bacteria perspective.

Dave Asprey:
I think diabetes, and I'm for years now, is caused by omega -6 fats primarily. And toxins. That evolved dysfunction.

Melanie Avalon:
Well, we do have a question from A. James. This is supposed to be anonymous. So this is A. James. A. James, not a mutual friend, James. He says, will you be talking to Dave about the, is it Follistatin gene therapy?

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah. He got the gene therapy himself, maybe for promoting it, question mark, but says it only lasts a couple of months, and then you must do it again to maintain muscle mass. He's been, quote, getting ripped just since becoming single again, LOL.

Dave Asprey:
So two correct things. Gene therapy is good for up to two years, not a couple months. Go to daveasprey.com/genetherapy for info about that and a link to the episode in it. And no, I did this because I wrote about gene therapy in my longevity book in 2016, 2017.

Dave Asprey:
That's superhuman if you wanna read how to live to at least 180. Since then a couple of people have come out with books saying we might live for an extra 10 years, but it's all about health span. And if you just exercise enough and that's like Neanderthal longevity from the 80s and it's kind of gross.

Dave Asprey:
So the reason I did this is in my book, I said we will be able to do gene therapy soon and we'll have IPSC edited stem cells. The guy who created these who was on the podcast along with his partner Mac, read the book in medical school and said, oh, I made enough money selling Tesla shares.

Dave Asprey:
How about I build this tech for longevity instead of being a regular doctor? So I got it because I'm gonna live to at least 180 and I had got it even if I never talked about it but I talk about it because that's my job to talk about the stuff I do to live to 180 so you don't have to spend millions of dollars trying your life for yourself.

Dave Asprey:
That's why I did it.

Melanie Avalon:
I have a question. When you write your books, do you write your books?

Dave Asprey:
Yes, I write my books. Now, what is the definition of writing a book?

Melanie Avalon:
Do you, every sentence in the book, did that come from your creative inspiration that you then pinned?

Dave Asprey:
No book published today unless it's self -published is that way because you work with a team of editors at your publisher Literally before any of my books is out there. It has been handled by at least a dozen people to help me Get my words and my thoughts in order So to write a New York Times bestseller that's gonna be read by hundreds of thousands of people I would be irresponsible if I only wrote every word myself and the publisher would be irresponsible If they published it without going through every single word doing fact -checking Telling me that this sentence looks stupid and here's how it should be better.

Dave Asprey:
It's like a team of critics working on it and There's absolutely stages where it's collaborative or like oh we want to get these ideas in here. How do we do it? So I'll go back and forth with someone There's usually a primary editor or we'll call it writing partner where we'll have the conversations to structure it And then we go back and forth So I don't think you can legitimately say anyone wrote every word in their book unless they're a first -time author It's a team effort if it's going to be a worthy book

Melanie Avalon:
the legal department's fund.

Dave Asprey:
Believable for a win is great fun. How are you? Did I write my book? Yeah. Yeah. With every single word in the book, yours.

Melanie Avalon:
Yes, and then it got both self -published, yes. And then traditionally published, which I actually brought you a copy of my book because 10 years ago, I went to the opening of the bullet proof at the time, Coffee Shop in Santa Monica.

Melanie Avalon:
I've told you this before, but I'm telling you again. And I came with my self -published book at the time, and I was like, I'm gonna give Dave asked for my book. And I was dressed up in like a cocktail dress, sparkly, and then they were like, Dave's gone.

Melanie Avalon:
I was like, okay. And so I gave them self -published one. I was like, can you please give this to Dave? And then I walked away and I was like, someday I will give him my book in person. Well, here you go.

Melanie Avalon:
I have it down there. Thank you. So I'm giving it to you. Aw. But to answer your question, that's the real version, like the traditionally published. And I think I can say that I wrote every sentence, and then they would say like, oh, we need to put this in here because of all of us.

Melanie Avalon:
So then I would like write a new sentence. you

Dave Asprey:
Your editor didn't just say, here's my suggested edit, and you clicked accept.

Melanie Avalon:
And

Dave Asprey:
There's collaborative tools for getting it out there in a way that's good. And so I don't think there's any shade on doing or not doing that. It's just when you have a book that's really going to be seen by so many people, you need like beta readers to go through it.

Dave Asprey:
Like, no, this doesn't work. This doesn't work. And then do I care if it's me who says, you know, this sentence was in a passive voice and I missed it? Can you put an active voice? I don't know, I hope someone could do that.

Dave Asprey:
That's, it's like, I don't wash my own socks. I get help with that. And I'm, You don't wash your own socks. I'm grateful to have help for that. And I do that because it takes more time to wash my socks than the value that's provided.

Dave Asprey:
So I can focus on this podcast because I pay someone to help me with that. And I'm super grateful for it, right? But it's the same thing with the book. I do the strategic parts and the important parts.

Dave Asprey:
And if someone says, you want to reorganize these three sentences, I don't care. Can you copy and paste them instead of me? And I feel good about that.

Melanie Avalon:
I have an example. I recently interviewed last week Nina Tyshuls.

Dave Asprey:
I wasn't near that.

Melanie Avalon:
And she's good friends with Gary Tops. I had Gary on the show. And that reminded me that when I tried to traditionally publish my book, they were like not having it with Gary. They were like, you got to put in some sort of disclaimer.

Melanie Avalon:
So I went in and like made a disclaimer.

Dave Asprey:
You want to know something really funny? Sure. I interviewed Gary Tabs on my podcast, probably one of the first 20 out of more than a thousand episodes now. Oh, wow. And after the interview, I said, Gary, I'm writing my fertility book.

Dave Asprey:
And I need, like I don't know what to do, but I've been writing it for five years to self publish this about how I was able to have two kids, even though my mother, my kids was 39 and 42 at the time we had them, which was infertile when I met her.

Dave Asprey:
So like there's a lot of knowledge in here. And it was Gary who introduced me to my first agent. And so the next day was so nice. He sent to know, so Gary Tabs, if you're this, thank you brother for your support early in my writing career.

Dave Asprey:
I don't forget those things.

Melanie Avalon:
I love Gary. Okay. Two last questions related to all of this. Leah says, I love the quote, what have you changed your mind on based off of new information that you once believed strongly type question.

Melanie Avalon:
So it has been a long time. I'm sure his views have changed over the years. I would love to know what matters to him now. And then Teresa said, is there anything he's written about in his books that makes him cringe because he doesn't agree with it today?

Dave Asprey:
Okay, there's the cringiest part is when I came out with the Bulletproof Diet cookbook, I feel like I was bullied into having some recipes with Kale. Really? Yeah, because at the time, Kale had a $6 million marketing budget from the Kale Marketing Association.

Dave Asprey:
And so many people were just Kale. And I'm like, guys, Kale and spinach are not that good for you. But if you're going to have a little bit, you can have a little bit if you must. But what I did in the first chapter of the Bulletproof Diet, okay?

Dave Asprey:
Clamer? No, I just, just what it is. Okay, here's the things that are messing with you. Lectins, there's the whole genre of lectin books, right? Oxalates, they're having their day right now and it's only going to get better, right?

Dave Asprey:
And then there's Retic Acid, which is in my most recent book, which is a big problem. And I talked about histamine, which is also having its day right now because of long COVID and all this stuff. And it's like intermittent fasting and omega -6 fats.

Dave Asprey:
So these were the universe to play with in the Bulletproof Diet on all those different levels. But what I didn't do, probably because the data wasn't organized yet, is I wasn't aggressive enough on lowering oxalates, especially being a former vegan or a former whole foods plant -based diet.

Dave Asprey:
Because the more whole the food is, the more toxins from plants there are. That's why, like brown rice, every rice eating culture, if you can afford it, you eat the white rice because the toxins are more in the brown part than the same thing with wheat.

Dave Asprey:
Whole wheat is for peasants because you don't care if they die, but the wealthier people eat the white flour because it has less toxins and they get their nutrients from the side of beef. So, sad, that's how the world works.

Dave Asprey:
Now, the fact that some 70s guys like to eat brown rice because fiber, not knowing about lectins or arsenic or oxalates, I don't know, they're nonsense. So anyway, I was not aggressive enough on oxalates.

Dave Asprey:
I should have just said guys, beets are stupid. Almonds, especially almond milk, which wasn't much of a thing, is stupid. And I should have said raspberries are not worth it. Eat more blueberries. I'm a big blueberry fan.

Dave Asprey:
I love blueberries. But raspberries, the number of, especially women I've spoken with who had interstitial cystitis and serious pain in the reproductive system, they give up these foods. Oh, and kale and spinach are in there.

Dave Asprey:
And I've always been against those guys. Spinach is the very worst besides rhubarb. And I just feel like I wasn't aggressive enough. So my apologies if you ever had a recipe with almonds or kale on them that came from my book.

Dave Asprey:
I know better now.

Melanie Avalon:
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for my first in -person podcast.

Dave Asprey:
And I gotta say congratulations, you're doing a really good job of moving the biohacking movement forward. I love it that we have younger people, women who are doing it. And it's so important because this idea that we have control of our own biology, it's intrinsic to being human.

Dave Asprey:
But the reason that 60% of my followers have always been women, sometimes like 55%, but it's always been slightly more than half, it's because women generally are better biohackers than men. Because for a lot of guys, including me, when I was younger, it's like, well, there's no bone sticking out down here, I'm probably fine.

Dave Asprey:
Right, and we're maybe not that tuned in, but because women's bodies change on a regular basis, you notice, because it's different today. So the sense of interoception, which is the nervous system feeling of what's gone on the body.

Dave Asprey:
Like what's happening where? Well, that's proprioception. Interoception is just the broader word for everything, including like your gut. It's proprioception is where am I in space. Interoception is my gut tingly or is it gas?

Dave Asprey:
You don't know. So there's all these different feelings and a lot of your emotions. And the vibe of where things are. They say like the issues and the tissues and stuff like that. And it's how do you feel what's going on in your inner world, but not the cognitive inner world, but the somatic inner world.

Dave Asprey:
So women are better at that on average than men because you just deal with a changing landscape and we're kind of like, oh, I think I'm okay. So this is why I think there are so many women biohackers.

Dave Asprey:
There are also so many intuitive uphealers who are women. The last 15 or so years of moving the biohack movement forward, I've been very carefully bringing more breath work and meditation, more intuition and more will say esoteric practices and that are based on somatic sense of the self.

Dave Asprey:
I know they're real because I run a neuroscience institution 40 years is in, right? And that lets us measure whether it's happening or whether we're just deceiving ourselves. It is happening.

Melanie Avalon:
Well, thank you. And I will say to that point, listeners, friends, I would not be doing what I'm doing today. I would not have this podcast if not for Dave Asprey. Honestly, I was experiencing health conditions and I started listening to your show and I just found things that worked and I've been following you since then.

Melanie Avalon:
So literally, this would not be happening if not for you. And that's not just me. It's the entire world. So I cannot recommend enough getting Dave's books, all the things. You'll learn everything especially fastest way if you want to know all about fasting.

Melanie Avalon:
So thank you.

Dave Asprey:
You are so welcome and just keep inspiring people. You're part of building the movement of biohacking. It is a growing global movement and it's here to stay. So thanks for helping. 

Melanie Avalon:
Thank you so much for listening to the Intimation Fasting Podcast. Please remember, everything we discussed on this show does not constitute medical advice and no patient-doctor relationship is formed. If you enjoyed the show, please consider writing a review on iTunes. We couldn't do this without our amazing team. Administration by Sharon Merriman, editing by Podcast Doctors, show notes and artwork by Brianna Joyner, and original theme composed by Leland Cox and recomposed by Steve Saunders. See you next week!

STUFF WE LIKE

Check out the Stuff We Like page for links to any of the books/supplements/products etc. mentioned on the podcast that we like!

More on Vanessa: ketogenicgirl.com

Theme Music Composed By Leland Cox: LelandCox.com

If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving us a review in Apple Podcasts - it helps more than you know! 

 

 

Jan 21

Episode 353: Skipping Breakfast, Fasting In The Media, ProLon, Podcast Prep, Lyme Disease, Inflammation, The Keto Diet, And More!

Intermittent Fasting

Welcome to Episode 353 of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast, hosted by Melanie Avalon, author of What When Wine Diet: Lose Weight And Feel Great With Paleo-Style Meals, Intermittent Fasting, And Wine and Vanessa Spina, author of Keto Essentials: 150 Ketogenic Recipes to Revitalize, Heal, and Shed Weight.

Today's episode of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast is brought to you by:

Aquatru: Aquatru’s 4-stage reverses osmosis purification process is the same technology used by all major water bottle brands, and removes 15x more contaminants than ordinary pitcher filters! One set of Aquatru filters purifies the equivalent of 4,500 bottles of water, with no plastic! Get 20% off at aquatruwater.com with the code ifpodcast!

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chicken breasts, or 2 lbs of salmon—for free in every order for a whole year! Plus, get $20 off your first order!

To submit your own questions, email questions@IFpodcast.com, or submit your questions here!! 

SHOW NOTES

Beautycounter: Keep your fast clean inside and out with safe skincare! Shop with us at melanieavalon.com/beautycounter and use the code CLEANFORALL20 for 20% off, plus something magical might happen after your first order! Find your perfect Beautycounter products with Melanie's quiz: melanieavalon.com/beautycounterquiz

Join Melanie's Facebook group Clean Beauty and Safe Skincare with Melanie Avalon to discuss and learn about all the things clean beauty, Beautycounter, and safe skincare!

