The Intermittent Fasting Podcast

Intermittent fasting influences immunity and metabolism

Welcome to Episode 413 of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast, hosted by Melanie Avalon, biohacker, founder of AvalonX, and author of What When Wine Diet: Lose Weight And Feel Great With Paleo-Style Meals, Intermittent Fasting, And Wine, and Barry Conrad, actor, singer-songwriter, and creator and host of Banter with BC.

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TRANSCRIPT

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

Melanie Avalon

Welcome to episode 413 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, founder of Avalon X and author of What, When, Wine, Lose Weight and Feel Great with Paleo Style Meals, Intermittent Fasting and Wine, and I'm joined by my co-hosts, Barry Conrad, actor, singer-songwriter, and creator and host of Banter with BC. For more on us, check out MelanieAvalon.com and BarryConradOfficial.com. You can submit questions for the show by emailing questions at iofpodcast.com or by going to iofpodcast.com. We would love to hear from you. Please remember the thoughts and opinions on this show do not constitute medical advice or treatment. 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 everybody and welcome. This is episode number 413 of the intermittent fasting podcast. I'm Melanie Avalon. I'm here with Barry Conrad. Barry, how are you today?

Barry Conrad

Hey, everyone. How's it going? I am doing great today. I'm having a really, really good day productive. Feeling good. How are you feeling, Mel? I'm feeling good.

Melanie Avalon

I'm feeling really good too. I'm really excited because I know I keep talking about it, but we're finalizing the design. And by the time this airs, it might even be out, but we're finalizing the design of my coffee line bags. And I love creative design. Like, do you like creative design?

Barry Conrad

I actually do as well, I really do, I'm working on something, some level which I'll share at a later date, so I'm totally in the zone with you, I get it.

Melanie Avalon

We've had so many work calls about it and people keep making comments about once we get through the bag design and like, you know, like, you know, how it's like, so they're all like dreading the design process. I'm like, this is like the best part. I love it. It's so fun. Honestly, it probably will be out by this time. This comes out because this will be in March, but either sign up for updates or get my glow coffee because it is going to be a coffee that basically has the highest CGA content possible in coffee and CGA is the primary antioxidant in coffee. So for all of the health benefits of coffee, this is the coffee that you want. So we source beans to be high in CGA content and then we specifically roast it to be high in that content. And then we test it for purity. It's free of toxins free of mold that uses organic beans. And I just found out more about the actual farms the coffee comes from and it's led by all women. They're very supportive of the environment and like the goodness of both the environment and people and humans. And it's just so, so incredible. And the coffee tastes amazing. So I'm, I'm excited go coffee, but I'm just so happy because the colors that we're doing on the bag are just beautiful, like glowing.

Barry Conrad

Can you say what colors they are? Do you want it to be a surprise?

Melanie Avalon

Well, I really honestly do think it will be out by the time this comes out. Either way, though, yeah, I'm happy to say it's like it's like it's an ombre effect. So the top is yellow, then it goes to orange and then to like magenta and then to brown. It's just I think it's stunning.

Barry Conrad

And you know what, Mel, I'm ordering some.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, yes. Well, actually, I think Barry, I'm going to have to send it to you in Australia because I don't think we'll be shipping to Australia. Oh, really? I doubt it. I'll be sending you some, though.

Barry Conrad

Okay, well, I'm all for that because I love my coffee. So let's go.

Melanie Avalon

I know. I can't wait to get your thoughts on it.

Barry Conrad

I'll tell you my honest opinion.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, no. Yeah, please do. Please do. Do you know, have I told you what I do with coffee topically? Like, not drinking it? Have I told you what I do?

Barry Conrad

No, you know, this is a first what would you do?

Melanie Avalon

Okay, so every time I wash my face, like after a shower or after a sauna and then I take a shower or in the morning, I splash my face with coffee.

Barry Conrad

Why? Don't try to get the visuals so that you have a bowl of cold coffee on the sink. How does it work?

Melanie Avalon

So, okay, so basically I actually, okay, it's a little bit ironic that I'm creating a coffee line because I don't, I love coffee, but I don't, I don't drink a ton. I'm not a, I used to, I went through phases, but now I just have like a little bit every morning, but I have to have it, but it's like a little bit. So basically I cold brew coffee, I keep it in my fridge and then I just like have a little bit every morning and I also use it for my face. So I wash my face and then I like pour some coffee into my hands and I just splash it on my face kind of like a toner. And the reason I do this is because way in the past I was using some products and they were like features like coffee bean and caffeine. And I was like, wait, what if I just put coffee straight on my face? I love it because it tightens my skin. I feel like some of the caffeine gets into me. Like I feel like it wakes me up. The antioxidants are there in coffee. So wow. Yeah, it really makes my skin glow, which is perfect because glow coffee is what I'm making. I didn't plan that.

Barry Conrad

Are you gonna, are you gonna do like a blog about it when glow coffee is out, which is probably now you're gonna say, by the way, here's a hack. You can put this in your face and da da da da.

Melanie Avalon

Oh my goodness, thank you for asking, can I actually get your, okay, Barry, this conversation we're having right now is probably going to affect the glow coffee bag. So this is a lot of responsibility on your shoulders right now. Are you ready? Take this very seriously. So we're coming up with on the back, the instructions, like how to use, you know, like how to brew. And I was thinking, because I want to have my name, I want to be associated with it, but I don't want to, I don't, I don't want to be it. Like I don't want it to be like Melanie Avalon's glow coffee, but I do want people to know that it's my brand because then they'll associate with my standards and you know, everything that I'm about. So I was thinking, what if I have like under the, like by the instructions or somewhere, I have like Melanie Avalon's, like how Melanie Avalon brews her, like does glow, like, like basically like what I do. And then it could be like instructions for how to cold brew. And then it could be something about how to put it on your face.

Barry Conrad

I think that's a really good idea. I think not having it on the front, but having it on the back where all the instructions and things are, having those tips there and then underneath how Melanie Evelyn does it, and then in brackets, founder or creator. I think that's a really smart way to still have you there. Some people know it's yours, but it's not like Glow by Melanie Evelyn. Do you know what I mean?

Melanie Avalon

Yes. Would you put in like, so basically like the basic instructions and I can make it all look nice on the template, but like the basic instructions, but then like Melanie's, you know, thing and it's like how to cold brew and then the how to like splash it on your face.

Barry Conrad

I think it personalizes what you created. I think it's a really good idea.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I really want to do it. I just got to, I got to work with like chat GPT and help it help me figure out how to like put this on the bed, you know, like what to say exactly. But

Barry Conrad

Because I'm guessing you don't want it to be like, because how big is the the package like the bag? Is it like a one kg bag? Is it like a 500 grams bag? It is 12 ounces. Do you know how this always gets me? What is the equivalent? Do you know that in grams? Hold it, I'll find out.

Melanie Avalon

Barry, making me do the hard work here.

Barry Conrad

Hold on, 12 ounces is how many grams.

Melanie Avalon

It is 340 grams.

Barry Conrad

You beat me to it, my internet's slower. All right, that's good. That's a good bag. Good size. I think it's just like normal size, right? The reason why I asked that was, I guess it depends how much you want, how much info you want to put, how much copy you want in the back of the packaging. Right? That's a great idea.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, it can fit a lot of stuff. What I'm actually figuring out right now, if people are curious about the production process, I'm curious. I'm trying to figure out if our bags are going to have side panels or not, because if so, then I will have even more real estate to put stuff on. Yeah, so go coffee.

Barry Conrad

Super exciting and that's such a good idea, that's my vote, put it on there.

Melanie Avalon

it on? Okay, I'm doing it. That's you. So when it comes out and you see it, be like, that was me.

Barry Conrad

That was me, everyone.

Melanie Avalon

So, what is new in your world?

Barry Conrad

You know what? I've actually started taking Salsa classes again.

Melanie Avalon

salsa classes, again, wait, you just like hit me with two big things, salsa classes and again.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, so listen, this might seem random, but last year, I did a show called In the Heights, Lin-Manuel Miranda, one of the shows and in the preparation, well, actually, it wasn't preparation, I was I wanted to learn salsa anyway. And then I booked the show whilst doing classes like every every Monday, I go it's like local and it's it's such a good workout. It's such a sexy fun dance to do and I'd stopped doing it because the show did most of the work for me and once I was doing that, but now that's, you know, we're well and truly into the year, I am picking it up again, got to do it. So I've started doing salsa again. And it's every every, do you know how to salsa?

Melanie Avalon

Well, first of all, I just want to say if you lived in Atlanta, I would do salsa classes with you.

Barry Conrad

Would you really? Uh-huh. Are you just saying that because like, you know, would you be like, okay.

Melanie Avalon

I'm serious. Sign me up. What do you wear? Can you wear anything?

Barry Conrad

Have you done it before now how funny that that's like one of the first question listeners are you surprised that she's like what do you wear can you wear anything.

Melanie Avalon

Well, I need to know what I can wear.

Barry Conrad

You can wear one of your awesome dresses that you wear and you can wear that if you want because I mean it's it's that kind of thing or some people just wear like active wear gym clothes it just depends it's wear whatever you like but there's salsa shoes that you can buy like the specific heels which I feel like you'd you'd like that that's a Melanie thing and then there's there we have like a social so like every few weeks is like a salsa social where like a whole bunch of people from the school we just like dance and like this food and it's like you know more just to hang which it's which is so good it's like dating but you're not really dating but you just like dancing with random strangers like going from one person to the next person to the next person you'd like that it's really fun.

Melanie Avalon

There's, well, she's my friend too, but Stephanie Rupper and Noelle Tarr, they have the Wellhead Women podcast, showed up, and Stephanie was always doing dancing and talking about it. I think it was salsa, and it just sounded like such a culture, and once you know how to do it, they just go salsa dancing, and like you just said, you dance with all these other partners, and it just sounds really cool.

Barry Conrad

It's really, it's so cool and it just feels, I don't know. It's just, it's hard to explain, it's a lot of fun. You have to kind of just put yourself out there, be willing to look foolish, and everyone's just learning at the same time, but man, I've always wanted to do it, and I'm so glad that I've finally bit the bullet and I'm back at Salsa class, so that's an update of mine.

Melanie Avalon

can you drink while learning? I feel like I'm a better dancer when I have some drinks on me. Or do you have to be like memorizing things? But it's muscle memory, right? It's like body memory.

Barry Conrad

Well, I mean, technically, you could probably come to the class having had a few beverages, but you can't, it's like a dad's studio. So you can't like have a bottle open and, you know, I could just picture you waltzing around, hold on guys, just having a drink.

Melanie Avalon

Like just wait for me. I'm going to open a salsa studio and we're going to, it's going to be called what I'm I have nothing. I'm just trying to come up with like some great like salsa wine pun. Oh, oh wait that wait salsa, like, like chips and salsa, salsa and what choose salsa, wine and salsa, wine and salsa.

Barry Conrad

That's a good name.

Melanie Avalon

it took care of itself. The puns took care of themselves. To answer your question, I took ballroom dancing classes and okay, wait, wait, let's go back farther than that. I did cotillion when I was little. Do you have cotillion in Australia? What is that? Oh.

Barry Conrad

the reaction. I'm not sure if that's bad or good.

Melanie Avalon

might have it. You might just call it something else. It's like at country clubs and it's like you're like a little kid and they teach you manners and how to set a table and how to ballroom dance. And it was really stressful because I have this memory of being, how old was I? It's like fourth grade, fifth grade. I had this memory of being there. And this is the fourth grade. Boys are like, you're not really into boys. And to learn to dance, they made us do this exercise, which I don't think they should be doing to fourth graders and third graders. We had a snowball, like a snowball, like a fake snowball. You know, like those fake snowballs made of like cotton. Okay. So like the size, it was like the size of like a baseball, but like soft. And we had to hold it between our heads. Like with the boy, that's like so close to their face. And you have to hold it there. It was like a lot to take in.

Barry Conrad

Did you like that?

Melanie Avalon

No, I did not like it. Do you like Italian or holding the ball with a boy?

Barry Conrad

We're both maybe the first questions the ball and then the second is cotillion.

Melanie Avalon

Ball with the boy, no, cotillion, meh. I liked learning how to, you had to like memorize how to set a table. I liked it, yeah, it was fun. Yeah, so that was my first dancing experience and then I did ballroom dancing for a little bit in college and peace out.

Barry Conrad

Wow, so basically we could go dancing when I'm in Atlanta.

Melanie Avalon

Basically not. No, it's it's funny. What up because I don't really oh and I and I used to I did a little bit of swing Dancing lessons. I don't think it retained any of it. I need to take lessons

Barry Conrad

There's one way to find out when I'm in Atlanta next, let's just go out like a spot and then just hit the floor. Do you know how to swing dance? I don't, but I could probably learn. I'm a quick study.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, you should come here and we'll take swing dancing lessons and salsa dancing lessons.

Barry Conrad

Deal and speaking of Italian does that cover like this is the color you use you know that are as well as the table setting cuz i'm i'm going through that again just trying to we learn the etiquette you know because it's different in different places yeah.

Melanie Avalon

Yes, they don't have this in Australia, this thing I just described to you.

Barry Conrad

They probably do, so I'm not going to quote and say they don't, so don't get at me, everyone. They probably do, but maybe it's called something else. I'll just say that.

Melanie Avalon

That's cool that you're trying to relearn the way you're trying to learn it for like Australia or like what are you trying to learn exactly?

Barry Conrad

I love to travel, so I just want to be versed in that so that when I go to different places, I'm not being disrespectful, you know, to the, you know, I mean, table manners.

Melanie Avalon

trying to learn all countries or like places you might go.

Barry Conrad

Places are my go.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, that's cool. Apparently there's a lot of rules, speaking of fasting and food and such, about like some like whether or not to finish all the food or not. Like some places it's like an insult if you eat all of it. Some places it's an insult if you don't eat all of it. Like you just can't win. Like my takeaway is everybody's offended by everything.

Barry Conrad

I've got some friends who are Samoan, and in their culture, it's a sign of respect to have more. I remember going over to a Sunday lunch with some of my friends, and the mother was like, Barry, have some more. But my plate was already like, picture this, like a heaped, like a mountain, a mountainous, massive plate. She's like, have some more, have some more, because it's offensive if you don't keep eating.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, some places it's like you can't if you say no, it's offensive, but then some places if you eat everything, it's offensive because it means they didn't give you enough.

Barry Conrad

That's not really my style but i can i can respect that when i'm there.

Melanie Avalon

my style is I do like the idea of I like the idea of like dressing up and like having respect and like you I like the idea of like the cutlery being in a certain order and play settings I think it's great I think when it comes to actual food though people should be able to eat whatever they want

Barry Conrad

Obviously. Or not eat whatever they want as well. Yes, yes. Speaking of meals, before we go any further, actually, a couple of episodes ago, listeners, you may remember we talked about, you know, what is one meal a day, like, you know, we revisited the great... The great one meal a day debate? Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I stay right there because I actually did a poll on... We did a poll on the Instagram, and I'm gonna let you know, which is really interesting.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, so friends, follow us on Instagram at if podcast to engage with the polls.

Barry Conrad

engage in the polls. I love a poll. So here we go. So these are the options, Melanie. Okay, so you've got to eat the meal within one hour max. That's one. The second one is it can be spread across two to four hours. And the third one is just eating once a day in brackets timing doesn't matter. Which one do you think had the most votes out of those three?

Melanie Avalon

Wait, so did you include though, we need to do it and include like where it's okay if you eat and then stop and then eat again.

Barry Conrad

Might have to do that again.

Melanie Avalon

Because that's like the crux of the debate. Wait, so what options did you put?

Barry Conrad

You've got to eat the meal within one hour max. The second one is it can be spread across two to four hours. And the third one's just eating once a day. Timing doesn't matter, which is quite ambiguous.

Melanie Avalon

And the question was,

Barry Conrad

In the latest episode, we revisit the great one meal a day debate. We're curious what's your definition of one meal a day.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, I would say that it doesn't matter the timing.

Barry Conrad

Okay, so 62% of the followers said it can be spread across two to four hours. 10% said you've got to eat it within an hour, and 29% guessed your one, which is just eating it once a day. Timing doesn't matter. How interesting is that?

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, that is interesting. I would have done the same, but just switched the first two.

Barry Conrad

So there you go. So that's what people are at the moment. How about you? I think probably the second one, probably not within just one hour, because, you know,

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, no, me neither.

Barry Conrad

And eating once a day timing doesn't matter. That could be like spread across like eight hours. I don't know. Like eating once a day. You know what I mean?

Melanie Avalon

That's how I define it though, honestly. I, yeah, I didn't think about that, that you could be taking into account, like a long, a really long window.

Barry Conrad

But in any case, I think listeners definitely, if you don't follow us at our podcast on Instagram, please do, and there'll be lots more interactive polls for you to weigh in on what you think about all these conversations.

Melanie Avalon

Can you post if you have a snack and then stop and then eat, is that one meal a day?

Barry Conrad

You know what? I'm going to. I'll do it. I'll do part two if you, so what is it? If you start.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, like the great one meal a day debate part two. If you have a snack slash appetizer, then have a break, then eat your main meal. Is that still one meal a day?

Barry Conrad

Okay. We'll share those results first and then I'll put up the top part too. If you have a snack slash appetizer, then a break, then eat your main meal. Is that still one meal a day?

Melanie Avalon

Love it!

Barry Conrad

It's so good just to hear what people's different perspectives are, don't you think?

Melanie Avalon

Yes. Okay. So, Barry, do you have a study to start us off with?

Barry Conrad

I actually do. This study is called intermittent fasting influences immunity and metabolism. It's from Science Direct. All right, so let's just dive in. This title, intermittent fasting influences immunity and metabolism, we've all heard about IF as if you're new to the podcast, maybe you haven't, this is your first time. But a lot of people have heard of IF in the context of weight loss, but there's a lot more going on beneath the surface. One of the key things this study reveals is how intermittent fasting can improve something called the metabolic flexibility. So I know that term, it sort of sounds technical, but it's actually pretty straightforward. Essentially, metabolic flexibility is your body's ability to switch between different energy sources, like whether that's carbs or fat, and depending on what's available. And for people dealing with obesity, this is like a game changer, because their bodies often get stuck using just one type of fuel, usually carbs, which makes it pretty hard to burn fat efficiently. So it's like trying to drive a car with the handbrake on, you're not really going to go anywhere quick, but fasting helps to break that cycle. So in a way, fasting helps your body get back into that groove, using the fuel properly. But here's where it gets even better in the study, it shows that intermittent fasting can reduce inflammation, which is a big, huge problem for people with obesity, especially. And I'm sure that you've heard of inflammation. But what's important here is chronic low grade inflammation, which is also known as metaflamation. This kind of inflammation like messes with your insulin. What was the word that it used?

Melanie Avalon

Interesting, I've not heard that before.

Barry Conrad

And basically, this kind of inflammation messes with your insulin signaling and metabolism, which makes it way harder for your body to process your food and to use it for energy. But then when you fast, your body actually calms that inflammation down, allowing your metabolism to function better. It's like sort of hitting the reset button and clearing away all that stuff that's been slowing you down. But Melanie, this is the part that really blew me away because it went on to say that intermittent fasting can improve gut health. I know we were talking about that last week. And you know how much I'm into gut health as well lately? It turns out that fasting can actually help reset the balance of gut bacteria. And that is huge because gut health is linked to so many aspects of our health overall. So like a balanced gut microbiome listeners, it helps reduce inflammation and supports our immune system basically. So while our metabolism is getting like a boost from fasting, our gut health is also improving at the same time, creating like a ripple effect of benefits, like a domino effect of health. Like when one thing gets better, everything else can follow suit. But here is the kicker. Like intermittent fasting can improve your blood sugar regulation and insulin sensitivity even without dramatic weight loss. And that is really key about this study because it's basically saying even if we're not seeing massive changes on the scale, and I know a lot of people do come to IF4 weight loss first, but just to know that even if you're not seeing huge changes on the scale, your body still improves how it handles sugar and insulin. And that's so massive when it comes to preventing metabolic diseases like type 2 diabetes or whatnot. So even if the weight's not falling off right away, everyone, fasting is making a huge impact on your body's ability to manage sugar and to manage insulin levels, which can have long-term health benefits. So long story short, when you really think about it, IF is it's not just about the weight or focusing on the number and the scale. It's about the body being more efficient overall. It's about reducing that inflammation, improving your metabolism, supporting our gut health, and giving your immune system a boost. So friends, whether your goal is to lose weight or just to optimize your health like intermittent fasting, based on the study, offers a whole range of powerful benefits to help you function at your best. That's my takeaway from the study. So yeah.

Melanie Avalon

Oh my goodness, good find, that's an awesome study, it literally touches on all the things. It's so cool, we know inflammation is so involved in all of these disease processes. It's really interesting how just the absence of doing something, so just like letting the body rest and being in the facet state, because I think with the immune system we often think it's about whether or not we're exposed to sickness and whether or not there's disease and how are the immune cells functioning, but just by fasting and stopping having these inflammatory inputs, the body can pull it together, you know? It can take care of itself. That's so cool about how it can help reset the gut microbiome, that's cool.

Barry Conrad

It's so cool. And I think, you know, like we know this, but a lot of people that don't know by intermittent fasting might not know that take away of, you know, even when there's not massive changes on the scale, like a lot is happening. That's like, you know, a huge thing to remember. There's a lot happening within the body about handling the sugar and insulin. And that's really key. Long term. We're thinking about the long game people. We're not thinking about two weeks or a month, you know, so massive win. I have.

Melanie Avalon

Immunity and metabolism, those are like the two, I don't know, if you had a list of all the things you really want to affect in your body, your metabolism, you know, creating your energy, burning fat, and then immunity, your actual state of health.

Barry Conrad

And do you remember when people used to say, the trainer thought it was really popular where they'd be like, ah, you need to have six meals a day to keep your metabolism spiked. Yeah. It's just not true. At all.

Melanie Avalon

That is definitely a myth. Basically, yes, you do, quote, burn more because there's a thermogenic effect to food, but you burn more calories at that meal, but then you took in more. It doesn't make up for the calories that are burned from eating are a percentage of what you ate, but you still ate all that food. And the metabolism doesn't undo it. It's just no with the fasted state. It really doesn't, like you just talked about with this study, it really does support a state of metabolic health and metabolism and using fuel substrates appropriately and not getting locked into this sugar mode where you're just waiting for your next sugar meal, which is a limited, we have limited sugar glucose stores. So then we're just like waiting for our next snack rather than tapping into body fat.

Barry Conrad

You know what? One of the biggest misconceptions that I've heard from people coming to me who know that I do intermittent fasting is you're really damaging your metabolism. You're slowing it down by not eating. Why do you do that? Why wouldn't you just keep eating? It's healthier to keep eating throughout the day. It's interesting trying to get into it with people if it's a general conversation because they've already made a lot of people make their minds up about it's the same thing breakfast is the most important meal of the day. So getting those three square meals in there and it's just not the case with IF. What do you think, Mel?

Melanie Avalon

Well, the breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Did you and I talk about this on the show? Or is that when Vanessa was here? About that came from, that was literally created by the breakfast cereal industry. Kellogg's. Like, yes, yes. So there are these ideas that are just saturated in society and it's really, really hard to have a paradigm shift with things. And especially when it's things that people think is just common knowledge. Like eat constantly to fuel your metabolism. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

Barry Conrad

So basically yeah is proving that wrong and i think as well it's you tell me what you think no but i just tried to live by example and if you do it long enough and it's quote unquote sticking people usually come around saying okay okay time but this thing. For real what is this i think you've been doing it for a while now and it's working so yeah.

Melanie Avalon

You know? Exactly. It's ironic because I'm talking about it all the time on this show and in my social media and things like that, but in real life, I really just want people to do whatever they want to do. I never try to convince people of things. I have zero, zero energy or interest in that. So I just do me and I'll answer questions if people have questions, but I don't try to convince people of anything.

Barry Conrad

Convert people yeah

Melanie Avalon

or yeah, or convert. Awesome. Well, thank you. We will put a link to that study in the show notes and the show notes will be at ifodcast.com slash episode 413. Okay. Shall we jump into some listener questions?

Barry Conrad

I think we should. So Benoit on Facebook asks, let's say I have a couple hundred bucks to spend on my health. Should I go Lumen or CGM? I have no major health issues aside from being overweight. I've been doing IF for 14 months, 22 to protocol, evening meal, 7-7 and occasional ADF. Choosing healthy foods, home cooked, grew lots of veggies in our home, garden the summer, etc. The objective is to better understand my metabolism so I can tweak my food choices to improve my weight loss and break plateaus more easily.

Melanie Avalon

All right, Benoit, thank you for your question and it works well with what we just talked about with metabolism and everything with fasting. So, lumen versus a CGM. I will, well, first of all, tell you what those are. So, a CGM is a continuous glucose monitor. Have you worn one of these, Barry?

Barry Conrad

I actually haven't worn one of these. You recommend it? You would love it.

Melanie Avalon

it. You would love it. So it is a so it's a a sensor that you put onto your arm and it measures your blood glucose levels 24 seven. It sinks to an app and you can see how your blood sugar is responding to everything to what you eat to how you fast your exercise to your sleep your stress. It is so enlightening because you will actually see like it's very powerful to eat a food and see what it's doing to your blood sugar like actually see. I honestly think if everybody wore a cgm at some point like in like in the US for example that it would just change the metabolic health of the country it's it's that helpful. The one I love I love Nutrisense so listeners can go to Nutrisense.com slash if podcast and use the code I have podcasts that will get you a discount and one free month of nutritionist support so Nutrisense.com slash I have podcast with the code I have podcast so that's a continuous glucose monitor. It actually technically measures the interstitial fluid around your cells which blood sugar seeps into so there's slight a slight delay like when you when you get the number that is actually probably what your blood sugar was like 10 minutes prior but it's a pretty accurate gauge and then a lumen is a a device which actually measures the levels of co2 in your breath to tell you if you are burning fat or carbs like literally what are you burning which is so cool depending on whether or not you're burning carbs or fat it changes the co2 ratios in your in your breath.

Melanie Avalon

Its purpose and I should go back to what a cgm's purpose is but its purpose is to help you achieve metabolic flexibility help you learn to what Barry was talking about earlier with metabolic flexibility help you learn how to you know burn carbs when you want burn fat when you want and you know switch back and forth burn more fat and the app that it comes with uses you know AI to analyze what's happening to make recommendations to adjust your food and your fasting to help you burn fat more also with with the cgm with Nutrisense they also have like I said you know nutritionist support and things like that so that you can really optimize your blood sugar levels so for Benoit both of these are going to be incredible for you I would do with weight loss being your goal so how are these both going to affect weight loss and plateaus the cgm is going to really open your eyes to the food choices that you're making so you can see are you locking yourself into a high blood sugar state because if you're in a high blood blood sugar state all the time you're not going to be burning fat so it's really going to help you see how is your food affecting you you know how's your fasting affecting you so that you can make better choices to regulate your blood sugar levels and burn fat the lumen it's also going to help you learn how to burn more fat because it's going to show you again with your fasting and your food choices are you actually getting into fat burning mode and then it's going to also make suggestions and recommendations to you know help you get there so I want to say both like honestly I would do a cgm at least once to get a picture of everything and then ongoing to really move towards you know weight loss I think a lumen would be great that I know I like kind of took the easy way out by saying both of them but that's how they're going to function essentially do you have thoughts Barry?

Barry Conrad

Well, I think, as Melanie said, it's super interesting that you're able to track your blood glucose levels in real time. And I think that is really helpful to see how different foods affect your blood sugar, which is key for weight loss as well. So in my thoughts would be, if your goal is to break a plateau and improve weight loss, CGM is going to be helpful because of those insights. But if you're more interested in understanding how your body shifts between the carbs and fat, lumen's great. But I mean, again, it's both a solid. Both are solid tools. But yeah.

Melanie Avalon

Ironically, I might, okay, they're both going to help so much that the thing is with Lumen is it's going to be an ongoing journey with the CGM. It's a two week thing. It'll open your eyes. You'll see all these things. You'll learn a lot of information and you'll be empowered to make better choices to move towards weight loss. Lumen you can keep using for like, I mean, the rest of your life and it's actually going to, it's going to guide you to weight loss. So again, I want to say both because they're just so powerful. The goal of Lumen is more geared towards weight loss, if that makes sense. Awesome.

Barry Conrad

Well, it's a weird win then for you, Benoit. Yeah.

Melanie Avalon

So you can get 10% off with the code Melanie Avalon. I'm going to put both codes because I'm always, I'm not sure if this one still works. You can try to get $100 off with the code IF Podcast at lumen.me. I don't know if that one's active, so you probably will need to try my code, which will be Melanie Avalon.com slash lumen and use the coupon code Melanie Avalon and that should give you a discount as well. Okay, shall we move on to our next question? Let's move on. Let's do it. Okay, so our next question is from Dawn and this is from Facebook as well. So listeners join our Facebook group. It's called IF Biohackers, Intermittent Fasting plus Real Foods plus Life. You can ask questions in there. We're both members in there, even though Barry just joined.

Barry Conrad

Don't bloke my spotlight.

Melanie Avalon

I like that. It's a great place to be. Don't let.

Barry Conrad

Blow up my spot, I've just joined.

Melanie Avalon

Is that an Australian phrase, blow out your spot?

Barry Conrad

blow up my spot.

Melanie Avalon

Blow up your spot.

Barry Conrad

Do you say that over there?

Melanie Avalon

No. What does that mean? Blow up your spot?

Barry Conrad

It's like put me on blast kind of thing.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, I love how there's all these little like, little things, you know, blow up your spot.

Barry Conrad

So if I said something like, and listeners Melanie said this, but Barry, don't blow up my spot. That was not for everyone.

Melanie Avalon

don't blow up my spot. Okay. So this question, this question is from Dawn and she says, I'm a long haul flight attendant and struggle to cope with fasting and long days and time zone changes. Any advice would be gratefully received XX. And we've talked about this a lot on the show, but we haven't talked about it since Barry's been here. And I don't think Barry, you are so much more skilled at traveling. I am so curious how you adjust your fasting and food and such when you're traveling.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, I do fly a lot. And, hey, Dawn, thank you for the question. We appreciate you having a go and asking. Being on those long-haul flights and being a flight attendant dealing with the time zone changes, it's definitely going to make... It can make fasting a bit trickier, but it's doable. It's going to be doable with the right strategy. So my thoughts, I'd suggest starting with a flexible fasting window that works best for your schedule. So for example, on a flight day, it might be easier to do a shorter fasting window, especially if you're already dealing with things like jet lag and long hours, because that can really be tough even as a traveler. So you can adjust based on how you're feeling and then on the ground. So just say you're flying from the US to London, for example. Once you get on the ground, then you could go on for that longer fasting window when you have more control over your schedule and your body's rhythms. I'm going to say here, hydration is key, speaking from experience. So really make sure you're drinking plenty of water, especially on those long flights. And I'd even consider adding electrolytes to your water just to keep it balanced and to avoid that drained feeling. And you can just get off a plane feeling like you've been hit by a train. So you don't want that feeling. Another thing to consider is like your meal timing. So if you're in a different time zone, it's about gradually shifting your eating window to match the new time zone. That's what I find is helpful because that way, you're easing into the rhythm rather than forcing your body into a new pattern all at once, just because this is what my protocol is. So I need to just stick to it. It's about listening to your body, easing into the rhythm. And then I would say, last but not least, probably focus on nutrient dense, easy to carry meals. Because as you know, more than anyone being a flight attendant, the meals on planes is often just not nutrient dense. So making sure you have protein, healthy fats, some carbs in there, stuff like nuts, seeds, some protein bars, good quality protein bars, keeping it simple, but satisfying enough to fuel your body properly. And with a bit of tweaking, dawn and listening to your body, you'll find a rhythm that works. But don't be out on yourself. I mean, it's about, as we say as well, it's about consistency, not being perfect about it. And keep doing what you're doing. You'll figure it out. You got this. Melanie, what do you think?

Melanie Avalon

So I love the flexibility. I love not being hard on yourself. And to be using it to a point, this is interesting because we actually have opposite advice here.

Barry Conrad

Okay, there we go.

Melanie Avalon

So another approach. So that's one approach where you ease into it gradually with time zone changes. And I'm coming from this more from just like traveling for a day. So this is a little bit different than constantly changing time zones because of being a flight attendant, which I could not be a flight attendant. Could you be a flight attendant?

Barry Conrad

I think on paper it sounds really fun, but I think my body would just be messed up. My internal clock and everything. Yeah. I don't know. Probably not.

Melanie Avalon

I cannot. There have been studies on jet lag and actually using fasting to deal with jet lag. And the approach that you do is you fast longer. So basically, you go into the travel, you approach the travel situation, you have your like normal meals, and then you go into the travel, you fast, you fast through the traveling. And then what's really important, you continue to fast in the new location. And what's important is that you eat a meal in sync with the new location's time. So that's what I mean by it's the opposite, you don't go based on what you were doing or like ease in, you literally just immediately adapt the new culture. If you've been consistently doing a fasting window, where your there's something called zeitgeibers, which are essentially environmental cues that signal that affect your circadian rhythm. So our circadian rhythm, our sleep-wake cycle is severely influenced by our environment. So light exposure, eating exposure, even social cues can affect it. And so eating is so intensely connected to our circadian rhythm. If you are fasting, and in general, fasting and eating on a consistent basis, then your body associates different times of the day with different meals. So for example, I always eat one meal a day dinner, and then I go to bed after. So when I have my one meal a day, it signals to my body like this is evening and we're going to bed. And so the way I can use that as a hack for traveling is when I'm traveling somewhere, I just do my normal fasting, my normal everything, and then I eat dinner in the time zone of the new location. So if that requires fasting more, or I think it would always, I'm trying to think if it could ever require eating earlier.

Barry Conrad

Thank you.

Melanie Avalon

Probably not.

Barry Conrad

Because what if there's a time like it's usually like a time zone change when what not and then what if it's maybe like 1 p.m.

Melanie Avalon

Well, like one hour time zone change. Yeah.

Barry Conrad

OK, yeah.

Melanie Avalon

Well, yeah, yeah, so because basically the flight would have to account because because if you're flying from like you're flying from Atlanta to LA and let's say it's like a four-hour flight So you've you went four hours, but then you jumped back three hours. Oh wait No doubt that would be massively expanding it. Oh, sorry. That's like the opposite. You have to go the other direction You have to go when it's like speeding ahead, but there's nowhere I can fly. Okay, so reverse So from LA to Atlanta, I'm like thinking of myself in Atlanta. I can't fly because it's like the ocean. Okay, so if I'm in LA And I fly from LA to Atlanta It takes like four hours, but then okay, that's where but that's where it would um jump forward So it'd be super late when I get there I don't know. This is too much math and too much time zone for me to figure out the point is if I Eat my one meal a day in the new time zone In alignment with that new time zone then I can pretty much Like just immediately adopt that new time zone So like when I flew not this past thanksgiving, but prior to that I went to London London for just like a day

Barry Conrad

I still can't get over that.

Melanie Avalon

And you know what, Barry? I didn't really have barely any jet lag at all because what I did was I flew to London. I got there. So I left for London in the evening here. I was on the plane. I might have slept a little bit. I'm not sure. I got to London in the morning or after morning or early afternoon. And then I just didn't eat until dinner. And so then at dinner, I ate my meal. And then it was like, time to go to bed. And that pretty much synced me up with like the eating schedule. And then the next day I went to the Thanksgiving thing. And then I flew home the day after that. So that works that I mean, that works really well. I mean, I guess it depends on what dietary pattern you're doing. But it works really well for like one meal a day before dinner. So what I was thinking when I first read her question was if she is the type that because here's the thing. So for Dawn, Dawn is going to quote be awake every day and sleep every day, but it might be changing crazily hours because of the flight. But it's still a pattern of like being awake, going to bed, being awake, going to bed. So if Dawn if depending on what works for you, but if a one meal a day type situation works for you, you could for example, always eat before you go to bed. So then you would like just you wouldn't even like think about it, you would just like do your traveling, do your life and then eat your one meal a day for dinner. Remember, it doesn't have to be right for bed, but have your one meal a day for dinner and then go to bed and you I think not a flight attendant. So it might be more complicated than that. I don't really know how your schedules work. But I think you could do that. Like I think you could do that ongoing. So you would never be eating during a flight or anything. You would just unless you're sleeping, I guess if you're sleeping on the flight for your like sleep, sleep, but I don't see I need to know more about flight attendants. I don't understand like, I don't know if did you say international or not.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, well, long haul to me is international, because to me, like, when people say long haul, it means, like, they go, they're leaving the country, they're not going to, like, interstate, which is like, you know, four hours, five hours, or, you know, long haul flats. So that's, you know, it's changing time zones. Yeah.

Melanie Avalon

long days and time zone changes. So I mean, again, I don't know a lot about flight attendantness. So maybe this is being like, do this. And it's like, not even remotely possible. But I would consider trying up an approach like that where you, your pattern is that you, when you get to your city, you eat, it would change so much based on where you're going.

Barry Conrad

It would change so much.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, okay, if I was a flight attendant, I would probably do that.

Barry Conrad

Well, Melody, you're a very unique person. You're just like, this is what I'm doing. I'm flying for one day. I'm sticking to this protocol. This is it.

Melanie Avalon

I do think though, there could be a map. I think you could find a system that works for you where you are using meals and this like Zeitgeiber approach. Say that again, Zeit. Zeitgeiber.