AQUATRU: Get 20% off at aquatruwater.com with the code IFPODCAST!

go to Prolonlife.com with the coupon code IFPODCAST for 10% off your order of Prolon!

Listener Q&A: Carolynn - IF and Lyme Disease

Autophagy Modulates Borrelia burgdorferi-induced Production of Interleukin-1β (IL-1β)

The Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast Episode #222 - Craig Emmerich

Our content does not constitute an attempt to practice medicine and does not establish a doctor-patient relationship. Please consult a qualified healthcare provider for medical advice and answers to personal health questions.

TRANSCRIPT

(Note: This is generated by AI with 98% accuracy. However, any errors may cause unintended changes in meaning.) 

Melanie Avalon:
Welcome to Episode 353 of the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. If you want to burn fat, gain energy, and enhance your health by changing when you eat, not what you eat with no calorie counting, then this show is for you. I'm Melanie Avalon, biohacker, author of "What, When, Wine" and creator of the supplement line AvalonX. And I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Spina, sports nutrition specialist, author of "Keto Essentials" and creator of the Tone Breath Ketone Analyzer and Tone Lux Red Light Therapy Bannals. For more on us, check out ifpodcast.com, melanieavalon.com, and ketogenicgirl.com. Please remember, the thoughts and opinions on this show do not constitute medical advice or treatment. To be featured on the show, email us your questions to questions@ifpodcast.com. We would love to hear from you. So pour yourself a mug of black coffee, a cup of tea, or even a glass of wine, if it's that time, and get ready for the Intermittent Fasting Podcast.

Melanie Avalon:
This is episode number 353 of the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. I'm Melanie Avalon, and I'm here with Vanessa Spina. Hi everyone. Vanessa, I realized we can talk about two fasting guests. We both interviewed a fasting guest since talking to each other.

Vanessa Spina:
Yes, should we start with? Yeah, I've been wanting to know how yours went with Valter Longo.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, so I interviewed Valter Longo and you interviewed... Wait, how do you say his first name?

Vanessa Spina:
Dr. Satchin Panda.

Melanie Avalon:
So it's Satchin, like Satchin. Yeah. Okay. I don't know why I cannot get his name ingrained in my head. So, Valter Longo will be on this show. So listeners will, actually, I think they will have already heard it.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah. So he was last episode. Oh my goodness. So he can debrief.

Vanessa Spina:
Yes.

Melanie Avalon:
But if you haven't heard the episode. I did want to clarify for listeners one little thing about the episode. So this is actually really good timing because I talked with him about, we talked about breakfast and he is very anti -skipping breakfast.

Melanie Avalon:
So he was pointing out a lot of studies about breakfast linked to mortality. Well, what are your thoughts on this?

Vanessa Spina:
So there was a study recently that came out, and I think I was texting you that the interview that I did with Gin, former co -host of yours, on my podcast, she brought it up and she was really breaking it down really well and sort of brought up all the different points.

Vanessa Spina:
So I know we also talked a lot about how there's been so many clickbait headlines in the last year about intermittent fasting, but she explained a lot of the reasons why it may appear that skipping breakfast could lead to increased mortality.

Vanessa Spina:
And she said it went crazy through her community, her intermittent fasting community that she has online. And I think that she's probably right. Basically, I think she was mostly saying that the data was skewed with people who tended to have a lot of other bad habits that were not supportive of a healthy lifestyle.

Vanessa Spina:
And I personally have started having my first meal again. I do two meals a day and I've made that switch and I consider that to be this form of circadian fasting. But I still sometimes will not have breakfast if I'm not hungry yet in the morning, but I do think that it can offer some advantages and it just depends on what you're after.

Vanessa Spina:
And I also think when you're younger, you can get away with more fasting, especially you can get away with more like OMAD style. But I do think that when you get older, that it's important if you want to protect your lean body mass, do you have more opportunities in the day to trigger muscle protein synthesis?

Vanessa Spina:
So I know we have like a little bit different personal approaches with that, but I like that we have different, you know, approaches. And I also never feel like one pattern is set in stone. So it's kind of a long answer.

Vanessa Spina:
But that's interesting that he's very against that because Mark Madsen and, you know, even like Satchin Panda, they have no real issue with that.

Melanie Avalon:
Wow, okay, that was ridiculously informative. Thank you. When did that study come out? The one that Gin talked about?

Vanessa Spina:
I don't know, but I've just been hearing about it like in the last few months. And I tend to not pay too much attention to that kind of stuff when it comes up, because it's often, I know what kind of study it usually is.

Vanessa Spina:
And I don't get overly excited about a new study that has something negative to say about intermittent fasting. And I know that I know my science behind my approach and that kind of thing. I wish I could recall the title of it and recall everything that Jin said about it because she broke it down really well when we were talking about it, but I haven't read it.

Vanessa Spina:
So I can't really speak to it that much.

Melanie Avalon:
in a few episodes, we could read it and we could talk about it because I would love to talk about it having read it. So I'll actually put it in there at prep so that we can prep for it. That'd be fun.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, because my just initial thoughts are kind of things that you talked about which is well epidemiological data and like the healthy user bias. So basically people that tend to skip, so people who tend to eat breakfast maybe following other healthy lifestyle habits and we've been told for so long that like that you shouldn't skip breakfast.

Melanie Avalon:
So so people who skip breakfast might be more likely to like not engaging in other lifestyle behaviors that support a healthy diet, which is what I just said.

Vanessa Spina:
That's exactly what Jin said. She said it was healthy user bias and it was exactly what you just said.

Melanie Avalon:
There's that. And it was funny though. So in the episode, and by the way, I really, really enjoyed the episode. Oh, and Vanessa knows I'm so bummed listeners. I'm so bummed because I find doing video very energetically draining.

Melanie Avalon:
But occasionally I do it if I want to capture some video if it's a very important guest like Valter Longo. So I got already I was doing a video interview and I thought I was recording it. And I was not I was just recording the audio and it was a tragedy, but that's okay.

Melanie Avalon:
It happened. And as Vanessa said, at least I got the audio. So that's a good reframe. But something else he said, and I was telling you this offline Vanessa, but oh yeah, about the breakfast studies.

Melanie Avalon:
I said that a lot of them are funded by the breakfast food industry, which I have seen. Because when I was writing for my, my book, What When Wine, I was looking up breakfast studies. And I so many times I would go to the bottom and it was like funded by Quaker Oats or funded by, you know, all of these breakfast cereal companies, Kellogg's.

Melanie Avalon:
But he said they did a meta analysis and they found out over, I guess overwhelmingly wasn't the case. I don't know. So that was the only part of the conversation that I wanted to clarify because I, I didn't push him as much as I think I could have.

Melanie Avalon:
I did like a little bit, but I also didn't want to, you know, be crazy.

Vanessa Spina:
Was it actually his study? Maybe it was his study.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, I'm not sure he made it sound like it was his study. I'll have to go look later. He has a lot of studies though, but I had one other thought about it. I just know that when I, and again, I would love to read that study that Gin was referring to and possibly him.

Melanie Avalon:
I also think there's an issue, the timing of what we qualify as breakfast, because I think there's this idea that breakfast is like, super early, but I think you can have like depending on your circadian rhythm.

Melanie Avalon:
How do I say this?

Vanessa Spina:
I mean, it's when you break your fast. Yeah.

Melanie Avalon:
So what even is breakfast? If people's circadian rhythms are different, okay, for example, me. I don't eat breakfast, but if I were to eat breakfast in my circadian rhythm, it would easily be lunch to other people.

Melanie Avalon:
What does that mean then? What do you extrapolate from that data? I think it's complicated. I did a long post on this and I can put a link to it notes, but when I went and like sat down, it wasn't epidemiological data.

Melanie Avalon:
It was controlled clinical data looking at the release of hormones based on eating timing. And it really didn't look like you should be eating super early based on the hormonal profile that was released.

Melanie Avalon:
Like it seemed like, and this was just from the studies I was reading, but the hormones most in line with what when you would actually be eating or a little bit later. Cause like when you first wake up, it's like cortisol.

Melanie Avalon:
It's like anti -hunger hormones, if that makes sense.

Vanessa Spina:
Well, I can tell you what Dr. Satchin Panda says.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh, yes, yes, that's segue because Vanessa interviewed Dr.

Vanessa Spina:
Linda. I love his name. It was probably the interview that I most wanted to have with any guest. And I was telling you, it took me like a year because he's so busy. And he's one of those scientists that is in the lab a lot.

Vanessa Spina:
And I finally got him booked and I was super excited. And I just am such a big fan of his work. His book is on my, in front of me, I stared it all the time, the circadian code. It's so good. So he's done most of the research on time restricted feeding that really, you know, sort of, I guess put intermittent fasting on the map similar to Dr.

Vanessa Spina:
Mark Madsen. But he also discovered a couple other things like melanopsin, which is this protein in our eye, some of it's in our skin that detects your circadian rhythm. So he's done some really fascinating research, but he was kind of one of the first ones to really look at meal timing.

Vanessa Spina:
And he says, you know, like even healthy food, eating at the wrong time is junk food, which I love. But so he says that your day starts the night before you should get in bed and be in bed for at least eight hours.

Vanessa Spina:
So you get around seven hours minimum of sleep. And you should delay breakfast by one to two hours. And he said, it's because when you first wake up, you still have a lot of melatonin going and that it's better to wait one to two hours based on the rhythms of melatonin cortisol production.

Vanessa Spina:
Then Dr. Jack Cruz, you know, he really popularized this leptin reset. And he says you should eat within an hour of waking and that it's because you need to sync up with your circadian rhythm. So you know, there's people have different beliefs on on it.

Vanessa Spina:
My favorite, you know, protein scientist, Dr. Don Lehmann says, doesn't matter when you have that first meal, your breakfast is your breakfast. It's when you break your fast, you can have it at seven, 10, at 12, you know, whatever works for you.

Vanessa Spina:
But it's whenever you you break your fast, essentially. So it's just it's funny that we always associate it with eating within like an hour to a waking and, you know, with certain like, we really associate it with the morning time.

Vanessa Spina:
But the interview with him was amazing. It was really enjoyable to get to to finally ask him some questions that I wanted to ask him for a long time. So yeah, it was great that we both got to interview such amazing, fasting scientists who have contributed so much to our knowledge of, you know, the power of fasting.

Melanie Avalon:
That is so exciting. Were you nervous?

Vanessa Spina:
A little bit. They had asked for the questions before, which I usually don't send. I stopped sending questions a year ago because I preferred to have a more spontaneous reaction to my questions. And then I don't want them to think that they're going to go in that order either.

Vanessa Spina:
Sometimes you just, you know, I like to have more conversational episodes or interviews. So it's like we can flow in this direction, then we can come back and then this sparks something else and we'll see.

Vanessa Spina:
So I stopped sending questions, but they asked for them. So I sent them before. It was interesting because he said when we got on that all the questions were good, but he didn't want to answer one of them.

Vanessa Spina:
And it was about a question that I said, well, what do you make of all the media that talk about how caloric restriction and time restricted eating are essentially the same thing and all the benefits of time restricted eating are coming from caloric restriction.

Vanessa Spina:
And he says that he doesn't like to address that because it just kind of like gives power to the media that, you know, gives them maybe a sense of like recognition or something when really like they don't fully understand the mechanism.

Vanessa Spina:
So I thought that was that that makes sense. And that's my approach with a lot of this stuff too. Like you have to realize that a lot of media, they want you to click on their articles. So they often will sensationalize things, you know, and yeah, we granted we know that, but it's a good reminder, you know, to know that they sensationalize things to get us to get our attention to hook our attention so that we click on their links, go read their articles, spend time on their website.

Vanessa Spina:
So they're incentivized to make things sound a certain way or to make take certain studies and make very like enticing or controversial headlines. And sometimes that's all people see is the headlines.

Vanessa Spina:
And so they don't, you know, always get the full, the full picture. So yeah, I thought that was interesting, but I wasn't too, too nervous, but it was probably the interview that I was the most like anticipating, you know, getting ready for spending a lot of time preparing for what about you?

Vanessa Spina:
I know you've interviewed him before, so wait.

Melanie Avalon:
quick question about the prepping. It's funny. So I have a similar approach in that I make my prep documents and I have tons of questions and then I send those to my assistant. She like cleans it up and then she's I have like a whole system.

Melanie Avalon:
Then she sends me back because the okay, I send her because the way my prep documents are set up. I have like tons of questions with notes under each question organized into sections. So I sent her that and then she sends me back just the questions without my notes.

Melanie Avalon:
And then I pick out the questions that I want to send to them. So I like save for myself the like good questions. So then they don't know not good questions, but the ones that I want to be like very spontaneous and that they don't it's not because I want to like surprise them or trip them up.

Melanie Avalon:
It's just because like you said, I like having an element of spontaneity. And so I basically send them a document with like very basic questions that they probably would have anticipated I would have asked anyways, but I keep for myself all the like special questions.

Melanie Avalon:
So it's like a blend of what you do.

Vanessa Spina:
Yeah, it's funny how we have our own styles. And I have to say, when I do send the questions, people always really appreciate it. So it's nice that you do that. I just don't anymore. There's just a lot of things that I don't anymore.

Vanessa Spina:
So people sometimes, like I was interviewing Dr. Dom Bagostino yesterday. And he's like, I don't think you sent me the questions this time. And I was like, nope.

Melanie Avalon:
That's so fun.

Vanessa Spina:
Yeah, but it's yeah, I find it more fun because it's like I can just Ask you whatever I want and I feel like people get in this state of like They're prepared to answer anything too. So you can like I don't know.

Vanessa Spina:
Yeah. Anyway, it's all It's it's fun to talk about like our different approaches to things

Melanie Avalon:
I know, I wonder if anybody else finds it interesting. I find it so, I could talk about this for like an hour. Yeah.

Vanessa Spina:
Yeah, there's a lot of psychology that goes into it because you and I both host and produce our shows. You know, we don't, like you listen to a lot of podcasts, like they have all these producers and you know, there's a media company running everything for them and they book guests for them and they send them the questions even sometimes.

Vanessa Spina:
So we're our own producers as well. So there's a lot of that that goes into it, like producing.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, I mean, I do have like an amazing assistant for both shows that help so much. But yeah, we're like kind of spearheading. Like I think we're just very, you know, hands on involved in the production.

Melanie Avalon:
I just had an epiphany though. I think a reason I send the questions ahead of time, this may be, this may be the main reason I do it. Do you know what it is? No. I think I do it because I want them to take me seriously going into the interview because I think being a like young blonde stereotype, I feel like if I send them questions that show I've read their work and if they're like nuanced questions, then they'll be like, I need to take this interview more seriously.

Melanie Avalon:
I'm not saying that they wouldn't take me seriously, but it kind of lets me like paint a picture of my mind before they've talked to me, if that makes sense. Yeah, it totally makes sense. I like have seared in my head because David Sinclair was one of the first people I emailed on the biohacking show.

Melanie Avalon:
And I remember I sent him over the questions and he emailed back and he said, wow, that's a deep dive. And I like have that email like imprinted in my memory. That's awesome. So, okay, wait, but I had one other one other thought.

Melanie Avalon:
What did you ask me right before then? Oh, you asked me how it felt integrating Valter. So that has also been a surreal trajectory. And that's also interesting to see how far you've come because I've actually interviewed him three times.

Melanie Avalon:
So it's crazy to think. I mean, I'm still like an on it's amazing, but it's just really interesting to think back to like the first time I emailed him, which was for it was on this show. And it was forever ago.

Melanie Avalon:
It was when it was when Gin was still on the show. And I was just like so nervous. And the second time was on the biohacking show. I'm not sure if I was that nervous. And this time I was like, let's do this.

Melanie Avalon:
Like I'm good. And I'm not, but I'm not saying that to say that I get, I don't ever want to lose my sense of awe and gratitude and everything. It's just really interesting to see your progression. I think like, as you become more comfortable with podcasting, because it's been so long, although Vanessa, I'm never done in person.

Melanie Avalon:
So I'm really scared about Dave Asprey. What am I going to do without my notes? Or I guess I'm going to have my notes. Yeah. Why wouldn't you have them? I'm so used to like looking at my, I don't know.

Melanie Avalon:
It's like different when you're in person. Yes. You have to be like more engaging with the person. Yes. And there's going to be like a photographer there. And it's going to be so stressful.

Vanessa Spina:
No, you're gonna love it. It's gonna bring out the best in you. Okay It's a challenge is you right like you know, they they bring out the best in you so I might drink some wine before Yeah, why not? Tell anybody

Melanie Avalon:
What when wine? I know. Obviously, taking shots of wine in the car.

Vanessa Spina:
I've never taken alcohol when I'm nervous. Like I, oh really? I've never tried that like for speaking or anything, but I usually will fast. I usually will fast and that provides, I think it's probably because of the GABA.

Vanessa Spina:
Like if you get into ketosis, you know, it provides some GABA for you. It makes you more GABA dominant. So I usually fast and it gives me more of like a sense of, you know, control and preparedness and like presentness being present.

Vanessa Spina:
That always works for me when I'm speaking or something, but sometimes it can get to be like a little bit too anxiety producing, but yeah, you gotta just ride the wave.

Melanie Avalon:
That's so interesting.

Vanessa Spina:
I always, always, always, always find that it comes down to how prepared I am. And I know you're going to be super prepared. You probably won't even need notes.

Melanie Avalon:
Well, so thought one, I'm always fasted. I don't, if I was in the fed state, I'd be a wreck. I would be like lethargic and fasting is great for having your mind like on point. That's so interesting that you've never taken, so you've never drank to, you said to help with nerves.

Vanessa Spina:
Yeah, no.

Melanie Avalon:
I haven't. I have. Well, one of the episodes, cause we're doing two, and one of them is going to be listener Q and A. So I'll have to have notes cause that won't be memorized. I think what I'm gonna do though, I asked in the group for spicy questions, cause he does so many interviews.

Melanie Avalon:
So I want to make it very unique. And I got a lot of good spicy questions from listeners. So, do you like that idea? Like a spicy question episode? For sure. Awesome. And the thing I'll do like a fasting and coffee like themed episode.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh, and I did one other, Valter Longo comment. This was so funny. This interview came about because he didn't reach out. I didn't reach out, but ProLon reached out. And I responded. So ProLon is the fasting mimicking diet, which I forgot.

Melanie Avalon:
Have you ever tried it?

Vanessa Spina:
it? Nope, and I never will.

Melanie Avalon:
Sorry. Sorry. Not sorry. Tell us how you really feel. I have tried it. I think I tried it though in a time in my life when it wasn't really the time to try it. I would be open to trying it again. And a lot of listeners have tried it and a lot of listeners have provided feedback.

Melanie Avalon:
So I do think it's really valuable for a lot of people. I did ask him if it could be done in a one meal a day situation. Like could you eat all the, all the ProLon in one meal? Because if I were to do it, I think that's how I would have to do it.

Melanie Avalon:
He said you could. He said he thought that would be hard. I was like, that won't be hard.

Vanessa Spina:
That's a good idea of how you could integrate it, you know, into your, your lifestyle. I think, you know, for some people, it might be helpful. I, I just, it would not be for me. I find that I have a pretty strong fasting muscle.

Vanessa Spina:
So I would just fast. Like I just wouldn't, I don't, I don't understand the point of eating something, but I know that it's just like low protein, but I did that for so many years as a vegetarian and it never did anything really great for me.

Melanie Avalon:
But well, it's low protein and it's severely calorie restricted.

Vanessa Spina:
Then you're just on a low calorie diet.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, but what's interesting though is I guess because of how they specifically formulated it and in their clinical data. And again, I realized I was talking to the man who like created this, but he was very convincing with their clinical data.

Melanie Avalon:
But basically the physiological state, and so for listeners, I guess we haven't really defined what this is. So this is the fasting mimicking diet. Valter Longo developed it. It is a five day diet plan where the purpose of it, and he talks about this in his book, but basically, and his book is called the longevity diet, which isn't just about fasting mimicking diet.

Melanie Avalon:
It's about the fasting mimicking diet and then his overall longevity diet that he prescribes for like life. It creates the physiological blood biomarkers of fasting pretty like equivocably. So like ketone wise, insulin wise, IGF wise.

Melanie Avalon:
So basically it's creating the markers of the fasting state, but you're still eating. And so ProLon is these, it's like soup packets and some bars and this like vitamin drink thing and algae pills. Sounds miserable.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah. Oh, actually I should look and see if they are like spirulina pills that come with it. It comes with some sort of like algae pills. Ah, they probably are. If people want to watch about it, there was a documentary on Netflix.

Melanie Avalon:
Do you remember this one Vanessa? It's when I was hosting with Gin, I think it was like five different episodes about help things. I was excited because I knew literally like half a guest because one episode was the, it was Gwyneth Paltrow's.

Melanie Avalon:
That's what it was. Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop Lab show. Did you watch that on Netflix? I didn't. She has a cold episode with Wim Hof. She has a fasting episode. So in the fasting episode she interviews Dr. Alan Goldhammer who I've had on my show and she does the fasting mimicking diet and she has Valter on the show. If listeners want to kind of get a feel for it. So the studies are really, really interesting on the health effects and like the effects on the immune system and especially like help for cancer.

Melanie Avalon:
So I'm really interested by it. I just haven't personally successfully done it. But if listeners would like to try it and report back would love to hear your experiences and you can get 10% off. The link for that is prolonlife.com.

Melanie Avalon:
So P -R -O -L -O -N -L -I -F -E .com. The coupon code IFPODCAST will get you 10% off. And it is a, I don't know if it's, would it be a nonprofit if all of the money, I guess it's not a nonprofit, but all of the money goes back into fasting research.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh, but that's the funny thing is I, so basically what went down was ProLon  reached out about actually sponsoring the show. And I was like, well, I don't think it's the best fit for sponsoring, but I was like, I'm happy to have Valter on the show to talk about everything.

Melanie Avalon:
So they were like, yeah, great. So he came on, it was great, but he won't actually like mention the word ProLon. Isn't that funny? Why? I don't know. So like, like literally like, I don't know what it was, but at one point, like what I had said was like prepping him to say ProLon and he wouldn't say it.

Melanie Avalon:
He was like, these programs out there, blah, blah, blah, blah. I can't really name them. I was like, oh.

Vanessa Spina:
Okay.

Melanie Avalon:
need to know why. And then like later in the show, I was like, wait, am I allowed to say ProLon? So like later in the show, I was like, I didn't even say it. I mean, I said, I said it earlier, but so later I was like, yeah, and you know, these programs out there for five days.

Melanie Avalon:
So I stopped like, stop saying the word as well. That's bizarre. I wonder why I think it's because he doesn't want to be, I'm assuming. I don't know. I think it's because he doesn't want to be associated with like selling ProLon.

Melanie Avalon:
But it's his creation, right? I know. I want to go back and read the transcript when we get it back from the editors about what he said specifically, because it was he said something about it that was confusing to me.

Melanie Avalon:
That's curious. The fun time. It's so crazy that we get to do these amazing interviews. And I'm so happy. I'll have to, when does your episode come out with Dr. Panda?

Vanessa Spina:
It should be, actually it's coming out next Monday, which will be November 14th, so it should already be out.

Melanie Avalon:
Awesome, I can't wait to listen to it.

Vanessa Spina:
Thank you. I can't wait to listen to the Valter one. Thank you.

Melanie Avalon:
I got excited because I could see he was at USC and I went to USC and I could like recognize the brick walls because they use a lot of the same brick. That's a nice feeling. Made me happy. Nostalgic.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah. I know. Last podcast question I swear. Seems like you turn around your episodes pretty fast. Do you do that typically turn them around fast? Yes.

Vanessa Spina:
I do and it just depends though. So I kind of do a lot of things more instinctually. So I kind of like feel out when I think a certain guest, like the timing of it will be good. It's really not like a technical way of doing it, but I just know.

Vanessa Spina:
I'm like, it's time for this one. And then it's like, it's time for this. Like I just know, I just know what it's like. I have this feeling of when a certain episode should go out. So like right now I've got like about 30 episodes, like pre-recorded.

Vanessa Spina:
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, 30 because I'm going to be taking a break when the baby comes. Right, right, right. Okay. Sorry. So now I'm like scheduling them all, but I also leave a little bit of room to like move things around.

Vanessa Spina:
So, you know, if the week, the week before comes and I'm, I know what's coming out on Monday and I feel like it should be a different guest and I'll change it. So I really go by into intuition. Intuition.

Vanessa Spina:
And I just like feel it out. Wow. Okay. So sometimes I'll have like an episode go out, like I'll record it on a Thursday. And then I'm like, this has to go out on Monday. And then other times I'm like, this doesn't need to go out right now.

Vanessa Spina:
And it'll be out in like a few months. So it's very much like an intuitive thing for me.

Melanie Avalon:
I like that. Yeah. I feel like I'm sort of similar. I typically have a month or two. In the past, it was like three, but I feel like now I'm a little bit only a month out of episodes. And then I pretty much go based on timeline, but sometimes I'll move things around based on, yeah, if I'm feeling something.

Melanie Avalon:
Sometimes I'll get really, really excited and I just have to bump up the episode. Yeah. Which is, but that's, that's rarer though, because I'm just so usually very excited about all of them. Yeah, I get that.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah. Podcasts.

Vanessa Spina:
This thing is so fun. It is the best. I'm so thankful for it every day too. I think about that a lot, especially because it wasn't a thing before, you know? So, I'm so glad.

Vanessa Spina:
grateful. Yeah, it's just amazing. It's just amazing. I am so like, I feel like we both were born to do this and I'm so thankful for it every day. It's just awesome. Just love long form media and I feel like it's changing the world, you know, not just like, I'm not just like our podcast, but like, all the podcasts out there are changing the way that we have longer, deeper conversations about topics and we're learning, we're teaching each other.

Vanessa Spina:
And this is like, for me, this is what the internet is all about. It's like sharing knowledge with each other, you know, sharing long, deep conversations, not just like sound bites and having other people interpret things for us, like we could just go right to the source.

Vanessa Spina:
We don't have to read an article about a study anymore. We can hear the actual scientists talking about his results and his intentions and his methodologies and it's amazing. Like, I truly think this is one of the best parts of the internet.

Melanie Avalon:
I agree so much. Two thoughts to that. Thought one, especially in our world where everything's like TikTok and Instagram and like clickbait and so short. And even the news is like, you know, short little clips.

Melanie Avalon:
Like you said, it's like long form. It's like a conversation. I just, I love that so much. Like it really allows time to actually dive into things and get to know people. Like I love that we get to actually know our guests.

Melanie Avalon:
Like so many of my friends, like you, so many of my friends are guests from the show. And then the second thing, oh, I think one of my favorite things about it is it's like Christmas in that, you know, publicists and agents will be pitching me guests pretty much every day.