Barry Conrad

I've never heard that word before.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, it's Z-E-I-T-G-E-B-E-R. The definition is a rhythmically occurring natural phenomenon which acts as a cue and the regulation of the body circadian rhythm. Isn't that amazing? That's amazing, actually. Again, it's like something in your environment. So something you're doing or exposed to that affects your circadian rhythm. So I think you could, I really think you could use fasting and eating to create like a zeitgeiber for your circadian rhythm to help with the jet lag and stuff.

Barry Conrad

We hope that's helpful, Dawn, a couple of different, different thoughts there, but you know, I feel I'm confident that you're going to figure it out.

Melanie Avalon

Me too.

Barry Conrad

But please keep us updated, let us know.

Melanie Avalon

us know. Shall we end with our restaurant? Time to break our fast? Do it. So speaking of food, we are all about eating around here. And we love breaking our fast, and our heads and our minds and in real life. Okay, so Barry, the restaurant I chose, which have have you been to Disneyland or Disney World? Wait, wait, have you been to Disney? Wait, wait, I know we've talked about this.

Barry Conrad

Disney okay i've been to the one in florida that is because the world of the world of it is new world and you have been to the international i've also been to disneyland i've been to both. I have been to both yeah the California.

Melanie Avalon

Have you been to any international ones? No. I have. Are you impressed?

Barry Conrad

Yeah, there's also like a lot of kids around. Did I surprise you? You did surprise me and this is not what I was expecting, a Disneyland restaurant.

Melanie Avalon

I have been to Disneyland, Disney World, Disney Land,

Barry Conrad

Disney Places, Disneyland, Disney World, Disneyville.

Melanie Avalon

I think it's Disneyland. I have been to Disneyland Paris.

Barry Conrad

Wow, what's that like compared to the ones in the US?

Melanie Avalon

It was lovely. It was interesting because the Main Street had much more of a covered experience. I feel like there was indoor walkways because of the rain and such, but it rains in Florida. Main Street was a little bit different. Oh, I felt so validated. They had their version of Space Mountain. This is when I was young and resilient. I wrote it and it was literally the most painful experience of my life. I got off and I was like, that was horrible. I'm never doing that again. Then I talked to a friend who also went and she said that she was recovering from that ride for days. So it's not just me. They need to get rid of their Space Mountain. It's horrible. But yes, Disneyland, I went to USC in LA. I used to go to Disneyland all the time. My favorite restaurant in Disneyland slash California Adventure is the Blue Bayou restaurant. Last week we had a New Orleans restaurant. Have you been to the Blue Bayou restaurant?

Barry Conrad

I have not been but blue is my favorite color so i'm sure it's gonna be really good tell me about it.

Melanie Avalon

It is, you know, Pirates of the Caribbean. Yeah. So in Disneyland, there's a restaurant like in the ride. Like when you what? Yeah. So like the beginning of the ride, when you're like in the bayou of the Pirates of the Caribbean before you go into the Caribbean or Caribbean, it goes by there's like a indoor restaurant that looks like you're in New Orleans, like outside at night. I am all about restaurants that make it look like you're outside, but indoors at night, all about it kind of like the Mexican restaurant and Epcot. So yeah, Blue Bayou restaurant, it's my and it's like a fine dining, steakhouse, New Orleans, steakhouse type experience. It's wonderful. I love it. It's a vibe.

Barry Conrad

highly wreck. Okay, cool. You know what, all these restaurants, we've got to check them out. IRL for sure.

Melanie Avalon

I know. I know. So let us look at dinner. Okay. So right now they have a, okay, they have like a set. I'm confused. They have a set price meal. Oh, that's a question for you. How do you feel about set price meals?

Barry Conrad

Okay, so sometimes, and I don't know if you feel the same way, when you're out with like a big group of people, sometimes I get invites for, hey, we're going to this restaurant, they have like a set menu for X amount of dollars, and it's just easy, then I'm happy to try it. But if I don't love what's on the set menu, I'll just order a la carte. What about you?

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I don't like set price menus

Barry Conrad

You don't? Actually, why am I asking you that? Because I know that you want to change it, yeah.

Melanie Avalon

unless it's like the perfect set price menu like everything I would order, which I have never seen that in my life. And normally they're not like about substitutions, you know, it's so yeah, usually stay away from especially on like Valentine's Day, I feel like all the restaurants turn into set price menus and I'll just be like, nope, nope, I got to have my freedom of choice.

Barry Conrad

I agree. I mean, I get what I get. They're trying to like, you know, it's easy for them to like, you know, quantify, we're going to make this amount of money. These people buy it. But it's not, it's not ideal for people like us who want to have what we want to have.

Melanie Avalon

Exactly. And having been a fine dining server for like five years and being on the flip side, I know why they're doing those set price menus. Like they, yeah, like you just said, it makes it seem like, oh, I get so much and like, it's like happy and I pay, but no, it's because they can like make, it's like easy. They can like, they can make more money and they it's like all set up and they just like turn it out. Maybe they're not all like that, but I like a la carte is the point. So we're not going to do take away. Barry and I will not be doing the Mardi Gras celebration meal.

Barry Conrad

No. And also it doesn't seem like there's, I don't know, I'm going to skip past that. We love Disneyland. I'm not, we're not hating on it. We're just saying we're going to do, we're going to do a la carte. So let's do that.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, so then they're using the word that you like. What would you get for your starter?

Barry Conrad

Finally, someone's using the correct terminology. Oh, no. We say starters because it's very confusing listeners. You've probably heard us talking about what is an entree? What is the main meal? What is the starters? What's the appetizer? It's so different everywhere.

Melanie Avalon

I forget every single time, and for you an entree is, wait, an entree is an appetizer?

Barry Conrad

Yeah, like a starter kind of thing.

Melanie Avalon

And entree is a starter. That is so confusing. Who came up with that?

Barry Conrad

somebody awesome.

Melanie Avalon

We should we should research like what is the original.

Barry Conrad

I feel like if we did that then Melanie will be like Seabury I told you this is the right way to do it.

Melanie Avalon

No, but no, here's the thing. Well, a a I don't put I don't I wouldn't put it in your face like that, but B

Barry Conrad

You blow up my spot, you would.

Melanie Avalon

I would not blow up your spot. B, the US is like, we're very new, relatively speaking. So if it's ever like the original, it's probably more likely that it's not us. You know, like that's in your favor. OK. Like the US is a relatively new country compared to the rest of the world.

Barry Conrad

Of course.

Melanie Avalon

So I feel like it's unlikely that we originated things.

Barry Conrad

The terms for menu.

Melanie Avalon

Except for the Constitution. Oh my gosh. OK, so starters, what would you get?

Barry Conrad

Okay, so I'm looking at the dinner menu, and I already know I'm going to go the chicken gumbo and the brioche because a bit of bread there is going to be good, and the chicken gumbo has tassel, ham, and dulce sausage and peppers with stew.

Melanie Avalon

I knew you were going to pronounce it that way. I was waiting.

Barry Conrad

Okay, it's wrong. So tell me again, Melanie, because listen, if you listen to last week's episode, I got a word wrong too. But anyway, maybe that got taken out.

Melanie Avalon

Wait, what was last week's episode?

Barry Conrad

I'm not going to say it because of someone's name. I don't want to offend anyone, but how do you say it?

Melanie Avalon

Melody? Well, now I'm on the spot. Oh, wait, putting me on the spot. I think it's, isn't it, andouille, andouille? I don't think there's an, I don't think you pronounce the L.

Barry Conrad

We're keeping it in the edit is please be not because we want because that way we can have it out there is this how you say it is the size.

Melanie Avalon

I'm pretty sure the L is not like an L.

Barry Conrad

Okay, stand corrected, and I'll put it to the I have podcast followers. Okay, I'll get the chicken gumbo and the rosemary and sea salt brioche, which is butter and seasonal jam, comes with butter and seasonal jam, the bread. What about you? Awesome.

Melanie Avalon

I think I'm gonna tap out of this round.

Barry Conrad

You don't want to take anything from the other sections to substitute. You just want to move on to the.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, yeah, I think I don't think they I don't see other options really like the kids meal. Maybe I get like

Barry Conrad

is roasted chicken, which you could have planned.

Melanie Avalon

No, because I was named Shrimp. Oh my gosh, wait, this is what I'm doing here. And we're like, okay, I'm going to be like, okay, because you want me to do it in character, right? So this is what I'm going to say.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, here we go. Okay, so I'll be the server. Here we go. Hi, you ready to order?

Melanie Avalon

Yes. Okay. And then you're going to order, like Barry's going to order. What would you like? So for the starter, okay. I completely understand if you can't do this. It is literally no problem at all. I see that you have sauteed shrimp on the kids menu. Is there any possibility I could get, it doesn't have to be like a fancy shrimp cocktail type thing, but can I get just like shrimp, like in the cocktail type vibe as my appetizer? Again, zero worries if you can't do that, but I would love like shrimp as an appetizer. Is that possible? We can.

Barry Conrad

definitely accommodate that for you Madam, so we'll make sure that's taken care of.

Melanie Avalon

Thank you so, so much. And nothing complicated, like no sauces or anything, or like you can put that on the side if you want. Thank you. Like, thank you. You're the best.

Barry Conrad

not to worry thank you there we go you did it how was that that was really really polite really good really easy not a big deal

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, okay. We got our starters and nice job with the waiter.

Barry Conrad

I don't know what kind of way to get out to that. It was a change three times, what I was saying. Uh, entrees, I would get a, oh, wow. Definitely two of them.

Melanie Avalon

And you've got, you've got two options. You've got entrees and there's a whole, there's a plant-based section as well. There is. Which I find it difficult to get enough protein and plant-based options.

Barry Conrad

So, listeners, as you may have caught and done already, I love my protein. So I'm not gonna say I don't do plant-based because I think there's a lot of nutritional value in it. I love it, but I'm going to stick with the animal protein heavy entrees. So I'm gonna go with the prime rib and the roasted chicken. So the prime rib comes with mashed potatoes, roasted veggies, horseradish cream, and peppercorn demi glaze. And the roasted chicken is, as Melanie Avelin would say, andouille sausage, sounds really funny. Shrimp, Creole rice, and Creole, that sounds really good. Creole sauce, that sounds like it's gonna slap. It's really good.

Melanie Avalon

It is Andouille. It's Ann Andouille. Oh, one is a...

Barry Conrad

put it on the poll, but that's okay. You've already corrected me.

Melanie Avalon

validated by Google.

Barry Conrad

Okay, validated. And do we did you do the thing where they say it?

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, and Dewey and Dewey the little mouth is like was moving. Okay

Barry Conrad

So those two for me.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, the chicken and the prime rib. Okay, this is okay, this is great because I love there's not it's kind of a limited menu. There are four options. I love all of them. Also, I love that we both just get two entrees. So I am going to get two entrees right now. And then I'm going to reserve one for dessert since the appetizers were like a little suspect. I will get the oh wait but I don't want hmm was this difficult actually? Can I have a bite of your prime rib? Yes. How are you getting it prepared?

Barry Conrad

Well, all okay, just rule of thumb for Barry Conrad's rule of thumb for any red meat is going to be medium rare for me. It's just my vibe.

Melanie Avalon

So I think I am going to get the, okay, I know I've got it. I'm going to get the filet mignon. It comes with mashed potatoes, spinach, mushrooms, and crispy shallots. I'm going to ask if I can get it with just steamed spinach. Do you need a reenactment to, or? Yeah, I'll do it. It's like, actually, I'm going to order everything right now. So I'm ready. And your desserts? Are you ready to?

Barry Conrad

to order your entrees.

Melanie Avalon

Yes. Thank you so much. Okay, so I'm actually going to get two entrees. May I please have the filet mignon? And can I get it completely plain? So like no, no oil, no sauce, just like completely plain, and I will have it blue, like as rare as possible. And for the sides, can you just mix all the sides and I'll just, the spinach, can I get just steamed spinach with the filet?

Barry Conrad

And again, I'll speak to the kitchen, but I'm sure that should be fine.

Melanie Avalon

Awesome, thank you so, so much. And then similar vibe, I'm also gonna get the market. Oh wait, what is the market fish today?

Barry Conrad

It's a snapper.

Melanie Avalon

Okay.

Barry Conrad

Can out-broke character!

Melanie Avalon

Hmm. No, no, no, no, that's still in character. That's how I would have. Okay, so we're not okay. So basically for listeners, I'm very concerned. This is how this is educational. I'm very concerned with mercury content. So for market fish, I would only get the fish if it were a salmon or a tilapia or cod, maybe. Otherwise, or a trout, a farm trout. Otherwise, probably not. And I would Google the fish and I would look up the the mercury levels, but usually fish is a little bit problematic with mercury.

Barry Conrad

So, it still stands. If it was snapper, would you pivot to another choice or would you just stick with the...

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. So if it was snapper, I would not get that. And I would, I would say, okay. Yeah. So thank you. So I will actually, I'll just get the filet. Are you sure you just want the filet? Yes. And also heads up, I'm probably going to get another filet for dessert. So can you, can you have the kitchen reserve one? And also for dessert, if I get it for dessert, they don't like, I literally, they don't have to like cook it long. They don't have to like hold the, it's not going to be like a long thing. They can just like really, really quickly sear it basically. You can even bring it raw. It's fine. I'll do that too. If you want.

Barry Conrad

So you want us to understand, you want a filet for dessert as well.

Melanie Avalon

So basically, I'm having a filet right now in the way that you so amazingly, kindly accepted. And then I'm probably going to order a second one when we order dessert, but it's not... I promise you, you don't have to cook it long, you don't have to keep the kitchen going. You can just literally put it on the thing for a second. A second. Just sear it.

Barry Conrad

You sure? For dessert? You don't want to try one of our cakes or sundaes? Very popular.

Melanie Avalon

Barry will be having that for sure. So we'll have it. It's going to be great.

Barry Conrad

I'll have it Did you like that off mic moment

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I love yeah. That was so immersive. I felt like I was like there.

Barry Conrad

Don't worry. I'll just it's fine. Like she does this all the time. I'll have it. Thanks. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, we're good. We're yeah. So if that's possible, that'd be amazing. Yeah, perfect. Thank you so much. And I really appreciate it. Like, thank you. Thank you so much. And also no rush like we're like super chill. You don't have to stress about us or anything like we're just happy to be here. So thank you.

Barry Conrad

You're welcome.

Melanie Avalon

How was that? That was good. That felt... Oscar nomination? That was actually really funny. That was amazing when you did it, okay, when you did it, like, oh, that's brilliant.

Barry Conrad

But try to create an experience for the listeners here. There we go. That's so funny.

Melanie Avalon

Should we do it in character every time? That'd be really fun. We should do it in character every time and I'll be the server for you.

Barry Conrad

Actually, that's really funny and that way we get to use our acting. Let's do it.

Melanie Avalon

Yes, and I can be like the way I used to be a server because I was like a lot. I was a lot.

Barry Conrad

Okay, let's do it. That's so fun. Yes.

Melanie Avalon

Okay. Listeners.

Barry Conrad

You're getting a performance, you're getting fasting, you're getting science, you're getting everything.

Melanie Avalon

This is all the things you wait. So question though, cause that was the first time doing that. So how do you feel like about if I do this?

Barry Conrad

No, I'm all about it.

Melanie Avalon

You just gotta be nice, you know?

Barry Conrad

You can use have to ask in a way that's respectful i don't think it's only a big deal when people you know get snobby or entitled but if you just ask politely you can't really go wrong.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. Yeah. And I find most restaurants are very accommodating. Can't even tell you how many birthday, like birthday steaks with candles I've had. Two of those.

Barry Conrad

Okay, that's hilarious.

Melanie Avalon

They do that. That's happened twice, and they bring out a candle every time. They think they're really smart, but I'm like, no. It is smart, and it's really cute. I'm just saying people do it, though.

Barry Conrad

You should post a photo of that sometime because it's so funny, like it's just unusual.

Melanie Avalon

I will share my last birthday in November. They did that. So I will share it. Actually, no, no, no, that's not true. Last birthday, what? Wait. Oh, last birthday, I actually just went to a bar with friends. Birthday before that, they brought out a steak with candles. That's hilarious. So dessert time. I already pre-ordered my dessert. What are you getting?

Barry Conrad

I'm going to get, because the petite sundae, why do you think I saw it? I don't like the petite pot when it comes to any kind of food, so. I'm going to have three petite sundaes. I'll get two, I'll say to them, like we're not doing it now, but I'll say I'll get two petite sundaes, one for myself, one for Melanie, and then I'm going to eat it.

Melanie Avalon

No, you know what? I will take one for the team. I'll order one for you. I'll order a petite.

Barry Conrad

And then I'll order the brown butter banana upside down cake, which is soaked in bananas, a foster sauce garnished with candied walnuts. Okay. Here's another one of these. Okay. Okay. You have to read it out. What is it?

Melanie Avalon

tulle, I think it pronounced the L there, fleur, delise, I think those Ls get pronounced, and vanilla.

Barry Conrad

All fleur de lis, de lis, and vanilla ice cream. You'll see if you look at the menu, listen as it's, I cannot, I failed French. There we go. Yeah, so that's that. But yeah, those two desserts, well, three desserts is gonna have to do me because one petite sundae is not gonna do. Two petite sundaes and a brown butter banana upside down cake could do.

Melanie Avalon

they're gonna be so confused because I will have ordered all this like really crazy stuff and then I'm like oh and I'll have a petite sundae no modifications just as is

Barry Conrad

You know, it's the actual truth is I would probably just order two and they'd be like, Oh, one.

Melanie Avalon

for. Well, I already have the state coming, so.

Barry Conrad

No, it's both of me. And I'll also get the, yeah, I'll just say it. Oh, there's also beverages, so you're up. What would you like to drink?

Melanie Avalon

So the thing about Disney is I don't feel good at all about their choices of the champagne. I don't like champagne.

Barry Conrad

Sparkling wine.

Melanie Avalon

I think this is I have to look at the by the bottle list, which hopefully they have. I don't know if they do have because it's Disney. Because they only have a few options for wine and it's not looking good. It's all California. That's what I've noticed because I've I for fun, I sort of maybe read the Disney food blog where they like review restaurants at Disney and the food at Disney because I just love Disney and I love like reading about all the places and all the food. And I the thing I've noticed is that they tend to feature a lot of California wine.

Barry Conrad

But don't you see, you know my favorite white wine is Pinot Grigio.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, they have Frank family chardonnay, which is organic not idea

Barry Conrad

What about the Italian Pinagugio?

Melanie Avalon

Oh, the Italian Pinot Grigio? I could look that up. I'm on the struggle bus, though, with the wine, but what would you get?

Barry Conrad

Okay, so always for me, 90% of the time, I'll always get Pinot Grigio with something else. So Pinot Grigio, I probably love that for the table and then I'm gonna go because I also love my margaritas. I'm gonna try the Milograno melon margarita. I'll try it. Yeah. Oh, hey. So you're not gonna have anything to drink. You're gonna have water or there's like non-alcoholic.

Melanie Avalon

So here's the thing, if we were going to this restaurant, I would have dealt with this issue. I would look up every single wine. So for listeners I drink when I'm out, I try to find low alcohol, organic, low sugar European wines, hopefully on the menu. I would have looked at the menu, probably not found that many options. I would have inquired if they have a bottle list, which they probably don't. So then I would inquire, oh, you know what? At Disney, you probably can't bring in wine because you can't bring wine into the park.

Barry Conrad

Probably not, no. I'm guessing.

Melanie Avalon

We would implement plan C.

Barry Conrad

Have a drink beforehand, before going, or after, or what?

Melanie Avalon

Yes, actually, I can't even I don't know. No, it would be okay, I'm not I don't do that. This is like me just saying like, this could happen in a story somewhere. I'm not saying I do this, but I might depending if I pre researched and I knew the situation, I might like, you know, make sure I have my organic wine with me like with my person somehow, because of my means, and then I would order a wine.

Barry Conrad

And then I'll quickly swig it and then you can throw it in there.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, which a rue situation? Yeah.

Barry Conrad

That's so funny.

Melanie Avalon

Because my health comes first.

Barry Conrad

It's like spy vibes.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I'm actually very good at this such a real situation.

Barry Conrad

I'd love to see that actually, see you do it. Yeah, that was fun. Do you want to go? That was very eventful, eventful ordering experience, restaurant experience.

Melanie Avalon

So friends, let us know your favorite restaurants and how you break your fast and how you deal and order and all the things. Are you a berry or are you a Melanie? Like where are you on the berry Melanie spectrum?

Barry Conrad

That's that's actually a really good question. That's good. Yeah

Melanie Avalon

So, well, this was so, so amazing. So listeners, you can submit your own questions for the show. Just email questions at ifepodcast.com or you can go to ifepodcast.com and you can submit questions there. These show notes will be at ifepodcast.com slash episode 413. They will have a full transcript and they will have links to everything that we talked about. So definitely check that out. And you can follow us on Instagram. I am Melanie Avalon. Barry is Barry underscore Conrad. And we are, I have podcast. I think that is all the things. Anything from you before we go?

Barry Conrad

Listeners, thank you so much for tuning in. Have an awesome rest of your day or night and we'll catch you next week. Awesome.

Melanie Avalon

I will talk to you next week.

Barry Conrad

See you later.

Melanie Avalon

Bye. Bye. Thank you so much for listening to the Intermittent 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. 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.

Mar 10

Episode 412 – Special Guest Dr. Matt Dawson, Wild Health, Finding YOUR Perfect Diet, Blood, Genetic, & Epigenetic Testing, Optimizing Biological Age, Interpreting Lab Results, AI & The Future Of Healthcare, And More!

Wild Health Website | TruDiagnostic Website

Welcome to Episode 412 of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast, hosted by Melanie Avalon, biohacker, founder of AvalonX, and author of What When Wine Diet: Lose Weight And Feel Great With Paleo-Style Meals, Intermittent Fasting, And Wine, and Barry Conrad, actor, singer-songwriter, and creator and host of Banter with BC.

SHOW NOTES

SPECIAL GUEST

Dr. Matt Dawson is the CEO and Co-Founder of Wild Health, a genomics based precision medicine company. He is also CEO of TruDiagnostic, a deep science epigenetics company focused on human longevity testing. Dr. Dawson has published dozens of research articles, authored two textbooks, and written over 100 book chapters. He has won national awards in education and innovation and given talks in over 20 countries. He has a passion for not only human performance and longevity, but also bringing cutting edge research and science to market so that individuals can actually benefit from them. As such, he has founded 6 companies in the last decade, all of which are still in operation. Three of these have been acquired. His passion for human performance started in high school when he paired it with suboptimal natural athletic abilities to earn college scholarship offers in two different sports. His passion for longevity comes from a desire to be around as long as possible for his 4 children, wife, and future great grandchildren. He lives with that current family and two dogs in the woods of Kentucky.

Dr. Matthew Dawson attended medical school at The University of Kentucky before completing his residency in emergency medicine at The University of Utah, where he served as both chief resident and fellow. He has practiced medicine and was an associate professor at the University of Kentucky for 7 years, with an acute interest in functional medicine and, later, genomics. Dr. Dawson’s obsession with performance optimization began well before medical school. In high school, he would implement any fitness or nutrition technique that’d give him ‘an edge’ in athletics, resulting in college scholarship offers in two sports. Dr. Dawson carried this obsession with him through medical school and into his profession as a physician, earning numerous national awards for education, innovation, and leadership on account of his research and approach to health care.

‍Dr. Dawson crystallized this approach to providing patients with true health care, rather than sick care, by building Wild Health – a Precision Medicine service providing personalized, genetics-based care to help patients achieve optimal wellbeing. In that, Dr. Dawson has also trained thousands of physicians in Precision Medicine through online education, and has lectured in over twenty countries around the world. Dr. Dawson also co-hosts the Wild Health Podcast, a tool for teaching thousands about personalized, genetics-based Precision Medicine. His passion to help patients maximize their health span and perform at their absolute best considers all aspects of health: mental, physical, and spiritual.

Wild Health IG | Wild Health LinkedIn

SPONSORS & DISCOUNTS

WILD HEALTH: Get 20% off with code melanieavalon at wildhealth.com/melanieavalon.

TRUDIAGNOSTIC: Get 10% off at melanieavalon.com/trudiagnostic.

ONESKIN

Founded by a team of all female scientists, OneSkin is the world's first skin longevity company, with products shown to reduce your skin's biological age! OneSkin addresses skin health at the molecular level, targeting the root causes of aging so skin behaves, feels, and appears younger. It’s time to get started with your new face, eye, and body routine at a discounted rate today! Get 15% off with the code IFPODCAST at https://www.oneskin.co.

MD LOGIC

Get 10% off MD Logic's Health Marine Collagen with code ifpodcast at ifpodcast.com/collagen.

If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving us a review in Apple Podcasts!

Original theme composed by Leland Cox, and recomposed by Steve Saunders.

TRANSCRIPT

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

Melanie Avalon

Welcome to Episode 412 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, founder of AvalonX, and author of What, When, Wine. Lose weight and feel great with paleo-style meals, intermittent fasting, and wine. And I'm joined by my co-hosts, Barry Conrad, actor, singer-songwriter, and creator and host of Banter with BC. For more on us, check out MelanieAvalon.com and BarryConradOfficial.com. You can submit questions for the show by emailing questions at iapodcast.com or by going to iapodcast.com. We would love to hear from you. Please remember, the thoughts and opinions on this show do not constitute medical advice or treatment. 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. Welcome back, friends, to the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. This is Episode 412. I'm Melanie Avalon, and I'm here today with a very, very special guest. So the backstory on today's conversation, a while ago now, I got reached out to by a company called Wild Health. And they're doing very cool things when it comes to monitoring everything in your body that you need to be monitoring to actually take charge of your health right now, to take charge of your aging and longevity, all the things. I was really intrigued by their service because I know it can be really confusing, I think, for a lot of people to really navigate what's going on in their body. And there's so many different markers to look at. There's blood, there's genetics, there's just so many things. And what I really loved about Wild Health is it's a platform that encompasses all of that and analyzes things for you and makes things very implementable and approachable. So it looks at your blood work, it looks at your DNA, your genetic tendencies, it even looks at your biological age. And we'll dive into what that actually means. What's really cool is it's really easy to do to take the test, all the things. And then you have the portal, you have your results, you get this really comprehensive, like 50-page report that I was reading last night, again, and was fascinated by. And you actually get to work with coaches and practitioners in the portal to help make sense of everything. So I think the service is going to be so helpful for so many people. And I have so many questions as well as my own personal experience to share. So I'm here with the CEO and co-founder, Dr. Matt Dawson. Dr. Dawson, thank you so much for being here.

Dr. Matthew Dawson

Thanks for having me. You get such a great description of what we do. You nailed it.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, thank you. I really like because I feel like there are a lot of different companies trying to do what you're doing. And I like I said, I was very, very impressed with just the whole system and everything that I learned personally and and where the focuses are. But to introduce yourself a little bit to listeners. Can you tell listeners a little bit about your personal story? I know you attended medical school at the University of Kentucky and you did your residency in emergency medicine at the University of Utah. And you've published a lot when it comes to textbooks and articles and things like that. But what led you to what you're doing today with this wild health service?

Dr. Matthew Dawson

Sure. Yeah. So you're right. So I went to kind of traditional medicine route at first, and it was around six years ago. I was working at an academic center. I was teaching med students and residents and writing and publishing and doing all that. I started noticing all of the science emerging around genomics and personalized medicine. And it looked to me like for the first time that we could really personalize almost everything down to the level of someone's DNA. Like we've known for a while that you can look and see what medications will or won't work, what someone's likely to have side effects from. But it looked like you could even personalize diet, exercise, sleep, supplements, all of these other things. I kind of started diving into that, went down a rabbit hole when it comes to that. My co-founder at Wild Health, Mike Malin, he's also a physician. We sequenced our DNA. We started looking into it. And around that time, he had a difficult medical issue. He found out that his lipids were through the roof, like a really dangerous level, like cause a heart attack level. So he saw his doctor. His doctor told him to do a specific diet that works for most people, but Mike's not most people. He's Mike, and he got worse on this diet. So his doctor then wanted to put him on a statin, which is fine. It helps most people. But Mike had a bunch of side effects for him. I had muscle breakdown, myopathy. And when we looked at his genetics, we saw that, oh, wow, it looks like his genetics needs to be on almost the exact opposite diet of what his doctor had put him on. And he had a very specific gene variation that made him almost guaranteed to get that muscle breakdown of myopathy. And we were kind of angry at first, but then we just realized, well, medicine is always 15 to 20 years behind. And while the science is out there, no one is doing this. And we couldn't really tolerate that. We left our universities. We started doing it for friends and family, and just started having really remarkable results when we started personalizing people's treatment and recommendations to their DNA.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, I love this so much. And like I said, I was reading my report last night and it was, I guess, validating. It was nice to read some of the different sections and just see how much it aligned with me personally. So for example, in the sleep analysis, it was telling me that I have a genetic tendency to be a night owl, which is so true. In the food sections, it was telling me that I might have increased gluten and wheat sensitivity. Oh, in the mental section, there was one about how I tend to be dopamine driven, which is literally what I say about myself all the time that I feel like I keep a lot of dopamine around in my brain. So, okay, I have so many questions here. So these genetic tendencies that we have, how do you approach, because you just mentioned that, you looked at his data and you realized that he wasn't on the appropriate diet and all of these things. It mentions on wild health that there are, is it over 70,000 different SNPs? And maybe you can define what a SNP is. How do you decide which ones to look at? How to interpret them? And also, how do we know it's accurate? Because I noticed, for example, in the section that talks about your APOE, or was it the APOB? One of them, it was saying that it's actually, I think it's probably the APOE, one, that it's hard with accuracy to actually test that. So how do we know that what we're testing is accurate? How do you know what to test? And how do you know how to interpret it? Lots of questions.

Dr. Matthew Dawson

Yeah, no great questions. And yeah, it's about 700,000 specific SNPs that we test, and a SNP is a single nucleotide polymorphism. So it just means that it's a slight variation, and it just puts you at increased or decreased risk for something. So APOE is a good example of one of those. So if you have an APOE4 gene, then you're about 200 to 300% more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease. And if you have two of those, if you have an APOE4, you're about 11 times more likely. So someone is at more risk. Now, your DNA is not your destiny. We've heard this term DNA is destiny. It's not. It's only about 20% of your health outcome. And that APOE4 is a great example of that. So one of the first patients that we saw was my mother. My grandmother had passed away of dementia of this disease, and I was worried that my mother would have this gene, and sure enough, she did. But what I told her at the time is I said, mom, this is good news, because we know about this now, and we know what to do about it. And when we put her on the program, personalizing her diet, her sleep, her exercise, in three months, she lost 40 pounds, reversed her insulin resistance, told me she felt 20 years younger, and I think that we will prevent, or at least delay by 10 to 20 years, her getting that disease. So we find these differences in our genes, and we do something about them. You ask about diet. So another example of that is actually, I told about Mike and his diet. One of this was kind of an aha moment for both of us when we look at our genes. It looked like when we looked at our genes that he and I needed to be on pretty much the opposite diets. So he had all of these sensitivities to saturated fats, where I had none of those. And I had all these sensitivities to carbohydrates. And so it looked like I almost would do really well on a ketogenic animal-heavy diet, and he would do well on almost a vegan diet. And so we tested this. We would eat the exact same thing for two weeks, do the same workouts, draw our blood. And we were eating his diet. He destroyed me in the workouts. It was much better. His lab looked great. He felt great. When we switched to my diet, I would beat him in the same workouts. I felt great. He felt horrible. His labs were bad. Mine were good. And we're like, wow, this is why it's like religious wars when people talk about diet, like people they're keto or they're vegetarian or vegan or omnivore or carnivore or Mediterranean. It's because people find the perfect diet for themselves, and they assume it's perfect for everybody else. But we're not like that. We're very bio-individual, and personalizing all of these things makes a big difference in how we feel and perform and the diseases that we get.

Melanie Avalon

It's so interesting and I think it is so relevant to so many listeners on this show because we get so many questions about people having that very debate that you just talked about. Do I do lower carb? Do I do lower fat? I think it can be really confusing and of course you can do trial and error and try it yourself but having this lens of looking at through your DNA can just be so, so helpful. And what I found really interesting is cause I really gravitate towards an animal based diet. A lot of my genetic SNPs really did seem to line up with that. So for example, I saw that I have difficulty converting a lot of the plant based sources of vitamins into their usable form in my body and so I would benefit from having an animal based diet there with those different nutrients. How do you handle potentially conflicting genetic information that may pop up? So for example, my general recommendations in my report were that I tolerate saturated fat well, that I tend to tolerate carbs like okay, like in the middle. In general I was getting like low carb recommendations but then also at the same time some of the SNPs indicated that I'd be better on a high carb low fat approach. So how do you handle that when people have SNPs that seem to be conflicting?

Dr. Matthew Dawson

Yeah. So you said something important earlier. I want to go back to you said, it seems like a lot of people are trying to do this. And I think it's important to use that word, because one of the things we realized very early is it's not easy. Like, this is very complex. So, I mean, we, we've spent over $50 million on the platform to do this. And so it we use, we built this on an AI platform that takes into account, not just all your genetics, but also the blood work and a lot of other information as well. So like, you'll get kind of the general recommendations that will pop up and populate in there based on all the different SNPs. But then we also, the last step is actually running this through a physician and a health coach filter as well. That's where we give the final recommendation to kind of edit things. And but what the AI engine does is it kind of pulls together all the different stuff to make specific recommendations. I mentioned earlier, I'll give you a good example from food. With food, we don't really actually usually talk in terms of the big macro diets, the big macro categories, like vegan, omnivore, keto, things like that. We talk in specific foods, like what are potentially super foods versus kryptonite foods. So like for my mother, a couple of the steps that you mentioned, so there's a fads too, that means she needs more of the active form of omega three from animals. She also has a collagen 5A1 snip, which means she needs more collagen protein and a VDR snip, meaning she probably needs more vitamin D, a BCMO, meaning she needs more vitamin A. So when you put those together, the algorithm said, okay, for you, the world's perfect food looks like it's probably a sardine. It has a really clean source of omega three. It has a collagen protein in the skin and the bones. It has vitamin A and vitamin D in the organs because it's a whole animal. And so it kind of put all of that together. And then for kryptonite foods, you mentioned you had some sensitivities to wheat and gluten. She had that as well. So that's an SH2B3 gene, but she also had an MCM6. So it meant dairy is inflammatory for her. So identifying kind of the super foods and kryptonite foods, we think is a better way to go about talking about food than kind of the bigger categories itself. But at the same time, if you're seeing the doctor and the health coach and you're talking through some of these things now for you, if it looks like, well, you have some genes that mean you need more, that you'll be fine with, with fats and animal, animal fats and some where you need more complex carbohydrates. Well, then we're going to look at your lab tests. So for example, if your ApoB, your kind of most atherogenic cholesterol particle is through the roof, that may give us a little bit of pause on the animal proteins. But if your hemoglobin A1c is really high and you have a lot of insulin sensitivity, that may give us some pause towards the carbohydrates. So we would tailor the recommendations based not just on the genetics, but the lab tests as well.

Dr. Matthew Dawson

And then what also are your goals around activity and exercise and things like that. So it's a complex picture that we use the AI engine to make most of the recommendations. And then we add on the kind of doctor and health coach, their kind of final look and talking to the patient as well.

Melanie Avalon

I love that so much. Yeah, because I think, well, first of all, I want to say you did a really good job with the report of having it be very comprehensive. Like there's so much information, but also it is very approachable. It's very readable. So I really appreciate that aspect. And I really liked that. So basically AI can, you know, analyze and generate all of these findings, but then having that conversation with a real human being who can walk you through it. And, and that's what I remember when I met with my health coach, she was very knowledgeable and helpful in saying like, this is what this actually means. Like she was saying, like, you know, I know there's like a lot of data here, but here's what we're actually looking at. And then like you just said, when we actually look at your blood work, what do we see and what changes should we make? And I actually made a very practical, implementable change immediately after having this conversation. And that was that, cause I'm looking right now at my, like the summary at the very end. And it looks at like your lipids, your methylation, your vitamins and micronutrients, your hormones, your inflammation and your insulin resistance slash, slash metabolism. The one category that's like all red is my methylation category, which I have known. I've, I've known, I, I struggled with that in the past, but it was nice because talking to her, she was like, okay, like what, you know, what you need to do is you really need to be on a methyl folate supplement here. It's also interesting because, you know, based on the whole context of that, which it talks about in the report, apparently there are different ways that you could go about addressing it based on the whole comprehensive picture. But what she was saying with me was to get on that and now, and I've been on that and I've seen a big difference. So, so thank you. That was like a very like practical change that I made.

Dr. Matthew Dawson

And I'll make one point about that, about the provider and things, too. This is called precision medicine. I like to remind people it's precision medicine, not perfect medicine. So our recommendations as a physician or a health coach or a provider is only as good as the amount of data we have. So the fact that we have an incredible amount of data about your genes, all the biomarkers, scientific data, all of this, means we're going to be able to give much better recommendations, but we still need to follow that over time and make sure that what we're recommending is actually working. So I think the relationship part of this is really important, too, having that relationship with a physician health coach that can interpret, like you were mentioning. And like things I mentioned earlier, like from my mother, they identified that sardines was the world's perfect food. Well, the perfect food and perfect diet for you is the one that you're going to be able to follow as well. If she had said, that's disgusting, I'm not going to eat sardines, well, then we would have just found other ways to kind of plug those holes and give her that extra support that she needs. So it is definitely, the AI platform is very powerful, but having that human with it and following someone over time, because humans are complex, is a very important part of the process.