Melanie Avalon:
It's like Christmas because I get to like pick what I want to, what I want to play with, not play with, but I want to like read and engage in, you know. But okay, play that sounds awful. Play with. But like, it feels like being at the store and like, it's like, I get to pick out like my favorite thing that I want to engage with.

Melanie Avalon:
That's, that was the phrase, engage with.

Vanessa Spina:
I totally got what you're saying. It just sounded like pictures will come in and normally I'm like no no no but sometimes I see things I'm like oh yes like that's fun and it can really be like whatever like go back to the intuition whatever I just really want to learn about so yeah

Vanessa Spina:
Yes, I love that feeling. I'm like, yes, let's book it.

Melanie Avalon:
So awesome. Last podcast comment, I swear, and I told you this via text, but I think I told you I'm coming around now. I understand now why you're so attracted to Elon Musk. You didn't tell me this by text.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh, did you listen to my voice message? I think I said it in a voice message.

Vanessa Spina:
Yeah, voice messages are hard for me because like most of the time, most of the day I'm with Luca. So it's hard for me to listen because he's like always talking at the same time. So I can listen when he's like napping.

Vanessa Spina:
I'll have put like earphones in and then I listen, but then yeah, sometimes. I don't click on them right away. So maybe like it got pushed up or something. I'm

Melanie Avalon:
I'm so glad we are revisiting this then. Okay, just for a very brief. Thank you.

Vanessa Spina:
discussion. I need to know everything. Listeners are like, Oh, gosh.

Melanie Avalon:
one of those episodes. I know. Okay, so here's the thing. I think I'd only listened or watched one interview with him prior to this, which was also Joe Rogan, but it was the one where he was high on it and like NASA got mad at him.

Vanessa Spina:
It's not a good one.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay. So that is not, so that one, that's like not his typical vibe. I take it.

Vanessa Spina:
No, I mean, he was very eloquent and he said a lot of interesting things in it that I think about all the time. But yeah, I think a lot was made of the fact that he was not sober and etc. I just don't think it was like maybe his best show.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh, is it like that meme? Have you seen that meme? Have you seen that meme where it's like, I got to find it, but it's like, have you ever like left a social situation and just thought not my best work?

Melanie Avalon:
I think that sometimes. Yeah, that's hilarious. Not my best work. So that was probably that meme for him. But yeah, I liked that interview, but that was the only one I'd watched. So I watched, he was just on Rogan again, and he was very not high.

Melanie Avalon:
He was very like sober. I don't know if he was sober, but it was a different vibe. I was like, Oh, yeah, I see it. Yeah, I see it. You see it. Mm hmm. I actually thought he looked attractive and he was very smart.

Melanie Avalon:
He pauses. He's a pauser. Have you noticed that?

Vanessa Spina:
And I always think about the fact that he's just, I think Joe Rogan asked him on that first interview what it was like being in his brain and he said it's constant explosions.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, that's a lot to deal with.

Vanessa Spina:
Yeah, and he's just like, he's like, I don't know, I think he's like a hero, like he's trying to help humanity. I really truly believe that.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, that was my takeaway. Maybe that's what did it, because I watched it and I was like, I was like, oh wow, he like genuinely wants to save humanity. That's like his goal.

Vanessa Spina:
goal here. Yeah. And I think, you know, it's amazing. We hear about all these geniuses in the past, you know, people like Einstein, Michelangelo and, you know, Tesla, but to see them actually alive in our time and watch them, what they're doing.

Vanessa Spina:
And, you know, he got the US off of dependence on Russia for rockets, like he was like, before that the US government had to buy, they had to buy rockets from Russia. And he created SpaceX and made the US independent in terms of now being able to just send up their own payloads to space because they now have their own rockets through SpaceX.

Vanessa Spina:
Like he did that for America. Like he's amazing. And unfortunately, like ever since he took over Twitter, he's been like really demonized for a lot of things. And I truly think he just has such a good heart and he really just wants to help.

Vanessa Spina:
Humanity and and use his incredible genius to do that. And he's, yeah, he's done so many amazing things. And I think he'll he'll continue to. But yeah, he just, he just really is pure hearted. Like he really just wants to help us.

Vanessa Spina:
It's pretty amazing. I think even if just that alone was his legacy that the US could be able to send up its own payloads to space is pretty cool.

Melanie Avalon:
I did not know that he had that effect politically with Russia. Yeah, and that was the big takeaway because I know there's a lot of controversy with X, formerly known as Twitter. How long do you call something formerly known as?

Melanie Avalon:
How long? I don't know. Every time I see that phrase, I'm like, I wonder how long we're going to say that.

Vanessa Spina:
Yeah, we're just so attached to the name and the brand and everything that it's hard. I still think of it as Twitter. I see the X icon on my phone. I barely use Twitter, but I see the icon and I'm like, I still think of it as Twitter.

Vanessa Spina:
I think it just makes us all more comfortable to still say Twitter in the title, you know? But I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I just think it's kind of been a big distraction for him and it's embroiled him in a lot of negativity that he doesn't deserve.

Vanessa Spina:
So, unfortunately.

Melanie Avalon:
question for you. When Twitter switched to X because I don't follow the news at all. So like at all. So I didn't know it was switching. I don't know if they were talking about that it was going to switch.

Melanie Avalon:
Did they talk about that it was going to switch before it switched or did it just switch?

Vanessa Spina:
So Pete uses Twitter a lot and he said he knew but for me it was like what what do you mean? It's called what?

Melanie Avalon:
Well, I just remember I was on my phone and all of a sudden there was this big X and I was like, I was like, who hacked my phone? Because it looks like, you know, it looks like something scandalous. Because I was like, where did this app come from?

Vanessa Spina:
Yeah, X is, yeah, I don't get it.

Melanie Avalon:
And then I clicked on it, I was like, oh, that's interesting. I never, yeah, I never go on Twitter, or X, I never go there. In any case, what I was gonna say was, I know he's shrouded in a lot of controversy and politicalness and I'm a highly apolitical person myself.

Melanie Avalon:
Like I'm really like, I just don't get involved. Listening to the interview, I was like, oh, and I said this earlier, but like he really, the reason he bought Twitter is because he really thinks, whether or not he is, he really thinks he's saving humanity.

Melanie Avalon:
And it's hard to demonize him hearing from his heart why he did it. He was like, oh, I'm gonna go there.

Vanessa Spina:
He wants, he truly believes that we need as a society to have freedom of speech and to have this, he calls it like a community forum that like you're not where everyone can talk where you're not like silencing certain people or you're not.

Vanessa Spina:
He just thinks it's so important for us, all of us to have one like community forum where like anything can be said and that is like the notion of free speech. So yeah, it again, it's really hard to talk about it without it being politicized and everything, you know, and that's not something that we really talk about on the podcast much.

Vanessa Spina:
But I really think he's amazing. And yeah, I'm glad that you're seeing it now too. And he's also super.

Melanie Avalon:
Well, that's the thing.

Vanessa Spina:
Because his personality makes him, I think.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, and yeah, because you know, it's like video on Spotify, so I kept looking down. I was like, oh, he's an attractive man. I understand now.

Vanessa Spina:
I'm so glad I got the update. I'll have to find that voice note. I'll have to go back and find it.

Melanie Avalon:
I know. No, I did way more justice to it here, but all the way, but, okay, I'm gonna stop this train, but he has like 10 kids, right? At least seven. That's crazy. And that's it.

Vanessa Spina:
and they're like all boys. Really?

Melanie Avalon:
all of them.

Vanessa Spina:
Yeah, unless he's had a girl, you know, I don't follow as closely as I used to, but yeah, mostly boys.

Melanie Avalon:
Crazy. Oh, I did. That is a question I asked Valter Longo. That was my favorite moment of the Valter Longo episode for sure. I asked him because we were talking about how lifespan is driven by basically the need to reproduce and that all these processes are in place to like extend our lifespan so that we can have children.

Melanie Avalon:
And then once you have children and then once your role is like done with taking care of the child, then the body doesn't really care so much about staying around. So I asked him if you don't have kids, what are the implications there?

Melanie Avalon:
Because then your body's like still waiting, you know, to have kids. So would that extend lifespan? He says he thinks like, and this is me paraphrasing and listeners can listen to the episode, which was I have podcast episode 352, but he essentially said that like theoretically, yes, if you didn't have kids, it shouldn't theory promote your lifespan.

Melanie Avalon:
And it might, but it's probably not super measurable. And I'm the takeaway was that it might be like a year or two difference. But I personally don't, you know, see myself having kids. So that's all I'm going to say there.

Melanie Avalon:
That's in favor of my longevity, but he made it sound like it wasn't a big deal. Yeah, that's interesting. So, yep. Well, that was all of the

Vanessa Spina:
rabbit holes? Yeah, this always happens when we haven't gotten to record together in a couple weeks. We usually end up catching up and chatting a lot, but I'm ready for questions if you are.

Melanie Avalon:
Now I'm thinking we should discuss more studies in the beginning. Listeners, let us know if that's of interest to you because it's so timely, no pun intended. Okay. So our first question comes from Carolyn, first and probably only.

Melanie Avalon:
And this subject is IF and Lyme Disease. And Carolyn says, I am continuing to love the podcast through all of the co -host changes and am delighted to follow your remarkable career, Melanie. Well, thank you.

Melanie Avalon:
So nice. She says, I am really loving you as well, Vanessa, because my ancestry is from Prague and I'm wanting to play on a trip there with my 17 year old son. So hearing all about your life there has kept me on the edge of my seat.

Melanie Avalon:
Well, that's so wonderful. She says, I am a 55 year old woman who has devoted my life to fitness and nutrition. I have had a few minor health issues, hypothyroid diagnosis in 2012, herniated disc surgery in 2016, histamine intolerance in 2022.

Melanie Avalon:
But for the most part, enjoy abundant energy and a pretty lean and muscular physique, not to mention amazing mental clarity since starting IF in 2018. On June 21st, 2023, I was diagnosed with Lyme Disease and immediately started a course of antibiotics along with herbal supplements and a medicinal mushroom blend specific to addressing Lyme.

Melanie Avalon:
The longest extended fast I have done was several years ago and was around 90 hours or so. I'm interested in doing a five day fast, especially now if it will be helpful in eliminating these stealthy corkscrew shaped pests.

Melanie Avalon:
I'm a teacher, so I do not have to report back to work until early September. So the summer would be the perfect time to embark upon this fast, especially while I am just getting started trying to eliminate this pathogen from my body.

Melanie Avalon:
Thank you so much for all you do and for any insight you can provide about the benefits of fasting and mitigating the impacts of Lyme Disease. Gracefully, Carolyn. OK. Gratefully. Oh, gratefully.

Vanessa Spina:
I was like gracefully, it's such a nice way of signing off. I've never heard that.

Melanie Avalon:
I know we just started adapting that. Let me say that again. Gratefully. Thank you.

Vanessa Spina:
Carolyn. That's so nice, you know, all about your ancestry being from Prague and, you know, following Melanie's remarkable career. I love all the comments. It sounds like you've been doing amazing with your health and lifestyle and everything.

Vanessa Spina:
With regards to Lyme, I'm not sure how you're doing now because it sounds like this was before the summer. And I'm not sure if you actually ended up doing a five -day fast. But I did do a little bit of research and the thing that I found the most evidence on was with regards to autophagy.

Vanessa Spina:
So there was a really interesting study done about actually 10 years ago is about how autophagy modulates the bacteria that is producing a lot of inflammation when it comes to Lyme. So the study was pretty in -depth.

Vanessa Spina:
Would be great to link it in the show notes if you want to go and check it out. But they basically determined that when they inhibit autophagy, so they block autophagy, it increases the cytokine production of two, they're interleukin -6 and interleukin -1 beta.

Vanessa Spina:
So that basically says that autophagy, if it's not inhibited, if it is instead enhanced, that you could reduce that cytokine production and lower inflammation that is produced during Lyme. So I think a lot of the issues that come up with Lyme are pain from the inflammation.

Vanessa Spina:
And so I think that fasting, doing an extended fast has been shown in the research, I think, to produce pretty dramatic autophagy. So that's probably why you're looking into it. I have seen some other, I guess, like anecdotes or self -reported stories.

Vanessa Spina:
So there's an amazing blogger who is in Canada. A lot of people follow her and she says that she reversed her Lyme with fasting and carnivore. I think a lot of other people are doing that. I know Craig Emmerich has been doing carnivore to help with his Lyme.

Vanessa Spina:
So ketogenic diets also lower inflammation and carnivore often tends to end up with ketogenic macros. So I think that there's also a lot of nutrient density, but slow down, farmstead, and that's the account.

Vanessa Spina:
I saw that Rob Wolf, he reposted her post that she did about how she was diagnosed with Lyme and she has no pain in her body whatsoever and is completely able to manage all the symptoms. Like she really has no symptoms.

Vanessa Spina:
And she says it's all from doing prolonged fasting and carnivore. So I think it's definitely something to look into. And to reach out, you could reach out potentially to people like that, look into the research on it, and a lot of the research on fasting shows that autophagy is massively upregulated after 36 hours.

Vanessa Spina:
So if you're on to 72 hours, I think anywhere between three to five days, you'll probably get a massive amount of autophagy. There's also other ways to get autophagy. Exercise is one of the best ones.

Vanessa Spina:
It sounds like you already do a lot of exercise. So if that's something you can still do, it'll probably also help generating autophagy. It doesn't necessarily just need to be fasting, but definitely something I would say to look into and do more research on and talk to your care provider about if there's someone that specializes in Lyme they may be familiar or you could bring some of the research to them to talk about it with them.

Vanessa Spina:
What do you think, Melanie? Thank you.

Melanie Avalon:
Thank you so much. That was so incredibly helpful. We'll put a link in the show notes, which will be at ifpodcast .com slash episode 353 to that study. I really appreciate that. We actually released our recent episodes with Craig Emmerich around the same time, I think, because you just released yours with him sort of recently, right?

Melanie Avalon:
Yes. Yes, and I did as well. I talked with him about, I think there's a lot of potential for modulating the immune system for how you're actually reacting to the Lyme, whether or not you technically have it or not.

Melanie Avalon:
Because a lot of us have dormant infections of a lot of different types, and they can be kept at bay and actually not, quote, bother us if the immune system is keeping everything in check. So I think anything immune supportive would be really helpful in fasting is definitely immune supportive.

Melanie Avalon:
So, yeah, definitely, Carolyn, if you might have already done it by now, if you did, let us know and let us know if you had any beneficial effects from it. And also sending love. I know it can be really hard.

Melanie Avalon:
I personally had my own. I got diagnosed with it and I went down the rabbit hole. And honestly, the thing that helped me the most, this isn't necessarily the approach for everybody, but it's what worked for me.

Melanie Avalon:
I just stopped caring. And what I mean by that is I went into a mode where I was so fixated and I was like, I have Lyme in me. I have to kill it. I have to do all the things. I was in like an attack mode and I got so worn out from that.

Melanie Avalon:
I know that helped. That works for a lot of people. A lot of people do need to be aggressive and there's definitely a big difference between like you got bit by a tick yesterday and you just got positive and you need to do antibiotics now.

Melanie Avalon:
Like that's very different than me testing positive for Lyme as interpreted by some doctors, but not others and like the vagueness surrounding it and just having an overwhelming sense of fatigue. So like that state versus an acute instance where you just got Lyme.

Melanie Avalon:
When I finally decided like, you know what, I'm just going to focus on recovery and healing and not attacking all the time. And I'm not even going to test for Lyme anymore. That actually helped me the most.

Melanie Avalon:
And that's not going to work for everybody, but it worked for me. Wow, that's amazing. Yeah, actually, and I went and saw a new doctor recently, a holistic doctor. She was like, oh, we should like test you for Lyme.

Melanie Avalon:
And I was like, I don't want to. Like I'm fine. I don't need to.

Vanessa Spina:
Yeah, I mean if you're asymptomatic then why, yeah, why worry about it.

Melanie Avalon:
Well, I mean, I always am struggling a little bit with fatigue issues and certain things, but I'm just so massively better than where I was that I just don't want to open that rabbit hole. So, and that's not, again, that's not going to work for everybody, but it really worked for me.

Melanie Avalon:
Because I think some people just get locked down in fear and they're just, they're obsessive and that's all they can think about. I think it's really hard to heal when you're in that mindset. So, I think stepping back and taking a breather can help a lot of people.

Melanie Avalon:
So, yep. Hoki -doki. Well, this has been absolutely wonderful. So, a few things for listeners before we go. If you'd like to submit your own questions for the show, you can directly email questions at ivepodcast .com or you can go to ivepodcast .com and you can submit questions there.

Melanie Avalon:
And this should be done by the time this comes out for sure because I'm working on it right now and we're a few months ahead. I think I will have really optimized our Stuff We Like page on ivepodcast .com slash Stuff We Like.

Melanie Avalon:
It was kind of a mess for a while, but I'm really tackling it right now. So, you should be able to get all of the stuff that we like at ivepodcast .com slash Stuff We Like. And you can follow us on Instagram, we are ivepodcast.

Melanie Avalon:
I am Melanie Avalon. Vanessa is Ketagenet Girl and I think that is all of those things. And anything for me or Vanessa before we go.

Vanessa Spina:
Oh, I had so much fun with you and I'm excited to record the next one.

Melanie Avalon:
Me too. I will talk to you next week. Talk to you then. Bye. Bye.

Melanie Avalon:
Thank you so much for listening to the Intimation Fasting Podcast. Please remember, everything we discussed on this show does not constitute medical advice and no patient-doctor relationship is formed. If you enjoyed the show, please consider writing a review on iTunes. We couldn't do this without our amazing team. Administration by Sharon Merriman, editing by Podcast Doctors, show notes and artwork by Brianna Joyner, and original theme composed by Leland Cox and recomposed by Steve Saunders.

STUFF WE LIKE

Check out the Stuff We Like page for links to any of the books/supplements/products etc. mentioned on the podcast that we like!

More on Vanessa: ketogenicgirl.com

Theme Music Composed By Leland Cox: LelandCox.com

If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving us a review in Apple Podcasts - it helps more than you know! 

 

 

Jan 14

Episode 352: Special Guest: Dr. Valter Longo, Fasting Mimicking, Nutritional Science, Cellular Rejuvenation, Reproduction & Lifespan, Calorie Restriction, Autophagy And More!

Intermittent Fasting

Welcome to Episode 352 of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast, hosted by Melanie Avalon, author of What When Wine Diet: Lose Weight And Feel Great With Paleo-Style Meals, Intermittent Fasting, And Wine and Vanessa Spina, author of Keto Essentials: 150 Ketogenic Recipes to Revitalize, Heal, and Shed Weight.

Today's episode of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast is brought to you by:

LMNT: The LMNT Chocolate Medley is available for a limited time. For fasting or low-carb diets electrolytes are key for relieving hunger, cramps, headaches, tiredness, and dizziness. With no sugar, artificial ingredients, coloring, and only 2 grams of carbs per packet, try LMNT for complete and total hydration. Go to drinklmnt.com/ifpodcast to get a free sample pack with any purchase!

Ion Layer: NAD+ is a coenzyme that plays a key part in many cellular processes, including energy production and DNA repair. NAD+ levels are depleted by things like stress, aging, alcohol, travel, and lack of sleep. Boosting NAD+ levels can help support  energy, cognitive function, metabolic health, and even longevity! Ion Layer provides easy, affordable access to NAD+ patches! Get $100 off with the code melanieavalon at melanieavalon.com/ionlayer!

TONE PROTEIN: Introducing Tone Protein! Finally, a clean, sugar-free, and high-quality whey protein isolate by Vanessa Spina and MD Logic. Scientifically formulated to optimize building and protecting muscle, supporting the metabolic rate, and getting lean and toned in the most efficient way! Get on the exclusive VIP list and receive the launch discount at toneprotein.com!

To submit your own questions, email questions@IFpodcast.com, or submit your questions here!! 

SHOW NOTES

Beautycounter: Keep your fast clean inside and out with safe skincare! Shop with us at melanieavalon.com/beautycounter and use the code CLEANFORALL20 for 20% off, plus something magical might happen after your first order! Find your perfect Beautycounter products with Melanie's quiz: melanieavalon.com/beautycounterquiz
Join Melanie's Facebook group Clean Beauty and Safe Skincare with Melanie Avalon to discuss and learn about all the things clean beauty, Beautycounter, and safe skincare!

LMNT: The LMNT Chocolate Medley is available for a limited time. Go to drinklmnt.com/ifpodcast to get a free sample pack with any purchase! Learn all about electrolytes in Episode 237 - our interview with Robb Rolf!

ION LAYER: Get $100 off with the code melanieavalon at melanieavalon.com/ionlayer!

TONE PROTEIN: Get on the exclusive VIP list and receive the launch discount at toneprotein.com!

The Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast Episode #115 - Valter Longo, Ph.D.

Episode 311: Trauma, Cancer Prevention, Obesity, Calorie Restriction, Fasting Mimicking Diet, Digestive Rest, Kid’s Nutrition, Special Teachers, And More!

Valter's history

How animal studies compare to human studies

How the body regenerates itself

Pre-programmed cellular death

Timeline of reproduction within lifespan

Fasting & calorie restriction

Listener Q&A: Melanie - What level does he think is low protein? Does he think it is best to alway be low protein or is it ok to cycle between low and moderate or high protein diets?

Listener Q&A: Laura - Is there a way to mitigate muscle loss on an extended fast?

Listener Q&A: Shelley - Does the fasting mimicking diet really protect you from losing lean body mass? He says the glycerin drink that's included in the ProLon kit is supposed to protect you from losing lean body mass.

Listener Q&A: Heather - Have done several rounds of FMD. Wore a CGM and it spiked my glucose significantly - how is this mimicking fasting?

Calorie restriction & lifespan

FMD trials

The anti-cancer properties

Listener Q&A: Candice - What’s considered an extended fast—36 hrs, 48, etc? And what happens during each phase—like when does autophagy peak?

Stem cell regeneration

The differences in sexes

Listener Q&A: April - Am curious if his guidance differs for perimenopausal women vs. other groups but will see if he covers that in his book.

Listener Q&A: Tabitha - 
Do extended fasts or fasting mimicking diets affect women’s hormones and should they only be done at certain times of the monthly cycle? Curious to know especially during the perimenopause time of life?

Is ProLon appropriate for any age?

How ProLon works

Can you tweak the fasting mimicking diet?

Daily time restricted eating vs fasting mimicking diet

Breakfast skipping

Listener Q&A: Stephanie - How can I live to 180?

Our content does not constitute an attempt to practice medicine and does not establish a doctor-patient relationship. Please consult a qualified healthcare provider for medical advice and answers to personal health questions.

TRANSCRIPT

(Note: This is generated by AI with 98% accuracy. However, any errors may cause unintended changes in meaning.) 

Melanie Avalon:
Welcome to Episode 352 of the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. If you want to burn fat, gain energy, and enhance your health by changing when you eat, not what you eat with no calorie counting, then this show is for you. I'm Melanie Avalon, biohacker, author of "What, When, Wine" and creator of the supplement line AvalonX. And I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Spina, sports nutrition specialist, author of "Keto Essentials" and creator of the Tone Breath Ketone Analyzer and Tone Lux Red Light Therapy Bannals. For more on us, check out ifpodcast.com, melanieavalon.com, and ketogenicgirl.com. Please remember, the thoughts and opinions on this show do not constitute medical advice or treatment. To be featured on the show, email us your questions to questions@ifpodcast.com. We would love to hear from you. So pour yourself a mug of black coffee, a cup of tea, or even a glass of wine, if it's that time, and get ready for the Intermittent Fasting Podcast.

Melanie Avalon:
This is a very special episode today with Dr. Longo. We can't wait to hear what you guys think. If after listening, you would like to try the fasting mimicking diet, you can go to Prolonlife.com and use the coupon code IFPODCAST to get 10% off your order of the ProLon FMD.

So that is Prolonlife.com with the coupon code IFPODCAST for 10% off your order of ProLon. And then these show notes for today's episode, which will have a full transcript, will be available at ifpodcast.com/episode352.

So again, Prolonlife.com with the coupon code IFPODCAST for 10% off. All right, now enjoy the show.

Melanie Avalon:
Hi friends. Welcome back to the show. We have a very special episode of the intermittent fasting podcast today with a very special guest. This is somebody that we talk about on this show all the time. We get questions about all the time. We are here with a legend in the fasting world, Dr. Valter Longo, who actually is from USC, where went so it's personally, I'm very excited about this as well. Fight on. So listeners are probably familiar with Dr. Longo, but for those who are not, he is actually the Edna M. Jones professor of gerontology and biological sciences and director of the Longevity Institute at USC. I remember, actually, when I was at USC, I used to always pass that building and it looked very mysterious to me. I don't think I even knew what gerontology was at the time, which kind of shows how far things have come in my life. Dr. Longo, though he has received so many awards for his work from the NIH, he's been recognized by Time magazine. Just a laundry list of things which we will put in the show notes. He's also the author of an incredible book, which I have right here, the longevity diet. I highly recommend it. The subtitle is discover the new science behind stem cell activation and regeneration to slow aging, fight disease, and optimize weight. And Dr. Longo has actually been, he's been on my other show, the Melanie Avalon biohacking podcast, and he's actually been on this show like five years ago now. So it's been quite a while. And I know there's been a lot of developments and updates and so many things. So I have so many questions. Personally, I have a lot of questions from you guys because you had a lot of questions. So, Dr. Longo, thank you so much for being you.

Valter Longo:
Thank you.

Melanie Avalon:
So to start things off, just to get listeners a little bit familiar with your work, and for those who are not familiar, a little bit about your backstory, what made you so interested in aging calorie restriction fasting. I know in the book you talk about wanting to be a rock star when you were younger. So what led you to what you're doing today?

Valter Longo:
I was a music student, actually, in Texas. The University of North Texas had one of the best jazz programs in the nation. They asked me to direct a marching band. And so I said there is no way that I'm going to do that. I was a rock guitar player, so I wasn't going to be a marching band director, and I have nothing against marching band, by the way, but I wasn't going to direct it. So I thought maybe what I always wanted to do was aging. And it was always in my head. And so I was probably 19 years old, and I was sure that I wanted to study aging. So I went over to the biochemistry department, and of course they thought I was crazy because I'd never taken a biology course in my life. And they say that you're not going to last more than three months, but that's not the case. And so that's all I've ever done since. And then fasting came in mostly with Roy Walford at UCLA when I started my phd in 1992, a long time ago. And Roy at the time, was most famous person on the planet for nutrition and aging. And he was, not surprisingly, working on something called calorie restriction. So I started in his lab, but then I left his lab to go back to the biochemistry department and start working not on calorie restriction, but on starving bacteria and starving yeast. So I sort of got the sense from the very beginning, the starvation, real fasting, like water, only fasting was hiding something even more important than just calorie restriction. Calorie restriction just refers to just eating about 25% less calories than normal. But fasting, of course, is no calories at all. And so, yeah, since then, I've been focusing my laboratories both here and in Italy, I've been focusing on fasting.