Melanie Avalon

with the evolution of AI, is it continuously updated? And do you ever have to retest your genes ever, or is that technology pretty much done like you've done the testing, and now AI can just adapt to interpreting it?

Dr. Matthew Dawson

Yeah. So you would not have to retest your genetics. The AI itself, though, is getting better and is making the recommendations better and better over time. So when I say AI, though, I specifically think about two different things. So to be able to build all these recommendations, we need machine learning. A human's brain isn't, it's not the right tool to look at a million different variables and make recommendations. So you need machine learning for that. So that's what the platform is built on initially. However, the other thing that I mean when I say AI is large language models. So this has been a real game changer. So we took all of our, all of our IP, all the recommendation engine and all of that and put it on a large language model so that we could interact with it better. So for example, I have this app that we built on my phone, and I can actually interact with it. I can ask like I was giving a talk at an event in DC a few months ago, and I said to it, I said, Hey, I'm giving a talk. I'm in DC. I'm saying it's the Omni in DC. What should I have for lunch? And it gave me a specific meal at a restaurant point one miles away. That was based on it knows my genetics and I was on my lab work and who I slept that night, it knew that I lifted weights and went for a run that day, gave me the perfect meal at the perfect time there. So really cool stuff. And it can also it just pushes information like a few months ago, I got a notification from the LLM has all the status said, Hey, you are about you're overtraining, you're gonna get injured or sick. So I chatted back with it and said, Well, how do you know that? And it showed me all my HRV data, my resting heart rate trends, and I thought, Oh, yeah, I've been traveling and working out just as hard not sleeping. Well, historically, I would have just pushed through that and gotten sick or injured. But I saw this and then I said, Well, give me a program to recover over the next two weeks. And it knows my goals. At the time I was training to climb this mountain in Ecuador, and trying to improve my pickleball game. Those are my only only two goals. So it gave me recommendations personalized to me for those goals and to recover and follow that. So the LLMs are a real game changer and being able to interact with your with your data. Now that app itself, unfortunately, is not on the market. It actually was so good, we ended up taking it down because we were worried from a regulatory standpoint, it'd be seen as a practicing medicine. But we built it into our product where now, if you ask a question of your doctor and health coach, the LLM intercepts it, it gives them a suggested response because it knows everything about you. And the doctor hasn't memorized your 700,000 genes probably. And then the provider can kind of modify it or just use it or reject it and give a new answer. But we found when we first implemented that, the providers only use it about 20% of the time. But now it's over 90% of the time because the answers are phenomenal. Like they're just really good, much better than a than a regular person would give an answer.

Melanie Avalon

Do you think AI will ever completely take the place of humans?

Dr. Matthew Dawson

Yeah, great question. So there's a couple different ways to think about that. Like if you asked me the question, is AI better at making medical diagnosis than doctors? There's no question. It's just much better. Like there's lots of data on that. There's also data comparing like Chad GPT to physicians and blinded. Well, because people said, well, okay, it's better making diagnosis, but the people are more empathetic. So then they tested that and when people were blinded chatting with a doctor, Chad GPT, they actually rated Chad GPT more empathetic too.

Melanie Avalon

Oh my goodness. I believe that.

Dr. Matthew Dawson

So if you were to tell me your options are a doctor or AI, I take the AI every day, like I just do, and I am a physician. I don't actually think that's the decision though, just like when, let's think about chess. It took a long time before Big Blue, which is an AI machine from IBM, beat the world's best chess player. But the best chess player in the world now isn't a machine or a human, it's this combination. It's kind of a centaur. So what you want is a physician you really trust who stays super up to date and who is using the AI. Like you want the combination of the two is what I think the best medical care is now and in the future.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I'm really interested by it. I did an episode recently on AI. The whole book was actually about the future of health care in regards to like technology and AI and stuff. And he was saying that the reason the synergy of humans and AI can surpass just AI is that AI doesn't have the ability to, I guess at least right now, to think outside of its own rule system. And sometimes you need to think outside of... You need to not break the rules, but you need to be able to think outside the box in that regard.

Dr. Matthew Dawson

Yeah, I go really deep on this, especially the last couple weeks has been a crazy time in AI. And I would say, I don't know if I, I think you actually could train the AI to be much better at humans and we have that thinking out of the box and being creative. So I'm not I'm not sure if that's the separator. Maybe it is. I can give you another example, though, where them working together is really important. We had a patient who was young, like in the early 40s, executive came to us very healthy, no medical problems, just wanted to optimize probably like the 95th percentile already wanted to go to the 99th percentile. So great. We ran all of the stuff. And we got an alert from the AI from the large language model that said, Hey, notice some things like in his genetics and labs and things like this guy needs a deeper dive on cardiovascular health. So I as a physician or clinician, like no one would have said that this guy's perfectly healthy, young, we would have not got a clearly scan, which is an AI guy to CT angiogram for him, we would not have done that for him. It just didn't make sense. And from a textbook, but the AI picked it up. However, then actually having him do that, I don't know if he would have actually gone through the trouble of doing it, because he felt fine if just the AI was telling him, but he trusted us as a clinician. So it was kind of that combination of the AI finding it and then and then him trusting the human. And in fact, he got the scan, we got an emergency call from the radiologist who said he needs to go to the cath lab immediately he had like a 90% lesion and his LED, which is called the widow maker artery. And if he hadn't had this done, he probably would have died of a massive heart attack in the next year or two. And this was an example of the AI and the human either one of them alone, like would have been probably been a little deficient wouldn't have gotten this outcome. And now, I mean, this guy who he had two teenage daughters, and he's going to be with them hopefully for 40 more years instead of one to two years. So that's, that's just the example that pops to my mind when I think about humans and AI kind of working together to really deliver the next level of of medical care.

Melanie Avalon

Wow, yeah, I love that. Do you think there will be any, since AI has this super power to be able to analyze all this data, do you think it will come up with any really surprising findings or change our opinions on what we've historically thought about different medical conditions, treating them, like things like that? Paradigm shifts, basically.

Dr. Matthew Dawson

100%. And that's kind of why other guys, that's kind of why I push back on his thinking outside the box. Because when I look at this, like, AI, and people could argue about this word, I see AI is much more creative than humans already. And I wouldn't even say that a year ago, it's just progressing so quickly. Like, when you watch the emerging things that come out, or its ability to put things together, like creativity is really about pulling together kind of disparate things from different places to come up with new and novel ideas. They're really it's, it's fusing different different areas. And AI is amazing at that. So I yeah, I think AI, it's already in drug discovery, so many other areas, it's making a tremendous difference and really changing the care, we see it all the time and the recommendations that it makes, and the things that it comes up with, it's, it's very creative, and is definitely going to be showing us new ways to deal with things.

Melanie Avalon

Actually to that point, because so last night, so like I said, I did this a while ago, I read my report then last night, I went in and downloaded my report again, when it's generating the report, is it updating it when you go in?

Dr. Matthew Dawson

So, I don't think it is if you don't have new data, and I say I don't think it is because if it was like a year or two ago, then I think you would get a new report because there's been updates. But when you would get a new report is one, if there are updates pushed in the system or two, when you're feeding it more data. So if you had just had a new lab test, for example, then there would be a new report. But if there's no new data, then it would be the same report and recommendations.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, gotcha. One other question there. Oh, so when people are reading their results, when it's talking about these different SNPs, these, you know, genetics that people have, it'll say that you might have an increased or reduced risk of XYZ, you know, whatever condition or thing it's talking about in that section. How should we interpret that word risk? Especially if we don't know what the normal risk is for something. Yeah, how do we know the severity of what this means with this word risk? And is it like absolute or relative? Like, what's going on?

Dr. Matthew Dawson

there? That's a great question, and we could actually try to build that into the report and say it increases your risk by X amount, which means this, so therefore this. That would turn it into hundreds of pages, so that's part of where the human comes in, and that's why it's important to have a doctor and health coach, because if you have a PEMT SNP or some other SNP that says, oh, based on this, you have this increased risk of blood cancers or something like that, that can sound scary, but if you have the physician or the provider who has a context around that, it's like, okay, yeah, that means your risk of blood cancer goes from 0.5% to 0.6%, then that's like a one in a thousand increased risk that you got, so it's not a really big number, or even if it's a 1% for a 2%, that can sound scary, because you think, oh, my risk has doubled. Well, it's doubled from a relative risk standpoint, but still, from going from 1% to 2%, that's a 1% absolute, so it's a 1 in a hundred risk, so it's not really much to be worried about, like the stress from you thinking about that and constantly trying to do something about it is probably worse than having it, so it is important to have someone who can give you that context with these, quote, unquote, risks as well.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, awesome. Yeah, I did notice in the report that it was with one of the cancer related things that it actually gave me a little bit more data more in the language that you're using. And I had a feeling it was because for what the reason you just said, because you want it to be clear, like what it actually means practically. Okay, on the blood side testing side of things, so for listeners, so when you do this program, you get the genetic information, which that was a saliva test, right? The genetics. That's right. And then you also do a blood test and get a lot of biomarkers. How did you decide which biomarkers to include on the blood test and how did you decide the ranges?

Dr. Matthew Dawson

We basically said, okay, in the first assessment of someone, we want a lot. We kind of want as much information as we can reasonably get that doesn't kind of break the bank for them. So it's a large amount of tests initially. On follow-up testing, we try to get more targeted and specific, like what did we find? What are the risks? What are the things that we need to follow? So it's normally smaller tests. So we really picked, I think there's around 50-something biomarkers we start with, and we just think those are the ones that are most impactful. Now, there are others we could add. So if we do the testing and we're talking and we find that someone has elevated inflammatory markers and we just can't figure out exactly why, then we may add a lot more things. We may add some food sensitivity testing or some other toxin testing. If we're talking to someone and it sounds like hormones are an issue, we may do more advanced hormone testing. So the initial set is designed to give us the most bang for our buck, the most information without breaking the bank, and then we get very targeted from there when picking the lab test. And oh, you mentioned reference ranges. Yeah, so there are certainly classic reference ranges, and we'll use those for a lot of the tests, but others we try to use ranges that we consider more optimal for. There's an example, you mentioned methylation status. So homocysteine, I think a standard lab panels, they'll say it's normal if it's under 14. Well, we want you to be kind of under 10. Vitamin D, you may on some lab reports not get a quote unquote deficient number unless you're under 20. We want you definitely to be above 30 and optimally to be around 50 or more. So we do modify some to be more optimal range than just non-diseased.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, one of the personal findings I had, this was really interesting to me because this has been my theory for like a decade. And then getting my information back, I was like, okay, maybe, maybe this is correct, which is that, and this is again, this is showing how you look at the blood and the genetics. I always have high B12, like always, I test high for it. And so I tested high on this one for the blood work as well. But it said in my genetic analysis that I have a SNP which makes it hard for B12 to get into my cells. And so when I was talking with the practitioner to reviewing everything, I was like, oh, could this maybe be why it's always high for me because it's not getting into my cells, it's just like staying in my bloodstream. She agreed with me on that. So I thought that was really, really interesting. Another question, so the biological age test that people take. So what is the role of that? What is the difference between biological age and chronological age?

Dr. Matthew Dawson

Sure. Yeah. So, chronologically, it's just pretty easy. That's how many years you've been alive. Most people know that. If you don't, you can look at your driver's license and there it is. The biology age is different. So, first off, age is the number one risk factor for almost every chronic disease. But we all know people who may be 40, but they look and feel and perform like a 30-year-old or a 50-year-old. So, that's more of a biologic age. What is your risk of getting diseases? Morbidity. And what is your risk of dying? Mortality. And traditionally, for years, there's been multiple of these biologic age tests that are out there. Most of them are not good. They're kind of junk. They're not validated. They may just be based on some random algorithm. But are they really telling you what you want to know, which is, am I increasing or decreasing risk of dying? And am I increasing or decreasing risk of getting disease? That's what we really want to know. That's kind of a true biologic age. At Wild Health, we use a company called True Diagnostic for that. Now, True Diagnostic is just to call out a conflict here. I am CEO of True Diagnostic as well. So, we were using True Diagnostic for years before I came in and started working with True Diagnostic. The reason why I like True Diagnostic is because of one specific test they have that I have used for years I really like, which is called the PACE test. So, I don't actually care that much if we get your biologic age back. And let's say you're chronologically 40, but your biologic age tells me you're 36 versus 44. I'm just going to try to optimize you either way. And if it tells me you're 44, biologically, and let's say that we believe that result, well, are you doing everything perfect now and you just had a really rough go of it in your 20s and 30s? Or is it reflecting something that's going on right now? That's unclear to me as well. What I like about the PACE test, this is a test about by Duke, it tells you what is your rate of aging right now. So, it's information right now. And what's great about it is it is very sensitive to change. Meaning, for example, if you get pregnant, that's a physiologic stress and your rate of aging goes up about 20 percent, but then it comes back down to normal when you deliver the baby. Same thing happens if you get COVID, have hip surgery, get a car accident, your rate of aging goes up, but it comes back down when you recover. What this allows me to do as a clinician is to do end-of-one experiments to figure out what is going to reduce your rate of aging. So, Stanford did a great study. Actually, it's not a great study. There are a lot of problems with the study, but the interesting thing about the study was there's this twin study where they move people back and forth between a vegan and an omnivore diet. And then they measured lots of things, but one of the things they measured was this PACE of aging. And they found that in eight weeks, changing your diet, you can have an effect on your rate of aging.

Dr. Matthew Dawson

So, we could change someone's diet and see how it affects the rate of aging. Or if someone says, I want to go to Panama and get IV stem cells. Well, that's expensive. If you're going to invest $40,000, it would be good to have an objective measure of something like rate of aging that we could look at and see if it affects that. Or if you're going to try a wrap of ice in or some other supplement stacks or other things. It's nice to have an integrator of all your health, like rate of aging to follow over time and try to push down as low as possible.

Melanie Avalon

okay, I am loving this part of the conversation so much. I mean, I've been loving the whole thing, but I'm really loving this. And I just pulled up my report as well. So mine was 10.64 years younger was my biological age, which it says puts me in the top 16% of the population. For that pace that you were talking about, mine was 0.67.

Dr. Matthew Dawson

That's that's incredible. Yeah. So the way the pace works is if you get a score of this one point zero, that means you're aging at the normal rate for someone your age and sex. If it's one point two, you're aging 20 percent faster. If it's point eight, you're you're aging 20 percent slower. So point six seven is remarkable. That means you're aging at two thirds normal rates. That means for for over 30 years, you're only going to age 20. You'll be 10 years younger than you should be in 30 years from now. So that is that is definitely one of the lowest ones I've seen. That's really incredible. It just means that you're you're doing a lot of things right. Like you're killing it. That's a really impressive pace score.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, wow. Okay. I'm really excited. And you said this was based on.

Dr. Matthew Dawson

Yeah, this is developed by Duke. They have a really large cohort called the Dunedin cohort is a large group of people out of New Zealand that were followed for decades. And they followed them and watched how they aged, what diseases they got and things. And then they drew longitudinal blood samples over time. And then from that, they could derive and figure out what is your pace of aging based on different epigenetic markers. So this is epigenetics. So we sequence someone's DNA once, that's your genetics, that never changes. But I mentioned earlier, genetics is 20% of your health outcome. The other 80% are epigenetics, what you do, what you eat, your stress levels, how you sleep. And so you're doing all of that right, it seems like. And so the way we measure this pace is we look at gene expression, epigenetics. So it looks at about a million gene sites and tells how much each one is turned up or turned down, how much you're expressing those good or bad genes. And you turn them up and down by changing different lifestyle factors. And so from that, then they can derive what is your pace of aging. So that's how it is from that Duke study specifically, but that's a remarkable pace, that's great.

Melanie Avalon

Awesome. And for listeners, when you get your report, it breaks it down into all these different organ systems, so 11 different systems, and it shows you are you aging, you know, slower or the same or faster in each one. So it's like heart, inflammation, metabolic brain, musculoskeletal, kidneys, liver, lungs, blood, immune hormones.

Dr. Matthew Dawson

Yeah, and to be specific not only about that, so technically on the report, the trade report, you're going to get three different clocks. So Harvard developed a clock on the Olmec M.H. And that is probably the one where you said you're 10 years younger. That's the best predictor of kind of mortality, like your risk of dying. So you have a much lower risk of dying than someone your age. The other one you mentioned with the Oregon systems, that's from Yale. So Yale developed that one. It's called the symphony age. That's right. And because we age in a heterogeneous manner, like if someone drinks odd alcohol, their liver is going to age more quickly. If they're smoking, their lungs are going to age more quickly. So that's a nice one to figure out kind of maybe what is your weakest link. And then the pace one is from Duke. So three very different epigenetic clocks there.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, and so they should in theory align or do they often not?

Dr. Matthew Dawson

Well, they're giving you different information. So, yours are pretty aligned. Like, you're only getting ages 10 years younger and your pace is 0.67. Both of those are remarkable. I don't see your symphony age, but most of your organ systems are probably going to be lower as well. Maybe not all of them. So, they do line up in general, but they're measuring three different things. So, they're really telling you different information. And I will say for any of your listeners that do this, like, don't be disappointed when your results aren't like Melanie's. That's a phenomenal result you've got.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, wow. Yeah, for the symphony, they're all aging slowly except for immune and hormones. Very interesting.

Dr. Matthew Dawson

And things change over time too, so it could be that when you repeat the test, there could just be a certain reason at that time that those may be a little off as well.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, this is so interesting to me. Two quick questions. One, because you're mentioning this, well, first of all, I love this idea about how one of them, like the pace is looking at like your pace of aging. That is so, so cool. Practically, it seems like a person could be aging slower. And then like you were saying, that means when you live chronologically this amount of time, but you're only going to quote age this other amount of time. And at the same time, it seems like there's a limit to how long we can live. Basically, my question is, do people age at different rates, but then is there still like this final timeline that once you hit it, you hit it?

Dr. Matthew Dawson

What I'll say to you is, so far, no one has ever not died necessarily that we have on record. That we're aware of. Yeah, so where is that limit? People argue over that all the time, like, is there an intrinsic limit? Is it 120? Like, where is it? I don't know. And as science progresses, like, we're going to get better and better. People are living longer and longer. But yes, it's really about slowing the rate of aging. And the other thing about the slowing rate of aging, it's not just about living longer. You're just going to feel better and perform better. So it's not even like how much time we're adding to your life by slowing the rate of aging. But I mean, when you're 60, it'd be great if you feel and perform like you're 50 or 40. And when you're 80, like, you feel like you're 60. So it's really about optimizing your health now and how you feel later, too, is that the rate of aging, that's the big thing. Because most of us don't actually die of old age. We die of cardiovascular disease, dementia, cancer. These are the big killers. So while health, we're trying to slow down your rate of aging and optimize and make you feel as good as we can now. But we're also really aggressively screening for and trying to prevent those big things as well at the same time, because that's really what's going to lead to a shorter life for most of us.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, I have sort of a nuanced question. I hope I can articulate it. Let's say a person gets a test, like does this test, does the true diagnostics and gets all this aging information. So they have the potential to make lifestyle changes that will change the epigenetics. And if they are to retest, you know, in the future, hopefully they would see a beneficial change in that they're now aging slower based on these lifestyle changes that change their epigenetics. Is aging itself still a factor going against us? And what I mean by that is, even if they make these beneficial changes, if they test a year from now, does that year of aging, is that always going to be kind of a negative in affecting their rate of aging?

Dr. Matthew Dawson

If someone, if two people, let's say two people are doing the exact same things, they have the same genetics and everything else, if one of them is chronologically a year older, they're just going to have higher risk factors. So, it just is a risk factor in and of itself. Now, I think you were kind of asking the question like could maybe, and you tell me if this is a question, what was the question maybe like can you like reverse your biologic age and kind of be younger over time as well? Was that the kind of

Melanie Avalon

Okay, I think this is the reason I thought about it, because I was like, okay, I feel good about my results right now, so if I retest in a year and I haven't changed anything, but I've aged a year, is that going to slightly make my results not as good?

Dr. Matthew Dawson

Right, so if you're not changing anything, you test in a year, you're in the same position, your rate of aging should, so what would most likely happen is your rate of aging.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, does aging affect the rate of aging?

Dr. Matthew Dawson

Yeah no it doesn't so okay now i got you yeah so your rate of aging if you're not doing anything anymore in poorly or any better should stay the same so the rate of should change so what you see for example you have that call your rate aging is say point six seven. And then in the three years you retest your rating still point six seven but your biologic age the one where you got a number that probably is only gonna go by two years instead of the three years. So that's that's the what you can see from that.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, gotcha. I've had David Sinclair on the show a few times and he has, you know, he came out with a book and his whole hypothesis was aging is a disease. Do you think aging is a disease?

Dr. Matthew Dawson

So, I think it's semantics, and what I mean by that is if we want to get, like, funding from NIH and places like that, it makes sense to call aging a disease. At the same time, aging is unnatural. Everyone ages, so is that does everyone have a disease here? So it really kind of depends on what you're trying to do with the word, like does it lose its meaning if you say aging? Now I've heard some people, like the argument, which is an interesting one, that disease, to kind of flip this around, disease is just aging of certain organs. So it's another way to look at it. When we have dementia, that's just aging of the brain in an accelerated fashion, or cardiovascular disease, aging of the heart. So is aging a disease? I think, honestly, the answer to that is it's a semantic question, and it's around words. If it's helpful for us to think of it as a disease so that we actually get more funding to treat it, then that's great. Because if we were to able to spend money on reducing the rate of aging of people, that would be way more effective than all the research that's going into individual diseases because aging is the number one risk factor for pretty much every chronic disease.

Melanie Avalon

That's pretty much the argument or the thoughts I subscribe to as well. Okay. I could ask you a million more questions, but I will stop myself. So listeners, I think you can see just how incredible this wild health platform is. So to recap, when you do this, you get all of this. So you get that genetic test where you're getting your risks for health based on your genetic DNA, you're getting that blood work, so a picture of what's happening right now and looking at it through these idealized ranges. And then also this biological age test where you're looking at epigenetics and looking at your rate of aging and things like that. And you get to work with a practitioner to help make sense of everything. But it's really an incredible platform. I'm so, so excited about it. Yeah, when listeners sign up and do this, how often do you recommend they do retesting? What will it look like practically for listeners to do this service?

Dr. Matthew Dawson

Yeah, so what happens if someone signs up, they get DNA tests comes to their house, the blood work is just we just put an order in and you get that done. A lot of the testing is done at your house where we arrange it. You have the meeting with a physician health coach and then kind of the cadence from there, the retesting depends on what's going on and what we find. Sometimes we may repeat testing pretty quickly based on what we see or sometimes maybe it's not until another three or six months. It kind of depends on what we identify are the main issues and what we want to work on. Some things take a while to change, other things change pretty quickly. So after the initial all the testing and the meetings with the providers, it's a pretty individualized and personalized program from there just based on what you need.

Melanie Avalon

Awesome. Awesome. So friends, listeners, I really cannot recommend this enough and we have an awesome offer for you guys. So thank you so much for that. You can get 20% off a wild health membership when you use the code Melanie Avalon and that will be at wildhealth.com slash Melanie Avalon. So definitely check that out. This is, this has been so amazing. What are you most excited about with the future of all of this?

Dr. Matthew Dawson

Yeah, it's very clear to me. It's epigenetics. So, the pace of aging and all that, that comes from epigenetics, but there's so much more we can do. There's a true diagnostic. We just did this big study with Harvard where we found that we could actually predict and report on hundreds, if not thousands, of biomarkers just with an epigenetic test. So, you get so much data at much lower cost. So, there's a new product called TrueHealth that True Diagnostic has reported on about 130 biomarkers with the same just few drops of blood that the TrueAge test uses as well. So, in the future, in the next few years, we'll be able to give tens of thousands of dollars worth of data and biomarkers for hundreds of dollars. So, just the amount of data that we have to optimize our self-worth and to prevent disease and predict diseases is going up exponentially.

Melanie Avalon

Amazing. How often do you take your blood work?

Dr. Matthew Dawson

I go overboard with it. I'm probably once a month testing, but I'm always doing different experiments and I want the data. So I'm testing a lot. I don't really recommend that often to anybody else. It's a lot.

Melanie Avalon

That's amazing. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Dawson. This has been incredible. Again, listeners go to wildhealth.com slash Melanie Avalon, use the coupon code Melanie Avalon to get 20% off. Yeah, this has been so incredible and exciting. Thank you so much for all you're doing. It's changing so many lives. I really appreciate it.

Dr. Matthew Dawson

Thank you, Millie. It was a lot of fun. You asked great questions, so thanks so much for having me on.

Melanie Avalon

Thank you so much. Enjoy the rest of your day. Bye. Thank you so much for listening to the Intermittent 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 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.

Mar 03

Episode 411 – The Great Oyster Debate, Calorie Restriction Vs. IF Vs. Keto Vs. Mediterranean Diet For Longevity, Resistance Training And Fasting, Protein Intake, Fasting With Kidney Disease, Men Vs. Women Fat Burning, And More!

#272 - Laura Morris & Jennifer Ventrelle, MS, RDN | The Official Mind Diet

Welcome to Episode 411 of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast, hosted by Melanie Avalon, biohacker, founder of AvalonX, and author of What When Wine Diet: Lose Weight And Feel Great With Paleo-Style Meals, Intermittent Fasting, And Wine, and Barry Conrad, actor, singer-songwriter, and creator and host of Banter with BC.

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Mentioned Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast Episodes:

#136 - Dr. Steven Gundry | Gut Check

#135 - Cynthia Thurlow

#255 - Dr. Mindy Pelz

#286 - Dr. Amani Ballour | The Cave Documentary

STUDIES

Molecular Mechanisms of Healthy Aging: The Role of Caloric Restriction, Intermittent Fasting, Mediterranean Diet, and Ketogenic Diet—A Scoping Review

Safety of fasting in diabetic and non-diabetic patients with stable chronic kidney disease during Ramadan

Effects of Ramadan fasting on moderate to severe chronic kidney disease

If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving us a review in Apple Podcasts!

Original theme composed by Leland Cox, and recomposed by Steve Saunders.

TRANSCRIPT

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

Melanie Avalon

Welcome to episode 411 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, founder of Avalon X and author of What, When, Wine, Lose Weight and Feel Great with Paleo Style Meals, intermittent fasting and wine. And I'm joined by my co-hosts, Barry Conrad, actor, singer, songwriter, and creator and host of banter with BC. For more on us, check out melanieavalon.com and barryconradofficial.com. You can submit questions for the show by emailing questions at iphpodcast.com or by going to iphpodcast.com. We would love to hear from you. Please remember the thoughts and opinions on this show do not constitute medical advice or treatment. 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 everybody and welcome. This is episode number 411, 411 of the intermittent fasting podcast. I'm Melanie Avalon. I'm here with Barry Conrad. Barry, how are you today?

Barry Conrad

Hey, Mel, how's it going? I'm doing really, really, really good today. I have had a really productive day so far. Sydney is looking, it's showing up and showing out beautiful weather. Feeling great. How are you doing?

Melanie Avalon

I am doing swell, also beautiful weather. It's snowing, although this is coming out in March, although does it still snow in March sometimes?

Barry Conrad

Maybe some parts of America.

Melanie Avalon

That works. Well, conversation that we must have, I'm going to re-ask you it, even though you know what it is, and I know your answer, but we must discuss this because this is mind-blowing to me. So did you know you didn't know, but you know now, because I already told you, telling you again, did you know, and listeners, that snow doesn't just form, like the raindrops do not just become snowflakes, they have to have a nucleus, which is particulate matter and dust and stuff in the air. So every little snowflake has a piece of physical something at the center of it, and snow cannot form without this. It can in a loud situation, but not in the real world. Did you know this?

Barry Conrad

I did not know this at all. I just thought it was basically, you know, water freezing in the air and falling to the ground. That's why I've eaten the snow. It's like, oh, this is just frozen water.

Melanie Avalon

I feel like we were taught how snow forms a lot in school, and nobody ever mentioned a nucleus.

Barry Conrad

What does that mean? What does for listeners and for me? What does that mean? Like a nucleus, like a piece of, like a speck of dust?

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, so there's some, like some sort of particle in the air. I mean, a lot, they're like microscopic particles, but it forms around that. If not, there is no snow. It would just be really cold rain.

Barry Conrad

Well, I'm glad. I thank the universe or whoever's out there for that nuclear nuclei. How do you say it? Nuclear?

Melanie Avalon

I guess for the nuclei, if multiple.

Barry Conrad

Because we love snow and i'm glad that we have it so but i didn't know that didn't know that metal until today so false advertising what we learned in the school it's not what happens.

Melanie Avalon

I know. And now I look at the snow and I'm like, so is it dirty? It's like, I'm like stressed about this. And it means it's not like there's snow and then some cold rain. It's only snow. That means there's so many little particles in the air everywhere.

Barry Conrad

So does that mean you can, are you grossed out now by snow rather than loving it because of that new information?

Melanie Avalon

not grossed out, I just feel like I feel like somebody lifted the curtain, like the illusion is gone.

Barry Conrad

Smoke and mirrors, the veil is fallen on how snow is made.

Melanie Avalon

I know. So here we are. Here we are. What's new in your life?

Barry Conrad

You'll love this, Mel. I'm actually preparing for a show called Disco Wonderland, and it's basically I'll be hosting and performing at this event. It's with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, but disco music. So think high energy, sophisticated, classy, awesome fun. We have people like Pauline, who's one of Australia's best female voices. We have Tim Lucy Mondo, who I did beautiful, the Carole King musical with. And we have, you'll like this one, Nick Afoa, who played Simba in The Lion King. So we're all taking the stage. It's going to be- Wait, wait, wait. In the original Lion King? The stage production, the musical.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, he played it like in the, in which version, in Australia.

Barry Conrad

Australia and New Zealand, yeah. And Singapore, yeah. It's going to be lit. It's going to be an amazing couple of nights next. Well, this is going to be in the past now, but it's happening next week, Friday and Saturday. I'm so excited. And also I get to like, you know, dress up, which you'd appreciate as well. If you were here, do you want to come? Do you want to fly?

Melanie Avalon

Yes, thank you. You should come. I would love that.

Barry Conrad

It's right up here, Ellie.

Melanie Avalon

it's disco. So is it going to be like people dancing like a disco party?

Barry Conrad

So yeah, so it's at this place called the Horden Pavilion, which is like one of the most popular venues here in Sydney. And yeah, people will be on their feet dancing. It's a ticketed event. It's gonna go off. I can't wait. I'm so excited. And you're singing? I'm gonna be hosting and also taking the stage, also singing. So I'm kind of holding the night together slash storytelling because it's like a narrative all the way through it. And then also singing.

Melanie Avalon

That's so cool. Oh my goodness, please post all the things.

Barry Conrad

I'm going to post everything, yeah.

Melanie Avalon

feel like I was there. That's amazing. Congrats. That's awesome.

Barry Conrad

Thanks. I'm so excited. Awesome. What about you? Fill me in on all things Melanie.

Melanie Avalon

Well, I had a moment this week this was a moment. I interviewed you might have seen it on Instagram, but Dr. Amani Bellore have I brought her up yet?

Barry Conrad

I don't think so.

Melanie Avalon

So, she was in a 2019 Oscar-nominated documentary called The Cave, and this woman, I have never been so in awe of a human on my show and really nervous, I was so nervous to interview her. So, she was the first woman to lead an underground secret hospital called The Cave in Syria, all during the Syrian Civil War. So, like, so her memoir came out, that's why she was on the show. Her memoir came out like a year ago. I immediately, when I got the pitch, I immediately recognized her from that. I didn't see that documentary when it came out, but I recognized it. So, I read her memoir, I watched the movie, and it was just so, it was so haunting. It made me realize how naive I am to everything that goes on in the world, because basically, she was leading this hospital, and there's shellings, and they're getting attacked all the time, and they're always dealing with war victims, and they're running out of supplies, and she's dealing with patriarchal society where people don't want her to be in charge, and it was so haunting. And then, she's had multiple humanitarian awards, and she's spoken to the United Nations, and it was just crazy. And then what's even crazier is because I booked her like a year ago, she had stopped doing interviews, actually. So, and then we did our interview, and in December is when Assad fled in Syria, and so there was the revolution and everything. So, this was her first interview that she's done since that happened in December of 2024. So, she said, I asked her, because I asked her, what is it like to have these conversations, and is it hard to think about, and are you sad? And she said that the conversation she was having with me was the first time she's had a happy interview, because it was the first one she has done since that happened in December. It was a moment. And then the second moment is, I normally record on what we're recording on right now, which is a podcast recording platform, but we were having some technology issues, so I decided to record it on Zoom. Have you ever recorded something on Zoom?

Barry Conrad

I have.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, so I was so nervous because we had the interview and I was like, this is one of my most cherished conversations I've ever had in my entire life type thing, you know? And so I was so nervous about losing it that I wasn't closing out the window, like the zoom window because I was like, I can't close it until I have the file. Because what if, you know, so I'm like, I'm not going to close this window, I'm just going to go find the file and then I couldn't find the file because you have to close the window to have the file. So I literally spent like a panicked 30 minutes thinking I lost it, like trying to find it. And then finally I realized, oh, you have to close the window. And then it popped up like right away. And then Barry, I started sobbing, not crying, sobbing. I was so happy.

Barry Conrad

It's like I just picture the-

Melanie Avalon

So yeah, that's my life.

Barry Conrad

It sounds like a really special experience, to say the least, right?

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I'll put a link to it in the show notes, but I don't know about you. I just feel like I need to open my eyes a little bit more to the world, what's going on. Like in general.

Barry Conrad

I can relate, you know, with that as well. I mean, there's just so much happening at any one time, but you still feel so sheltered sometimes, you know, and just caught up in your own bubble of your own reality, really speaking for myself.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I don't watch the news.

Barry Conrad

You don't?

Melanie Avalon

No, I'm gonna keep doing that. I'm gonna keep not watching it even with this experience, but I Just figure if something is bad enough that I need to know about For like my immediate surrounding like I will find out Like people will tell me or all like the zombies will show up at my door Like I just don't want to get overstressed just watching the news all the time because it tends to be like sensationalized and doom and

Barry Conrad

I was about to say the same thing. It really can be sensationalized and there's people that I know who are just so deep in it. Like every update, every, it's just like, and it consumes just the way they live their life and like in fear and anxiety and stress is like, well, I don't really have capacity for that. So I'm not going to do that.

Melanie Avalon

Exactly. And then there, though, there's the tension where, you know, I feel like I should have known more about the serious situation. I basically learned all of it reading her book and watching the documentary. I didn't even, I didn't know about it that really. So maybe the solution is to like seek out conscious like content like that, where you're seeking out conscious, you know, explorations of topics.

Barry Conrad

And just being intentional about it, right?

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, exactly. Well, shall we jump into some fasting-related things?

Barry Conrad

I think we should jump all the way and let's do it.

Melanie Avalon

All right. So Barry and I are excited because this is going to be the first episode of a new format we're trying. So basically each episode, one of us is going to start with a study that we found related to intermittent fasting. I guess it probably, I should always like in some way relate to intermittent fasting, but it could be a little bit tangential. And then we're going to do listener Q&A. And then at the end, we will break our fast, except sort of in our minds.

Barry Conrad

I'm gonna maybe have a drink it. We'll see how we go

Melanie Avalon

Oh, okay. That's where we're going to profile the restaurants like we've been doing because we love food. So we love feasting. So to start things off, the study I found, this study is called Molecular Mechanisms of Healthy Aging, the Role of Chloric Restriction, Intermittent Fasting, Mediterranean Diet, and Ketogenic Diet, a Scoping Review. It was published in Nutrients in 2024. The reason I was drawn to the study is it's looking at anti-aging mechanisms for longevity, which is obviously a passion of mine. And it specifically goes through those four things I just mentioned. So calorie restriction, intermittent fasting, Mediterranean diet, and the keto diet to compare how they affect aging and why in a way. Like why is each one having these beneficial effects compared to the other, which I really like because we talk about, we definitely talk about calorie restriction, IF, and the keto diet all the time. And I'm really interested in the Mediterranean diet as well. In general, so the overlap seems to be that they affect the mTOR, AMPK pathways, which we've talked about on the show as well. So mTOR is basically a signaling pathway involved in growth. And AMPK is kind of like the opposite. It's activated during fasting, calorie restriction, and these things we'll talk about it. But it's like self-preservation of the body and it actually is supportive of longevity. So let me go through the four different ones. So calorie restriction, they talked about it and they said, and this is pretty well known, but it is the most effective non-genetic intervention known to date for extending both lifespan and health span, which is something to think about. People say that, I mean, I read that all the time from all different places. And I wonder if that will ever change. I wonder if fasting or some other protocol will ever come out that shows to be more effective. But as of right now, calorie restriction is the most effective. Did you know that?