Melanie Avalon:
I have so many questions already. Just to start with, the animal studies, how much of the aging pathways and everything in the animals, how appropriately do they apply to humans? Is it like a one to one thing, or is it more extrapolations, or what's the comparison there?

Valter Longo:
You mean in general, timing wise, when.

Melanie Avalon:
You find findings in rodents or yeast, how do we know how much that applies to humans?

Valter Longo:
This is why I started working. I went from humans and mice in Walford lab to bacteria and yeast at UCLI and the John Valentine's lab. And because I thought all these organisms have 3 billion years of history, and I thought in 3 billion years, all these organisms have been evolving in parallel. And so I thought there's going to be probably very fundamental laws for what's happening during fasting that apply to all organisms. Now, of course, there's a lot of differences, and you have to make sure you understand them and you apply them. And so that's what we do. So we run lots of clinical trials for that reason. But I think the fundamentals were going to be, I mean, at least that was my hypothesis. The fundamentals are going to be the same. So if you starve a yeast, a unicellular eukaryot, it's going to start shrinking, and then it's going to get into a low aging mode, and it's going to start eating its own components while it's shrinking. And then eventually you feed it again and it re expands. Right. So I thought this is probably something very much conserved all the way to humans. You shrink, you eat your own parts, essentially, while you're doing that, and pick the ones that are most damaged and then turn on programs that are very similar to the embryonic developmental programs. So the same programs that generate organs when you need to re expand. Right. It all makes sense. And that's what we now see in mice, in rats, and we're starting to see this in people. But really, a lot of that started in yeast and bacteria.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, awesome. Yeah. Two thoughts from that really quickly. One, I think you were pointing out in your book that we clearly, as humans, when we create an embryo, we have the potential to create something that is not aged. It's really interesting that our bodies age, but we still harbor this seemingly inherent potential to create something that is completely young. So how do we apply that to our entire body? Is that just two different systems? Can that translate over? Is there something different that's going on when we're creating embryos versus our bodies aging?

Valter Longo:
Yeah, and this is the big difference between, I think, what we do and what a lot of my colleagues do. Right. So there's a lot of biohacking. And our point has been that the human body already knows how to go back to zero. Right, meaning age zero. But how do you do that? Right, so how do you make a liver or a muscle or a pancreas regenerate itself and go back to zero? And so we've shown that, in fact, you could do this with fasting, mimicking diets and do multiple shrinking, re expansion. Shrinking re expansion. And if you do it enough times, you'll see that actually these Yamanaka factors, these reprogramming, these markers of embryonic development, they turn down, right. And they start the process of regeneration. And then when you refeed, they actually start the process of re expansion and making new cells and more functional cells. For example, we've done it with pancreas. We take the mouse and we damage the pancreas to where it no longer makes insulin. And then we start with the fasting, making diet and refeeding cycles. And you see that the pancreatic cells begin to be reprogrammed, and then eventually they start making insulin again and they become functional again. So we went from a permanently non functional pancreas to a regenerated functional pancreas. So this is just some of the examples. Now, can you actually make it all the way to an organism that is completely young? That's much, much harder. But I think that we're on the right track. Right. And I don't know that we want to make people go back to being 15 years old, but certainly we can rejuvenate. We now know that we can make people younger. The question is, how much younger at.

Melanie Avalon:
The point of death? What do you think is happening there? Because what I'm thinking through in my head right now is the aging of all these different organs and the potential to, I don't know, independently anti age each individual organ, but the body as a whole. What do you think actually happens at the point of death? Is there a system wide message where it's just decided that everything has independently aged enough that we just have to stop all systems? Or what do you think is happening there?

Valter Longo:
We've been working also on the theoretical part, and we're not very busy on that, but we have. And there are two possibilities that we came up with, and one is that aging is actually programmed, right, which is very unlikely. We demonstrated for unicellular organisms. What does that mean? But nobody's ever demonstrated for mammals. So is it possible that there is actually a program to kill us, to get us out of the way so that new generations can have the space and the food and the resources to grow? The evolutionary biologists will say that's crazy talk. There is no way. And maybe it happens in microorganisms but nowhere else. But let's assume that that's not true, then the other part is really, there is something called the force of natural selection. And so what does that mean? Means that the evolution, as the job, is selective for organisms that are very protected, as long as they are still in a phase where they can contribute to the next generation. Right. So let's say for humans, let's say it's 40 to 50. After that, it will make sense. And we know that the force of natural selection goes down, meaning that the force that kept everything working in an almost perfect way is now weaker and weaker and weaker and weaker. So by the time you get to 70 or 80, that's almost gone.

Melanie Avalon:
Right.

Valter Longo:
There's no force anymore. And what does it mean? It means you're on your own and your organs are on your own. There is no help from evolution anymore because evolution doesn't care about that 73 year old person, and in fact, it might select against it, get out of the way. That's why then we die, because we've been on our own for 30 or 40, 50 years by then, and things go progressively wrong. Eventually the system stops it.

Melanie Avalon:
In all of the various animal species, does the timing of when they typically reproduce and the amount of time required to foster those children or the babies, does that correlate to the lifespan of the species pretty equally?

Valter Longo:
Yeah, very much, right? Very much. There was a great experiment done 40 years ago by Michael Rose at UC Irvine, I think. And he took flies, and he took the flies that were reproducing early, and then he took the flies that were reproducing late, right? And he selected them for many generations. Kind of like saying, imagine if we went out and took women that are having children very late in their mid 40s, right? And then we took women that had children very early, 1820 years old. And then for generation, we selected these two groups, right? And then they went back and looked at it. And the flies that were reproducing earlier, they had a shorter lifespan, a much shorter lifespan, and they were very good at reproducing, but they lived a lot shorter. And those that were reproducing until later time or at a later time were selected for reproducing later time. They were not as good early on. They were 80% as good at reproducing, but they were making offspring for a lot longer. And this has been shown in lots of different organisms. And so, yes, so the reproductive span is very much associated with the lifespan.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh, my goodness. Okay. I'm so excited right now because that question haunts me. Do you think that translates over to humans? And so, for example, this is just me being completely selfish. I don't really anticipate having children. Do you think women who don't have children, would that affect their lifespan at all?

Valter Longo:
That's actually been published in many studies. Right. So it's a little tricky because on one side there is an advantage, and then there is a disadvantage of having too many children, probably because people become very stressed out. Right. So I think in the end, there's probably not much of a difference. So that percent doesn't matter that much. And if there is a difference, it's probably a few years. But the point would be if we found a way to postpone making, let's say, women and men reproduce until much later, let's say that we found a way to allow women to reproduce until age 65, then most likely that group of women will live longer on average, or a lot longer on average.

Melanie Avalon:
So fascinating. Okay, one more last animal. Rabbit hole question. The antiaging or longevity programs or mechanisms in the immortal jellyfish, is that the same pathways, or do they have something else going on?

Valter Longo:
Well, the jellyfish, you can look at them a little bit as a colony of microorganisms, right? So if you look at a colony of yeast or bacteria, is the colony immortal? Yes, it is immortal, but does it really relate to us?

Melanie Avalon:
Right.

Valter Longo:
Well, yeah, in some ways, but it's going to be very difficult to translate that immortality of a colony. And so the jellyfish, in a sense, are like a colony that sticks together, right. And of course, it's a more complex organization. So it is closer to mammal than a colony of yeast. But let's say it's an in between situation, right? So you cut something off and it can regrow. Just like if you kill part of a colony of bacteria or yeast, it's going to regrow back. It doesn't really care that you kill some of it.

Melanie Avalon:
Right.

Valter Longo:
And the same is true for certain fungal colonies. Right. That have been discovered to be, I don't know, thousands of years old and been growing for thousands of years now, you could say, is that an organism or is it a group of organisms that simply keep expanding?

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, got you. That makes sense. Okay. Coming back to the calorie restriction and the fasting, a foundational question. I've always had these pathways that are activated, the effects of fasting, are they the same pathways as calorie restriction? Are they different? And also, if you are engaging in different modalities, like fasting and calorie restriction or fasting and protein restriction or all the various things that might be antiaging, do you think those effects are additive or do they cancel each other out? Like, if you're doing one, are you pretty much good, or does doing multiple things add more antiaging potential?

Valter Longo:
Well, I think that, of course, the risk is that if you start doing multiple things that are improvised, that could hurt you.

Melanie Avalon:
Right.

Valter Longo:
So already, calorie restriction, again refers to eating 25% less than normal. Not less than people eat, but less than normal.

Melanie Avalon:
Right.

Valter Longo:
So then a typical male would be, I'm fairly thin and I'm 170 pounds. If I were to be calorie restricted, I would be maybe 145, right? Yeah, it's already pretty extreme. Now, even that, it's not clear that that's going to be beneficial to anyone. I mean, the study Wisconsin, among mean, Wisconsin showed lifespan extension, but the one in the NIA did not show lifespan extension. And so then you will argue that maybe calorie restriction, chronic, color restriction, like the extreme and chronic, it's going to give you a lot of benefits, but not necessarily make you live longer. And in the process, it's probably going to slow down your metabolism and your hunger, et cetera. I would say that I think that the periodic fasting mimicking diet are starting. And protein restriction is another one that I like. And time resistant eating, what Sachin panda has been talking about for decades, those are the things that I like, and I think they are additive, meaning, like if you eat for, let's say, 12 hours a day, maybe a little bit less, 11 hours a day, and then you're protein restricted, but not excessively protein restricted, you got to be careful because you can go from one problem, which is too much protein, to the opposite problem, which is too little amino acids of certain kinds.

Melanie Avalon:
Right.

Valter Longo:
So then timers hit the eating, let's say eating for 1112 hours a day, plus protein, the correct type of protein restriction, the correct type of diet, say pescatarian, what I call the longevity diet, plus the periodic fasting making diet, plus the exercise, that's probably 20 extra years of life expectancy.

Melanie Avalon:
You've mentioned a lot of words that we did get a lot of questions from listeners about, so I'll start bringing some of them in. So on the protein front, I think listeners and even me and my co host Vanessa, when she's here, I think there's a lot of confusion surrounding protein intake. On the one hand, we talk all the time on this show about the importance of actually like, a moderate or high protein diet for muscle growth and just supporting body composition. And I recently interviewed Dr. Gabrielle Lyon all about the benefits of protein. But then, on the other hand, we see these benefits of low protein and how protein associates with aging and dietary protein restriction, the benefits of that. So we had a question. I know, my name is Melanie. This is from another melanie, not me. She wanted to know. She said, what level do you think is low protein? Do you think it is best to always be low protein? Or is it okay to cycle between low and moderate or high protein diets? So, protein, what can you share about this issue?

Valter Longo:
Yeah. Well, first of all, the 20 years of life expectancy that I mentioned earlier is compared to, let's say, a western diet, right? So not compared to somebody that might have another type of positive intervention. So the protein, everybody loves this oversimplification. High fat, low fat eye protein, low protein, high carb, low carb. I think we need to move away from this, right? And I know people like it simple, and I can understand that, but it's not simple. The human body is extremely complex. So the solution is not going to be simple.

Melanie Avalon:
Right?

Valter Longo:
So even protein, you could be on a high protein diet and have deficiency in lots of amino acids, right? So let's say that you are on 100% legume diet, very high protein. Let's say 25% of your calories come from protein. You're still going to be malnourished, right? Because all you eat is legumes. Why? Because legumes contain very low level of a number of amino acids, which are very central for muscle and lots of other. So my recommendation. So we started clinics in the US and Europe from the foundation, and these are nonprofit clinics. And so I recommend, it's called create cures. And I recommend that people consider either talking to people that are dietitians and nutritionists at the clinic or somebody that knows what they're doing. Unfortunately, this low or high is really meaningless. And it could be very damaging because people then may say, oh, I have very good protein intake every day, so I'm good to go, not realizing that they don't, because all they're eating is legumes. Or, I have a reasonable low protein, but it's all from red meat. I'm fine. And again, now you may not be fine just because, yes, you have, say, 17% protein of your calorie in protein intake, but it's all from red meat and you still might have a problem, right? And then it gets more, even more complicated than that because there is phases of life, right? So if you're zero to three is one level of protein, then three to ten, then ten to 18, then 18, all the way to, let's say maybe 25 to 65 70, a relatively low protein diet is good, mostly vegan, but not completely vegan. But then after 65 70, then you have to go higher and have more animal proteins because otherwise you're going to be deficient in certain amino acid.

Melanie Avalon:
Right.

Valter Longo:
So I know it's very confusing answer, but that's because it's extremely complicated and I'm just trying to summarize it in 1 minute. But it's almost impossible, right. To really give. And that's my message here, instead of having an answer is like, please do not think you can get a manual out of 1 hour with me or somebody else because it doesn't work like that.

Melanie Avalon:
You have so many studies published, it's overwhelming and amazing. And I was going down the rabbit hole reading a lot of your recent ones and going like just what you were saying about you can't summarize things in 1 minute, even with your studies. I'll read like one study and then I want to read all the references and there's just so much information. And I was even going on one rabbit hole because it was talking about in the case that they were looking at, I think it was in monkeys, the calorie restriction was actually protective against sarcopenia, which was kind of mind blowing. So it just kind of goes to show how complicated everything is and how many layers there are.