Barry Conrad

I actually didn't know that but yeah, I'm curious. I'd like to hear the others because this is this is super interesting

Melanie Avalon

They go through examples of studies that show that the reason that calorie restriction seems to be so powerful or potent for longevity is, well, it has a lot of just health effects in general, like weight loss, reducing inflammation, improving cardiovascular health, and then like literally slowing biological aging. But again, it's primarily through how it's affecting that mTOR pathway. So again, that mTOR pathway is like the growth signal mode. And while it's really great and really important, like you need it to build muscle, you need it to grow, you need it to do all those things. Also, if it's over activated, it's aging because then you're always in growth mode. And so calorie restriction reduces its activity. And one of the ways that it might do that is by reducing protein intake. And there's one amino acid and protein called leucine. And it is really, really, it's a really powerful stimulator of that mTOR growth pathway. So by reducing protein with calorie restriction, and in particular leucine, you're reducing that mTOR pathway, and you're encouraging helpful aging. And then on top of that, calorie restriction also reduces insulin, which we talk about a lot in this show, and IGF-1. So insulin is the hormone responsible for fat storage and putting energy into your cells. And it can be aging when you have too much of it all the time, and it stimulates mTOR. And then IGF-1 is also a growth signaler. So calorie restriction reduces both of those. And then not only does it reduce mTOR, but I was mentioning that AMPK, which is the flip side of things, calorie restriction actually activates it. Because like I was saying before, AMPK is activated during things like fasting. It happens when you have a low energy state. So calorie restriction is like literally just a low energy state. So it instigates AMPK. So that's like the summary of calorie restriction and why it's probably anti-aging. I can go into the next ones, but do you have any thoughts?

Barry Conrad

Is this sort of a margin of what that deficit is, what defines calorie restriction, or is it really case by case per person?

Melanie Avalon

I mean. That is such a great question. They just define it as a sustained reduction in overall caloric intake while assuring adequate nutrition. It's kind of, okay, so the studies they looked at, the ones they looked at, for example, they look at one study, a two-year intervention in 218 healthy weight or non-obese individuals, and that was 25% calorie restriction, a follow-up study, this follow-up study would have been the same sample size. So they're saying they're like 25%. I know the calorie restriction society, which is actually a thing, I think they do like 30% restriction, kind of existing in that sphere.

Barry Conrad

Right. So beneath your maintenance calories, you're resting, you know? Yeah. Okay. 30% of that.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, 25, 30% or so.

Barry Conrad

And I wonder as well how many days or what frequency people need to do that for this to be effective. Do you know what I mean? Like, is it one day a week? Is it for, you know, every other day? Yeah, that's an interesting question as well. Like, how often do you need to do that?

Melanie Avalon

So like, for example, that, that one intervention I talked about a second ago, that was two years straight. Two years straight. So that was actually the calorie trial, which is probably the most famous of calorie restriction studies besides the Minnesota starvation experiment. And so it was two years, which is a long time. I mean, I don't think like just one day, you know, it's Yeah, so then there is intermittent fasting, represent. And what's interesting about IEF, so it also has a lot of beneficial effects all over. So body composition, cardiovascular health, cholesterol, hormonal health, it's similar to calorie restriction, and that it's affecting those pathways by, you know, reduced energy intake. But they say that it potentially has additional benefits or different impacts compared to calorie restriction. And that's mainly because you get this feasting period where you get high nutrition. And so there's a few different benefits to that one getting the nutrition, but be that like fast fee cycle is actually a cellular stress response mechanism. And fasting supports that more than calorie restriction. So it can help build resilience in the body, possibly more than calorie restriction by going back and forth. They were saying that IEF fasting's effect on insulin may be better because of the fasting feasting period. And then fasting also can do things like upregulate heat shock proteins, and sirtuins, which are also signaling mechanisms in the body which can support longevity. Yeah, so basically, it's pretty similar to calorie restriction in some ways, but it also has other benefits because of that, that cycling nature and that period of time where you're not calorie restricted.

Barry Conrad

I think it's super interesting that it's saying that it builds more resilience on the body than calorie restriction alone, right, intermittent fasting.

Melanie Avalon

that, yeah, basically it can be better for the, it says it can, may also enhance cellular stress response mechanisms more because both of those are a stressor. So fasting is a stressor, calorie restriction is a stressor, but fasting, because you are going back and forth from fasting, eating, fasting, eating, it's like priming the body's stress response more. It's like helping it more. And those stress pathways are really involved in longevity.

Barry Conrad

That's awesome. Go IF!

Melanie Avalon

I know. And then similarly, they did Mediterranean next, but I'll do Keto next because that's what we talk about a lot. And it's also kind of similar. So it's also activating similar pathways and having effects on mTOR, but it's not from not eating. So it's not from a lack of food, like fasting and calorie restriction are. It's actually from highly from reducing insulin, because on a ketogenic diet, you're not having carbs, you're not stimulating insulin and having that glucose. And so that in turn can directly affect the mTOR activity. They had concerns, oh, they said that it also can actually support autophagy, even though you're eating, but that reducing that mTOR and, you know, reducing that insulin can help with that. But they do have concerns about how keto, depending on who you are and what you're doing can affect LDL cholesterol levels. So they say it could pose a potential risk for cardiovascular health in some individuals. But what's interesting about this one, like this pillar, is that it's similar mechanisms and things going on, but you're not doing it from not eating, you're doing it from the type of food you're eating.

Barry Conrad

which really speaks to the importance of actually what we eat. It's not just about the fasting or just restricting calories, but our diet significantly impacts our bodies.

Melanie Avalon

Yes, so, so, so much, which actually brings us to the fourth one, which is the Mediterranean diet. So for the Mediterranean diet, they talk about how it's the most documented diet for slowing the development of age associated conditions. And a big reason for this, by the way, is because of the authors of the MIND diet trial, which was like this really, you know, huge thing and I actually had on some of those researchers and the author, the authors of the official MIND diet on the Melanie Avalon biohacking podcast. So I'll put a link to that in the show notes. But in any case, so the Mediterranean diet, it's really interesting. It also can affect anti-aging pathways, specifically inflammatory markers, things like C-reactive protein and also indirectly affect mTOR. But it's not doing it through, again, like, it's not like keto. It's not doing it through not eating, it's doing it through the actual foods. So it says that some of the foods included in the Mediterranean diet, specifically the high levels of unsaturated fats and the antioxidants can modulate insulin sensitivity and endothelial function, which are then affecting mTOR. Then they also talk about how the fiber rich component of the diet can help support the production of short-chain fatty acids that can have an effect on these aging pathways, which actually brings me to the book I'm reading right now. What is it? I've had Dr. Stephen Gundry on my show twice. He's the figure behind the plant paradox. He's kind of like a legend in that world. I had him on for, I think, the longevity paradox maybe. And then he wrote a book about keto and then I had him on for unlocking the keto code. But his newest book is called Gut Check. Let me see when it comes out. Okay. It's out now. And he's talking all about the role of signaling molecules to the mitochondria to support health and short-chain fatty acids that I just mentioned that the Mediterranean diet can help produce. They actually do so much to signal to our cells mitochondria to get stronger and deal with inflammation and it's anti-aging. So yeah.

Barry Conrad

With a Mediterranean diet, is that things like lots of seafood and some red meat, herbs and spices, things like that, vegetables? There's no poultry, right?

Melanie Avalon

So they define it as, they say it's distinguished by an abundant consumption of unrefined cereals, fruits, vegetables, legumes, olive oil, moderate intake of dairy products and alcohol, represent, low consumption of meat, synergistic blend of vital minerals, antioxidants, and compounds with anti-inflammatory properties. Yeah, when you think of the Mediterranean diet, especially after like reading that book, it's things like fruit and like leafy greens, olive oil, wine, some fish, greens. I feel like

Barry Conrad

Like we could both really get into this diet, but there's a couple of things, like obviously we both eat lots of animal protein, and they don't recommend lots, they just say your moderation. And also the grains, you don't really eat grains, do you, Mel? Not that much, and I don't as well, other than rice, white rice. Could you do it? Could you follow the Mediterranean? Or have you flirted with the Mediterranean diet before?

Melanie Avalon

Well, interestingly enough, all the foods I eat, like quantity wise, it's more than the Mediterranean diet for the animal protein, but the actual foods themselves are all on the Mediterranean diet. So like when I read the official mind diet, which I highly recommend, they actually have a quiz, like it's like a scoring system where you, they want you to eat a certain amount of points. And foods, different foods are like different points. So you can like score yourself and see like how, you know, how well you're doing on the Mediterranean diet, like scale. Yeah. Basically, cause I eat primarily as my meat, it's like fish and scallops and things like that. So I do need to add some more olive oil. I think they're really big olive oil fans. And the only fruits they focus on is, is berries, which is what I eat.

Barry Conrad

Buried, just that.

Melanie Avalon

Mm-hmm. And what I really like that they do, because I feel like, okay, there are so many studies tangent. How many times are there health studies and they'll just be fruits and vegetables as the category, like lumped together, like produce? That's so broad. That is so broad. It should be broken down. So like they break it down into berries, and then like all other fruit. And then for vegetables, they break it down into leafy greens and all other vegetables.

Barry Conrad

Interesting.

Melanie Avalon

and it's like different effects like you if you break it down that way you'll find different health effects than lumping it all together.

Barry Conrad

I have a lot of blueberries and raspberries like frozen, like with my Greek yogurt in terms of berries. Is it specifically a type of berry or just all berries?

Melanie Avalon

I think it's all berries. I'm pretty sure, I need to fact check that, but I'm fairly certain it was. Right, it is because there was a question about are cherries included? And I don't remember the answer.

Barry Conrad

I don't have a lot of cherries to get. Do you have a lot of cherries? I don't really buy them on the regular.

Melanie Avalon

No, you haven't had cherries in forever.

Barry Conrad

When I think of cherries, I think of like a dessert, you know, like it's going to be on a slice of a fun, fatty cake or some chocolate cake or something like that. You know what I mean?

Melanie Avalon

Yes, like a staple flavor like cherry, you know

Barry Conrad

I do. I actually could do, every time I see the Mediterranean diet, just see those words, it just gives a fresh, healthy vibe. I could definitely do Mediterranean diet, I just need way more meat than what they're suggesting.

Melanie Avalon

I do too, yeah.

Barry Conrad

That was super interesting. Just the differences, the different effects that you can get through caloric restriction and IF and then just dietary. Just what we eat. So fascinating.

Melanie Avalon

And I forgot to mention, so Dr. Gundry in that book, he also talks about how ketones are a signaling molecule for the mitochondria. He actually thinks the benefits of the keto diet and ketogenesis are from not necessarily the ketones being fuel, but how they talk to our mitochondria. And our mitochondria are our cells' powerhouses. So they're like the energy production center of every cell. So yeah, he has this theory that it's not like ketones are a great fuel, per se. It's that they talk to the mitochondria, specifically they tell them to uncouple. It's like this whole, this whole thing.

Barry Conrad

Wow, yeah, yeah, what about even with the keto diet, how a lot of people like, well, it's, it's a great reason just to eat a lot of bacon or it's not just that right. It's not just eating a whole lot of bacon is a specific amount of fat. You should have protein is that am I right in saying that.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I think there's because like, people who are keto and they'll just go all out with like all the fat all the time. And I really, I personally don't think that that's healthy. I don't think it means we should just be slamming ourselves with all of this fat. I think it's more about reducing the carbon take and getting in getting in the ketones and then having, you know, the amount of healthy fats that you need. But people are like, Oh, it's fat is like a free food on keto, because your insulin is low. So you're not going to store any of it. Here's the problem with that. It's just not true. So the reason insulin is low with fat is because fat doesn't really require much insulin to be stored. So it's really ironic, honestly, because people think that that means it's a free food and you're not going to store it. No, it just means it's so easily stored that it's not really even affecting insulin. So if you're eating like tons of fat on keto, you're not gonna be burning dietary body fat, you're gonna be burning dietary fat. Yeah, I think I think a whole foods approach to keto is much more healthy. So like focusing on whole foods and, and then just having natural fats that come with your food already, like steak and chicken. And I mean, you can have bacon, but you don't want to be eating just bacon, which is like mostly fat.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, I've seen people eat bacon in like blocks of butter like on you know, social media just to sort of sensationalize Oh, it's just so it doesn't seem healthy at all

Melanie Avalon

I think people should really focus on protein, like we talk about, and having healthy amounts of fat. Yup. So, okay, shall we jump into listener questions?

Barry Conrad

Let's do it. Let's jump on in.

Melanie Avalon

All right, so our first question comes from Nicole on Facebook, and she says, I'm 48 and perimenopause. I work out in the mornings around 5.30 a.m., about four to five days a week at a minimum doing strength training. I know that it's ideal to eat protein after lifting. Do you have thoughts on continuing my fast after my workout and waiting until lunch to eat? Am I doing more harm than good by not eating after lifting? Also, I know that fasting my age is supposed to be different. I have an IUD, so I cannot base anything off my cycle since I do not know where I am at it without menstruating. Okay, so protein waiting to eat after lifting. Do you have thoughts, Barry?

Barry Conrad

I do have thoughts. Nicole, this is a great question. I love my protein. So first off, I'm going to say, you know, fasting at your age can still really work beautifully, but it is about tailoring it to you. So working out at 5.30 AM and delaying that protein until lunch, it's going to be fine, especially if your body feels good because you're maintaining muscle mass and your energy stable. But strength training, it's like a whole, it's a whole different beast. So ideally you want to give your muscles some protein to recover and grow. So a small clean protein source post lift, something like maybe like a shake could do the trick while keeping you close to your, your fasting benefits. But remember we don't actually need to consume protein right after. So you don't have to have it right up, like put the weight down and go to your car and you know, hold down protein. You don't have to do that right after your training, but rather within a 24 hour window. So you may know like the RDA is it's one gram per pound or 0.8 grams per kg of body weight daily. But keep in mind, that RDA it's designed to cover the needs of the general population. So like to just to avoid deficiency, it's not for people like you and I or people who have higher activity levels or specific health goals like building muscle, for example, that's probably not going to, it's not going to probably be optimal. And I'm guessing that if you're training like four or five days a week, you're going to need a bit more protein. So I'd actually recommend 1.5 or even, even double the RDA on average. That's sort of what I'm doing on the daily around 130 grams. Also, you know, I've definitely isn't, it's not a one size fits all kind of situations. So from what you're saying, your IUD makes it a bit tricky with your cycles, but listening to your energy levels and well, how your body feels, that's going to be what guides you. Melanie, what do you think?

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I love that. Definitely. You don't have to eat right after the anabolic window can extend for up to 24 hours after a stimulus from, you know, strike training. So what's key is making sure you actually get in enough protein. And you could always adjust. So basically, like I would focus on if you don't want to eat until lunch, I would say that's fine. Just make sure that you're getting enough protein in like Barry was saying. And if you notice that you are losing muscle or aren't making gains, then you know, A, look at how much protein you're eating and B, you could try bumping up earlier like you could you could experiment, but you should in theory be okay as long as you're getting enough. The fasting at any age being different. So check out my interview that I did with Dr. Mindy Peltz on the Melanie Avalon biohacking podcast. She wrote fast like a girl, she wrote the menopause reset. And you can also check out Cynthia Thurlow's book as well, the former co-host on this show because she she talks a lot about this. But you can still so A, yes, you can adjust fasting for, you know, perimenopause menopause. Also, if you have an IUD and don't have cycle, you actually can still have and I think it's Dr. Peltz who talks about this, you can still like track a cycle. And you just do it based I'm trying to remember what she says, I think you can do it around like moon cycles if you want. You can also do it around like using some of your biometrics to figure out like when your cycle would have been. But you can still if you want to, you can still do that. So I would definitely listen to those interviews and check out those books. Some people, yeah, some people really adjust their fasting different ways, others don't. The good thing about fasting is that from what a lot of people say like interviewing Dr. Peltz and like Cynthia, when you actually enter menopause, you can actually do more fasting like your your body's with the exception of you want to make sure you're getting off protein and things like that. The body's not as you don't have to worry as much about like hormonal issues or cycle issues by overdoing it with fasting when you're when you're menopausal versus when you're younger.

Barry Conrad

I get asked this as well, like, you know, fasting is different for men and women, like, can you elaborate on that? And I think that is, I think it's so nuanced. What are your thoughts on that? Well, like, you know, because even what Nicole sang here, I mean, she's very menopause. You know, it's different. It's different to a male's approach. How would you, you can't really blanket statement saying these are the differences and that's black and white.

Melanie Avalon

Do you know what I mean? Yeah, not at all. The ironic thing is women actually tend to be better fat burners than men, which can seem surprising because it seems like women are always the ones, I don't wanna make stereotypes, but a stereotype out there is that women struggle more with weight loss than men, I think. Women are actually, yeah, so especially like when doing exercise, women are more likely to burn fat at certain levels than men. I mean, we store more fat, but we're also like primed to use it more. That's a benefit there. As far as the differences with the fasting, women do need to be more, especially during their cycling years, need to be more concerned about that they're getting enough nutrition that they're not over fasting, and that it's not creating too much of a stress that is gonna throw off other things hormonally. I think they do need to pay more attention to that than men. But these ideas out there that fasting is horrible for women, a lot of it goes back to rodent studies, which are just not even remotely applicable because it's like studies of rodents fasting for an entire day or more, which is the equivalent of days in a human. So it's not surprising that it creates hormonal issues in rats when the equivalent fasting hours would be days and days in humans. And they also have a more sensitive stress response. Rats also, they're much more sensitive to fluctuations affecting their reproductive cycle because they're having kids, I don't know, baby rats all the time. It's something that is much more sensitive to environmental signals of stress.

Barry Conrad

And you do hear a lot. No, we put on weight easier than you guys, like it's easier for guys to be in shape. And I've heard, I have heard some females saying that and I'm not calling everyone out, I'm just saying that's what I've heard on the street, in the gyms and yeah.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I think it's I mean, it's a lot so much of it is the insulin resistant and like resistance and the food we're eating but when it actually comes to like the ability to burn fat, like women are made to be fat stores fat stores and fat burners. And that's because we're, there's a lot more concern in the body for running out of energy and nutrients because of having a baby and like supporting a child through like pregnancy and reproduction. So women are good at storing fat and they're good at burning it. There you go.

Barry Conrad

Yeah. Something I've learned that I can now answer, well, you know, women actually are good at storing hand-burning fat, so I'll say that.

Melanie Avalon

Yes, exactly. And then once women hit like I was saying before, like menopausal, that's when they become a little bit more similar to men hormonally as far as like the fluctuations and not having to be quite as concerned with fast and creating like hormonal issues.

Barry Conrad

Well, should I jump into the next question? Okay. So we have a question from Jennifer. I'm curious about the safety of intermittent fasting and kidney disease and in brackets she says moderate or if IF could possibly offer any benefits to damaged kidneys. I don't have diabetes. My kidney damage brackets scarring occurred from infections when I was a baby. My GFR is 41 to 54 range.

Melanie Avalon

All right, Jennifer, thank you for your question. I got really excited for a second because I think I manually typed her name in and I spelled it J-E-N-I-F-F-E-R, which is how my cousin spells it and nobody spells it that way. So I got really, I thought for a second, maybe I found somebody who spells it the way my cousin does, but I think I manually just typed that in. Jennifer, thank you for your question. So I'm not a doctor, just not a doctor. And I would say, you know, for everything, work with your doctor, especially when if you have, you know, a condition like that with the scarring. I can just tell you what I found in the literature about fasting and kidney disease. And there are quite a few studies. So for example, I found one called Effects of Ramadan Fasting on Moderate to Severe Chronic Kidney Disease. So this is 2017. It did look at Ramadan style fasting. So, you know, not eating during the daylight hours. This is people who actually have moderate to severe chronic kidney disease. Almost half of them had stage four, followed by stage three and then stage five. And it found that fasting was reasonably safe for them. There was another one called Safety of Fasting and Non-Diabetic Patients with Stable Chronic Kidney Disease during Ramadan. Again, the last one looked at 68 patients. 38 were diabetic, 28 were non-diabetic. The majority were stage three and followed by stage four and then stage... Oh, sorry. The majority were stage three A followed by stage four, followed by stage three B, then stage two, then stage five. They actually saw improvements in... So for fasting, it improved blood pressure, improved creatine levels and uric acid levels for all of the patients. And their conclusion was that they saw no worsening of renal functions in both diabetic and non-diabetic patients with stables, chronic kidney disease who intended to fast. That was the takeaway of like the studies I was finding. So I would basically say, I would just monitor everything. I would, you know, do the fasting, but hopefully you're working with a doctor, especially having that condition and monitoring all the things for your kidney performance, your kidney levels. I would just really keep an eye on it and work with a doctor. Do you have thoughts?

Barry Conrad

I, as well, I'm not a doctor, but from my understanding, I would say, from what I know, the higher your glomerular filtration rate is, the better your kidneys are at filtering. And since your kidney damage isn't related to diabetes, that's a positive, but yeah, as Mel said, I'd strongly just encourage you to talk with your nephrologist about how fasting fits into your situation. Safety first, Jennifer, safety first.

Melanie Avalon

All right, is it time to hypothetically in our minds maybe break our fast?

Barry Conrad

I think it's time it's different time i'm ready.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, so do you have a restaurant for us, Barry Conrad?

Barry Conrad

I do have a restaurant, so this week's restaurant is Antoine's Restaurant in New Orleans, Louisiana. The reason why I chose this restaurant, a few reasons, it was established in 1840, which makes it one of the oldest family-run restaurants in the US. It's known for its delicious French Creole cuisine, and it introduced the famous Oysters Rockefeller in 1889. It features 14 unique dining rooms, 14 rooms, each with its own vibe and

Melanie Avalon

14. Wait, I'm trying to envision that. That's so many rooms.

Barry Conrad

It's so many rooms with a different vibe, so I know you'd appreciate that one, Mel, and it's hosted notable figures like Winston Churchill, Frank Sinatra, and LBJ, Lyndon B. Johnson, the 36th president of the United States, so it's a cornerstone of New Orleans, blending history, hospitality, and exceptional food, so I'm so ready.

Melanie Avalon

I forgot, have you been to New Orleans?

Barry Conrad

I have once before and I loved it. Have you been? No. It's so vibrant.

Melanie Avalon

I know. I'm annoyed that I didn't go for Taylor's last concert. Why didn't you go? I think I had so much like trauma from trying to get tickets to the first one, which was the most amazing night of my life. But I was like, I don't know if I can go through this again.

Barry Conrad

What do you mean? What happened?

Melanie Avalon

I was there for the, remember the whole Ticketmaster fiasco.

Barry Conrad

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yeah.

Melanie Avalon

I've told you that, right? You have. Six hours. I was actually podcasting for this show. I woke up early for me like 8 a.m. That is like so early for me. The stress, I know it doesn't sound, it's complete first world problems, but the stress of being in a Ticketmaster queue for six hours and it looks frozen and not knowing if you should refresh the window or not. So like six hours of like wondering should I refresh the window because it seems frozen. But then people are like, no, if you refresh the window, you'll lose your place in line. It was being sleep deprived. And then I had a podcast at the same time.

Barry Conrad

So you were like not, like you probably would have been in two minds, like you podcast you, but you're thinking about this window that, do I not refresh it?

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, yes. Because you know when you're debating a decision to make, it's stressful anyways if you just don't know what to do. And then the urgency of meeting these tickets. And then six hours is a long time, Barry. It's a long time to be worried about, be stressed about that.

Barry Conrad

Can you tell us what happened at the very end? Did you leave the window or did you refresh it?

Melanie Avalon

I did not refresh it. Yeah, my sister-in-law was mostly was like don't refresh. She was like Twitter was saying don't I don't know I was recording with Cynthia. I told her I think it was Cynthia Yeah, I think Cynthia was my co-host at the time and I was like listen I was like if this goes through I have to I have to stop Yeah, it was Cynthia because so then and then I got in like mid podcast recording and I was like stop And then I was like in this panic frenzy of Because I should have bought six tickets, which was the max but I bought two

Barry Conrad

Should've bought 6 tickets, why?

Melanie Avalon

Because people were reselling them for like I would have made bank

Barry Conrad

Yeah, that's a good call.

Melanie Avalon

But yeah, that didn't occur to me.

Barry Conrad

You know she's going to tour. She's probably going to tour again soon, right? I'm guessing she has another surprise.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, but will it be the Aeros tour though? She should do, oh yeah, she should do surprise Aeros tour again, part two.

Barry Conrad

Maybe I'd like to go to a show with you just to see you lose your mind to Taylor Swift.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, so we're there for dinner. What would you get for your... Oh, I have an idea because we were trying to figure out the terminology. Maybe we should just read the terminology on the menu.

Barry Conrad

Okay, let's just do that. Let's say what they have there. Let's do that.

Melanie Avalon

Like because the beginning, well, I guess we can clarify, but so the beginning is appetizers and oysters as a category and then soup and salads. So yeah, what would you get?

Barry Conrad

OK, I'm going to say I've got to go because, you know, they I said before they famously introduced the oysters Rockefeller. So I'm going to that's going to be one of them. The oysters Rockefeller. The I love my potatoes. I'm going to go souffle potatoes. And then because I have been to New Orleans once before and I love the gumbo. I've got to do the seafood gumbo. That's my jam. So those three. Should we read the descriptions? Yeah, I think we should. So the oysters Rockefeller, it's baked with a Rockefeller sauce created in 1899 by second generation chef and proprietor Jules Alcator. The souffle potatoes are classic fried puff potatoes with bérené sauce. And the seafood gumbo is Gulf shrimp, oysters, lump crab meat, blue crab and shrimp stock. Trinity, okra and filet. It's going down. Party in my tummy. It's happening.

Melanie Avalon

I don't know what that filet is because it's spelled F-I-L-E. Yeah, that's yeah, it's not like a steak filet.

Barry Conrad

So it's a French term for a boneless cut of meat or fish. So it is, there we go. In this case, it refers to a piece of meat often from fish or beef that's prepared with our bones.

Melanie Avalon

So it's probably fish. Well, Barry, we've talked, but we haven't talked talked since I had my oysters again.

Barry Conrad

Oh, here we go. Let's hear it. Let's hear the grief.

Melanie Avalon

Can I tell you something? I posted. Are you in our Facebook group?

Barry Conrad

You know what i'm embarrassing you know i need to join the facebook group cuz that's really bad do you get on facebook i definitely will have to more now cuz i'm the new course but yeah i'm jumping in the group now as we speak.

Melanie Avalon

Well, you should jump in and you should see the post I posted. I posted a post of the oysters that I had at a Michelin-starred restaurant here called Spring, shout out. And I posted and I was like, I got these oysters and I just don't like oysters. And I mean, I'm paraphrasing, but I was like, does anybody else have this experience? Because basically, I don't understand why I don't like them because they are so nutritious, I should like them. So there's something going on here. There's a reason they don't taste good to people, I think. Maybe we're not supposed to eat them. Regardless, the amount of comments this post got was insane. And I got a lot of backup. People don't like oysters.

Barry Conrad

The people out there, all of you listeners who are backing up, Melanie, no, it's not. Oysters are so good, they're so delicious. How can you say that?

Melanie Avalon

Well, because so I got it completely plain, like no, nothing on it, because people were like, Oh, well, you need like the olive oil or the lemon. But also I got supported when I went. I actually so I went with my sister my previously mentioned cousin Jennifer and our friend Conrad, who is a he's actually the bar manager at another Michelin restaurant here called Lazy Betty. And he came to my defense, because everybody at the table was saying that I needed to put stuff on them to make them taste better. And I was like, No, because intuitively, if I like it, I should like it without other stuff. And Conrad said this is true. Oh, my gosh, I just realized his name is Conrad. And your last name is Conrad. That's confusing.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, that is confusing.

Melanie Avalon

whoa okay it literally tasted like everything bad about the sea like not the good like okay like my spirulina is like take the good from the sea and like yummy this is like everything bad about the sea like in a bite i literally took one bite and i was like done and it was a massive oyster it was massive

Barry Conrad

Did you approach it with like mentally thinking it's going to be disgusting like

Melanie Avalon

No, because I think I should like them. I really do. And I love like raw meat. I love seafood. So I was like, I'm gonna love this oyster. This is gonna be great. I am here for this. And then I...

Barry Conrad

No, you know what? We're gonna change that. We're gonna have oysters together. Are we gonna have good ones? No. Yes. It's gonna be great.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, so you know what for you here at Antoine's I will get this is the last time I'm trying oysters though So if this doesn't work then I'm piecing out From the oyster from the oyster thing. I'll get let me look at the oyster options I'll also get the Rockefeller, but I want everything on the side

Barry Conrad

So you don't want any of those, okay, okay, you don't want any toppings. You want it on the side. All right, that tracks.

Melanie Avalon

and I think I'm good. I don't think I want anything else.

Barry Conrad

Just that? Yeah. You're going to have a Rockefeller for dessert as well? Okay, hopefully not.

Melanie Avalon

No, I'm not.

Barry Conrad

Like one recommend.

Melanie Avalon

I'll tell them, I'll be like, and by the way, you don't have to reserve any oysters for dessert because I'm not going to want any more. Maybe I'll like it. I'm open-minded.

Barry Conrad

I think you know what? I have hope. I have faith it's going to work. It's going to happen. There'll be a day where you'll try and be like, this is where it's at. It's really good.

Melanie Avalon

I don't know. Three times I've done... No, twice. Three times? I think I've had oysters. Two or three. Every time I've done this. Maybe two. Maybe two. I think I've had it three times though, I'm pretty sure. And it's the same experience every time. It's like the seed vomited in my mouth.

Barry Conrad

That's so rude.

Melanie Avalon

I'm upsetting you, very upset.

Barry Conrad

I'm actually sitting here shaking my head, I can't believe she said that. Anyway, moving on to the next category.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, okay, I'll redeem myself, I promise.

Barry Conrad

We have classic entrees and Louisiana seafood together so that's I'm guessing that's our main situation and there are dinner add-ons the scallops done that too well how about how about you go first this time.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, let me look. I would like to get two entrees because this is my one meal a day, so I need a lot of food. Oh wait, maybe I can get one of the entrees for my dessert. Okay, that's what I'm going to do. So I'm going to tell them ahead of time to have another one ready because I'm going to order it for dessert. So for my entree, entree, I'm going to get the veal chop. The veal chop royal, which is boiled veal chop, lemon, saffron butter, and roasted ancient grains. I'm going to modify that. See, this is also good because I can teach listeners how to modify things. I'm going to say, can I get it cooked rare? Can I get everything on the side? I don't want butter. Actually, they can put the lemon, saffron butter on the side. I might try it. I don't want any grains. Do they have sauteed steam spinach? And if not, that's fine. They can just not give me anything. Unless do you want the ancient grains?

Barry Conrad

I'll have the greens. Yeah, we don't want to waste it. There, you'll have them. I feel like this is going to happen for real when we eat. You know you're going to be passing up.

Melanie Avalon

We're gonna be so good at ordering when we actually go eat. It's gonna be like we've eaten together like 50 times.

Barry Conrad

She'll have the, she's gone to the restroom, but she's going to have that and you'll come back. Oh, that's exactly what I wanted. Yeah.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, what are you getting?

Barry Conrad

Okay, again, it's, I'm with you. It's my one meal a day vibe. So I'm going to go lamb chops to start for sure. Like to say to start lamb chops. And then I'm going to go the classic fish, Amandine, that looks delicious.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, so you are getting two entrees, then I'm going to get two entrees too.

Barry Conrad

Well, yeah.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, great.

Barry Conrad

I don't know if it's a copy of it.

Melanie Avalon

No, I wanted to, but I was saving one for dessert. I think I should have it now because then I can get more food.

Barry Conrad

You can get more food and you can always, you know, if you don't finish it, I'll finish it.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, perfect. Okay. Are you getting them the way they're prepared?

Barry Conrad

just the way they prepared. I'm going all in. So I don't, unless I'm preparing for something or not, I won't really modify anything, as Melanie likes to do. So I'll probably just smash it the way it is and experience it in its fullness for now.

Melanie Avalon

For the almondine, so fresh local goldfish, light breading, toasted almonds, brown butter, onion rice, fresh lemon drizzle. Are you going to add sauteed lump crab meat? Which it suggests.

Barry Conrad

You know what, I'm going to add that and I'm also going to, because it's an add-on, have some bronze garlic scallops as well. It's going to be massive. Yeah.

Melanie Avalon

What was the other one that you were getting you said to blam shot?

Barry Conrad

The land shops with port demi glaze which is grilled lamb chop lollipops rosemary fingerling potatoes and port demi glaze that sounds so good.

Melanie Avalon

How are you getting it prepared? What temperature?

Barry Conrad

I don't want it to be overdone, so I want it to be pretty... How would you ask for it? I don't know how to ask for things over there temperature-wise. How do you guys say it?

Melanie Avalon

I mean, I'm I asked for blue.

Barry Conrad

Well, I'm not going to blue it. That's going to be medium rare.

Melanie Avalon

Medium rare is pretty safe. If you're at a nice place medium rare safe, if you're at like a fancy place, you could maybe get medium, you know, if you insist, but medium rare is probably good. If you're at a fast casual type place, I would honestly, I would order rare, but medium rare, rare, like emphasize the rare.

Barry Conrad

and listeners as well. I'm not going to leave out the creamed spinach when you see the link to this menu, you know what I mean. So I'm going to add some creamed spinach on the side.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, so they do have spinach, so that means they can do steam spinach for me.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, on the sides, this is asparagus you can probably ask for steamed as well.

Melanie Avalon

Yes, this is true. I have to add in my other entree, which is the Speckled Trout St. Louis, which is Golden Fried Trout Filet Crawfish and Artichoke Saute, Mounier Butter and Creamy Herbed Rice. Okay, we're modifying that. I want it.

Barry Conrad

Oh, wow.

Melanie Avalon

By the way, I'm like saying this very like forceful right now, but I'm very nice to the white staff. I don't, I'm not in their face about it. I'm very kind.

Barry Conrad

Can you give me a demo of how you would do it like if I just came over so

Melanie Avalon

How would you, are you ready to order? I will, I will next week.

Barry Conrad

It's like I'm putting you on the spot like, okay, tell me how you would do it because I really want to hear it I'm sure the listeners want to

Melanie Avalon

I'm gonna do it in character next week. But yeah, so this one, not fried, I would like it just baked or steamed, baked or grilled with no, like no seed oils, no oil, just give me the fish. If they insist that there has to be a little oil, then a tiny bit of olive oil, but I have faith that maybe they can do it without it. And then I'll just see if they can do it with steamed spinach again.

Barry Conrad

Mm-hmm. Okay, that sounds good

Melanie Avalon

Then are you getting a dessert?

Barry Conrad

I am going to get a dessert, but before that, I'm going to get, yeah, let's do desserts first. I'm going to go to a drink. Dessert, I'm going to go, oh, a couple things, here we go. You're probably going to guess. I'm going to get two. You can probably guess which two. I'm going to go the flour-salted caramel chocolate torte, which is candied pecans, salted caramel and merengue crown, and then I'm also going to get the creme brulee, which I just love. It's one of my favorite desserts, those two.

Melanie Avalon

I was very close. I was going to say you were going to do the chocolate torte and then either the bread pudding or the creme brulee. I wasn't sure which one, but then I was leaning towards creme brulee for you. They also baked Alaska though. Did you see that? I've actually never tried that. I haven't either. It's not the one that's like on fire. Yeah. Or they like fire it up. Is it on fire or are they just like...

Barry Conrad

Like maybe they're just like to use the blowtorch, you know, the thing.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, they blowtorch it. Yeah, you have to order that at the beginning of the meal. You know what they should do? They should put that note at the top of the menu.

Barry Conrad

Mm-hmm. They should actually. I could just picture you going. Can I have the baked Alaska? Can we just have the fire on the side? Just hold the fire. Hold the fire.

Melanie Avalon

Hold the fire, I can't do the A-G-E's or the H-C-A's, whatever they are, the amines.

Barry Conrad

What about you? Dessert.

Melanie Avalon

I might get a...

Barry Conrad

us. Maybe another oyster, Runkafella? Nope.

Melanie Avalon

Scallops. I'll get scallops for dessert. That's it. Well, I already had two entrees The bronze garlic scallops and they can actually keep the garlic. I like garlic Although I don't like garlic breath. So maybe not

Barry Conrad

It's alright, you can just sit on your side of the table and you can have a mint or something.

Melanie Avalon

I have a complex around, I have some PTSD surrounding garlic breath. I can't do garlic. I'm public. What do you mean? Because of a comment somebody made to me once.

Barry Conrad

What do they say?

Melanie Avalon

I went on a date with a guy and then he tried to kiss me at the, this is like a first date and they tried to kiss me at the end, which I don't kiss on the first date. You don't? There might be exceptions, but usually no, usually no. And so I declined politely. And then later he said, you had garlic earlier, didn't you? And I was like, I was mortified. And then he said, no, you should take it as a compliment that I still wanted to kiss you. And I was like, I just, the amount of it mortified, like that to this day, I'm like, so it's cause I had gone through, I like discovered garlic. I mean, it had it before, but I discovered how amazing it was. And I had gone to town on garlic like the day before. What a joke.

Barry Conrad

What's that guy? Bro, who says that?

Melanie Avalon

He did, and yeah, he does.

Barry Conrad

Like a backhanded compliment like, you know, you should be flattered. I wanted to kiss you. It's like, God, thanks, bro.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. So to this day, I like can't, if I'm going to be in a social setting, I just, I got to work on that with my therapist probably, but yeah.

Barry Conrad

Are you going to talk to me with your hand in front of your mouth, are you going to do that from across the table while you're eating?

Melanie Avalon

Just not gonna eat garlic. Oh, but you mean like a little bit like when I'm talking a little bit Yeah, I do do that a little bit. Yes

Barry Conrad

I can actually fix you do I think we've met motto talked about this about dates.

Melanie Avalon

We did. Yeah, I don't want to like I occasionally cover my mouth not while talking I wouldn't talk me eating at the same time, but occasionally like while I'm chewing cover my mouth I don't look away though. Well, like don't look at me. I don't make you not look at me Don't look Okay

Barry Conrad

That's so bad. Okay, should we go to a drink? Do you want something to drink? What would you like to...

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. Yes, I don't see, I don't see any wines on here that I can do. Really? I'm not sure. I don't think so. This is where I'd have to bring my own wine, I think, to this restaurant.

Barry Conrad

You can scan the, I don't know if you can be bothered if we have time, there's a QR code to see the complete list, but that could be time-consuming.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, for like the bottles. Oh, you know what? Yeah, no. Everything by the glass. I don't see any organic, low sugar, European wine. So I would look at the bottle list and look for that. Otherwise, I'm sure they have a cork policy. I could bring a bottle. How about you?

Barry Conrad

Well, a couple of things. I'm going to get a bottle of the Chablis because that would just pair really well with the style of cuisine that we have. And then I will get a Mardi Gras Mambo cocktail, which is Casamigos Blanco, blue curacao, lime juice, and orange juice. And that's a cocktail for all of you listening.

Melanie Avalon

So you know what? I could maybe I could do that. So it is organic that Chubley is, I don't know the ABV, but I would get that. It's a French white, as long as it's not like too sweet. So awesome. Thanks for picking this one. Oh, gift shop. There's a gift shop.

Barry Conrad

Are we going to do the thing where if there's like an alternative thing like a gift shop you have to choose a gift as well or are we just going to stick to the food. We could go on forever if we do that let's stick to the food otherwise you could be here online shopping going through every category.

Melanie Avalon

I could get a wine glass. If it was like a really amazing experience and I wanted to remember this place, which I'm sure I would, I mean, it looks amazing. I think I would get a wine glass.

Barry Conrad

A vino set. A go vino set of four. That looks pretty good.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. Well, this was fun.

Barry Conrad

I feel like satisfied just even ordering the food even though i haven't eaten it like thinking about it right now.

Melanie Avalon

I do too, because we're all about fasting and feasting, even if you're crazy like me with ordering. But I really, I feel like this is going to help people, they're going to learn like how to order. But you know, because I think people get intimidated, not how to order because you can totally order like the way Barry orders, but if you have dietary restrictions or want to make adjustments, you can. Hold on, hold on, hold on.

Barry Conrad

what do you mean the way Barry orders? I don't just have anything. It's just like, if I want to change it, you know, I will change it. Yeah.

Melanie Avalon

There are two different types of order.

Barry Conrad

Yeah. And there's no shame in changing order as well. It's just the way you do it, right, Mel? Exactly.

Melanie Avalon

I'll do it in character next time. Well, this was so fun. Listeners, definitely send us your questions. You can directly email questions at ifodcast.com, or you can go to ifodcast.com and submit questions there. The show notes will have links to everything that we talked about, and they will also have a full transcript. So that will be at ifpodcast.com slash episode 411. And you can follow us on Instagram. I am Melanie Avalon. Barry is berry underscore Conrad, and we are IF Podcast. And yeah, I think that's all the things. Anything from you, Barry, before we go?

Barry Conrad

Thanks so much for tuning in everyone and we'll talk to you next week.

Melanie Avalon

All right, talk to you next week. Bye. Bye. Thank you so much for listening to the Intramusian 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. Editing by podcast doctors, show notes and artwork by Brianna Joyner, and original theme composed by Leland Cox and recon host by Steve Saunders. See you next week.

Feb 23

Episode 410 – Autophagy Genes, Biohack Yourself, Fruitarianism, Eating Timing, Barefoot Shoes, Serrapeptase & MCT Oil, Fat-Fueled Exercise Problems, Protein Needs, And More!

Derek Duvall Show Episode 237: Melanie Avalon - Founder of AvalonX, Podcaster & Actress

Welcome to Episode 410 of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast, hosted by Melanie Avalon, biohacker, founder of AvalonX, and author of What When Wine Diet: Lose Weight And Feel Great With Paleo-Style Meals, Intermittent Fasting, And Wine, and Barry Conrad, actor, singer-songwriter, and creator and host of Banter with BC.

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Get 10% off MD Logic's Health Marine Collagen with code ifpodcast at ifpodcast.com/collagen.

LINKS

Featured Restaurant: Atlas

Barry’s Upcoming Show: Destiny

STUDIES

Dawn-to-dusk intermittent fasting is associated with overexpression of autophagy genes: A prospective study on overweight and obese cohort

If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving us a review in Apple Podcasts!

Original theme composed by Leland Cox, and recomposed by Steve Saunders.

TRANSCRIPT

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

Melanie Avalon

Welcome to episode 410 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, founder of Avalon X and author of What, When, Wine. Lose weight and feel great with paleo style meals, intermittent fasting and wine. And I'm joined by my co-hosts, Barry Conrad, actor, singer, songwriter, and creator and host of banter with BC. For more on us, check out Melanie Avalon.com and Barry Conrad official.com. You can submit questions for the show by emailing questions at I have podcast.com or by going to I have podcast.com. We would love to hear from you. Please remember the thoughts and opinions on this show to not constitute medical advice or treatment. 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 everybody and welcome. This is episode number 410 of the intermittent fasting podcast. I'm Melanie Avalon and I'm here with Barry Conrad. How are you today, Barry?

Barry Conrad

I'm doing really well. How are you doing?

Melanie Avalon

I'm good, what's new in your life?

Barry Conrad

Well, it's a beautiful day here in Sydney. The sun is shining. It's currently one o'clock. What is the time in Atlanta right now? I know we have a list as we have a wild.

Melanie Avalon

9 p.m.

Barry Conrad

I've actually been doing, earlier today, some work on some character work for my play that's happening later this year, Destiny. So that's been really, really good just diving into the character a bit more and excavating, I should say. So that's been really, really fulfilling and fun to do.

Melanie Avalon

That's so exciting. And when will you actually be performing that?

Barry Conrad

Yes, so listeners, it's called Destiny and we head into into work in July, but it runs from October 18th onwards. So if you're in Australia or you're going to be traveling here, please come see it. We'd love to see you at the show. It's going to be really special because of what it's about. So, yeah, I'd love to see you there.

Melanie Avalon

That's a long lead-up, right? Yeah. Like, how does that compare to how many months you normally rehearse for a show?

Barry Conrad

Yeah, well, we have well, usually it's maybe a couple months. So this is a longer lead up, but there's also more intermittent sort of workshops beforehand, which is really good where we get to actually be part of the process more, which has been really, really good and rewarding as an actor to have more of a say, you know, because it's a play and it's something different to sort of musical theater that I've done before. So that's why it is different. And it's, I'm so excited. I'm really, really excited about this Mel. So yeah, we'll have to put a link in the show notes for people if they're going to be around or happen to be in Australia, so they can check it out. Oh, definitely.

Melanie Avalon

Definitely. I'm so excited for you and I'm so proud of you. Wanna come? It's so awesome.

Barry Conrad

Come for a day what about you what's what's happening in melanie evolones world right now.

Melanie Avalon

I'm really curious by the time this comes out, because there's so many different potential products I'm working on right now, I'm curious what will be actually launched by the time this airs. The coffee line I'm making, Glow Coffee, my EMF blocking product line, which I know I've been talking about it for so long, but it's actually, like it's in production now, so we should be launching that sometime this quarter. We have our next two things we want to make for my supplement line, so hopefully one of those will be coming out around February. Then my really big project, which is, I don't know if I mentioned it on the show, I probably have the dating app that I'm working on, so lots of things, lots of things.

Barry Conrad

Bring it on, bring it on. Exciting.

Melanie Avalon

And I'm hoping to be going to some more conferences around this time as well. Oh, oh, I will. I'm actually going, I'm so excited. I'm going at the end of January. So I will have gotten back from it a few weeks ago, but I'm going to Sundance Film Festival for the first time, which is very exciting. I think we talked about that. Yeah, I'm really excited. You should come to that, see the movies.

Barry Conrad

That x is it's tempting you know i hear your friend the person that you know with the project that's so that's so incredible what an achievement to be able to have that in. Be part of that festival right that's awesome.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, it's so exciting. Hopefully someday we'll see you there in a film. That'd be awesome.

Barry Conrad

or even maybe you, when you fire back into the land of acting.

Melanie Avalon

You never know. This is very true. We should manifest it.

Barry Conrad

Would you ever want to is that something that you maybe want to maybe possibly potentially maybe kind of do later on again.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah, yeah, we shall see if the stars align So Okay, so friends we have decided to start starting off the show with an intermittent fasting study And we're gonna make it a surprise like one of us is gonna prep it for the other person but this time we just Got one together. So this one is called dawn to dusk intermittent fasting is associated with overexpression of autophagy genes and Perspective study on overweight and obese cohort So this was this is a new study published so it's actually gonna be published in February 2025, but the preprint is online already and Long story short we talk about how intermittent fasting Has been shown to have effects on healthy aging and longevity often through Autophagy genes and we talked about autophagy a lot on this show But basically it's the process where your body Goes in and breaks down old and problematic proteins in your body and recycles them It gets rid of dysfunctional ones and then it recycles them to make new cells and you know new proteins in your body It's like a cleanse on the cellular level. We know that fasting supports it And so this study actually looked at 51 participants there was 36 males and 15 females and they were all overweight or obese and They also had six healthy subjects who were a normal BMI that group was used as the control and They monitored these different genes that are involved in increasing autophagy And they found that at the end of the fasting period Compared to the pre fasting period that the participants that were overweight and obese They saw a significant increase for three autophagy genes and it's a lot of letters, but it's LEMP to LC3B and ATG5 and that was up to 4.2 times increase so the first one was 4.2 times the second one was 1.9 times and the third one was 1.4 times and then they did check another fourth autophagy gene But it was not significantly increased and the type of fasting by the way, they're looking at Ramadan which a lot of the Studies will use Ramadan fasting as a way to test fasting related things because so many people are Doing it anyway as a part of that lifestyle. So yeah, they concluded that basically Fasting with Ramadan is associated with the upregulation of autophagy gene expressions And that this may in part explain the short-term metabolic and health improving effects on early aging Related markers and they said that if presumably may be protective Against aging and metabolic disease and people who are overweight or obese. So I thought that was pretty cool Barry What are your thoughts?

Barry Conrad

This actually really blew my mind because what sort of really stood out to me about the study is in just those four weeks of the fasting, as you said, the 51 participants who like there were mostly people with overweight or obesity had like this huge boost in activity of those three key genes that you said. Like the one gene there, it's called LAMP2, which listens to sort of like the manager for our bodies cleanup crew sort of thing. And it actually increased over four times. It's like their bodies were going into like an overdrive to heal and protect themselves, which I thought was amazing. And I've got friends who are Muslims, so I'm very familiar with Ramadan and how they fast and then feast. So this makes total sense that they conducted this study in that way. And yes, sure, like, you know, the people in the study lost the way and, you know, maybe reduced their waistline or whatever. But from what I'm understanding from the study is that the benefits like they went deeper than the physical. So the glacial went up, their inflammation went way down. Even anti-aging markers improved, which again, why I love fasting. It's not just about the scale. It's about the overall health and longevity and what's happening inside. And I mean, Mel, I've been fasting for years now since not as long as you, but 2018 and seeing signs like this just confirms those benefits firsthand, like the non-scale victories, that it's not just sort of like a clickbaity fad. It's something that is actually impacting us on like a cellular level, like keeping our bodies thriving. And also I loved another thing is that it didn't just sort of focus on one outcome. It showed that fasting, it doesn't magically fix anything. It's a powerful tool in the toolkit for better health and sort of like creating habits for work to help our body work better. So whether that's weight, inflammation or whatnot. I mean, Mel, I'd love your take. Do you think Daunter Dusk fasting has an edge over 19.5, 16.8, 24. How do you think autophagy plays into not just longevity, but everyday energy and recovery?

Melanie Avalon

I love all of this so much. Before I answer your questions, it's really empowering because this concept of epigenetics is just so wonderful because basically everybody has these genes. It's not like you have this gene or you don't have this gene. It's not a genetic destiny in that way. It's epigenetics, meaning we have these genes and then how they're expressed, like how they're actually functioning and if they're turned on or not and how much they're working is really determined by environment and lifestyle. So it's so empowering because it's like anybody can turn this on. You don't have to have been born with the gene because you already have it. It's just, is it being expressed or manifest or is it on? And it's so great to know that fasting can turn these genes on. Yeah, so as far as like the different types, like the different types like dawn to dusk or more of an hour space approach. So honestly, for me, I feel like it really comes down to what are you going to do consistently. So rather than saying like one is better than the other, I think it's really about finding what can you do and stick to. And for some people, it's like a dawn to dusk type approach. For some people, it's like a one meal a day. For some people, it's 18.6. But I really think there's a magic and it's kind of like last episode when you were talking about like the concept of tiny habits. It's like what are you actually doing day in and day out? So I would encourage people to find the fasting that works for them. Yeah, what are your thoughts on that concept?

Barry Conrad

Yeah, we're all very individual. It's hard for, well, it wouldn't be fair to prescribe one protocol to any one person. So I think just doing what works best for your body, I do feel like this study has made me not rethink, but, you know, just the benefits of timing your window, like timing wise in terms of like the time of day, do you know what I mean? Like, you know, how eating earlier rather than too late at night, what do you think about that? Or do you think it has a, there's any difference eating super late at night versus capping off your eating earlier in the day? That's something that this did provoke me to think about in terms of that.

Melanie Avalon

I've done a lot of diving into that. It does seem like there are a lot of studies about the problems with eating at night and late night eating. That said, I think I like sat down and looked at the actual like what winter hormones being released and what things are being turned on at different times. And for me, I feel like it points to a later eating window, but still while it's laid out, if you're being quote ideal, I don't think the hormonal profile right when you wake up is one in which you should be eating because once when you wake up, you have like cortisol, you have adrenaline, you have things that are releasing endogenous fuel, not prepping you to actually be eating. And I actually did a whole blog post on this that I can put a link to in the show notes. All of that said, it goes back to my answer before where I really think what you can stick to is what is best. So if eating later consistently is what works better for you, or if eating earlier consistently is what works better for you, I think what fits into your life, that's what I would focus on rather than what is in an ideal scenario in a metabolic word study, the perfect time to eat.

Barry Conrad

I think it leads back to what you were saying before, Melanie, about making habits work for us, you know, make it easier for our lifestyle, because that's going to be the thing that's going to actually sustain and be consistent rather than if this is the ideal window people are saying I should do, that, well, actually, what works best for you day in and day out? That's the thing, really. And for your body. Like for me, for example, I maybe, when I'm on vacation, I'll have breakfast when you're supposed to, quote unquote, have breakfast in the morning, but I don't start eating normally on the daily around till like four or five most days. So yeah, it's just like it's doing what is going to make me win and just stay consistent with my protocol. And so I think that's exactly what you should do as well.

Melanie Avalon

Exactly. And then just to go just to show how different we are. So if I were to eat at four or five, that'd be so early for me. Oh my goodness. I feel like the only way I could eat at four or five is if I like didn't eat that night before. Otherwise, I just wouldn't be hungry.

Barry Conrad

You're like 10 or 11. You eat later, way later.

Melanie Avalon

Are you late? Are you late? Actually this week I'm going to a dinner so I will be eating at a normal time. It's still late but it's not that late. It's like eight o'clock.

Barry Conrad

How do you feel about that? Do you feel excited about eating a bit earlier or not really, or kind of nervous or apprehensive?

Melanie Avalon

I don't like eating earlier. I'm not excited by that aspect of it, but I know that, I know I'll have a fun time and I know once I'm there, I'll love it. And so here's the other thing. Because I'm so intense with my routine of how I eat, I can kind of like signal to my body that it's eating time. Like normally when I start drinking, I'm like, you know, if I have some wine, that's kind of signaling that I'm about to eat. So I can kind of like tweak, well, actually that's not true because when I go out and have drinks, I don't eat. So maybe that, I think once I actually start eating, my body enters the like eating mode. And so it's all good. It's interesting because it's like, it's like your body becomes hungry once you actually start eating. If you're not hungry before, for me, that's my personal experience.

Barry Conrad

You know, what's really interesting is that sometimes when I'm in a longer fast, when I start thinking about food, it's almost like my body starts preparing to like, I just start, you know, like I start salivating. I'm like ready. Like my body knows like, and before starting intermittent fasting, I didn't really feel those cues or that sensation or have that experience. But now when I'm fasting, it's like, okay, it's time to eat. Like it's so fascinating. Do you ever feel that or not really?

Melanie Avalon

Oh, definitely. And that's a key thing about like dopamine, for example, because like people think people think often think dopamine is your happiness chemical and that compound or hormone and that dopamine makes you happy. But dopamine, it makes you happy at the thought of reaching a goal. So it's not actually getting the thing that makes you happy. It's like trying to get the thing that makes you happy. I promise this is going to relate. And the more dopamine is released and it's released just at the anticipation because it becomes a routine and a habit and self-reinforcing. So the point of this is we have habits that we do and once we start doing them and we get ingrained in them, we don't actually even have to do the thing that would release and encourage dopamine. We just have to like anticipate doing it and we get the dopamine hit. So they'll see that people who are, and it happens with food too. So like it's what you basically just said, like if you're accustomed to eating something that you really like or like in a situation that you like, you'll start releasing dopamine before you even do that thing. Yeah. So you can definitely, the body like anticipates and releases these compounds that then make you engage in that habit and like start the systems running, if that makes sense.

Barry Conrad

It definitely makes sense. I think the body is just so fascinating. And I don't know if this is relative, but even as soon as you said that about the body sort of anticipates, even with things like acting or performance, like when something's ingrained, it's like an anticipation and you know what's coming. You know what I'm saying? It's like intuitive. You know, it's just like programmed on a cellular level almost. It's so awesome. I love that.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. And actually, so we had Mark Sisson on the show. Have we, have we talked about Palluva yet? His shoe line? No. Okay. This is going to be all over the place. I promise it relates though. Barry, we got to get you wearing Palluva's. Do you wear like running shoes?

Barry Conrad

Yeah, every day when I go to the gym.

Melanie Avalon

So I highly recommend friends check out Mark's book, Born to Walk. So Mark Sisson, he's, do you know Mark? He's like the, he's one of the, he's the founder of like the Primal Health movement. He, he had a Mark's Daily Apple. Yeah. He had like Primal Kitchen, lots of New York Times bestsellers, Primal Endurance, and I think the Primal Blueprint is probably his most famous one. He has the Keto Reset Diet, but in any case, in Born to Walk, and we'll put a link to that episode in the show notes, but he basically makes the case that we should not be, like we should be walking a lot. We shouldn't be doing this endurance, this intense endurance activity all the time and like marathons and running. It's just not good for you. And shoes are like horrible for our feet, like horrible. They basically allow you to move in a way that is not natural for the body and also sustain impact trauma consistently, but you don't really feel it because of the shoes, but you're still getting all that damage and it's just not good. So he has this line paluba, which is a, like a barefoot shoe. It's like where your like toes are separated in it. And he has a whole line of them. And literally he completely changed my, my, my thoughts about like shoes and running and walking. And oh, the reason I'm talking about this is because we were talking about how would these, there's like four different feel good neurotransmitters that people think of like dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins. And dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin are all good feeling things to bring good things to your life. So dopamine is about pursuing a goal. Serotonin is about like social hierarchy and feeling safe and social bonds. And then oxytocin is about like the love, like the bonding compound. It's from like hugs and like love and all those things. Endorphins, which also make you feel great, their purpose is to mask pain. So historically, their main purpose is like if an animal's being killed by another animal, they get flooded with endorphins so they don't feel it. So it's not a compound we should be chasing to feel as a good thing because literally its purpose is to make you not feel painful things happening. And that's what people who are doing intense running careers and marathoning and all the things are chasing, they're chasing endorphin highs. So that's why I was thinking about that.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, I mean, that sounds amazing with the issue. I'd love to wear that. And also on that, I 100% subscribe to walking. I actually, my form of cardio in the gym or outdoors is walking. I do hill sprints or walking. I just think it's such an underrated way to burn fat and not just that it compounds things. You can do that at a very pretty easy pace. Burn fat effectively and do something like listen to a podcast or make calls. It's so good. And also just clear your mind so that that's one thing. Another thing is I'm actually in bare feet right now, Melanie, and I always wear shoes, but I was recently traveling a bit, seeing my family and in New Zealand. And I've never been more barefoot during those few weeks than probably in years and coming back, it's just more freeing. You feel grounded to the earth. You can move better. And I'm actually I promise you, I'm barefoot right now. So there you go. It's very fitting that you're talking about it.

Melanie Avalon

I love that so much. Yeah, it's literally, he completely changed my perspective on it. I'm like, I need to be barefoot, like all the time or wearing these palubas. And so yeah, I love that you had that experience giving your feet the more natural experience of the world. So listeners, you can get 10% off paluba. If you go to paluba.com slash iapodcast, that's p-e-l-u-v-a.com slash iapodcast and use the coupon code iapodcast. So and they have one of the shoes that I like, you can actually, I don't really like, I don't normally wear like tennis shoes and stuff anyways. So I need to start wearing the normal ones outside. But for wearing around the apartment, they do have one that kind of you can not use the back of it. So you can use it kind of like a slip on. And so that's the one I'm really loving. That's the Zen active slip on. So I have the women's Zen active slip on but they have so many different ones. Yeah, it's literally game changer. Okay, oh, I just thought of something really random. But I should have said in the beginning when we were talking about what we're like, what's new in our life. Guess who I'm interviewing. Speaking of interviews tomorrow. Actually, I don't know how you would guess but give me a clue. It's a character from like one of the most well known TV series in the superhero world. What?

Barry Conrad

Who is it? Oh, you know, Melanie, I love superheroes. Don't play with me. Hold on. Is it okay? Gender? Give me the gender.

Melanie Avalon

You want to play the yes or no game?

Barry Conrad

Yeah, yeah, let's do it. Okay, I'm ready. Are you under the age of 50?

Melanie Avalon

The person? Yeah. No.

Barry Conrad

Are you in a Marvel franchise?

Melanie Avalon

Not Marvel. I don't know anything about superheroes.

Barry Conrad

Okay, have you been in a release of this franchise in the last two years?

Melanie Avalon

The character or the actor? The actor. No.

Barry Conrad

I don't know, tell me, because now I'm just going to, but we need to play 20 Christians, this is fun, but tell me who it is because I'm dying to know.

Melanie Avalon

I feel like Barry and I could play 20 questions for like five hours, so we can just like play. It's the original Robin from Batman and Robin.

Barry Conrad

You mean, oh, that's amazing. Are you serious? How did you score? That's amazing. That's incredible. How'd you score that? That's awesome.

Melanie Avalon

I was on the Derek Duvall show and that host Derek, he's like so kind and so nice. So he was interviewing me, um, I can put a link to that in the show notes. He connected me to Burt. He said Burt was like one of his favorite episodes he's ever done, but so Burt has, the reason he's going on like health related podcast is he has a, he has a gentle giants pet food line that is like to help support pet longevity and stuff. He's like all in now. He's all into dogs. They have, they have like he and his wife have, I don't know, 40 or 50 dogs at their house.

Barry Conrad

What?

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, and they make this pet food line.

Barry Conrad

If it's a big house.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. I was watching videos. They put the food in like, like horse trough type things. Like feed the dogs. I am going to ask him a lot of questions about his dog, pet food line, but what would you ask him about his career, his acting career?

Barry Conrad

I would definitely ask him what was the most foundational thing you learned from being part of that franchise like with Batman and how has that shaped the rest of his like the trajectory of his career because that was like a huge, huge moment.

Melanie Avalon

And you were in, you were in Spider-Man something, right?

Barry Conrad

I was in power range. It's very different. It's very different.

Melanie Avalon

And here's the thing, I knew as Power Rangers, I was seeing Power Rangers in my head.

Barry Conrad

But Melanie, get this. Honestly, I always joke, but I'm not really joking. I would love to be. I'm obsessed with superheroes, so this is the perfect guest. I can't believe you're interviewing him. It's awesome. I'd love to be in a Marvel franchise.

Melanie Avalon

I'll let you know how it goes. Also, yes, Barry, you would be a perfect superhero. Which one would you be if you could be one?

Barry Conrad

like a current one, or you're asking me what kind of power I want.

Melanie Avalon

if you could be like, you know, like a new version of one of the ones.

Barry Conrad

Yeah. Okay. One of the ones, this is how you know, Melanie is not really a discoverer is Wolverine. Definitely. Hands down. My favorite.

Melanie Avalon

That's not a comic book though, is it?

Barry Conrad

Yeah, X-Men. X-Men.

Melanie Avalon

X-Men with a comic book? Wow. No idea. I had no idea.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, I feel like if you were a superhero, you'd be like a biohacking, a biohacking superhero, like, take my red sauna. Like, I don't know, I could just see like in a dress looking really glamorous, looking really good, and then like, just like not breaking a sweat and just doing your thing.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I'd be down. Is there a blonde, superhero, female? Many. I can't think of any.

Barry Conrad

We're going way off here. Sorry listeners, if this is not interesting, but we're having a good time.

Melanie Avalon

I'm a fasting superhero.

Barry Conrad

So what is the power? So you could fast real good, you know, 19 hours a day, 20 hours a day.

Melanie Avalon

I don't ever have to take the time to eat, so I have more time. Yeah, but I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow. It's amazing. Congratulations. Thank you. So, OK, before we go on to our next thing, we realize that last week, this is my bat. I only partly answered one of the listeners questions. So we had answered a question from Julian about MCT oil and syrup peptase. I answered the part about at the end about what MCT oil and coffee breaker fast and we kind of like ran with that, but we didn't answer the first part. So would you like to reread the first part?

Barry Conrad

So Julian on Facebook said, I just recently started implementing black coffee with MCT oil in the morning during a fasted state. I usually also take seropeptase during that time as well. Would it be fine to take both MCT oil and seropeptase simultaneously? I wanted to make sure the MCT oil didn't interfere with the seropeptase since it's helped my sinuses drastically. Also, if I'm having black coffee with MCT oil, yeah.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, so totally forgot to answer this one. And so Julian is referring to my Avalon X serapeptase, which this actually ties into what we were talking about with autophagy. So serapeptase is a proteolytic enzyme created by the Japanese silkworm. And in the fasted state, well, its purpose in the silkworm is to break down the cocoon of the silkworm. So it breaks down nonliving tissue without hurting living tissue. So when we take it in the fasted state, kind of like how autophagy is that process in the body where we break down problematic proteins and things like that, that's what serapeptase does. And a lot of inflammation and health issues we have come from our body reacting to like proteins in our body. So like Julian says, it clears sinuses, I mean, dramatically. It's a game changer for that for me personally as well. And I hear that from so many people. And it can help with inflammation, it can break down amyloid plaque in the brain, help reduce cholesterol, all the things. I love it. I take it every single day of my life. And so you can't take it, well, you can take it with other food and proteins. But if you do, it'll just break down your food instead of going into the bloodstream and working its magic. So that's why it needs to be taken on an empty stomach. However, if you were to take it with MCT oil, MCT oil is just a pure fat. So serapeptase is not going to break down anything in that. So you could take MCT oil and serapeptase together is the answer to that. And if friends would like to get some serapeptase, they can go to avlonx.us and use the coupon code IF Podcast to get 10% off site wide there, including that serapeptase. It's kind of like a superhero serapeptase. It's like a superhero supplement, I think.

Barry Conrad

I've actually never tried syrup up this yet, so I feel like it's time for me to well and truly dive in and see what all the fuss is about, especially your supplement.

Melanie Avalon

Oh wait, did you get my bottle that I sent you?

Barry Conrad

I only got the magnesium. I didn't get the Sure-Five test.

Melanie Avalon

I didn't see new Sarah Papjes.

Barry Conrad

No. Oh. Not that I expect you to at all, but yeah, I haven't tried it yet.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, let me see, hopefully I can get it into Australia. It's like, I know I got the magnesium in. They do not make it easy. Yeah, they do. I will have to send you some. That's crazy. I really thought I had sent it to you.

Barry Conrad

That's all good. Yeah, but I definitely want to try it because I know that you talked about it so you rave on about it and you really believe in it. So I think it's definitely worth trying.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, it is one of my favorite things like ever, ever, ever.

Barry Conrad

And do you take show of her days when to like to break your like during the when you break your first or when do you take it?

Melanie Avalon

So you would want to take it earlier in the fast and then not eat right after because if you ate right after, it would just break down the food. So you want to wait at least like an hour after to eat, but I take it in the morning and I don't eat until the evening, but I just notice such a difference. It just clears my sinuses. My brain helps with brain fog. It's amazing.

Barry Conrad

I'm going to write that down now because actually, I have allergies, like dust allergies, and when I was traveling recently, it's just so dusty, and I found it really hard, so I wonder if that would help mitigate some of the sinus issues as well. So that's definitely, I'm going to write this down right now.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, yes, it would be amazing for that like game changer. It's so effective

Barry Conrad

Okay, great, awesome.

Melanie Avalon

All right, Barry, would you like to read our question from Camilla? And by the way, I picked this one because she's from Australia. That's not the only reason, but that's a reason.

Barry Conrad

So Camilla says, hi. First of all, I absolutely love your podcast. I'm 30 years old, Chilean woman working full time in Australia. And listening to you has saved my life from the boredom of cleaning rooms for eight hours a day and encourages me to keep fasting. I tried so many times fasting before, but never understood the importance of clean fasting. That changed everything. So my very big question is, back in time, I practiced about three years ago a lifestyle called hygienism. The diet includes fruit juiced fasting, which is two juices in the morning, 10 and 2 a.m. And then fruit for lunch, about one kilo of fruit, where I can mix acid with semi-acid and semi-acid with sweet fruit. A few fruits for snack and for dinner. Fruit for a big plate of salad with cooked veggies is optional. Also, I can choose one protein, one cereal, or one starchy vegetable. I followed this diet for about two years and was feeling fantastic. It was very similar to the feeling of being in the fasted state. In the first two weeks with just fruit and salad two days a week, I lost about 10 pounds. By the way, I was dancing and using my bike a lot. The problem with that diet is that my body got used to eating every two hours, otherwise I would have been shaking and so hungry. Also, my stomach got bigger because I had to eat lots of fruit to get satiated, but I had it all covered. I didn't crave junk food anymore and my cravings for sweets was gone as the fruit was all that I needed. The problem started when I left my comfort zone and during my travel, where I had not that quantity of fruit available and for social or emotional reasons. So I quit that lifestyle and started overeating. My stomach got really elastic and big with the fruit. And I binge ate. In one year, I put 20 pounds on in my body and I felt awful. I've been trying so many diets and fasting, et cetera, but I didn't understand that intermittent fasting was a lifestyle too. So far, I've been practicing clean, intermittent fasting for about two weeks. I feel much better, more energy, no cravings of junk food during fasting time. My mind is clearer and more calm, but I haven't lost weight because I'm still overeating and eating junk food became a disgusting habit. My problem is that when I have dinner, salad and cooked veggies, I still crave sweets and mess it all up with cookies, brown bread and jam, granola, whatever it looks that it can satisfy my brain. Sadly, I have housemates that love junk food too. So here's my question. What are your thoughts about doing intermittent fasting and having a fruit diet? I ask because I feel when I do strict food diet, I stick to it more easily than having a whole food meal. I don't think I would do just fruit as before because I used to have fruit for dinner at least three days a week, but I wonder what happens with the insulin and sugar levels if I do it for about a week or two.

Barry Conrad

My goal is weight loss. And since I started fasting, I also go back to daily yoga practices, riding my bike for about 30 minutes a day. Oh, and also today I began with MCT oil to break my fast. And I wonder, would I get the same great benefits if I drank the oil, if I do exercise, or would it be better if I exercise and then break the fast with the oil? Thanks so much in advance. And I apologize if the English isn't the best. You're so great. I can't be grateful enough for having met you in the virtual world. Send you lots of love.

Melanie Avalon

Camilla. All right, Camilla, quite a journey and so many questions there. I'm curious, Barry, have you ever done a stint where you did like fruit fasting or something like that, like only eight fruit?

Barry Conrad

for about a day, but because I love meat so much, it's like, this is not going to work for me. It's not really, what about you? It's just not, for me, it's not satiating or satisfying. And it just actually, if anything, makes me crave more sugars. So, no, not really, just a day.

Melanie Avalon

The longest I did was in college. That's when I, I think I've told you before I did my, my apple fast. Where I was going to eat apples for three days. And I went like 11 days eating just apples. And it is very true. I felt, I like, I felt high. Like I felt like Camilla said, like the fasting feeling, I felt very light. I, it was an experience for sure. I have so many thoughts about this. So one, I think a lot of people, especially if they are eating an unhealthy diet and then they switched to some sort of cleanse, like just green juices or just fruit, that, that is sustainable in the beginning for a little bit. And they probably feel really great. And if they have the fat to burn, you know, shedding the toxins, getting all of this hydration and nutrients from the fruit, and then the body is probably doing more topology and so it can feel really great, but here's the thing. For most people, I mean, I know they're apparently fruititarians out there that, you know, say they've done it for life. There's also a lot of fruititarians out there that stop doing it because it works really well in the beginning. And then they start falling apart. I don't think most people can get the protein they need, the nutrients they need on a fruit only diet forever. There might be the rare people who can, like they've got the perfect microbiome and the perfect constitution and it works for them. But for most people, I don't think it's going to work. And I think what happens is people will try it and experience these amazing health benefits. And so they think, they think it's the thing and that it should be, that they should do it longer and that when it stops working, that it's not because it's not sustainable, it's because, you know, of other problems, but maybe it's because it's not sustainable and you need more nutrients and protein. And you can only do that for so long. So, yeah, so I have a lot of thoughts here. Basically, I think it could be done as a short-term thing. Like I said, if you want to do it as a very short-term thing, like maybe a few days, if you can make it that way. And I guess combined with intermittent fasting while doing that, but it's just, it's not a long-term thing. I would not look to this as a long-term lifestyle. And I definitely wouldn't do long-term intermittent fasting with only fruit. I just think that is a recipe for a disaster. And especially if you're dealing with binging and craving and that effect, a lot of that could be due to not getting the nutrients you need, like the protein that you need. I would have a reframe and if you're doing fasting, focus on fasting, like let fasting be the cleansing process and then have your eating window be the nourishment and make sure that you get all the protein you need in that window so that you're not craving and binging.

Melanie Avalon

And something else I think people might not account for sometimes is just how much an effect that you can like undo what you've done if you get into a binging cycle, because I think people, if they're not doing fasting from a healthy perspective where they're getting enough protein, they're getting enough nutrition and instead they're not getting enough. And then they get into this like binge, you know, this binge cycle where they're binging and then they try to make up with it, make up for it with fasting, but then they're not eating enough. So then they binge again. Like that's not, you can create a lot of harm by doing that and it's not sustainable, it's not healthy. So I would focus on fasting and eating a lot in your eating windows. So you don't fall into that. And there's this thing called the protein leverage hypothesis. And it's basically that we will be hungry and we will keep eating until we fulfill our protein requirement needs. So basically I would not suggest as a long-term thing, doing fasting and puritarianism together, I would only do it as like a short thing. Yeah. And I can talk about the MCT oil and the exercise, but what are your thoughts, Barry?

Barry Conrad

Yes. This is a big question and also so many thoughts, but first of all, Camilla, thanks for sharing that. It's a big story. Thanks for the support for the podcast as well. The fact that fasting has brought you clarity and energy after that sort of journey is a huge win, but I would definitely agree with Melanie in saying that combining IF with just fruit solely, it's not a great strategy because you're just not getting the nutrients that you need, you know, and I mean, I would suggest balancing that with some greens, some seeds. If you don't like meat, try protein from tofu, eggs, fish maybe, but I don't think you can't really sustain a long life, in my opinion, on just fruit. And also one thing to keep in mind is that if you're eating mainly fruit as well, you're going to spike your insulin so much, which potentially could make weight loss slower potentially. If you're just having fruit over the long term because your body does adapt. Yeah, great. The yoga, the cycling is great. That's awesome. But I'm 100% on the protein train here. Like protein is so important because skeletal muscle is such a huge important factor in terms of like having longevity. You can't just I don't want to see you withering away. So make sure you get your protein in. That's what I would say.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, we're definitely on the same page. And I think a lot of times people, especially doing like veganism or especially like fruititarianism, like if they're getting cravings and bingy and everything, it can be hard to see that it's because you're just not getting enough nourishment, you know, like you can think it's because oh, like I'm just weak or I crave these junk foods, but there's a lot of magic if you get in enough protein in your diet.

Barry Conrad

100%. One thing that I would say is when I'm having particularly, at the moment, I'm experimenting more with smoked salmon for my protein sauce just to change it up. But generally, I have with smoked salmon that is around for 200 grams of smoked salmon that has 40 grams of protein for that. In one sitting, I can get that. With ground beef, I have about 42 grams for the same amount. When I have chicken breast and ground beef, I get full. I can eat a lot of meat for sure, but I definitely feel satiated. The only thing that I can put that down to is the satiation that comes from hitting the protein that you need. I don't get that when I'm just snacking or having lots of carbs solely. I'll just keep eating and keep eating and keep eating because your body hasn't got what it needs. Please, please look at the protein. That would take you more.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I agree so much. And then for her question about the MCT oil, which is I didn't realize that we were answering two questions about this, but so she said she uses it to break her fast and she wants to know, should she basically take it, like have it before exercising? Okay, wait. If after drinking the oil, so like have MCT oil and then exercise or exercise and then have the oil. So I would want to know like why you're having the oil. Like is it just for calories? Like what is it for your metabolism? Like what is the purpose of having it? I would not have it before exercise because there's, I think there's a lot of benefits to fasted exercise. And if you are taking a lot of MCT oil before exercise, you're just going to be burning the MCT oil rather than, especially if like weight loss is a goal of yours, which she said it is, you want to be tapping into your body fat, not just running off of the oil you just had. So if weight loss is a goal, I would definitely, I would have it later. Not, I would have it in your eating window, not before exercising. What are your thoughts?