Valter Longo:
Yeah. So calorie restriction causes muscle loss. But then some studies suggest that the lower level of muscle now is more functional than the higher. But again, most people are not going to want to look like they're starving and have more functional muscle. Right. Even there, as you just pointed out, it's a complex answer and it's best handled by somebody that can follow the person and get them to where they want to be.

Melanie Avalon:
So the muscle itself, we got a few questions about that. Laura wanted to know, is there a way to mitigate muscle loss on an extended fast? And Shelly wanted to know, does the fasting mimicking diet really protect you from losing lean body mass? Dr. Longo says the glycerin drink that's included in the prolonged kit is supposed to protect you from losing lean body mass. So what have you seen in your studies and trials with the fasting mimicking diet and muscle loss?

Valter Longo:
Yeah, we've seen that four out of four trials now are showing we're looking at about maybe 300 patients, all ages, no lean body mass loss. Right. So there is a temporary lean body mass decrease during the fasting mimicking diet. I cannot talk about commercial products, but as it is in the box.

Melanie Avalon:
Right.

Valter Longo:
So people, sometimes they complain about all my sugar spiked. Well, that way we tested it is protecting, I guess, muscle loss and is increasing insulin sensitivity and is actually helping reverse diabetes.

Melanie Avalon:
Right.

Valter Longo:
So it works the way it is right.

Melanie Avalon:
Now.

Valter Longo:
If you change it or improvise at home, who knows, right? I don't know, but I can tell you. And some of these trials we didn't do, right. Other people have done, but it works very well the way has been designed. And I think not only it works very well in protecting lean body mass loss and in causing insulin sensitization, but also I think that we worked very hard in making sure that somebody could do this for 20 or 30 years. And it'd be hard to claim that problems come from this diet because we're saying you should probably do it only maybe three or four times a year and that's it, if not less. Right. Depending who you are. Yeah. So I think that we now know we can protect lean body mass. Now, when we combine it with diabetes drugs, that's when we see the lean body mass loss.

Melanie Avalon:
Right.

Valter Longo:
But of course, we don't see it with other diabetes drug. We see it in the diabetes drug. So we're presuming that it is the diabetes drug, it's not the fasting diet that is causing the lean body mass loss.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh, wow. So, like, when it's combined with metformin, people tend to lose in both the.

Valter Longo:
Trial, one was with metformin, one was all diabetes drugs. Then we see the lean body mass loss, but you also see it with the drugs alone.

Melanie Avalon:
Question about those findings and results. Are you finding that nobody's experiencing overall lean body mass in the end, or are? Some people are and some people aren't, and it averages out to them not. I'm just wondering if people respond differently individually or is it pretty consistent?

Valter Longo:
It's generally consistent, but some people, we'll have to look at the scattered plots, but some people probably, on average, they don't. But some people are probably going down and some people are going up in muscle mass. Right. If somebody was doing it and they clearly saw. But to know if you're losing muscle, you will have to get a daxa or something similar. Right. Because, well, there is some devices that can measure impedimentiometry. They can measure, but those are probably not very accurate. So if you get a Daxa, you'll know if you in fact lost muscle mass and bone density. If somebody was in that category and for whatever reason they think it's a fasting making diet, then that's something to keep in mind. But the issue is also, how frequently are you doing it? Because if somebody was to do like the trials that I just told you on, diabetes is once a month for six to twelve months.

Melanie Avalon:
Right.

Valter Longo:
So we're not recommending anybody else does that. So that means that you're doing it six times in six months or twelve times in twelve months. And that may also be why we see some lean body mass loss. My point being that if you do it once a month for three months and then you stop, then you have all the opportunities to regain your. Even if you wear among the small percentage for whom lean body mass is reduced, then you have an opportunity to regain it.

Melanie Avalon:
Is there a difference in people who are obese or overweight versus people who are normal weight with the muscle loss?

Valter Longo:
No, there isn't. So we looked at normal weight and we looked at at least two trials normal weight and two trials on overweight and obese. No lean body mass loss in the absence of other drugs. And in the one we just finished in Italy, there was even six cycles in six months and still we didn't see any muscle and lean body mass loss.

Melanie Avalon:
You said there is a temporary loss. How fast does that come back? Is it right after they stop within one week?

Valter Longo:
We measured that one week after and it's already back.

Melanie Avalon:
Wow. Okay. You were talking about how people were saying that it spiked their blood sugar and the implications of that. So maybe just to revisit it one more time, because Heather literally had that exact question. She said that she's done several rounds of the FMD diet, fasting, mimicking diet. She says, I wore a CGM on a recent round and the soup spiked my glucose significantly from around 70 to 160. How is this mimicking fasting when consuming soups causes a huge insulin spike. So that actually adds another question. Is that still fasting? If you're getting that high blood sugar response?

Valter Longo:
We're not trying to have an identical effect to water only fasting. That's not our purpose. Our purpose is to make people live longer, younger and healthier.

Melanie Avalon:
Right.

Valter Longo:
And so from all the trials we see, so if somebody sees the 160, they will say, okay, well, this is going to make me gain weight and this is going to make me insulin resistant. But yet trial after trial after trial, we see exactly the opposite. Right? And then even trials, like, know, completely independent of us. Or, you know, all these trials have been done by other people, by big universities, because people can say, oh, there is a product behind it and there is some attempt to. These are independent trials and that's what they found. Right. So then the spikes may actually be beneficial to maintain lean body mass and maybe even they may be beneficial to get this impressive sensitization to insulin. Right, that we see in a short time. Now, we are also going to try to test versions that have a lot lower starches and they have a lot lower carbohydrates. So we'll see. But I think we've been doing this for ten years in the clinical setting and it's going to take us a while to beat the effects that we see now. For example, Heidelberg saw a one c dropping from, I think, 8.1 to 6.7. Very impressive change in diabetic patients.

Melanie Avalon:
Right.

Valter Longo:
And I'm sure lots of them were getting the same spikes, as this person is saying. So again, I'm very worried. People are just going home and getting the continuous glucose monitor, seeing one piece of it and then concluding that this is bad for them, very dangerous. But I'm all for people checking themselves and that's good, but don't come to conclusions because that's not the way it works. We'll see. And I wouldn't be surprised if when we tested with lower glycemic spikes, that we start seeing less effects.

Melanie Avalon:
So, interesting. And actually, I was reading last night one of your. I think it was more recent, it was a study, it was called diet composition influences the metabolic benefits of short cycles of very low caloric intake. And it was looking at very low caloric intake with a standard laboratory chow in rats compared to plant based fasting mimicking diet. I'm just curious because it was saying that a long lasting metabolomic reprogramming in serum and liver is observed in mice on very low calorie intake cycles with standard diet, but not fasting mimicking diet. Do you know the diet that I'm referring to? I'm wondering if that was a. I.

Valter Longo:
Think I'm among the.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah. Yes. Was that a beneficial metabolomic reprogramming with the standard chow?

Valter Longo:
This is a study by Rafa de Cabo, and this is the way, probably the graduate student that was working on it saw it. But now we have lots of mouse lifespan studies, even mice on a high fat and a high calorie diet. And this we published a few years ago. So it's taking that short window that you saw in the paper, and it's taking a lifelong.

Melanie Avalon:
Right.

Valter Longo:
And we're showing that, remarkably, it is a natural metabolism paper from two years ago. Remarkably, the fasting making diet only once a month is able to reverse all the problems caused by the high fat, high sugar, high calorie diet.

Melanie Avalon:
Right.

Valter Longo:
So the heart effects, the insulin sensitization, the insulin resistance, and the effects on cholesterol effects. Yeah. So I would say now we have lots of mouse, rat and human data. It's pretty consistent. It's almost like it's a little bit too good to be true. So I would now, hopefully, we're going to get some negative results, because so far it's been working even much better than we expected. I always think whenever I saw the Heidelberg study, they did something very similar to the paper you're referring to. They did five days of a mediterranean diet a month. Right. In diabetic patients. Five days of a mediterranean diet a month against five days of the FMD. And when I look at the paper, I think they probably did it to show that the FMD is pointless. The mediterranean diet is going to work. I mean, I don't know. Right. But I suspect that that's what they were trying to do. But sure enough, the mediterranean diet is worthless five days a month. And the FMD causes remarkable effect. And go look at it, because it's really impressive differences between this maybe a little bit calorie restricted, very healthy diet and the FMD.

Melanie Avalon:
So now I'm super curious, in your history of running all these trials, what was the biggest, surprising finding for you? Or it doesn't have to be the biggest, because that's a big question. But what was, like, a big, surprising finding for you maybe sometime where you thought you would find one thing and you found the opposite or. Yeah. What has been surprising in your FMD trials?

Valter Longo:
I think that the effects on cancer have been remarkable and thus far. And I think at the beginning, we will have expected kind of like what you see with the ketogenic diet. Right. So you see working against cancers, lots of cancers, but actually helping some cancers grow faster.

Melanie Avalon:
Right.

Valter Longo:
So the ketone bodies hurt a lot of cancers and help some. And I expected that from the fasting mixing diet. I truly did. And I'm surprised that after 20 years, we haven't seen that. Right. And I expect it. But really, like, another two papers were published just this week on the fasting McGinn diet and cyclic fasting. It just keeps on working in all the models that have been tested. So, for example, a paper that just came out in cancer research this week by a chinese group showing that the fasting mimicking diet is causing b cells to start attacking the cancer. So another novel colorectal cancer in this case, right, in mice. Yes. So I think that that's surprising, right, after all these labs and all these attempts, and nobody yet has come up with negative effects, but I'm sure it's going to happen. But it hasn't happened yet. So, very happy about that, but also very surprising.

Melanie Avalon:
Do you have a theory as to what the fasting mimicking diet might be circumventing or avoiding? That is the problem for why ketogenic diets sometimes support cancer.

Valter Longo:
My theory is the following. Is it possible the starvation for human beings represented an opportunity, kind of like sleep, right? So an opportunity to get rid of damage component. Right. Something that is under the force of natural selection that I mentioned earlier for the purpose of distinguishing good from bad. And so you only do it during fasting and not necessarily when you have a lot of food. Right. And why? Maybe because the bad becomes food for the person.

Melanie Avalon:
Right.

Valter Longo:
It's a lot of speculation, but is it possible because, let's say precancerous cells, cancer cell, autoimmune cell, insulin resistance cell, senescent cells. So imagine all of this is food, right? So you don't want to throw it away. So maybe because we starve so frequently, maybe that was left around to become food when we don't have any food coming from the outside.

Melanie Avalon:
Because I'm not sure exactly which cancers are supported by ketogenic diets. But do you know if they've done calorie restricted ketogenic diets in those situations?

Valter Longo:
No. These are normal calorie ketogenic diet, right?

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah.

Valter Longo:
So of course, the FMD is a calorie restricted ketogenic diet, but they've done usually normal calories, right? Yeah. So of course the normal calorie, if there was a program that was signaling go after the damaged cell because we're starving. So the normal calories now will prevent that, right. And say, well, we're not starving, we're just getting the calories from somewhere else. And so maybe that's why we see both. Because, yes, the ketone bodies may be part of the program to kill cancer cells, but the ketone Bodies may also be part of the fuel for certain cancers.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay. And then speaking of self eating and breaking down these things, so we do talk about autophagy a lot on this show. And that's another thing where I think it is so presented as black and white and autophagy is on, autophagy is off, when in reality, autophagy is probably occurring all the time to different levels, and it's probably way more complicated than the way it is often presented. So in your trials, can you actually measure autophagy? So do you guys measure autophagy? Candice wanted to know when autophagy peaks. She says she's seen charts online, but who knows what type of science that's based on.

Valter Longo:
Yeah. Now there are trials to look at the FMD and autophagy. We see it in mice after a few days and probably maybe by day three, that's when. And it also depends in which cells, in which organs. So it's going to take a while to know how much autophagy is going on in how many systems. But autophagy, I think is just a small part of what I was talking about earlier, this shrinking re expansion. So one of the components is autophagy, but there is probably also cellular killing, as I was mentioning earlier, and using cells for fuel, the reprogramming of cells, the stem cell activation, the stem cell cells renewal. So there's probably a big program to remove damaged components and then regenerate. And autophagy, I speculate maybe 20% of the whole operation.

Melanie Avalon:
Got you. For the stem cell piece. Do you find that it affects both the release of stem cells? Does it increase the amount of stem cells? How all, does it affect the stem cells in the body?

Valter Longo:
Yeah. So of course, in humans, we're just beginning to look at it, and we did have some initial evidence that we published on circulating stem cells. But in mice, for example, the metropoietic stem cells, those in the blood that give rise to all immune cells, they increase in number and then they increase in self renewal properties, meaning they start producing more of themselves.

Melanie Avalon:
Right.

Valter Longo:
So stem cells get activated and make more stem cells. And then this is associated then in the mouse with a rejuvenation of the immune system and a restoration of damaged immune system, more stem cells and more active stem cells. But in some other organs, we don't see the stem cells going up. We see the reprogramming of cells happening and the Yamanaka factors. So we think that it can go both ways. One way to achieve it, more stem cells, another way to achieve it, take a somatic cell, reprogram it into an embryonic like cell, and then do the job and then go back to a differentiated cell.

Melanie Avalon:
Wow. So fascinating. We got a lot of questions about women specifically. So I guess first, as a foundational question for me, when you're doing these, the majority of your studies are they split populations of male, female. Do you test in women specifically? So are there sex differences?

Valter Longo:
We haven't seen it yet. Now, we really tested the FMD on thousands of patients in informal clinical trials, right. At least over a thousand, probably between cancer, diabetes and all the other diseases, Alzheimer, et cetera. Probably, you know, maybe 1500. So far, there wasn't, there hasn't been anything that is so evident that it works in male, doesn't work in female, or vice versa. But I think as we have more bigger numbers for specific changes. So let's say, for example, a one c or fasting glucose or cholesterol, then at some point, I think once we have, let's say, 300 males and 300 females that have done, say, three to six cycles of the fasting making diet, then we can go and compare them and see is there actually a difference in the response of males and females? But clearly they both respond. And all the trials thus far have been mixed with males and females.

Melanie Avalon:
I'll read two of the questions I got about it specifically. So April, she said, great timing. She said, I just started his book today, and we'll do a round of prolonged when I'm done. I'm curious if his guidance differs for perimenopausal women versus other groups, but I'll see if he covers that in the book. And then Tabitha, she said, do extended fasts or fasting mimicking diets affect women's hormones? And should they only be done at certain times of the monthly cycle? Curious to know, especially during the perimenopause time of life. So do you have any guidance there?

Valter Longo:
Yeah. So lots of people are asking about this. We haven't got reports of, let's say, in the cycle. The FMD is done early on versus late. We haven't gotten reports from people saying it clearly works best in one part of the cycle or another. And so far, we haven't tested around menopause, before menopause and after menopause, but it's certainly been tested on women in all those stages. And thus far, we see pretty clear results in all stages. Also, because some of the trials might have had half of the women pre menopause and half of the woman postmenopause. And it works as a group. And so I think we will have seen problems if it was just specific for a stage of life. But again, as I was saying earlier, and I encourage people to write to us and say, I'm in this stage and this is not working for me. And you never know. This could motivate a clinical trial on a specific population, but thus far we haven't seen it, but it doesn't mean that it's not there. So it could be that something works a lot better in certain groups, but I think that the effect is so powerful that probably most people benefit regardless of the stage. But, yeah, maybe some will benefit more.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, got you. Yeah, that'll be exciting to see future as you get more and more and more feedback with that. That actually made me think of another question. When you're talking about when to do it, age of onset of implementing fasting, mimicking diet, or really anything, but I guess I'll keep it specific to fasting, mimicking diet. Is there a difference in when people start implementing this as far as the potential benefits that they see, or is it pretty much whenever you start it, you'll be good?

Valter Longo:
Well, I think that it all depends, right. For most people, they're going to have some issue. It's going to be beneficial. Now, we see effects on cholesterol, some of it. A bunch of this has not been published yet, but let's say we see clear effects on an ldl, we see effects on blood pressure, a1c, we see effect on abdominal weight. Again, no loss of lean, body mass. So if you think about all those things and see reactive protein in multiple trials, it goes down, inflammation goes down. So I would say the great majority of people are going to have some issue in this arena. If you think about the Americans, people in America, 75% are overweight and obese, right? And maybe probably 85% have some weight issue. So that means that 85% of the people will clearly benefit. Now, we've been talking about, if you just think about the weight and nothing else, right? But probably 95% of people benefit if you think about the weight and all these risk factors for diseases. So we've been talking about 20 to 70 now. We just finished the Alzheimer's trial in people up to 85. And I think the results are surprising in a good way. We expect that people having problems, but we didn't see that and becoming frail and we didn't see that. And also we're doing trials in the very young one, down to six years of age, in the type one diabetes trial in Gaslini children's hospital. And so now we've been talking to people about the possibility of running a trial in the young, maybe not so young, but maybe like say 14 to 18. Is it possible that maybe this is a great way to give them these five days of a vegan diet? It's a great way to educate the brain of a younger individual without forcing them to eat less or change their diet. And so with the hope that they get there on their own. Right. That's another thing that we didn't talk about. But these five days of a vegan diet, low calorie fasting, mimicking vegan diet, they have such a beneficial effect on people that we see lots of people basically gravitating more towards vegan nutrition. Could it be that in children, in the teenagers, this is going to be a good way to train the brain to behave in a different way without imposing diets?

Melanie Avalon:
I imagine that's a lot harder to conduct those trials. Probably getting like consent, I guess, or getting it approved to do it in the younger populations.

Valter Longo:
It was not an issue. But in the Gaslini children's hospital in Genova, Italy, is inpatient. Right. So they have to check into the hospital. But these are very young, like down to six years of age and with type one diabetes.

Melanie Avalon:
Right.

Valter Longo:
So, yeah, I think that we've been talking here at Chla with different faculty doing in the 14 year old, 14 to 18. I think it should be pretty straightforward. I mean, they're still getting 800 to 1100 calories a day, so the risk is really minimal. But, yeah, of course, I love to go through their ethical committee approval as.

Melanie Avalon:
Far as actually doing the fasting and mimicking diet because I realized we kind of just jumped in. Could you just tell listeners briefly what the ProLon program looks like? And then I have a specific question about how it can be implemented. But in general, it's five days or. Yeah. Would you like to just tell listeners a little bit what they should expect?

Valter Longo:
The FMD that we've been testing in lots of trials, there is different version. There is a version for Alzheimer's. There's higher calorie. There's a version for cancer. It's a lot lower calories. There's a version for autoimmunities that it's a different composition. But let's say the one for normal people that's been tested so much, I cannot name commercial names, but let's say that one is 1100 calories or so on day one, and then it goes down to 800 calories on day 2345. It's a low calorie, low protein, high fat, plant based, and it's relatively high in carbohydrates, even though it's very low carbohydrate. But I mean, composition wise, it's relatively high, and that's by design. I did not want people to cycle between high ketogenic state and low ketogenic state. And it's maybe out of being over cautious, but that's the way I like it. So I was always worried that if you get to severe ketogenic states or very high ketone bodies and then back and you keep going back and forth enough times, that could eventually cause problems. And I don't have any evidence for that, but I was afraid of that. And that's why, by design, the FMD is relatively high in carbohydrates, even though, because it's so restricted, it's still a very low level of carbohydrates.

Melanie Avalon:
So that possibly sort of answered my question. My question was, so I personally do a one meal a day approach with intermittent fasting. I think I talked about this before, last time I had you on the show, but I eat like, very high protein and then I fast during the day. So with the fasting mimicking diet commercial version, would I be able to do it in a one meal a day approach and have all the meals at once, or it sounds like that would be the antithesis of what you were potentially nervous about happening.

Valter Longo:
Not necessarily because the FMD, again, let's say that you do it three times a year. That's not really going to. So you could do it either way, right? You could try to compress it. It'll be hard to do for you. But if you already do it like that, it is possibly doable in one meal a day, and this is only for five days, and then you go back to whatever it is that you do, right. So I think that it can be done like that, but it would not be easy, let's say, to have the two soups and the bars and all the other things that are in there all in one shot. But it's doable. But it's also not necessary, right. For those, say, 15 days a year, you could have your regular meals, say, morning, noon and evening.

Melanie Avalon:
So basically, the comparison between daily intermittent fasting all the time versus fasting mimicking diet however many times a year, but then not fasting the rest of the time. I mean, I don't know if it's a comparison where you're like, oh, this one's better, this one's not, but you're seeing similar benefits. I don't want to put words in your mouth. What are your thoughts on that comparison? Because a lot of the audience is doing daily intermittent fasting.

Valter Longo:
Yeah, I mean, the daily intermittent is not intermittent fasting. I think I like such impanda's time restricted eating, meaning like, eat within so many hours a day. And I think that's a very good practice in addition to the periodic fasting making diet. So I recommend 1112 hours of food consumption because as you get to the 16 hours, you start seeing gallstone issues. If you skip breakfast, you see this is associated with a shorter lifespan. So the breakfast keepers, they tend to live shorter than the non breakfast keeper. Now, of course, it could be that the breakfast keeper have a terrible lifestyle, et cetera, et cetera, but that's not a good start. And this is why I usually say, if you're going to skip, skip dinner and fast for 16 hours or whatever, probably better not to skip breakfast. Now, it doesn't mean that you cannot be a breakfast keeper and live to 100, but the epidemiological data suggests that in general, the breakfast keepers live shorter, have more cardiovascular disease, et cetera. They're compatible. So you could do, let's say eleven, let's say twelve or 13 to 16 hours of fasting per day regardless. Right? And then on top of that, as I was saying earlier, add, say, three times a year, fasting mimicking diet. So the two things are expected to be additive, if not even synergistic, potentially.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, got you. Yeah. The breakfast thing is something where I just feel like it's so complicated. And with the epidemiological data, I just wonder if it's a lot of healthy user bias, like we've been told so long that skipping breakfast is bad. So are people who are breakfast skippers engaging in other lifestyle habits? And then a lot of the studies are funded by the breakfast cereal food industries.

Valter Longo:
No, they're not. They're. No. In fact, we did the same thing. We did the analysis and got scooped by a chinese group and we saw the same with the enhance the CDC database. Very clear effects. Don't forget that these epidemiological studies adjust for smokers and adjust for bad behavior. And on top of that, I always ask the question, why doesn't that, let's say they have bad behavior, some bad behavior, which we do not see. Why doesn't a good behavior, which would be the fasting, now, counterbalance the bad behavior? Right. Why don't we see them at least live normal? We see them live shorter.

Melanie Avalon:
Right.

Valter Longo:
And that's where you got to become concerned. Right? Let's say they have bad behavior. Well, 16 hours of fasting is clearly beneficial. There's nobody's arguing with that. Why doesn't that help them at least live normal?

Melanie Avalon:
I see what you're saying. So not necessarily fasting studies, but if there are studies on breakfast skippers, they are technically then fasting a certain amount of time. So technically they shouldn't see the issues. Yeah.

Valter Longo:
So most of them are going to be fasting for 1416, 18 hours a day. Right. Because they skip breakfast and they've made, I don't know what time they had dinner. I'm not saying that 16 hours is bad, but I'm saying this breakfast skipping is definitely not a good idea. And also there's papers that I actually wrote a little piece on about a year ago showing people started eating at 12:00, they were hospitalized and they either started eight or twelve, the same identical diet. Right. And those that started at twelve had a lower energy expenditure and they were increased hunger.

Melanie Avalon:
Right.

Valter Longo:
And so now we not only have epidemiological studies, now we have the second pillar, clinical studies showing why that could be a problem. Right. So start at twelve. Now you're going to be more hungrier and your metabolism slows.

Melanie Avalon:
Did they actually end up eating more still?

Valter Longo:
I don't think they. No, they were being fed the same exact food. They brought them to the hospital and they gave them the food. So then the very controlled study, right? Yeah. So then, of course, if somebody only eats once a day, like in your case, well, eventually you're going to be able to control it and still have benefits. But in the general population, just that change caused problems. Multiple problems.

Melanie Avalon:
I was thinking of the studies where they skip breakfast and they are hungrier, but they don't ultimately end up eating more because they can't literally compensate for that entire skipped meal by making it up later.

Valter Longo:
No, they knew exactly what they were eating because they did it in the hospital. Right? Yeah. So then this was very controlled. So it's very clear that the results and multiple trials actually were in the same issue. This cell metabolism from about a year ago, multiple trials were showing the same thing.

Melanie Avalon:
Very interesting. Okay, well, one more last topic. I want to be really respectful of your time. So many people just wanted to know, in general, your blanket recommendations for lifespan and longevity. So some rapid fire, just some quick questions. Stephanie wanted to know, how can I live to 100 or sorry, to 180?

Valter Longo:
Good luck. Tell me. If you find out, then tell me. But to 110, I would say read the book. All the profits go to, all. My part goes to the foundation so we can help people live longer. And so I don't make a penny out of it. But yeah, the longevity diet goes through it. But in general, number one pescatarian diet, fish plus vegan, maybe fish three times a week, high nourishment, low protein, let's say age 20 to 70, and then you go. Moderate protein intake, wash the amino acids, because if you have vegan, you cannot just have legumes. You have to have legumes, seeds, and nuts varieties so that you get the right amino acids. Then 12 hours a day of time. Recipe, eating maybe 13 hours a day of fasting. Say twelve to 13 hours a day of fasting. If you're overweight or obese, skip lunch like I do, Monday through Friday, and then you can have the normal three meals on Saturday and Sunday. Then 150 minutes a week of exercise, plus an hour a day of walking, and then three cycles of fasting. Five day fasting, making diet per year. Yes. So those are the major recommendations.

Melanie Avalon:
Awesome. Well, Dr. Longo, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for all the work that you're doing. I've just been forever grateful for so long, and I've been such a follower of your work. And like I said, I was overwhelmed looking at your list of studies. And I'm really excited to see everything that comes in the future. So just thank you. I will continue to follow your work. Hopefully we can bring you back on in the future.

Valter Longo:
Sounds good. Thanks a lot.

Melanie Avalon:
Thank you. Bye bye. 

Melanie Avalon:
Thank you so much for listening to the Intimation Fasting Podcast. Please remember, everything we discussed on this show does not constitute medical advice and no patient-doctor relationship is formed. If you enjoyed the show, please consider writing a review on iTunes. We couldn't do this without our amazing team. Administration by Sharon Merriman, editing by Podcast Doctors, show notes and artwork by Brianna Joyner, and original theme composed by Leland Cox and recomposed by Steve Saunders.

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