Barry Conrad

I would agree with that. One thing to keep in mind is that there's a train of thought out there where people feel afraid to exercise without something in their system, whether that's a banana, whether it's fat, or whether it's something. So I'm wondering, because she hasn't been fasting for a long, long time, that that might be a possibility, because you actually don't need that chameleon. Because remember, in the fasted set, there's plenty of glycogen for you to use up there. There's energy there, and there's plenty of fat that we're carrying. You don't need to take anything else to exercise. And I exercise as a six-foot-tall, 80kg male fasted. I'm not withered. I've got lots of muscle, and I don't eat anything. I have black coffee that's about it. So I would definitely say, you don't need the MCTL, and I wonder if that's something you've been told that you just need. Let me just have this little something to help me. You don't need it. Your body's got everything that it needs inside.

Melanie Avalon

I'm so glad you brought that up. It's so true. It is like a fear. It's like, I guess people are scared of that they're gonna run out of energy. Like I'm not, you know, but it's like once you start doing it, you realize that you can, you know, tap into your body fat stores and we carry so much energy on our body, just waiting to be tapped into. And especially if you have something like coffee or tea, you know, to have that caffeine and polyphenols and such help you, you know, tap into those body fat stores. Yeah, you can do it.

Barry Conrad

You can do it, Camilla.

Melanie Avalon

Awesome!

Barry Conrad

And we'd love to hear from you if you changed anything after hearing this. We'd love to hear back from you.

Melanie Avalon

Yes, please let us know! Okay, so we're like playing around with the format of the show and we always feature a restaurant on the show and we've decided we're going to try out having it at the end because then it's like we're breaking our fast after talking about all the fasting stuff and like we just talked about we are all about food on this show. So Barry, the restaurant I picked for us today is actually my favorite restaurant in Atlanta. Which is why I picked it.

Barry Conrad

Hold on for one second. You know what? I was actually thinking, the last episode listeners, I was actually thinking, I said to Melanie, if we went on like a food tour, she'll only come for a day. And then in my head, I was thinking, but if it was Atlanta, she'd come. So hello, now you've chosen Atlanta restaurant. So perfect.

Melanie Avalon

Wait, if it was Atlanta?

Barry Conrad

then you'd definitely be there.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, yes, yes. So guess who's got to come to Atlanta?

Barry Conrad

Yours truly. Yep.

Melanie Avalon

for more than a day, for more than a day. So why are the rules different for me? Oh, the rules aren't different, but there's, you make your own rules. So, but my rules are one day, which we didn't talk about this on the show yet, because it's going to be way in the past when it happened by the time this airs. But, um, I went for one day to Vegas for the biohack yourself premiere, which actually was really, really incredible. Um, and I highly recommend people check it out. It's a documentary on Amazon prime and it has all the people in it. Like all the biohacking people are, are in it. And I, I was so honored. They actually invited me to host on the right carpet. So I got to interview a lot of really cool people. I got to meet people in person. I never met like Ben Azati. I was excited. I got to meet Aggie who I found on the show. Got to interview Del Big Tree, who he's actually a really big deal. He, he leads the make America healthy again movement. And he works with RFK. Yeah, it was really cool. It was fun.

Barry Conrad

That's amazing. Congrats, Mel. Can I see it? Is it when does it come out on Amazon Prime?

Melanie Avalon

it's out now. We'll put a link to it in the show notes and no, you won't, you won't see me because I was just at the like the premiere thing and this is the actual documentary. I got to see, I literally, I think there's so many friends there, like so many people I've had on the show. The people I listed before were people I actually interviewed, but I got to meet in real life. Well, I know Dave Asprey, so I got to see him. I got to meet the founder of Viva Ray's who I've had on my show. I got to meet, I got to, I saw Sean Wells, literally just so many people. I, Ian Clark, who I just interviewed the other day, you would have loved it, Barry. We should go to something like that sometime. I'd love that. It'd be awesome. So in any case, so the restaurant I picked, like I said, it's neck and neck because I have two favorite restaurants in Atlanta, but this is my all time favorite and it's called Atlas. It's at the St Regis and something really cool about it. So it has a Michelin star. I knew it would because the Michelin guy just came for the first time two years ago to Atlanta, which was really exciting. And I was like, I know Atlas is going to get one and it did. And what's really cool about it is the restaurant itself, there's all this art and they actually have to change the art every, I don't know how many days, like how many months or so. They have to continually change it. And the reason they have to change it is because they have so much art in that room worth so much money that it would, they would be a museum if they didn't change it out. Isn't that cool?

Barry Conrad

That's so cool.

Melanie Avalon

I think it's probably complicated to be a museum, so the art changes. But they have really cool museum type stuff, obviously. I went there for my birthday three years ago, maybe. So the menu is, I guess we can just pick from the tavern menu because they have a tasting menu but we can't actually see what that is because it changes. So we'll just have to go off of there.

Barry Conrad

This looks good.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, so they do have a chef's tasting menu, but it says full table participation required. That's like so scary.

Barry Conrad

Well, have you met me? I'm pretty much a full table when it comes to food. I'll eat for like five people.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, so we'll go. I'll be like, we're getting the chef's tasting menu. The full table is berry. And then I'll sit over there.

Barry Conrad

That's your buddy.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, actually, you know who I went to? I went twice. I went with Jean Valacara, who is the he has biohackers magazine and I had him on my show as well. But I love biohackers magazine. He's incredible. He's called his handle is cyber gains on Instagram. Yeah, he does calisthenics. He's like, so he's so impressive, like, with what he does. But he came to Atlanta and we went into Atlas once he had to come in town for like some other like conference things. So we went there. Okay, so looking at the menu, what would you get to share?

Barry Conrad

This all looks incredible, actually. I would say I'm gravitating towards large seafood platter for sure. I'd probably eat most of it, but we could definitely share that.

Melanie Avalon

features caviar, king crab, oysters, shrimp, crudo, and main lobster. I feel like we have to do that because the other things are oysters or small seafood platters. So we'll just get the large one. And I would eat, I would eat everything on that. Wait, what is crudo? I should know this.

Barry Conrad

So crudo, it's sort of the way, like when you have kingfish crudo or not, it's just the way it's cured. So I'm guessing it's going to be like kingfish or some sort of fish, but cured in that.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, it means raw.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, exactly.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, so I would definitely actually when I went I think I had I actually this is one of the locations where I Had this is do you know what this was berry? This was where I learned the term savory dessert because I Had salmon as the appetizer. This is when I went with jean and then for dessert I asked if I could have salmon and they were so accommodating and then I said I was like do people do this or like It's just like a weird and then the server said to me. Yeah, sometimes people have savory desserts And I was like, oh my goodness. I am adopting that term

Barry Conrad

That tracks, that makes sense and that's it's good that it's a full circle moment back to your favorite restaurant. That's good.

Melanie Avalon

So they also have an incredible wine list, but in any case, okay, so to share and then the cheese cart, would you be having some from the cheese cart, Barry?

Barry Conrad

Of course, like that was my second thing. We definitely need to have that select, like we need to get like a selection. Cause that's something we can pick at. I love cheese and crackers. I love it so much. So we have to do that.

Melanie Avalon

So I have good and bad news. Okay, what? What's the good news first? Good news is I love cheese. Like in heaven, I probably just, it's probably like made of cheese. The bad news is cheese for me, it's like the thing, I just can't have it. I like it too much. And cheese has queso-morphenes in it, which are, it's basically like morphine, but in food form. And the reason it has that is because I'm not trying to scare people away from cheese, but the reason it has that is to, do you know, do you know the reason why it has that? You tell me. It's to help the child. So milk has queso-morphenes to help the child bond to the mother.

Barry Conrad

Oh, well.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, isn't that crazy? So basically like mother's milk has these compounds that make the baby like be addicted to the mom.

Barry Conrad

That's kinda crazy.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, and depending on your constitution, some people have more like receptors for that and react to that differently. So for me, like it, if I have one bite of cheese, it feels like a drug like I, so I just have to abstain because I could just like eat cheese forever.

Barry Conrad

What about like a morsel, like one, one little bite and that's it.

Melanie Avalon

Exactly. You have one bite and it's like, then you're just stuck wanting more. Like, I'd rather just not have it.

Barry Conrad

We'll all have the cheese. We can get it.

Melanie Avalon

I love it so much that I would love you to have it and you can like give me tasting notes and yeah. So we will get the cheese cart.

Barry Conrad

Now, do you like do you like heavier? Is that something that you like?

Melanie Avalon

Oh, okay. I am so excited to talk about this. So I had not had caviar until semi recently. And what's funny is I didn't realize it was caviar until after I ate it. I was at another birthday dinner at one of my, another restaurant I love here, which is called Kevin Rathbun's Steakhouse. And something came with caviar. And then I ate it. And I was like, this is so good. And I was like, Oh, this is caviar. Like after I ate it.

Barry Conrad

That's funny. That's hilarious.

Melanie Avalon

It did not taste like what I thought it would taste like. What did you think it would taste like? I don't know, but it basically just tasted like salt.

Barry Conrad

Well, did you have it on a blini or did you have it on like, what did you have it with?

Melanie Avalon

It was a condiment, like it came with the tartare, I think, but it was like squishy and like little, little bit like seafood, but like salty. I loved it. And like fatty. Do you like caviar?

Barry Conrad

I love it. And so I'm throwing the ball to you, which, cause I'm having most of the cheese, which caveat would you choose?

Melanie Avalon

Let's get the la grande caviar selection, then we get everything. Wait, how does that compare to the tasting flight?

Barry Conrad

No, that's not enough.

Melanie Avalon

What's the difference between, it's the same thing though, with condiments. With condiments, is that the difference?

Barry Conrad

And have you tried Blinnies before? Have you tried that?

Melanie Avalon

No. What is that?

Barry Conrad

So I actually make these from scratch when I'm having caviar or even with smoked salmon. It's basically like, think of like a miniature, like a miniature pancake, like really small.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, okay. Yeah, I do. So so I would actually I personally would order just the tasting flight, but I feel like for the table me and you we would we want to get the grand caviar selection so that you can have the condiments and the Bellini that you make at home. Wait, I have a quick question about caviar. Do you buy caviar like at the grocery store? Because once I had it, then I when I would go to Whole Foods, I was like, oh, I should like buy some caviar. And I was like, Oh, this is this is confusing. There's like so many options. And the price goes from like expensive to like crazy expensive. I like couldn't bring myself to buy it.

Barry Conrad

I have an occasion for caviar but at the store but i would definitely go for if you're gonna do it like you know do for an occasion. But you can definitely buy it gets it gets pricey though.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, maybe I should, oh my goodness, maybe I should have a caviar line in the future. Maybe that'll be my first food. Yum. If you could have, last quick question, if you could have a berry Conrad food line, what would be your first food?

Barry Conrad

Do you know what not just food i would say you know because i love spicy i'd maybe do something like a hot sauce or a. So like a hot seasoning first before like a food because that's something that i could make sense because it's something you can put lots of different things that's probably something i would do.

Melanie Avalon

I'm making a note of that, that you like hot sauce stuff.

Barry Conrad

I do. I love it. I love Spicy.

Melanie Avalon

We should do a product collab, like a food collab. A wine, maybe? Yeah. Okay, what would you get to start? Oh, I know what I would get. This is like, oh, whoa, there's two things I want. Oh wait, there's three. Oh crap, actually I want everything. What do you want?

Barry Conrad

Kompachikrudur and the Wagyu Tatar.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, so I want the wagyu tartar, the crudo, and the hen's egg. I really want the hen's egg. Oh wait, is it not a hen's egg? Is it actually crawfish?

Barry Conrad

Yeah, I think it's just called hens egg, but I don't know why.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, so I take that back I want the same thing as you

Barry Conrad

Okay, in that case, let's get the garden solid like to kind of pad things out just to be there, you know, there's some, you know, greens there to look good.

Melanie Avalon

and take pictures for Instagram.

Barry Conrad

For the photo, exactly. You gotta bounce it out.

Melanie Avalon

And I'll have the crude out and the wagyu as well as will you.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, what would you have for your, okay, not the entree, I'm going to say your main event. That's the main dish.

Melanie Avalon

Yes. Are we skipping? Is pasta like, I'm confused. There's like a pasta section. Is that like a, is that a course? I'm skipping that course. Do you want one of those?

Barry Conrad

I feel like that's a main thing too. I feel like I put pasta and the entrepreneur sections into one thing. Like they're all like main things.

Melanie Avalon

So here's what I love, friends. You can get, for your main thing, we always have the language translation issue here, but for the main thing, you can get a pasta, an entree, or an entree for two. So basically, I'm always wanting to get two entrees, so I can just get the entree for two for one, for me. This is like incredible, but you can have some too if you want.

Barry Conrad

So what would you have?

Melanie Avalon

I think I would get the Dover Soul entree for two, but how big is that fish that is for two?

Barry Conrad

They'd be massive.

Melanie Avalon

That's what I want. It's probably like a it's like probably a whole fish. Do you like fish when it's in its whole fish form? I love it

Barry Conrad

I do. I love it. Some people get grossed out by seeing the eyes and seeing the whole thing. I love it.

Melanie Avalon

I love it when it even has like the brain in it still.

Barry Conrad

What? I was expecting that.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, because I remember the first time I had it like that, the guy I was I was with was like daring me to eat the brain. I was like, Oh, no, I like I want to eat the brain. This is not hard for me to do. Although it actually didn't taste as good as I thought it would. I thought it was gonna taste like good, like bone marrow. And it actually tasted like not that good. And I was like, Oh, actually, nevermind. But I wasn't scared is the point.

Barry Conrad

Have you fished before like yourself? Like, have you gone fishing and caught something and ate it?

Melanie Avalon

I have. Are you impressed? Are you surprised? Growing up, we lived on a pond. We would fish. We never ate that fish, but we would fish. And then in Florida, we would always go on these fishing things where you hire a person who takes you fishing, and then you would cook the fish later. But oh, actually, so I'm halfway answering this. At that time, I was not eating fish, so I didn't actually eat the fish, but we did cook it.

Barry Conrad

Wow.

Melanie Avalon

How about you?

Barry Conrad

Oh yeah we went fishing a lot when i was a kid so i do love the whole thing and it takes better when you catch it something about that.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. Although now I don't think I could actually eat any of the fish that I catch because of the mercury issue. Unless I catch salmon. And sole I believe is low. That's why I was picking it.

Barry Conrad

I might have to have like a bite of the soul, just like an immortal to try it.

Melanie Avalon

And what would you get for your entree?

Barry Conrad

I would get two things. I would get the West Home Wagyu and I'd also get the Hunter's Chicken.

Melanie Avalon

That's perfect because I also wanted those. So can I have a bite? Of course. How are you cooking your Wagyu?

Barry Conrad

So it's got to be medium rare, but more on the rare side.

Melanie Avalon

I can tolerate that.

Barry Conrad

I'm not going to do blue, Melanie, I'm not going to have just

Melanie Avalon

You're not doing blue? No blue?

Barry Conrad

No.

Melanie Avalon

someday. When we have our meal together, will you eat blue? Like if I order it blue, will you like try it?

Barry Conrad

Oh yeah I'm not like I've I'm not scared of having it's just like I enjoy like a little bit more like heat on the surface but I definitely love like rare for sure I definitely do it to the blue.

Melanie Avalon

Perfect, okay. And then for dessert, what would you get?

Barry Conrad

Oh man, this is hard. Okay. The FM Rocha, which is vanilla hazelnut chocolate, and I would also get the Baba R. Rom, which is an aged spirit selection. That sounds pretty appetizing to me. What about you?

Melanie Avalon

I would get a repeat of whichever appetizer I liked the most out of the caviar, crab, oyster, shrimp, crudo, and lobster. For dessert, actually, let me take that back. I probably would go like the shrimp, lobster, or crab route.

Barry Conrad

One day, hopefully I'll get to see you like have like one bite of like a cake or something with me.

Melanie Avalon

That is your mission in life, and I respect that.

Barry Conrad

I just want to see your reaction to it just when you have it.

Melanie Avalon

It's not, yeah. Would you get any of their seasonal or signature cocktails? The beverage menu.

Barry Conrad

You know what? The Southern Passion looks pretty good. I'll try that.

Melanie Avalon

Although it's perfect because we're in the south.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, you know.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, on theme I would get so I actually am friends with the Psalm here. His name is Maxwell. Shout out to Maxwell. And he knows my tastes and how intense I am and that I only drink organic low alcohol, like fruity wines. So from Europe. So and again, Atlas has an incredible wine list, like the book is just overwhelming. It's like, it's one of those like books, you know, like pages and pages and pages. So I would have him pick something.

Barry Conrad

Also, I have to maybe zoom out for one more second. I'll have that as like the first, I'll have that with my starter. And then with the mains, I'll have my, I'll have the golden margarita.

Melanie Avalon

Perfect. You got to feature the the berry margarita moment

Barry Conrad

Yeah, because that looks good. Lime, egg white, that's to own. That's that's that looks really good.

Melanie Avalon

And we could take beforehand a shot of what we talked about last time, Z-biotics.

Barry Conrad

Exactly. We'll take the shot and then enjoy the night.

Melanie Avalon

the probiotic genetically engineered to help you break down the toxic byproducts of alcohol in your stomach. I highly recommend it and it is part of my protocol every single time I go out. So for that, listeners can go to melaniavalon.com slash zbiotics, z-b-i-o-t-i-c-s and use the coupon code melaniavalon to get 10% off. Awesome. Well, I feel good. So friends, takeaway is that with fasting, you can have your cake and eat it too, unless you just look at it like me. But the point is you can indulge in all the things that make you feel good and happy in your eating window and still get all the benefits of fasting. So we love it.

Barry Conrad

We love it. And you know what, I was actually just thinking as we were doing this week's restaurant is, I hope that when we do the restaurant at the end, that if it works with your window, your eating window listeners, that you can start snacking away and enjoying it. Like while we talk about food, that'd be really fun. That'd be fun for me to listen to and eat.

Melanie Avalon

Oh yeah, or go look at the menu and see what you would order.

Barry Conrad

Or both, and or. Yeah.

Melanie Avalon

I love it. Love it. Love it. All right. Well, this was so, so fun. Friends, if you'd like to submit your own questions for the show, you can email questions at iapodcast.com or you can go to iapodcast.com and you can submit questions there. You can follow us on Instagram. I am Melanie Avalon. Barry is berry underscore Conrad. And our together one is I have podcast. And yeah, I think that's all the things. Anything from you, Barry, before we go?

Barry Conrad

Thanks for tuning in everyone and we'll catch you next week.

Melanie Avalon

Yep, this was so fun. I will talk to you next week. Bye. Bye. Thank you so much for listening to the Intermittent 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, 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.

Feb 17

Episode 409 – Special Guest Kara Collier, Continuous Glucose Monitors Q&A, Ideal Blood Sugar Levels, Berberine & Apple Cider Vinegar Timing, Reducing Blood Glucose, Sleep, Stress, Diet & Exercise, Adding Fat Vs. Protein, Blood Sugar & Heart Health, and More!

Welcome to Episode 409 of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast, hosted by Melanie Avalon, biohacker, founder of AvalonX, and author of What When Wine Diet: Lose Weight And Feel Great With Paleo-Style Meals, Intermittent Fasting, And Wine, and Barry Conrad, actor, singer-songwriter, and creator and host of Banter with BC.

SPECIAL GUEST

Kara Collier is the co-founder and VP of Clinical Operations at Nutrisense, one of America’s fastest-growing wellness-tech startups. She is a Forbes 30 under 30 recipient, frequent podcast guest & conference speaker. Kara has made it her mission to help others reach optimal health using modern technology & expert coaching. Kara is a leading authority on continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) technology, particularly in non-diabetics, for health optimization, disease prevention, and reversing metabolic dysfunction. Kara is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist (RDN), Licensed Dietitian/Nutritionist (LDN), and Certified Nutrition Support Clinician (CNSC).

Website | Nutrisense IG | Kara Collier IG

SHOW NOTES

SPONSORS & DISCOUNTS

NUTRISENSE CONTINUOUS GLUCOSE MONITOR

Get $50 off with code melanieavalon at melanieavalon.com/nutrisensecgm.

ONESKIN

Founded by a team of all female scientists, OneSkin is the world's first skin longevity company, with products shown to reduce your skin's biological age! OneSkin addresses skin health at the molecular level, targeting the root causes of aging so skin behaves, feels, and appears younger. It’s time to get started with your new face, eye, and body routine at a discounted rate today! Get 15% off OneSkin with the code IFPODCAST at https://www.oneskin.co.

MD LOGIC

Get 10% off MD Logic's Health Marine Collagen with code ifpodcast at ifpodcast.com/collagen.

If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving us a review in Apple Podcasts!

Original theme composed by Leland Cox, and recomposed by Steve Saunders.

TRANSCRIPT

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

Melanie Avalon

Welcome to Episode 409 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, founder of AvalonX, and author of What, When, Wine. Lose weight and feel great with paleo-style meals, intermittent fasting, and wine. And I'm joined by my co-hosts, Barry Conrad, actor, singer-songwriter, and creator and host of Banter with BC. For more on us, check out MelanieAvalon.com and BarryConradOfficial.com. You can submit questions for the show by emailing questions at iapodcast.com or by going to iapodcast.com. We would love to hear from you. Please remember, the thoughts and opinions on this show do not constitute medical advice or treatment, 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, everybody, and welcome. This is episode number 409 of the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. I am here today with a very special guest. It's somebody who's been on the show before, and it's for a topic that we talk about all the time and which has a radical effect on people's health and wellness and fasting and all the things. And so that topic is continuous glucose monitors, also known as CGMs. And friends, like I was saying, you're probably familiar because I talk about them all the time, but continuous glucose monitors, which we will talk about, actually give you a picture of your blood sugar levels on a sort of like a 24-7 basis for quite a few days when you do a session of one. And it is so eye-opening because it actually gives you an in-real-time picture of how your food is affecting you, how your fasting is affecting you, all the things. It can be a game changer, especially if you're trying to just figure out where you're at with your health or if you're trying to break through a weight loss plateau or just really optimize everything you're doing when it comes to food and diet and lifestyle. So I am here with Kara Collier. She is a fabulous human being and the co-founder of Nutrasense, which is a platform which makes CGMs accessible to everyday people. And by everyday people, I mean you don't need a doctor's prescription in order to get one. And then Nutrasense also comes with an app which helps you actually analyze and understand the data and it is just so empowering, so helpful. And so Kara, thank you so much for being here.

Kara Collier

Yeah, absolutely. I'm excited to chat.

Melanie Avalon

So, I was telling you before, I have quite a few listener questions for you, but before diving into those, I actually have a personal question because I think last time we came on the show was a while ago and I feel like within that, well, it wasn't that long ago, but in any case, in that time period, I feel AI really like took off, like chat GBT, because I feel like there was like a pre-AI time, I mean, AI's been around for a while, but like it like rapidly escalated. And so I was just thinking before we started recording with Nutrisense and everything you're doing with CGMs, like the future of it and what you're doing now, has that had a big effect on the company and the future and everything that you want to do with CGMs?

Kara Collier

Yeah, that's a great question. So much has changed. I think we spoke maybe like a little over a year ago, when you reflect back of like all the things that change in a year, both in terms of technology advancements, but also just the industry, like a lot has changed within cgms and within our company. But with AI specifically, yeah, it is going to make analyzing, I mean, it already is making analyzing large amounts of data, super simple and easy, which is great for both businesses that function on data as kind of the main component. So now instead of just having maybe cgm data, it's going to be a lot easier for us to plug and play other forms of data and put it all together and give you something meaningful. And then it's also going to make it easier for the user, you know, we have the easy ability for you to export every single data point in that kind of like five minute intervals. And then you can kind of if you're savvy enough, you can use simple free AI tools to manipulate that data if you have certain things you want to look for or see that we aren't necessarily providing for you. So I think it just makes it a lot easier to use data for answers, because you don't have to be an analyst anymore to be able to kind of use these tools. So as a company, it's kind of helping us make it easier for making things digestible for people. And it's also helping us to make sure that our human support, which we're actually leaning on even more now in the forefront of AI is still having that human component, but it's helping to kind of augment them and give them the tools and support they need to do their job well.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, that's really interesting. So do you think you're temporarily leaning on them more or do you think ultimately, you know, it'll be all AI providing that support?

Kara Collier

Yeah, it's hard to predict what exactly will happen and what the gaps are going to be and how much adoption there will be across the board. You know, you still ask the average person on the street if they use chat GBT on a daily basis and most people actually are not. Like it's still really underutilized on just like an average person, but we've actually leaned more on the human component because of a demand from customers. Recently, you know, we used to just provide chat support access to our dietitian so that you could ask questions. And now we do kind of our long telehealth sessions that are reimbursed by insurance. And that really came from the demand of people wanting to turn these data insights into real behavior change. So it's kind of connecting that dot of how do I now turn this into a habit I can stick to? How do I, you know, adjust things when my routine is different? And for some people, I think it just depends on your personality type AI might solve that problem for you. And we're happy to kind of support that person in that way, where I think there is a whole separate group of people that need that human connection in order to reach their goals. So I think it really just depends on your personality type and like what motivates you.

Melanie Avalon

I'm so interested by this, and it's also interesting that you point that out about, you know, not everybody using chat GPT and things like that. Actually, yesterday, the guest I had on the show, I just like brought up chat GPT, I was talking about it, and they actually hadn't, like, they didn't know what I was talking about. And I was like, Oh, like, because I'm so saturated in it, it's like, I use it so much. I forget that everybody's not using it all the time.

Kara Collier

I know I'm currently trying to get my mom to use it more for like basic things. And it's, it's an interesting experience to walk through somebody who's like the learning curve is like, it's not intuitive to them in the same way of like how I would use it for all these different applications. But as soon as like I pointed out, she's like, Oh, that's amazing, but wouldn't have thought of it herself. So I think there's a lot of people like her.

Melanie Avalon

I use it for for everything. It's so it's so helpful. It expands beyond just things like this, but the entirety of health care like will we always want a final human, you know, overseeing everything, especially like surgeries and procedures and records. Do you think there's a future where we're comfortable? I know you're talking about personality types, but do you think there's a future where it's all just automated?

Kara Collier

I think so. I think a lot is going to change. I think we're at the start of exponential change, you know, where it's, we're at that bottom of that exponential curve where I think it's going to be almost, it's going to be very challenging to even imagine what things are going to look like 10 years from now. Cause I think they're going to be so different than even what has changed, you know, in the past 10 years. So I think everything is going to look different eventually. I just don't know when that will happen. Like what is the pace of which this is going to occur in a, which we're all very like normalized and we trust some of these systems. Cause the other thing is, you know, right now there's still the issue of kind of the quality of data you put in is what you get out, but it's, that's going to be less of an issue as things just get more and more intelligent. I think there's going to be time where we trust data a lot more than humans.

Melanie Avalon

It's so interesting. And on a similar note, so the actual technology itself, and it's interesting when I was asking for questions, one of the first comments I got, it actually wasn't a question, but it was a clarification, which I find really helpful from Lisa Marie. And she said that she's a type one diabetic here. She said, please know that CGM tests the interstitial fluid and not the actual blood like blood glucose monitors do. I've heard other podcasts mistake this. It will be interesting to see what questions pop up here. And then Stacy wanted to know how accurate are CGM's. And the reason I'm leaning off of both of those is kind of tying it into this concept of the evolution of everything in the future. So the actual technology of the CGM, because like Lisa Marie was saying, it's not actually measuring our blood sugar levels. It's measuring this interstitial fluid. Is the technology itself, like has it evolved or changed? Is that still how it works? Do you think it will change? And then as far as the accuracy, like how does that tie into the evolution and how the technology might be changing?

Kara Collier

The, that is correct. So the, the CGM they are measuring your glucose in your interstitial fluid, which is just kind of like the fluid in between your cells. So you can think of it as kind of like classic diffusion that we learned in science class. So when your glucose changes first in the bloodstream and then diffuses into the interstitial fluid. So the biggest difference between the values in your blood glucose level and your interstitial fluid is that there's usually a little bit of a delay as it diffuses and the more intense the change. So if you suddenly dump in a ton of glucose into your bloodstream, the faster it's going to diffuse into the interstitial fluid. So the more rapidly it's changing kind of the quicker you're going to see that appear, but if it's a slow change, it will diffuse slowly. So it is an, and one thing that is important to think about though, is that that glucose in our interstitial fluid is still like, you know, it's a part of our body. Like that is like real glucose that is also important to know. So it's not that it's irrelevant. It's just that it's a slight difference from your blood levels. This is especially important for type one diabetics, which are the, you know, the patient population, the audience that these CGM were first created for, and that they're most critical for this audience because they cannot, you know, they type one, type one diabetics do not make insulin. And so they rely on exogenous, you know, injected insulin in order to maintain glucose levels and to live and survive. So those minor fluctuations are really important to be on top of in a type one diabetic. And their glucose swings are much more dramatic typically because, you know, that normal process that a non-type one diabetic kind of naturally has. So their swings might go from 200 to 50 in the matter of, you know, 30 minutes. It's especially important in that group, whereas if you're a non-diabetic, the minor differences, it is important to kind of know that absolute value, but it's the trends and information that you're gaining from like the way your glucose is changing. And that is most useful. So coming to the question then of accuracy and precision, what tends to be very correct, so to speak with the CGM is the precision. So the amount that glucose is fluctuating at different times. So if you compare your overnight average on your Sunday versus Monday, kind of how you're seeing how much those are different between two days is very accurate in that precision. But what might be off is the absolute number. So it could be reading that your glucose is 90 right now, and then jumped up to 120 when in reality it was 80 and jumped up to 110. So we do allow people to calibrate in our app, which means if you know your glucose at that moment, because you recently got a fasted glucose level or your finger pricking is 80, you can adjust it to match that. And then you can kind of see that in real time, a little bit more accurately. But if you don't have that number and you aren't calibrating, you can see that my glucose jumped 30 points and it took four hours for it to come back down to what it was before I ate.

Kara Collier

You can see those trends and variability in your glucose levels, whether the number is exactly on or not.

Melanie Avalon

Oh my goodness. Okay. So many, I have so many thoughts and questions. I'm just trying to think in all the conversations I've had about CGM's. I don't remember learning that about if it's a bigger change or a faster change that you see it faster on the CGM. That's, that's really, that makes sense though. Okay. Some, some questions there. Well you mentioned just to provide some clarity for listeners about the numbers they actually should be looking for. Andrea had a really good question. She said, what is the optimal blood sugar spike for a given meal? Should your blood sugar never go over X amount or is it more about how quickly your blood sugar returns to normal? I heard someone say your blood sugar should basically stay between 80 to 130 no matter what you've eaten. So can we, um, just kind of clarify for listeners, what numbers they actually should be looking for?

Kara Collier

Yeah, absolutely. And I love this question because I think there is a lot of misinformation around this. The first myth I always like to point out that I think we've discussed is that like an absolutely flat glucose line is not necessarily the end goal. Like zero variability in your glucose is not superior to normal amount of variability. So if your glucose moves because you just ate, that is normal physiological response to eating. But we want to make sure that it's moving in a way that is not too high and it doesn't take too long to get back to normal. And then we also want to put it into context. And this is where kind of either AI detection to put it into context for you or a human to kind of point this out and talk through it is important. Because if you eat something that is just protein and fat, I'm not expecting your glucose to go up too much if there isn't any carbohydrates in it. So it might be ideal if your glucose was starting at 80, if it goes up to a 90 or 100, and then comes back down to 80 within two hours, that's pretty expected. But if you have some carbohydrates, let's say you have half a cup of sweet potato with that same meal, it might be completely normal for it to go up to 120, 130, but then come back down within two hours still. So you do want to take into context like what did I eat to make sure that it's an expected response. But at a high level, we really don't want glucose to go above 140 in an optimal manner. And we want it to kind of come back down to those pre-meal values within two hours of eating. But as I mentioned, if you're following a low carbohydrate diet, if it's just kind of mostly protein and fats, then I really don't expect it to go much above 120, kind of at any point in time with meals. But one last clarification I'll point out is that there's a difference between what is optimal for good long-term health and kind of what is the goal range, which is below that 140, and being metabolically unhealthy. So there are responses when I look at someone's meal response that I would say, this concerns me that maybe there's some metabolic dysfunction, potentially some insulin resistance. And then there are responses where I'm like, this makes sense given the context, but it's not a healthy or ideal response. So to give two examples, you might eat a piece of steak and half of a sweet potato, and your glucose goes up to 140. It takes four hours to come back down to normal. And it's like, I wouldn't have expected it to go that high, and I would have expected it to come back down sooner. This could be something to look into, get your insulin level tested, kind of try some other foods. It might not be a good sign of normal metabolic response. And then there's somebody who maybe drinks an entire Gatorade and their glucose spikes up to 150 and comes back down in an hour. And that response doesn't indicate to me that you have metabolic dysfunction, but it doesn't mean we want to see that response because it's not necessarily good for your body. Does that make sense?

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, no, that completely does. And actually, so to that point, and so this is me asking, and then Andrea actually had a follow-up question that is kind of similar. But my question would be, if we're not expecting to see that many fluctuations on like a low-carb diet, a keto diet, maybe even a carnivore diet, is there benefit to using a CGM on that sort of diets? Or is it really just for people who are eating carbs? And then I can tie in Andrea's second question, but maybe I'll start with that.

Kara Collier

Yeah. I definitely think there is still benefit. Usually people who are following a lower carbohydrate diet don't need to wear them for as long to get some insights, but some examples of things you might learn are the impact of meal timing. So sometimes everyone kind of responds differently, but eating later at night versus earlier in the morning, like how does your glucose respond? And then there's also giving you a better picture of what your average glucose levels are because a hemoglobin A1C, which is trying to capture your average glucose, isn't always super accurate. And so this wearing a CGM is another way to kind of see at a broader view, what are your average glucose levels overall, which is really important for overall health. I mean, kind of seeing like, does it come back down to lower values while I'm sleeping when I'm fasted? And then that's kind of the third component is seeing the fluctuations in your fasted glucose levels, which can be impacted by a lot of factors outside of nutrition and carbohydrates. So often we'll see people who are under a lot of stress and those fasted glucose levels are really high, which brings their average glucose levels up and they're not eating any carbohydrates. And the thing they really have to work on is stress management. That could be a similar type of thing for sleep quality or sleep quantity. So there's all these other variables that can impact your glucose levels that a CGM just provides much quicker and more meaningful insight into that are worth at least assessing, even if you're following a low carbohydrate diet. So maybe you wear one sensor for 14 days and everything looks good. You might be good to go and maybe you only wear one once a year to kind of check in where somebody with more of a variability in their diet might need to wear them a couple more to even kind of understand that baseline.

Melanie Avalon

So that actually does tie in really well to Andrea's second question because, so basically she's trying to figure out why her fasting blood sugar is consistently around 100, whereas like she said two years ago, it was always low around in the 80s. And she says she's been taking berberine for a long time. She says she's tried eating higher protein. She avoids processed foods, seed oils, refined sugars and grains. She takes a bajillion supplements. And so she's struggling to figure out why her fasting blood sugar is high. And her two questions here are, one, can high protein cause a higher fasting blood sugar somehow? She said she feels healthy otherwise. Good energy, good muscle mass, very little visceral fat. And then her second question, it's not really a question, but I'm turning it into a question. She said, I'm considering getting a CGM again, but I, oh, this is just a note. She says she thought that the numbers were consistently about 15 millimole difference compared to her finger stick. And since her main concern is now her fasting blood sugar and not the spikes, will it be helpful? So, and her fasting insulin was 4.7 and she's considering metformin. But to recap the questions here, so I guess there's three questions. One, which is what is similar to what we were just talking about, if she's just concerned about her fasting blood sugar, not the spikes per se, would a CGM be helpful there? Maybe we can start with that question.

Kara Collier

Yeah, I still think it's very insightful because you can start to see trends a little bit easier than the finger pricks. And like I said, in our app and in some apps, you can calibrate and some you cannot. So it sort of depends. But if you know, okay, it's consistently 15 points higher, you can kind of just do that mental math in your head that, okay, it's reading 115, but it's actually 100. But it's useful to get that sense of what days are my fasting glucose even higher or lower and like what is driving those changes potentially. Typically, we don't see people have the same exact pattern every single day. And to that point, then kind of bleeding into potentially a second question, is there are other variables that we tend to look at really closely if it seems like the fasting glucose is the thing that is driving up. So I mentioned stress tends to be the top thing for people usually if they have a higher fasting glucose level, but everything else looks good, because that kind of chronic cortisol pulsing that chronic elevated cortisol is going to stimulate the liver to be making glucose. And that tends to drive up our fasted glucose levels. So sort of assessing stress levels, and kind of any form of stress is a good place to start. The second thing tends to be sleep quality and quantity. So kind of looking at that and making sure that you're getting adequate sleep, because that can definitely impact your fasted glucose level. And lastly, in terms of just really common factors for people is the timing of your last meal. Some people seem to be much more sensitive to this than others. There seems to be like a genetic variance to how sensitive you are. But for some people, if you eat later at night, it will bleed all the way into kind of the next day, next morning and impact your fasted glucose levels. So that's another thing to play around with. And as we've kind of mentioned, the benefit of the CGM is that you can experiment with something and get insight quickly. So you could try adjusting that meal timing and see what happens and pretty much assess within one day, if that is making any difference or not. Similarly with adding in a walk before bed or in the evening or after your dinner, you can have a very quick yes or no of what type of impact that had, which I think is one of the main benefits of the CGM is just that quicker learning feedback.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I could not agree more and it's hard to really emphasize just how profound it is until somebody's actually done it, but that in real time data and that really ability to see quick changes, I just think is so, so powerful. So her question about the protein, actually before that, I want to comment on the liver piece. I also love that you brought that up because I think a lot of people think fasting, you know, their fasted blood sugar level is primarily driven by like the food they just ate. But so much of it is the liver actually, you know, producing this glucose, which I think a lot of people don't realize. So her question about can high protein cause fasting blood sugar to be higher? Have you seen that with CGM's?

Kara Collier

Yeah. And to touch on the liver piece, just to emphasize that more, like your liver has unlimited ability to keep making glucose. Like there, there is no upper limit, you know, it's like you can keep making it and making it. Because I think a lot of people under emphasize the amount of stress they're under and how much of an impact that has, but related to protein. So this is something that I get asked quite often. And I have very rarely been able to see a direct link between, okay, we really increased your protein and we saw that fasted glucose go up or we really decreased your protein and we saw fasted, flat, fasted glucose levels drop. So I can't say with certainty, because I haven't done like a, you know, completely randomized controlled trial. But anecdotally, I haven't seen this to make a big impact. I think that the upper threshold of how much protein you have to eat in order for that to start impacting your glucose levels is pretty high and higher than what most people are doing. So it's not to say I don't think it exists. I just don't think it's a common variable that most people are probably needing to deal with. It can, you know, provide the substrates for your liver to make more glucose, as we've mentioned. But again, most of the time I don't, see this direct correlation and it's not usually something that I'm having people worry about too much. Usually I'm having people eat more protein than what they're currently doing.

Melanie Avalon

I tend to err on the side of encouraging more protein rather than less. And we've actually, especially when we have a new co-host now, but Vanessa Spina was our prior co-host and we talked about protein all the time on the show and it's still an ongoing debate. Like it's weird to me that we still don't know that there are still conflicting opinions about if you're eating excess protein, whether or not it becomes glucose or not. Like there's people still debate that.

Kara Collier

Yeah, they do.

Melanie Avalon

I'm like, how do we not know? I feel like this is testable.

Kara Collier

Yeah, I feel pretty good about recommending like higher protein is typically better. And there's like very rare instances where I'm like, that's a lot of protein you're eating. Like usually I'm like, yeah, more protein, please.

Melanie Avalon

It's shocking the amount of protein I eat, but I also don't add a lot to it. I don't think I could eat the amount of protein I eat and also have a ton of carbs or fat as well. This is a random question I just thought of. Have you seen, I'm trying to remember, I don't remember the brand or what it was called, but a company reached out to me and they were making an app that was supposed to show you your blood sugar levels, but it didn't actually test them. Do you have thoughts on that concept? I was very hesitant. I immediately just said no, because I was like, how does it know? Like you could be telling people wrong information.

Kara Collier

Yeah, I would definitely be skeptical of that. And that, that brings to a question I think you had earlier that I might not have finished with just like new technology with measuring glucose levels. What is being tested and I think has a lot of potential, but is not ready for like full market adoption consumer use is kind of detecting your glucose values through like optics and lasers. So, you know, similarly to kind of how we're detecting heart rates from like a wearable or like a watch. I think that there will certainly be a possibility where we'll be able to wear something like that, that is kind of able to detect the glucose levels like in from your, you know, your veins and your, your blood vessels. There's also the ability potentially to detect it in like your eyes. So the small amount of those tiny blood vessels that are in your eyes and kind of similar type of functionality. I haven't seen anything yet that has been that is credible and verified and ready for like market use. So I would say if you have something right now, like anybody out there, like they're seeing an ad for something, I would be skeptical, but I definitely think we're going to have much better technology in the future.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I was going to circle back to that. I'm so glad you brought that up again at Nutrisense. Are you actively looking at expanding if there is new technology like that in the future, or I'm just curious about like the company in general. And actually related to that, Anna said, are they available over the counter yet? I had heard a like a rumor or a whisper that maybe that barrier was going to be broken anyways with CGMs. Do you know about all of that?

Kara Collier

Yeah, absolutely. So from a company perspective, we don't make the hardware. We work with the companies who do make it. And then we do the software. So the app and then the services, the nutrition dietitian support on top of it. So we're always looking for like what, and we're not hardware specific, where we only work with, you know, one person, one type, we work with several different ones. And now we also have a better related to the over-the-counter option. We have a better what we call like BYOS, bring your own sensor, because they are available over the counter now. Oh, are they?

Melanie Avalon

Did I miss that?

Kara Collier

Yeah, so it's very recent change. So yes, they're available over the counter, which is a huge change in making them more affordable, more accessible. So we're working directly with those companies as well, to kind of integrate those sensors into our ecosystem to make it even cheaper to our customers as well. And from their perspective, they are still hardware manufacturers that don't really want to play too much in like the consumer side, even though now it's direct to consumer or the software side. So, you know, they're, they want to kind of like stick in that wheelhouse. So it works well to be able to either you can get the sensors directly from them and then use just our app in our dietitian services or kind of still get it through us, but using their hardware because it's continuing to make it cheaper and easier for everybody.

Melanie Avalon

Wow, when did that happen? Do you know?

Kara Collier

I think it was August or September.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, in the fall. Okay. I find it really interesting in the medical community in general, where the barriers are, and where they aren't. Like what we're like allowed access to, and what we're not. I just, I'm, I find it intriguing.

Kara Collier

It is. The whole thing has been interesting because, you know, it's in Europe, they've always been over the counter, same companies, same, you know, manufacturers are allowed to sell them in Europe over the counter. And then in the US, we just kind of, you know, had like an arbitrary rule, but they are still their cgms that they make for so like, you know, the Libre you're familiar with is still a prescription device for diabetics, technically. And then they have their over the counter variation, which has like certain, it has to be like a different sensor, technically, in order to get that approval. So there's still some weird rules and like, things that we're having to go through. But I think the whole landscape is changing. And we're only going to move towards more accessibility, cheaper prices, better technology as things continue to change.

Melanie Avalon

Awesome. Wow. That's really interesting about the, like the lasers or the eye. And I want to say non-invasive, but putting a CGM on for friends, if you've probably heard me talk about this before, some people can be intimidated because it, there is like a needle that sticks to your skin, but I promise you, you don't, you like don't even feel it. It's so easy to put on.

Kara Collier

Yeah, it's so easy. And if you do any sort of at home finger pricks, that's way worse just like to put it into context way worse.

Melanie Avalon

There's like no comparison.

Kara Collier

Yeah, I hate finger picking now.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, as far as actually lowering blood sugar levels, Amy had some good questions. She wanted to know about some specific different things. So she wanted to know, to help regulate blood sugar, is it better to go on a walk right after a meal? Or if the morning blood sugar is high, is it better to walk before the first meal? So that's the first one she asks about. So walking, and you mentioned walking earlier, so I'm glad she's talking about it. Is the timing of it, do you see a difference?

Kara Collier

Yeah, in general, walking is a great tool. The more you can do it and the more you can kind of get these like micro walks in. So 10 minutes here, five minutes there versus like a really long walk is better. So if you have the ability to do a 10 minute walk in the morning when you wake up and the ability to do 10 minutes walking after each meal, like that's ideal. But if you're like, I'm only going to do it once, I would say right after a meal is the best.

Melanie Avalon

And then another one she asked about when is the best time to take berberine?

Kara Collier

Yeah, I'm also curious to see if you if you have a preferred time, but in general, I see it best with meals. So I tend to recommend if you're kind of splitting it up, like if you're taking it twice a day, kind of taking it with with your biggest meals as the most optimal time, but I recommend taking it consistently. So as opposed to kind of taking it here and there, the more consistent you are, we see I see better benefits, but curious your, your thoughts. 1

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. Well, first of all, have I sent you my berberine?

Kara Collier

I think last time you did, yes, yes, you did, because it's in the beautiful glass bottle. I love when they're glass bottles and not plastic.

Melanie Avalon

Me too. Yeah, no, huge Burberry fan here. It's interesting and I'm glad you asked that question because the majority of the research I've seen on Burberry does dose it around meals. That said, I do a daily fast. I fast every day and I eat one meal a day at night. So I actually just personally, I do take it in the morning and then I take it before my meal as well. I just, that's the way I do it.

Kara Collier

Yeah, makes sense. And I think the main recommendation from my awareness of taking it with meals is because sometimes people have GI side effects and they tend to be lessened with with meals, less so of like effectiveness. So if you don't have any sort of, you know, GI issues with it, then I don't think it matters as much.

Melanie Avalon

That's a good point. Yeah. It's also astounding because I think a lot of people think about berberine and they focus on the blood sugar control aspect, but there are so many studies on the other benefits of it beyond that. So helping with cholesterol, it actually, there's a study on showing how it activates AMPK, also microbiome effects. That's why I thought about it. So yeah, it has a lot of potential good benefits, which I love.

Kara Collier

Yeah, absolutely. And just like general like suppression of chronic inflammation, those like natural stress pathways. Yeah, absolutely. And it's so low risk, like we don't really see any sort of issues with it.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, it's great. How about fasting? So I'm going to modify her question a little bit because she's wanting to know, actually before that, since we're talking about blood sugar levels, she wants to know what is the best time to drink apple cider vinegar for blood sugar. She said she's seen 15 minutes before a meal and also right after a meal, does it matter? Do you have thoughts on apple cider vinegar?

Kara Collier

Yeah, I typically see the best benefit with this if it's right before a meal. So just drinking a little bit, diluting it with water if you want to. I know there are also apple cider vinegar supplements, but honestly, just kind of drinking it, taking a quick shot, diluting it into a beverage. A lot of people will dilute it into a plain sparkling water if that's your preference and kind of drinking it right before the meal, I tend to see the best, best impact.

Melanie Avalon

Awesome. Do you personally use any? Well, I know we're brain. Do you use apple cider vinegar?

Kara Collier

I don't use it consistently. I have used it in Burberry or not Burberry apple cider vinegar is one of those that you can sort of use more randomly and see just as much of an impact versus like needing consistent use to see the benefit. So if I know like I have maybe an abnormal meal coming up that's like higher carbohydrate or kind of something going on, like I'll try to incorporate it. Like I'm like, Oh, a mental note to do it, but it's not a part of my daily routine.

Melanie Avalon

And then Amy's last question was the fasting schedule. She wants to know for blood sugar, is it better to do a long fast or to fast daily for X amount of hours? What might people find with fasting and CGM?

Kara Collier

Yeah, and this is one of those topics where I think wearing the CGM and experimenting is going to be your best option because I see so much variability between people of what what is kind of their optimal sweet spot for fasting. Like as I mentioned, I think there's some good general rules of thumb of like, you know, don't be grazing all day, like make sure you have at least, you know, a little bit of time between your last meal and going to bed, having some sort of fasting window throughout the day. And then beyond sort of the basics, I just, I just see so much variability between what works for people. What you're kind of looking for is what does your glucose look like when you break a fast, so kind of just being mindful of what is the first few bites of food you put in your mouth, please don't start straight with carbohydrates, you'll probably especially the longer you've been fasting, the more important this is of like how you're breaking that fast. And then kind of when it comes to the right timing, you just sort of experiment with different times. And then that fasting window, I think also experiment. I know you you mentioned you do OMAD, and I think it works really well for some people. And then for some people, it doesn't. So I think just kind of testing that out for yourself. And usually the factor that I see of when it doesn't work is if they have a lot of other stressors stacked up in their life. And there's one too many stressors happening. So if you have a very stressful job, and you don't have your stress management under control, and you kind of are doing other things that are putting stress on your body, sometimes the positive stress of fasting and some of these other things like, you know, sauna cold plunge can tip that scale into too much stress. And then we see glucose levels go up fasting glucose levels, postprandial responses, average glucose levels. And so usually it's kind of what which of those things can we adjust so that we can normalize. And then with some people, we see their glucose levels dramatically appear dramatically improve when we add in more fasting than what they're currently doing. So again, I think it's contextual. And I think you have to experiment. But you know, I do recommend kind of the basics of doing some type of fasting window. So you're not eating 24 seven and trying not to eat like right before you go to bed. And then being mindful of how you're breaking that fast is super important.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I just like you're saying, it's so individual. And it also can change, you know, through time, like one thing that's working for you now might be different later. Like I know for me in the past, I went through a period of time where I was very low carb, almost carnivore, and I would have higher fasting blood sugar levels doing that. And then when I actually added in some carbs, I actually started having lower fasting blood sugar levels. And so my theory there is that, you know, my liver was probably like overcompensating, putting out glucose, and then it's actually just brought in, you know, endogenous or exogenous carbs. I feel like it wasn't keeping my levels high all the time. Things just can really change. So if you had to, well, Susan wanted to know what's the best way to lower blood sugar, and we literally just went through so many different ones. But so maybe I'll modify her question a little bit. If you had to, you know, have somebody start somewhere, because that's so many lifestyle factors, like where should somebody like, where should they start? Because it can be a little bit overwhelming, I think.

Kara Collier

Yeah, it definitely can be. And that's again, why I think a CGM can be helpful is because you can kind of identify like, oh, this one meal is like really not working for me. Let me just adjust this thing versus kind of you get a high A1C and you're like, what do I need to do to bring this down? Like what do I, like it feels overwhelming. So it can be helpful to have just like more information so you can pick one thing at a time that you know is working. But if you don't have that, you're like not really sure and you know, your, your glucose is elevated. I would start with just being mindful of your carbohydrate intake. You know, it sounds simple, but that's a good place to start. I think one of the biggest myths out there that I'm sure your audience is a little bit more aware of than maybe the average person is just that like half of your calories should come from carbohydrates. And that's a lot. And like for 98% of people, it's too much. Sometimes I see it work fine for people if they're like athletes usually is pretty much the only bucket that, that amount tends to be okay. And so really just being kind of mindful of that total carbohydrate amount and prioritizing your plate to be more about protein, non-starchy vegetables, if you tolerate those well, and then kind of the carbohydrates are more of a nice to have small amount. So that can make a big difference. And then if you're consuming any form of like liquid carbohydrates, try, try to cut those out and that, cause that makes a big impact. You know, even if it's sort of quote unquote natural juices, that's still a very concentrated form of carbohydrates, any sort of sweetened beverage, sweetened coffees, Gatorade, you know, checking the sugar content of like electrolytes. So trying to just be mindful of that liquid sugar is another really kind of like big place to start kind of auditing your sugar intake.

Melanie Avalon

I'm pretty sure I think we talked about this before. I'm so fascinated by this question. So I'll re-ask it. How do you feel about the recommendation people make to add fat to your carbs to slow down the absorption of the carbs?

Kara Collier

Yeah. So it is this concept of kind of like no naked carbs, which I do think has validity to it. But what I see work a lot better than just kind of coding carbohydrates and fat is eating some protein before you have any form of carbohydrate. So back to that kind of point of how you break a fast, if you are in a fasted state and your first bite of food is like a banana, you're probably a piece of steak and then some non-starchy vegetables, like you're doing Brussels sprouts or whatever it is, and then like banana is your dessert or whatever, however you're arranging that. It's probably going to be a much more blunted glucose response, which is going to have a less of an impact directly on kind of your blood vessel health and that endothelial tissue and those things that kind of cascade from a dramatic glucose spike. So it is beneficial to first prioritize eating protein before you have carbohydrates and not eating them by themselves. But that doesn't mean that trying to think of a good example. If you're eating potatoes, that putting a bunch of olive oil on top of them makes them significantly better. That's kind of where we're headed. Instead, I would say eat a piece of fish and then have a few bites of potatoes if you want them and see what your glucose does.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I feel like my take on it is a little controversial, but I actually, I don't know. I just feel like if you're having carbs, adding fat to that just seems like a bad idea to me. Because then you're, I love the idea, basically for carbs, I would say add what you just said, protein or like green veggies. Because then you're gonna slow the absorption, but you're not gonna be adding in a competing fuel source. Because when you're adding in the fat, then you're just encouraging a situation, in my opinion, of energy toxicity. Because now you have like, you're adding a lot of calories, you're adding two fuel sources of fat versus carbs. It just seems, I don't know, compared to if you add in the protein or the veggies, but not adding in the fat, you can still be using that glucose and those carbs as fuel, the protein will be slowing everything down. I don't think it'll be running into this like conflicting fuel option.

Kara Collier

I agree. And I think volume matters. Like what the quantity of food definitely makes an impact. So it's like, you know, if we start to get where the quantity of food is more than your body needs, then it's it is going to start kind of kicking that in. But if it's like smaller amounts, it doesn't matter as much. But what I always recommend is that focusing on protein versus fat, because I also don't see fat blunt the glucose response nearly as well as protein or fiber does anyway. So it doesn't seem to have as powerful of an effect in that. And it is like, fat is extremely calorically dense. I am not fat phobic. I'm pro fat. But that doesn't mean that we want to like I maybe this is controversial, but I am not in the camp of add more fat to everything. Like the butter coffee is not my vibe. Because what I see often of what this actually turns into of people what people actually do with that is they're eating carbohydrates and they're putting butter in their coffee. And now we've just added 300 calories of butter for no reason. And like they're not any more satiated. They're not eating any less. They're not in ketosis. They're just adding more fat in random places. And that's not helpful.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I actually I'm on I'm on the same page there, because I feel like that's such a common recommendation. Add fat to your carbs. And it really should be add protein to your carbs. Like that would just be such a better recommendation, I think for for people.

Kara Collier

And usually the fat source people are adding that situation isn't necessarily like nutrient dense either, it's not like adding a lot of value.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. Yeah. So true. So we're talking a lot about using a continuous glucose monitor for blood sugar levels. And I think we're kind of focusing on, well, actually we haven't even really defined this. So blood sugar levels and how it does relate to metabolic health in general. So that's me asking you, like, what are your thoughts there? Stephanie wanted to know, does glucose have any relation to heart health or cholesterol? Would her general practitioner give her a prescription if she asked? That's a good second question. Okay. So a few different things there. So general health, do the blood sugar levels, how do they affect our metabolic health? Does it relate to heart health? What are your thoughts there?

Kara Collier

Yeah, absolutely. So metabolic health and metabolism in general, I think of as like this whole bucket of all the processes our body is doing in order to turn food into usable fuels. So thinking about digesting, absorbing, processing, transporting, excreting, it's all of the different processes required to utilize the energy that we're putting into our system and the energy that we've stored in our system. So that's like metabolic health and metabolism as a whole. And then glucose is one of those main fuel points, right? So we have glucose, we have fats and fatty acids, and those are our two main fuel sources. Of course, there's also ketones. And so by monitoring that, we have a good idea of kind of how that metabolic system is working. And typically you don't have glucose. It's not usually like if you keep going down a certain path of metabolic dysfunction, that you're only going to have one issue, that you're just going to have glucose issues and never lipid issues, or you're just going to have lipid issues and never glucose issues. So typically, like if we have metabolic dysfunction, that means our energy processing, transporting, all of those different systems are not working as they're designed to be working. And so you can kind of see that by watching how your glucose levels change and react and how they fluctuate. There's definitely a correlation with glucose levels and cardiovascular health, heart disease risk. And that's where tracking glucose levels tends to be easier than tracking lipids because we have the technology to monitor it in this 24 seven way. So usually when we improve glucose levels, we tend to kind of improve metabolic health as a whole, which then has that kind of ripple effect bleeding into improving lipid levels and kind of those other areas. But it doesn't just start with cardiovascular health. One thing I always like pointing out is that it also has a direct impact on kind of the sort of brain function side of things. So both risk for conditions like Alzheimer's and dementia, but also kind of your day to day ability to concentrate cognitive function memory, because that, you know, our brain is very glucose dependent and very insulin sensitive organ. So that's kind of another major area that by monitoring glucose levels and optimizing them kind of having that big impact on long term and short term health.

Melanie Avalon

Awesome, yeah. When she asked about would her general practitioner give her a prescription, if she asked, I'm curious if she's asking about like for her blood sugar levels or if if he would give it to her based on her cholesterol. But either way, do you find doctors are open to prescribing them to people?

Kara Collier

Yeah, historically, not so much, which is why we decided to do it ourselves. You started your company. Yeah, so we traditionally know, and I think part of the resistance here is that they're not trained on what to do with the information. It's like, okay, if I give this to a non-diabetic, and they come back and tell me, look at my glucose levels, how was it? They don't know because the only... And I really can't blame them for that because the only thing they've been trained on is maybe managing the diabetics levels, which is honestly very, very different. So part of it is, how do they help somebody if they do give it to them? And then the other is, it's not anywhere in traditional guidelines that this is a use case. So traditional medical triaging, an intervention for somebody, this is nowhere in the standard recommendations that it might be a useful tool. So unless you get somebody who's maybe more of in the functional medicine space, it's probably unlikely that they're going to, unfortunately. But yeah, that's sort of why we exist. And now that things are moving a little bit more over the counter, you can kind of bypass that all in general. So I would kind of go around them if they're resistant.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. And I don't know the, obviously I don't know the technicalities of the medical system and how it works, but I would imagine, I know for doctors, there's a lot of pressure about what they can and can't prescribe and there's codes they have to follow. And so I would imagine it's probably not the easiest for them to prescribe a CGM without like a verified you are diabetic or pre-diabetic like code to put in the system.

Kara Collier

Definitely like insurance won't cover it and so usually weren't they're not typically thinking about things if it's not in a classic like insurance coverage route

Melanie Avalon

And so, glad we're talking about this, to clarify, so when people use Nutrisense, what is the setup? How many CGM's do they get? How does it work with the app? What is that experience like?

Kara Collier

Yeah. So each CGM lasts 14 days. So kind of our minimum order is to do two CGM's or like a month supply. And that's a great place to start if you're not really sure, if you just kind of want to check it out, or if you're generally healthy and just want to see some of these additional like insights that we talked about. So if you were to just do the one month, then you would get those two CGM's shipped to your door. You just kind of sign up on our website online. It's super simple. You fill out a quick health questionnaire, and then we'll ship it to your door. And then you have access to the app, which is where you'll see your glucose data. Once you put the sensor on, you can log your meals, you can kind of sync with your wearables. So any data from like your Apple watch or your or ring will sync on there. And that's also where you can schedule and book calls with our nutritionists and where you can kind of connect with them. Like I mentioned, now we offer full video consults, which again, for some people using the app, looking at the data, reading our blogs, talking to our kind of like chatbot that has all of our information might be enough. But then for other people, there was this big issue of kind of like what now or what does this mean, or what's most important to take away from here. Being able to kind of connect with that human helps people really turn the data into actions and change. And so then we also offer three months, six months and 12 months subscriptions. So you can change to those plans at any time, but it gets cheaper, kind of the longer the commitment term.

Melanie Avalon

Awesome. And yeah, this will be a good time. So I will give listeners a link, because we do have a discount code for you guys. So thank you so much for that Kara. So people can go to Nutrisense.com slash if podcast. So that's n u t r i s e n s e comm slash if podcast and use the code I have podcast that will get you $30 off and one month of free nutritionist support. So definitely check that out. I'm super curious just like a day in your life, Kara at Nutrisense. Like what's a day in the life? I mean, I know we're like podcasting right now. But you know, where's your focus? What are you doing? Like was what's it like being at the company?

Kara Collier

Yeah, that's a great question. It's all over the place. I would say one thing that is always true is that a one day never looks the same as another day. But largely, so I'm responsible, really paying attention to our dietitian services. So everything that our dietitians touch and making sure that they are, you know, adequately staffed, trained, supporting our customers in the right appropriate way. And then anything that kind of requires knowing anything subject matter expertise. So I'm working with product a lot to make sure our product is really good, and scientifically sound and also useful and actionable. And then kind of external facing activities like this that require some of that more knowledge about kind of the nitty gritty of what it all means.

Melanie Avalon

And two more personal questions. One, how often do you wear a CGM?

Kara Collier

Well, I'm actually wearing one right now. So pretty often, I think when I first started wearing them, I wore them pretty much 24 seven, where now I probably tend to put one on every, I don't know, maybe two or three months, sometimes I'll wear them more often, if just there's like something happening in my life that I'm trying to pay more attention to. But in my normal routine, it's it's Yeah, maybe once every quarter. So

Melanie Avalon

This is actually really inspiring me because I haven't worn one in a while and I have one. So for me guys, so I'm going to I'm going to put that on like really soon. And what are you most excited about in the future with all of this?

Kara Collier

Yeah, similarly to what we've talked about, I think we're really at a cusp of a lot of positive change happening. So I'm excited about all of the technology advancements that are going to be coming, but I'm also really excited in terms of kind of the switch to the over-the-counter sensors. Because I think they're going to become more normalized. More people are going to be wearing these. They're going to be cheaper, which is going to make it easier for a lot more people to use them. And they're just going to become better technology that are easy to understand, easy to wear. They're going to last longer. And just like my personal goal, the reason I got in this in the first place is because I really, truly believe that if everybody wears even just one CGM, we will be healthier as a nation. So that is my big picture, moonshot goal, is that everybody wears at least one. Honestly, we still have a lot of improvement to make in our health as a society, but I'm optimistic that we'll at least be heading in the right direction, hopefully.

Melanie Avalon

Oh my goodness. Now I feel like I'm plagiarizing because literally that is how I open my conversations of CGMs. I always just say, especially for people who aren't familiar, I'm like, if everybody could just wear a CGM, like once, even just once, it would change the metabolic health of our nation. Like, hands down. Hands down. That's incredible. And it's really good to hear because I was curious when I first heard that, yeah, CGMs are going to become more accessible or maybe not require prescription. I was wondering how it was going to affect companies like you. Like, would you see that as, you know, a threat because you're providing CGMs, you know, and now people can get them over the counter. It's good to hear that you're all about the more access and the abundance. Because even if you get one over the counter, that is not going to help you analyze that data, make sense of it. I think so many people, you know, they get a CGM and then it's like, now what? You need something that helps you to understand everything. And Nutrisense, the app, and everything that you're doing is just so, so valuable for that. So, like, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Kara Collier

Yeah, absolutely. And it's definitely synergistic. You know, if I love that they're going to be, you know, cheaper and easier, but it's also they are not they're not good at making apps or accessible data. So it's definitely synergistic of what we do and what the hardware manufacturers do.

Melanie Avalon

So again, for listeners, cannot recommend enough getting a CGM, go to Nutrisense.com slash I have podcast use the code I have podcast to save $30 and get one month of free nutrition and support. So well, this was awesome. I would love to just keep having you on annually if you're down because I, I just think this is so so helpful for people and I just can't thank you enough for all you're doing. So so thank you so much for everything that you're doing.

Kara Collier

Yeah, absolutely. I would be thrilled to make it an annual change and honestly, so much changes in a year would be fun to kind of do at that cadence.

Melanie Avalon

I know. It's really exciting, especially like going back to what we were talking about in the beginning. Like just so much has changed even from last time we talked, so. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Enjoy the rest of your day and we will have to talk again soon.

Kara Collier

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks Melanie. Bye.

Melanie Avalon

Thank you so much for listening to the Intermittent 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, 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!

Feb 09

Episode 408 – Does MCT Oil Break The Fast?, GMO Probiotics To Break Down Alcohol, Fasting Tea And Coffee, Fasting For Colonoscopy Prep, Habits And Planning, Our Favorite Biohacks, Infrared Saunas And Red Light Therapy, And More!

Welcome to Episode 408 of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast, hosted by Melanie Avalon, biohacker, founder of AvalonX, and author of What When Wine Diet: Lose Weight And Feel Great With Paleo-Style Meals, Intermittent Fasting, And Wine, and Barry Conrad, actor, singer-songwriter, and creator and host of Banter with BC.

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Original theme composed by Leland Cox, and recomposed by Steve Saunders.

TRANSCRIPT

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

Melanie Avalon

Welcome to episode 408 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, founder of AvalonX and author of What, When, Wine. Lose weight and feel great with paleo style meals, intermittent fasting and wine. And I'm joined by my co-hosts, Barry Conrad, actor, singer, songwriter, and creator and host of Banter with BC. For more on us, check out MelanieAvalon.com and BarryConradOfficial.com. You can submit questions for the show by emailing questions at iapodcast.com or by going to iapodcast.com. We would love to hear from you. Please remember the thoughts and opinions on this show do not constitute medical advice or treatment. 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 everybody and welcome. This is episode number 408 of the intermittent fasting podcast. I'm Melanie Avalon. I'm here with Barry Conrad. Barry, how are you today?

Barry Conrad

I'm good i'm really really good actually i feel super rested recharged how you feeling today.

Melanie Avalon

I'm glad you're feeling that way. I'm hoping that like comes over to me because I love energy. And so the more, the merrier.

Barry Conrad

I'm sending it to you right now through the computer. Take it, take it, take it.

Melanie Avalon

Normally this is my vibe, like 8 o'clock PM my time, but yeah, I'm a little bit on the struggle bus. But last night I went to a restaurant which was South African.

Barry Conrad

Wow. Where was it? What was it called? What kind of food? What was the situation like?

Melanie Avalon

It's called Yibo Beach House, spelled like H-A-U-S, I think, in Buckhead in Atlanta. I only realized it was South African because like half of the wines were, it was a lot of South African wines. Which, do you like South African wine? Have we talked about this?

Barry Conrad

We haven't talked about this, but they, I was about to say they know we, I should say, because I'm South African, we know how to do wines. It's it's really, really easy to drink. It's paired well with like meats, especially like Springbok, Budovos, Biltong, all that.

Melanie Avalon

That was a lot of words that I don't think I, what was the first one?

Barry Conrad

Springbok.

Melanie Avalon

spring, bok, buck, like a deer.

Barry Conrad

Like yeah, exactly. So spring book is

Melanie Avalon

ringed deer.

Barry Conrad

Yeah it's actually ends but we call it like for example like a rugby team is the spring box or would like to call them the book like the book.

Melanie Avalon

And it's deer, venison.

Barry Conrad

You can eat it yeah and it's it's honestly amazing like the springbok lamb shanks wow incredible.

Melanie Avalon

Wait, wait, but that would be lamb. Now I'm confused.

Barry Conrad

Like Springbok Shanks, I should say. Kind of like Springbok. I went to South Africa a couple of years ago on a trip, listeners, and we got to stay at the safari, and they fed us like Springbok Shanks, Boudevoirs, amazing chicken paired with ones. Boudevoirs? Boudevoirs. Can you try to say it? Boudevoirs? Almost, yeah. You got to roll the R.

Melanie Avalon

I can't do that. Can you do that? I've heard if you don't learn how to do it, you can't ever do it.

Barry Conrad

Maybe you can go Brouwars? It's not quite the same.

Melanie Avalon

I'm not saying it again. I'm not saying it. I'm tapping out. So what is that? That word I will not say.

Barry Conrad

So the boudevoirs, the word that you are tapping out of, it's sausage. So African sausage, we have it on, you know, like people call the barbecue, like a barbecue, we call it a braai, B-R-A-A-I, and it's like a barbecue, but way better, and we have boudevoirs on the braai, it's the best sausage you'll ever have, it's amazing, not just saying it, we have to try it together.

Melanie Avalon

I wonder if that was on the menu, I should have looked at the menu more.

Barry Conrad

What did you have then? Just the wines?

Melanie Avalon

I just drank wine. So they had a lot of South African wines, but none of them were organic. And South African wines, because of the hotter climate, I'm assuming would be higher alcohol, higher sugar. So yeah, they had one organic wine and it was my favorite white varietal. So I was a long day. I don't even know how to say it. Milan de Bourgogne from France. It was

Barry Conrad

Like a peanut, what kind of, what does it taste similar to, like a peanut grease you?

Melanie Avalon

It tastes like melon, honestly, which I love. It's really light, fruity, melony. Melony, not Melanie. Melony. But and something I had before, which I'm dying to tell listeners about. I literally did not plan this, but perfect segue. I interviewed recently Zach Abbott. He is the founder of a company called Zebiotics. Have you heard of this company? I haven't told me. So he made the world's first genetically modified probiotic. So the probiotic is genetically engineered. And we had a whole side topic discussion about the like the misperception of GMOs. Like they're not necessarily bad. Like the concept of like genetically engineering something or modifying something. They modify this probiotic to create the enzyme which breaks down diacetaldehyde, the toxic byproduct of alcohol metabolism. Oh, wow. Yeah. So your liver is really good at breaking that down, but the stomach cannot doesn't really have that enzyme. So according to him, a lot of like the negative effects from drinking come from the diacetaldehyde that is in the stomach because there's no enzyme to break it down because it doesn't all make its way to the liver. So this probiotic is engineered to create that enzyme. So you take it before drinking. It's called Zebiotics. It's like in a little, it's a liquid in a little like shot. You take a shot of it before drinking and it breaks down that, that toxic byproduct. So it is amazing for, if you're drinking a lot or moderately.

Barry Conrad

We need that, Mel. We need to try that. I think that's for us.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, I'm using it now, like on the regular. And now every time I go out, I take it before hand. I'm obsessed. It's like part of my protocol.

Barry Conrad

How long before you drink do you have to take the shot is it like a half an hour is like faster an hour?

Melanie Avalon

Like right before you start drinking, but it also lasts 24 hours, which is cool. And he said it produces more, like more enzyme than you could ever drink enough to, like it's enough to cover however much you're drinking, essentially. I'm noticing a difference. Like it really works. And I posted about it in my Facebook group and so many people commented saying that they've tried it and it really, they really noticed a difference.

Barry Conrad

So you feel, what do you feel when you have it compared to before when you weren't trying it?

Melanie Avalon

I just, well, I do so many other things in my like drinking protocol. So I don't really get intense hangover-y type symptoms ever. Cause I'm like so intense with everything, but I just notice, so it's comparing it, I don't know. I drank a lot for new years.

Barry Conrad

like what

Melanie Avalon

will dry farm wines, but then they had like cheap champagne and I had some of that and it was like way too much. And I definitely noticed the next day, like not, I just would have felt that a lot more, I think, if I hadn't had that before. So I highly recommend it. He also has one that I have not tried that turns some sugar into fiber. It like converts sugar into fiber. I have not tried that one yet.

Barry Conrad

like commercially where like people need these things because this is going to just help like your everyday life. I need to try these both of those.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, no, it's it's super cool. So if listeners are interested, I wonder if they ship to Australia.

Barry Conrad

Australia was about to ask.

Melanie Avalon

Probably not. But maybe. Actually, I don't know. I feel like with their regulations and stuff, we should check.

Barry Conrad

Does it come like refrigerated in the start of the year? Probably, I don't know if it would.

Melanie Avalon

it's not refrigerated, it's shelf stable. Yeah. But in any case, listeners, if they would like to try it, they can go to Melanie Avalon.com slash Z Biotics. So it's Z B I O T I C S. Use the coupon code Melanie Avalon to get 10% off. Definitely check that out. Literally, like I said, it is part of my protocol now, not every night because of the cost of it, but on nights that go out for sure.

Barry Conrad

Okay, well, I'm gonna have to jump on that train. It's super cool.

Melanie Avalon

Anything new in your life before we jump into topics?

Barry Conrad

Yeah, I've I've actually been revisiting like a book that I have read before it's called atomic habits. Have you heard of that book?

Melanie Avalon

Yes, that's one of my favorite books. It's shocking how long that book was on the New York Times bestseller list. It just never left the list. It just stayed there.

Barry Conrad

Yeah. And listeners, if you don't know about this book, it's by James Clear. And it's basically about habits, but not just a generic way of explaining it. It's about small, consistent daily habits over time, rather than a big, dramatic one. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. And making it easy and more identity based. So for example, rather than saying, I can't have that to eat. It's like, well, I'm a healthy person kind of a thing. So basically, creating more of a structure around your life. So you don't need the self control, basically making it hacking your habits in a way. And so I think it's super cool. Because, I mean, Mel, you and I talked about this a while ago, how, like, there's more freedom and structure. I really think that I've always lived that way. And this book is all about that. And even if you were to tie it back to, like, even like intermittent fasting, it's the same sort of thing. Like the structure of having a fasting or eating window. And just remember the decision fatigue. And we're not making choices all day. So I think it's such a good book. I love it. It's a really, really good book for any time of year. So I highly recommend that. Listeners, please check it out, Atomic Habits by James Clear.

Melanie Avalon

I love that so much. I actually, I think that's the one that I, wait, is that the one that I cried at the end? Wait, have you finished it?

Barry Conrad

I've read it once before, but I'm going through it again, yeah.

Melanie Avalon

Do you remember at the end, does he talk about mindfulness and stuff? Is that how it ends? Okay. Yeah. I cried. How are you consuming it? I usually...

Barry Conrad

Consuming having it with like a knife and fork no I usually I usually listen audiobook for nonfiction but this one I kind of wanted to sit down and read something because it was getting distracted a lot and I wanted to kind of block things out some reading it the paperback.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, I listened to it and him reading the ending. I was crying. I was like, what am I doing?

Barry Conrad

What about the ending made you cry? Like, why, what do you think? That was probably.

Melanie Avalon

probably like 2018, it's probably like six or seven years ago, something about just how motivating it was. It was really inspiring. Yeah, I love what you said about it's really great for something like working on habits surrounding fasting and things like that. It's funny, I actually thought about you last night because I was talking with one of the girls and we were talking about, because you just mentioned the freedom and structure concept, and we were talking about making plans. And I was talking about how I feel safe when there were plans. I need plans to feel in control of life and feel safe and feel good and have freedom. And she was saying that the idea of planning something is horrible. It makes her feel constricted and horrible and want to run away. And it's so interesting that people can have completely different feelings about that.

Barry Conrad

I'm with you. There's more freedom in that because you can always divert from the plan, but not having a plan is kind of like, Oh, what's going to happen? Okay, let me zoom out for a second. I think in certain situations, not all situations, if you're hanging out with people on the day and you're kind of just having a day all day, like I'd go with the floor and whatnot. But if I'm scheduling a specific time or whatever, I'd love to just schedule that.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, same. We were talking about the example of like, I love making future plans. Like I have, you know, my guests are scheduled out through 2026. I have like theater shows scheduled out to go to through like the whole year. And she was saying that the idea of like making a plan to see a show in May is just like the worst, you know, like really, she does not like that concept. And I

Barry Conrad

That is really interesting. And that's actually so far in the future. I don't think I'm that, I don't know if I'm that well versed in the planning, but I think, you know, maybe it's going to inspire me to do that more. Because sometimes I can see if something's so far in the future, I'm like, am I going to be around? And you kind of get like trepidation or fear about like, what if I'm going to miss out on something else? But sometimes it's good just to be, well, it is good just to be certain and just, you know, decisive and just plan it.

Melanie Avalon

Well, it's kind of like what you said. You don't have, you know, once the time comes, things can change. But if I don't plan it, then, and it's something I want to do, then I don't know that I actually might be able to do it unless I put it down on my calendar. Yep.

Barry Conrad

I'd love to see your calendar. It's probably like so crazy, like just dates everywhere, writing everywhere, right? Yeah, pretty much.

Melanie Avalon

It makes me happy. It's my favorite thing. Okay. Shall we jump into some intermittent fasting related things?

Barry Conrad

Julian on Facebook says, I just recently started implementing black coffee with MCT oil in the morning during a fasted state. I usually also take seropeptase during that time as well. Would it be fine to take both MCT oil and seropeptase simultaneously? I want to make sure the MCT oil didn't interfere with the seropeptase since it's helped my sinuses drastically. Also, if I'm having black coffee with MCT oil, would I still be in the fasted state? Thank you.

Melanie Avalon

Thank you. All right, Julian, thank you so much for your question. So it's a pretty simple answer. Well, first of all, about being in the fastest state with the MCT oil, this is heavily debated as it has been for eons and eons. On this show, consistently, we do believe, well, actually, Barry, I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Historically, we believe that having anything caloric, especially something like MCT oil, like fat, would, quote, break the fast, because you're taking in calories. People say that MCT oil doesn't break the fast because it's a type of fat that's immediately, essentially, shuttled to the liver for energy, and it supports the production of ketones. So people will say that it's supporting the fasted state because it's just creating more ketones and running on fat. I believe, though, you're taking in calories, it is a food, so I do not consider black coffee with MCT oil still being in the fastest state. I would see it as being in a state fed on MCT oil and still producing ketones like the fasted state, but not actually being fasted. What are your thoughts on that, Barry?

Barry Conrad

I 100% agree. I mean, it has calories, so that technically it's going to break your fast. So, you know, if you're wanting to do, if you're someone that subscribes to like a modified fast approach, which some people say, because you want mental clarity or energy without spiking insulin too much, go ahead. But I personally, and I know that you feel the same way, it's not really the clean fast. It's going to break your fast. Do you know what I mean? So I'm on that team for sure. I'd skip the MCT all and just, you know, just have it during the faster window. I mean, just, just have it during eating. We know, I should say, let's do that.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, and when I add MCT oil it actually for me would always make me hungrier when I would experiment with that I don't know. Have you experimented with adding MCT oil to your coffee ever?

Barry Conrad

You know, during the bulletproof craze, I've introduced butter and whatnot, but not MCT oil so much. Is it much different? Like the feeling or the taste or the effect, having a bit of butter?

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, it is. It is pretty different because the butter is a long chain triglyceride. So it's like a saturated fat that has to be broken down, digested, you know, turned into energy. And then like I was saying before, MCT oil, especially there's like, there's the C8 and the C10 version, and I would always get the C8 version, which is even quicker in how it is metabolized and turned into ketones. So it does provide like much faster energy. The taste is different because butter has like a buttery taste, MCT oil tastes. I love the way it tastes. I actually used to put in my food sometimes. It's a very neutral taste.

Barry Conrad

your food.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah when i was doing like low carb for a while i would just add a lot of empty oil so i feel like it really makes the food i don't know i love it i love the taste of it.

Barry Conrad

Is this kind of like when you would have the rotisserie chicken that phase? Like when you put the amputee over that or not really?

Melanie Avalon

Not that they actually back then I was doing a lot of coconut oil, which has MCTs in it, but it's primarily that that's a misconception. People think coconut oil is like all MCTs. It's not. It's like a small, a little bit of it is MCTs, but the majority of it is actually lauric acid. A majority of it is lauric acid, which is a long chain fatty acid. No, this was after, after that phase. But when I would do like, I just went through a stint where I was doing like low carb, quote, high fat, but it was high MCT oil fat. I actually think that's a good hack for people if what they're doing isn't working and they're doing low carb, but they still want to do low carb and they don't want to try like a carb approach. I think switching out all your fats for MCT oil or even just like removing your fats and just adding a little bit of MCT oil can actually be a way to try to break a plateau or get weight loss going again.

Barry Conrad

Right. Julian, if you're in doubt, the rule of thumb, the best way to approach it is black coffee, water, black tea. If you're having to flirt with anything else, if it has calories, it's going to break your fast. Just keep that in mind.

Melanie Avalon

I agree with you Barry so much like people stress a lot about all the different things to like the perfect, you know, fasting supporting drink or supplement or do you want to add amino acids? Do you want to add these different pre-workout things and really friends like coffee and tea are just like the work so well. Yeah, we love peak tea around here. They actually have a fasting tea that they made in collaboration with Dr. Jason Fung. The bergamot one is just pure organic black tea. And so again, Dr. Jason Fung helped formulate that to help support fasting. So listeners can actually get 10% off when you go to peaklife.com slash IF podcast, that's P-I-Q-U-E-L-I-F-E.com slash IF podcast. That's on the tea front. And then hopefully we're recording a little bit in advance, but hopefully by the time this comes out, my glow coffee will be hopefully on its way. So plug for that. We're creating that to be the highest CGA content coffee possible and CGA is the antioxidant, which is one of the main antioxidants that gives coffee all of its health benefits. So we specifically searched and sought out beans that are high naturally in CGA. And then we roast them, especially to be high in CGA. And then we third party lab test the coffee to make sure it's free of toxins and mold and pesticides and all the things. And actually over the holidays, Barry, I wish you could have been there. This was so fun. We did a blind taste test with like six of my friends and we tasted it against two other coffee brands that are similar to see what people liked the most. I was happy with the results. We tasted three coffees. It was neck and neck with one of them for being the crowd favorite. And then the other one people did not like as much.

Barry Conrad

That's amazing. That's awesome.

Melanie Avalon

Is there like a profile of coffee that you like?

Barry Conrad

Not too bitter, but I don't love too light. It's got to still give me that kick. Like I love actually tasting the coffee. So somewhere probably profile wise, mid to strong, I would say. Yeah. I need to try some of it when it comes out when it's ready. I can't wait.

Melanie Avalon

or like wrapping up right now, like the art and yes. And I love the way it tastes. It's lighter to medium. It does have like some fruity notes and acidity to it, but it does have like a nutty flavorful finish as well. It tastes really good. It was half of the people's favorite out of all the three.

Barry Conrad

It's so exciting, I can't wait to try it.

Melanie Avalon

I'm excited too. You and I were talking offline, just while we're talking about drinks and pre-workouts breaking the fast. What did you get asked recently from somebody about a drink breaking the fast?

Barry Conrad

somebody asked me the other day, they were like, if I drink this, I'm not going to say the brand, this zero sugar energy drink, will that break my fast? Because, bro, it's like, it's energy. So, and it has no sugar. So, surely, that'll be fine. I'm like, bro, it's not fine. It's going to break too fast. It has calories. It's besides the point. Do you get asked that?

Melanie Avalon

Yes. And there's just so many, I like shutter when I look at those drinks, like all the ingredients in them and things. Like you could just get, like I was saying before, you could get health benefits and support your metabolism and all the things with, you know, a really good organic tea or coffee. That'll do it.

Barry Conrad

So you need, just get that glow. Get it. Yep. So we have a question from Jill and she asked, how to incorporate fasting into colonoscopy prep?

Melanie Avalon

Okay, so Jill, I'm so, I'm actually surprised in the seven years or so that I've done this podcast that I don't think we've been asked this. And what's interesting about it, Well, Barry, have you had a colonoscopy?

Barry Conrad

This is very tasty conversation and I have not yet, but I actually am totally keen to try one because I heard it has so many benefits, right? Clearing out your system.

Melanie Avalon

Well, so Australia, they must have different. So like here in the US, I think you like are supposed to get one. Okay. So actually I just checked the rules. I guess I thought, I thought it was like in your thirties that you were supposed to get one in the US, but in the US it's, they recommend at 45. And then earlier, if you have a family history of colorectal cancer. Yeah. So I've actually had three, three already. Yeah. That's why I have so many thoughts. That's about this question.

Barry Conrad

I, Melanie, I have not had one, I can safely say, but I definitely, even though I did confuse it with something else before, it's very important to get one because of, especially have family history, and I am due to get one, so.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, Barry was confusing it with colonics, which I love colonics do not get me started on colonics. We actually have talked about those on the show, but for the colonoscopy, so I didn't ever have it. I didn't have it for like, I don't have a genetic risk for cancer or anything. I just had it because of my, because of my anemia, actually they were trying to see, which I don't have anymore, but they were trying to see if I had internal bleeding or something like that. So the prep for it, because she says, how do you incorporate fasting into colonoscopy prep, you actually drink, it's, it's not fun. You have to, I'm like having flashbacks. You have to drink this like liquid laxative, like we're talking like a gallon of it. Like it is so much that you have to drink. I think it changes the different times I've done it, but I started an amount of time before you stop eating and then you just start drinking and drinking this stuff. Yeah. It's funny though. This is what's funny about it. So one of the times I did it, I was actually in the hospital for anemia. So I didn't have the, I wasn't able to kind of like make it my own. Like if I, cause when I did it at a later time, they just gave me the powder to make the drink and then you could like flavor it with the flavors they gave you. But I wanted to make it as like clean as possible. So I didn't do that, which I will circle back to you about how to incorporate fasting. But when I was in the hospital, I had to just drink, they already pre-mixed it. I had to drink it. It had like, we were talking earlier about flavors and stuff. It had all this like horrible stuff in it, like probably Stevia sweetened. I hadn't had anything like flavored and fake tasting in forever that literally when I started drinking it, I was like, this tastes amazing. Cause it tastes like candy cause I hadn't had like, you know, I hadn't had like that fake flavor-y stuff in years. I was like, this is great. It's like drinking Pez. Do they have Pez in Australia?

Barry Conrad

We don't have Pez. What is that similar to? Is it like a sugary drink? What is it?

Melanie Avalon

And no, no, no, it's like, it's like Pez dispensers, like these little like, it's like all the different, they're like different cartoon characters and then they dispense these little like sugar tablets that are flavored.

Barry Conrad

I feel like I feel like I can see what you're talking about and that's that's pretty delicious but drinking it. Yeah, I can see that.

Melanie Avalon

it literally tastes like that. But then by the end, I was like, Oh my gosh, this is like horrible. I can't not drink another sip. But in any case, so my reframe for colonoscopy prep as a expert colonoscopy undergoer is it is a nice chance to do an extended fast because you do have to stop eating a certain amount of time before the surgery. It's not, I said surgery before the procedure. You have to be drinking this stuff, which even though it's, if you do like the flavored stuff, it does quote break the fast, but it isn't any calories. So you're not taking in any calories and then you like clean everything out. And then if you try to think if I like did not eat that, basically I was able to incorporate it and have a, an extended fast. All right, because the night before I didn't eat the night before cause I was doing the prep. So it was kind of a nice way to get in like a lot longer fasting hours and you actually can drink bone broth. So the most recent time I did it, I drank bone broth. So that actually was like food. So that time I kind of saw it as like an extended fast with a bone broth fast added on or like my normal fasting with like a bone broth fast. If you have to do a colonoscopy prep, I would try to make the actual stuff that you drink as benign as possible. So if you can get the version, cause it's usually covered by insurance, you can get a version where you're flavoring it yourself. Then you can just not use those flavor packets and you can flavor it with more helpful options. So I went to the store and I bought cause what it comes with is like is flavored with artificial sweeteners that are not good and you know, stuff you don't want. So I would, I went and found these like stevia flavored things at the store, which were a little bit more benign to flavor it. So I would recommend doing that. And then if you actually want to have food as well, you can do bone broth. So you can see it as like a way to have a bone broth thing. And then you have the procedure, which is actually, you know, you're under anesthesia. So it's quick from your perception.

Barry Conrad

You had the bone broth and you're just awake in two seconds.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, you'll have to report back, Mary, if you do this.

Barry Conrad

So clear, non-caloric liquids, what I'm hearing is non-caloric liquids like water, bone broth, if allowed by your doctor, if they prescribe that, make sure you're hydrated beforehand, but also adjusting your fasting ahead of time. How did you approach your fasting maybe the day, two days beforehand?

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, so I did completely normal up until the day before. And then the day before was the day where I had to start the prep. So that's where I got in my longer fast because normally I would have eaten that night but I didn't I for the first two I didn't have anything caloric I just had those drinks and then the third time I did it I had bone broth. Yeah, so basically the day before is where I didn't have a one meal a day meal like I normally do so I got in a longer fasting period of time and then had the procedure the next day and then you can eat well, I don't know if they recommend like go I think they do recommend like going slow but I'm so used to that's one thing I've noticed like I'm so used to fasting during the day and then eating a massive meal at night that I don't have to make any special like adjustment I don't need to like ease into my big meal again I'm like good to go. Yeah, you're good to go. Yeah, but I've been doing one meal a day.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, it's the same thing where doctors always say ease into it after any kind of a surgery or procedure, but I think the great thing about fasting is you already are having that long time of not eating, so your body's really primed for that. Just go back to your eating. You don't have to try to ease into having three gentle meals or five gentle meals, you know what I mean? So that's great. There's another benefit of IF.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, actually, and similar with like when I get the thing, you confused it with a colonic. Sometimes if I go to a new place, they'll give you all the material where they're like, you know, ease into foods after I'm like, I'm good. Like, like, I am totally good. I literally, I don't ever need it. I think even if I did like, I mean, I haven't, but I think even if I did like a five day extended fast, I literally probably could just like feast after and be fine. I'm not saying to do that. Ease in if you need to.

Barry Conrad

We're not endorsing, but we're just saying if you're used to that, then you know what you do you.

Melanie Avalon

We're just being real. So yeah, but on the flip side of not eating, speaking of food, Barry, you have a restaurant to explore?

Barry Conrad

I have a restaurant to explore and let me tell you this is one that I hunted down because one of my favorite cuisines is Greek food and the restaurant is called The Bright Star. The Bright Star is actually based in Alabama and it's the oldest continuously operating restaurant in Alabama. It started as this 25-cafe catering to local workers and it's grown into this 330-seat iconic landmark. It survived the Great Depression, stayed open to serve the community through that time. Oh, wow. Yeah, it was featured in the 100 dishes to eat in Alabama before you die. Yes!

Melanie Avalon

We love that.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, and it's a family run establishment, so it's got lots of history. I love that it wasn't featured in that hundred dishes to eat in Alabama for you because I'm all about that final meals and whatnot. So should we dive in? Let's do it. Should we look at the menu?

Melanie Avalon

And first of all, I have to say I love places with like I love finding restaurants with history that have been around for so long. That's why for the first time we did this, I picked one that was like one of the oldest restaurants in America. I just it's so cool to think I just love like history of places. It's cool to think about. So for listeners, every episode we like to feature a cool restaurant that we found and say what we would order from the menu in our breaking of our fast because fasting one of the awesome things about fasting is the feasting on the other side.

Barry Conrad

Let's go to the dinner section and then, so we'll go look at the dinner section after choosing all of our food, then there's wine and beer and cocktail. So I think after dessert, even we might have to even check that out a drink of some sort, you're down.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. Okay. Well, this menu is massive. So, and they have a quick menu. I wonder what that's. Okay. You know, it's a massive menu when they start with their quote quick menu and the quick menu is, is larger than most menus. Very confusing. I'm confused. I'm confused. So what would you get for appetizer? Oh my gosh. There's so many things.

Barry Conrad

So I'm going down right now. Let me have a look. I'm gonna go for the appetizer.

Melanie Avalon

We have appetizers and then we have appetizer as entree.

Barry Conrad

When I saw that initially, I thought of, it's not the same thing, but when you said, I'll have my mains for dessert. But one thing that jumped out of me straight away was remember how I said I hadn't had. There's one thing on here, Mel, that I've told you that I haven't had before and you were really shocked. Can you guess what it is? It begins with an S, it's two words.

Melanie Avalon

I mean is it shrimp related? No because you like shrimp. Yeah. What was the shellfish that you... Oh right, shrimp cocktail.

Barry Conrad

I've never had a shrimp cocktail listeners ever I love shrimp I eat it normally but I just assume cocktail is not really a thing that you typically get in Australia at restaurants so that's definitely going to be on my starter situation. What is spag spag spag it sounds like is that spaghetti because we called spat like a spag bowl like a spaghetti bowl here in Australia.

Melanie Avalon

Really? It looks like it's an animal.

Barry Conrad

a spag.

Melanie Avalon

Well, it's definitely, okay, Chad GPT says it's a small particle aerosol generator. I don't think it's that. Oh yeah, you're right. They're saying spaghetti.

Barry Conrad

Slickest bag, yeah.

Melanie Avalon

Hm, I've never heard it called that. Interesting.

Barry Conrad

Okay, so I'm going to tell you my status first. I have a few. I'm going to do the shrimp cocktail, the entree baked mushrooms, and the entree bowl gumbo because I love gumbo. I tried it in New Orleans and it was game changing. So I'd love to try a Greek styled version. So that's my starters plural. What would you have?

Melanie Avalon

I would probably, I would maybe have lobster and crab. Oh my goodness. I can have so many things. Lobster and crab and salmon and shrimp. What is snap throat? Oh, snapper throat. Maybe they seem to like snapper here. I think I would get lobster, crab, shrimp, salmon. Let's just get all of it.

Barry Conrad

All of it. I feel like when we find the listeners, when we finally eat together, we probably need two tables put together because we want to have like taste little bits of everything, I reckon.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. I'd be down. I would be down. What would you get as your main thing?

Barry Conrad

I would get the lobster and we get the fried chicken I love fried chicken with the passion and I love lobster as well so both of those for the manes for me.

Melanie Avalon

I feel like apparently snapper is their thing. I feel like I need to get snapper. I'm a little bit curious though about the mercury levels and snapper. So I probably wouldn't get the snapper. Now that I say that I probably look it up and see if I could find mercury levels in it. But from my memory, I don't think it's I don't think it's low.

Barry Conrad

I forgot to add that one of the signature dishes is the Greek style snapper.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. So you might be missing out. I don't think, yeah, I would want it, but I don't think I would get it because of the mercury. So I probably get filet mignon. Yes.

Barry Conrad

Okay, and for dessert, are you going to get just the one or are you going to get another one?

Melanie Avalon

Oh, right. I think because I got so many appetizers that I can just have the filet. Oh, they have a veal steak. Hmm. I changed my mind. I'm like, I'm gonna get the veal steak.

Barry Conrad

Big, it's a big menu. I'm very impressed this place.

Melanie Avalon

I am too. And then they have a ton of dessert, what would you get for dessert?

Barry Conrad

Okay, I'm looking at it now.

Melanie Avalon

Can you get the birthday pie so I can look at it?

Barry Conrad

Okay, I've got a few choices. I'm going to I'm going to do the because you know, I love chocolate. It's my favorite. I'm going to do the whole chocolate pie, the peanut butter slice with vanilla ice cream on the side, and then the birthday cake. I'll order as well, but I'm not going to have all of it. I'll just have it for you to a look at and for me to like taste. How's that?

Melanie Avalon

perfect. And I would just watch and get some more, probably some more salmon, maybe probably whatever appetizer, like the best out of the salmon shrimp lobster, grab more of whatever I liked the most.

Barry Conrad

What about a drink? A beverage? What would you like to have? There's wine there, there's beer there, there's cocktails. I'm eyeing the cocktails, just FYI.

Melanie Avalon

I don't know I'd have to look I don't know if there's a wine I'd have to look up all the wines and there's a lot and I'm not sure if there are any that are organic low alcohol European so yeah what would you get?

Barry Conrad

I'm going to go, you know, I love a margarita meal, so I'm going to go for their blueberry lemonade margarita. Something different. I usually get a spicy, but I'm all about trying different margaritas, so that's my choice.

Melanie Avalon

Nice. Oh wait, actually they have lovey bunches. I think that's actually, wait, oh my goodness, wait a minute. Actually, they have one of my favorite organic wines. It's not European. It's, I'm assuming it's a typo on their website because it says love you bumches, but I think it's, if it's love you bunches, if that's supposed to be an N, that I love that wine. It doesn't say which a varietal it is, but they have a rosé that's organic, low alcohol. They also have a red. It's by Staltman Vineyards. Yeah, I really love them. They have really nice organic practices as well. And they're like light, low alcohol. Oh, I'm happy. Yay. Okay. Awesome.

Barry Conrad

I don't think we've had one in our very few restaurants we've done so far where you've pointed out like a wine that's organic, so that's pretty good. That's awesome. Thanks, Brightstar.

Melanie Avalon

I haven't looked at the wine list before this. Going forward, I will for sure. Well, a shout out again to the Bright Star Restaurant.

Barry Conrad

Shout out to Bart star when we're in Alabama next we'll have to check you out we have to make a list of all these restaurants by the way by the end of at the end of each year and sort of like okay when when we're going to be there let's just go through list and just do a tour of all the places.

Melanie Avalon

Sounds like a plan in my dream mind.

Barry Conrad

I don't think you're going to do that because you want to travel for a day.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, you can do it. I'll watch. I'll come to one of them.

Barry Conrad

That's so funny.

Melanie Avalon

Shall we answer one more question? Let's do it. Jennifer would like to know, if you could only have one biohack in your life, what would it be?

Barry Conrad

Okay, that's that is a tough one. But for me, I would probably say real life therapy for me, because the benefits next level, you know, it boosts my collagen and production, which means smoother, firmer skin for me, which is great for what I do. So I'm not going to be mad at that. It's it's great for also even more importantly, recovery muscle recovery, because I work out a lot. I work out at least three times a week doing resistance training. So that's usually beneficial for me. So red light therapy has already helped. I've found I've got a device or two devices actually that I use already and that has made a difference. So use that on the daily. It also helps with inflammation and pain and even with hair growth. And you know, it's not just about looking good for me. It's about feeling great. And I definitely feel like even having that Melanie, how you say you have the ambient sort of red light on while you're working away that I feel the same way. Like I just have it like playing. It only goes for 10 minutes at a time though. So I have to like time it and then put it on again. But that's part of my daily. I love it. That's probably the one hack that I would choose so far. Watch the space is probably going to be more to come. What about you?

Melanie Avalon

Well, that's a really good choice. That's definitely in my, my running. This question is so hard and I'm so glad I don't ever have to actually do this. Like just picking one would be so I would be so hard. So thinking about it, I'm obsessed with my cryotherapy, but if I could only have one, then I could, I could like not go to cryotherapy every day and just do like a cold shower. Am I allowed to like, like tweak this? So like, basically I could, I could get it, you know, without the actual biohack form, which is like going into a cold chamber, but I would really miss it. Red light, that's really up there. The one thing that I like blue light walking glasses at night, but it's like, okay, well then I could just force myself to not look at screens at night. But one of the ones where like I travel and I just, it's really hard to not have that is my daily infrared sauna session. It's so profound the way it makes me feel. And I feel you go in, it feels so good and relaxing. You sweat, you sweat out all these toxins and you just feel cleansed on an internal cellular level after it. And when I travel, I'm like, Oh, I needed sauna sessions. So bad. So, and that's not something where I can, I guess you could sweat by like working out of the gym, but this I don't, I'm not going to do that. So it would be my sunlight in infrared sauna and for listeners. So I have the solo unit, which is where you lay down inside of it and your head is outside of it. So you can like do your work while you're in it or read or something like that. But they also have cabin units as well. Literally one of my favorite things in my entire life. And if you tell them I sent you Melanie Avalon, they'll give you a major discount. So sunlight in infrared sauna is my choice.

Barry Conrad

I've only done one infrared sauna before and that was last year at like a like a health and fitness joint nearby and it was it was amazing like it's different to it's so different to a regular like steam sauna like because you do feel like it's from the inside out and you do feel refreshed and you're sweating you know your butt off as well so it's it's quite a unique experience so I can see why you would go for that I actually forgot about that that's that's a really good one

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. Did you feel like you wanted to get one of your own integrated into your life daily?

Barry Conrad

I did actually feel that and then I just and I made a note to like do it again and I just haven't but I think it would definitely be really relaxing too because I like I actually like the feeling of being hot when it's for a purpose I don't like feeling hot when I'm just you know at home that's why I like being cold just like you but it's a really it's a really good feeling isn't it?

Melanie Avalon

Wait, that is so true. So I do not like being hot. The only time is when I'm in a sauna because it's like a controlled environment for a purpose. You're, you're not sweating over yourself because you're like, it's, I don't like, I don't like sweating with clothes on. It's like, I don't like textures of that.

Barry Conrad

In the gym, you do that, though, so...

Melanie Avalon

Right, but I don't go to the gym. You don't do the gym, yeah. I don't like it. I'm thinking about it right now. It feels so disgusting. I think I'm like texture, but I don't like the texture of certain things on my body. I'm very sensitive to that.

Barry Conrad

What do you mean? Like, give me an example.

Melanie Avalon

like clothing and like sweat and not about it.

Barry Conrad

Do you like black, you know those black dresses that you wear to these awesome letouts, does that count?

Melanie Avalon

So dresses, I don't like pants because I don't like all that constrictive clothing on my body. So dresses are great because they're very flowy. They're maybe tight at top, but you know, or maybe they could be, they're not as constrictive. I could not be a man and wear pants all the time.

Barry Conrad

You know, now that you mentioned, I've actually never seen you wear pants in like in any post ever. Like, that's such a good point. Like, never seen you wear jeans, pants. Do you wear jeans?

Melanie Avalon

I do not like jeans. The last time I wore jeans was, so every year I post my annual Christmas tree getting video. One of the times I went, I was like, I'm gonna dress up like rustic to get this Christmas tree. So I wore jeans.

Barry Conrad

I actually can't picture it now. I actually can't picture you in like jeans and boots. I mean, jeans. Yeah. That's so interesting. Wow. There you go.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, you're missing out Barry with the dresses.

Barry Conrad

Well, I feel it could be too breezy for me. I mean, it's, yeah, let's not keep going down that path. I'm just going to pass now.

Melanie Avalon

So, at any point, that's why I love the sauna because it's like you sweat and like this sweat immediately is, you know, you're naked, it's like whisked away onto towels. And then you're like out, you shower, it's all contained.

Barry Conrad

How many showers do you have a day like two three.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, that's such a good question. It depends how many sauna sessions I do in a day. How many do you do in a day? Well, I always do at least one long one, but sometimes I do two, sometimes I do three. I like taking sauna naps. That's a hack. That's a good biohack. So you can sleep. Yeah, because then you literally sleep and get a cardiovascular workout at the same time. Like what?

Barry Conrad

So cool. I'm trying to picture this device. I need to... Is this... Is it like a chamber? What is it?

Melanie Avalon

It's like a dome. So again, so Sunline makes cabin units like the stereotypical cabin units, but they make this solo unit. It's like a dome that you slide into.

Barry Conrad

Wow, that sounds awesome, actually.

Melanie Avalon

So yeah, I like, I've like set it up with my hulk and trap. So I put it on top of a twin bed, a twin bed frame that I got on Amazon, like a metal twin bed frame. So it's on top of that. So then I can store stuff underneath it. I got a little arm thing that I attached to it that holds my iPhone above my head to do like work. And then I got a standup fan. So I put a fan on my face. So then I don't even feel that hot cause I have the fan on my face. And if you want to take a nap, if you're like really exhausted, you can take a nap in there and you wake up and it's like you worked out. That's.

Barry Conrad

wild. You never told me this before until now in terms of the whole setup. That's crazy.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, it's really cool. So to answer your question, I take a shower in the morning and then however many sauna sessions, I take a shower after every one of those. So the most hours I take would be four, I guess, in a day.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, I love showers.

Melanie Avalon

Do you end with a cold blast?

Barry Conrad

You know what? I've definitely started introducing that more because it's kind of my way of doing the cryotherapy, but it's not really. It's just more cold water therapy. Because cryo, from what I understand, is freezing. Freezing, freezing, freezing. But it definitely refreshes me doing it. I had a cold water shower today before doing the podcast after the gym. It wakes you up. Yeah. Didn't you hear it? I'm peppy. Yeah.

Melanie Avalon

So awesome. Okay. Well, Jennifer, thank you for the question and thank you everybody else for your questions. If you would like to submit your own questions for the show, you can directly email questions at ipodcast.com and can go to ipodcast.com and submit questions there. And you can get all of the stuff that we like at ipodcast.com slash stuff we like. Definitely follow us on Instagram. I'm Melanie Avalon. Barry is okay. Ready? Barry underscore Conrad, right? You got it. Yes. And on Instagram, our show is IF Podcast. So yeah, I think that's all the things. Anything from you, Barry, before we go?

Barry Conrad

I hope you all have an awesome day and something really great to break your fast and we'll talk to you next time.

Melanie Avalon

Awesome! I will talk to you next week!

Barry Conrad

See you later!

Melanie Avalon

Bye. Bye. Thank you so much for listening to the Intermittent 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, 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!

Feb 03

Episode 407 – Long-Term Fasting And Muscle Maintenance, Making Life Heavy Physically Not Emotionally, Feeling Tired In The Morning, Circadian Rhythms, Supporting Sleep, The Ideal Coffee To Drink, And More!

Episode 118 with Dr. Michael Breus (Part 1)

Welcome to Episode 407 of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast, hosted by Melanie Avalon, biohacker, founder of AvalonX, and author of What When Wine Diet: Lose Weight And Feel Great With Paleo-Style Meals, Intermittent Fasting, And Wine, and Barry Conrad, actor, singer-songwriter, and creator and host of Banter with BC.

SHOW NOTES

SPONSORS & DISCOUNTS

PIQUE FASTING TEAS: Need the perfect drink for your fast? Fasting just got way easier with Pique tea! Created with Dr. Jason Fung, Pique's organic, toxin-free fasting teas curb your appetite, boost your metabolism, and keep you going strong. Get up to 20% off plus a free beaker at piquelife.com/ifpodcast.

LINKS:

Featured Restaurant: Hobbit Cafe

Meditation

Plainclothes

Episode 148 with Dr. Michael Breus (Part 2)

Michael Breus's book The Power of When: Discover Your Chronotype--and the Best Time to Eat Lunch, Ask for a Raise, Have Sex, Write a Novel, Take Your Meds, and More

Studies:

Intermittent Fasting: Does It Affect Sports Performance? A Systematic Review

Intermittent fasting reduces mouse body fat while maintaining muscle mass

Is muscle and protein loss relevant in long‐term fasting in healthy men?

The Effects of Intermittent Fasting Combined with Resistance Training on Lean Body Mass

If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving us a review in Apple Podcasts!

Original theme composed by Leland Cox, and recomposed by Steve Saunders.

TRANSCRIPT

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

Melanie Avalon

Welcome to episode 407 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, founder of AvalonX and author of What, When, Wine. Lose weight and feel great with paleo style meals, intermittent fasting and wine. And I'm joined by my co-hosts, Barry Conrad, actor, singer, songwriter, and creator and host of Banter with BC. For more on us, check out MelanieAvalon.com and BarryConradOfficial.com. You can submit questions for the show by emailing questions at iapodcast.com or by going to iapodcast.com. We would love to hear from you. Please remember the thoughts and opinions on this show do not constitute medical advice or treatment. 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 everybody and welcome. This is episode number 407 of the intermittent fasting podcast. I'm Melanie Avalon. I'm here with Barry Conrad. Barry, how are you today?

Barry Conrad

I'm doing really good. How are you doing?

Melanie Avalon

I had a really exciting meeting today for something that I think by the time this airs will be like public knowledge. So I'm going to talk about it and I'm going to make a note that I talked about it. So well, I've been having a lot of meetings about this, but we had our first meeting with like six or seven people, like all of the team involved in making this come to fruition. Did I tell you I'm going to be launching a coffee line?

Barry Conrad

Yeah, this is about that. You did mention it to me. Yeah. Thank you.

Melanie Avalon

So I think by February, at the very least, I'm sure it'll be, I'll be talking about it. So are you a coffee drinker?

Barry Conrad

I'm obsessed with coffee, like I have at least like three a day long black all the way for me in the morning before my workout in between during work, the whole thing.

Melanie Avalon

You know what's gonna be the problem with us co-hosting? Now I don't remember if we talked about things on the show or like in real life.

Barry Conrad

I know, it's like, did we mention that?

Melanie Avalon

Because I know that you sucked it up and you started drinking it in Italy, Italian coffee and didn't even like the taste, but did it anyways, like the bitterness.

Barry Conrad

Yes well i listen as i actually hated coffee is like why would anyone want to put them through this experience and then i started acquiring the taste and now. I can't get enough of it i have to kind of covered sometimes the most i've had is like maybe five a day but that's not a regular occurrence long black no sugar no milk nothing.

Melanie Avalon

So here's so many so many coffee thoughts. Do you take into account like the quality or if it's organic or mold free or anything like that or is it more about the flavor profile like how do you choose coffee.

Barry Conrad

If I'm being honest, which I will be, I don't typically research all of the four. I go, usually, whether it's recommended by friends and the flavor profile so far. But now that I know that you start, you're starting this line, I'm going to be educated and I get to make better choices when it comes to coffee.

Melanie Avalon

Well, yeah, so a little fun fact, a reason that people really like Dave Asprey's coffee lines that he's had, like Bulletproof and Danger Coffee, which I love, I love Danger Coffee. I loved Bulletproof too. He's just not at the company anymore. Coffee beans are so susceptible to mold, like so much. So moldy coffee is like a big problem. And then coffee is also often high in pesticides. So you could be drinking this coffee that's supposed to be great for your health and making you feel good, but it can have all these things in it that could be doing actually damage to your health. And so a lot of people find that when they drink organic or mold free or toxin free coffee that they have a different experience. They don't get the crashes as much, that it's like a cleaner feeling. So yeah, I do think it's, for me, it's like really important. The focus that we're going to do in my brand, which I'm trying to decide if I should, you know what, I will, because I'll at least have a landing page up for it by then. So we can, I'll put the website and people can go there to learn more. Maybe we'll probably have like an email list grab or something, but it's going to be called Glow Coffee. And so do you, do you like that name?

Barry Conrad

I do like that name actually, what inspired you to choose that name? How'd you come up with that?

Melanie Avalon

It's because I wanted something that shows how coffee should ultimately, I think, make you feel, which is like full of energy and life and vitality. So basically all the benefits of coffee. I wanted to like capture an award and I really love the concept of things that are like luminous and ethereal and light and so like glow. I just that's what I want this coffee to do is help people glow from the inside out or outside inside out. Yeah, like just be glowing. And right now we're still in the process of finding our beans and everything, but we've been testing our beans and they're going to be like free of toxins, free of mold, all the things and a lot of the health benefits of coffee. And by the way, coffee is obviously a wonderful fasting aid, black coffee. Probably honestly, one of the best fasting aids, I would maybe say the best thing to just like catalyze your fast. If you're looking for like energy and fat burning, it's so supportive of metabolism, helps you burn fat, provides energy. Like it's a really great drink for fasting. It's one of the only things you can drink that doesn't break the fast, like black coffee and tea and water essentially. A lot of the health benefits of coffee are because of its antioxidants and coffee contains something called CGA. People don't realize this, but you can actually get certain beans and roast them a certain way to increase the CGA content. So our coffee is going to be super high in CGA content. So it's basically going to be the most antioxidant rich health promoting coffee that you can drink. I'm really excited.

Barry Conrad

Wow. Well, I can't wait to try it. I want to.

Melanie Avalon

try it. Oh, you will. You will. Once I, once I get it myself.

Barry Conrad

So exciting.

Melanie Avalon

Actually, you can help me decide this. I'm trying to side right now I'm gonna get have both websites, but I'm trying to side if it should be glow coffee co.com or glow coffee co. Do you like one better? I kind of like it

Barry Conrad

like clubcoffeeco.co.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. I'm going to have to pull people. They'll both work. So go to like glocoffee.co or glocoffeeco.com.

Barry Conrad

Actually, I'll take that back. I'll take that. I like the GlueCoffeeCode.com bidder.

Melanie Avalon

I feel like it just kind of like rolls off the tongue.

Barry Conrad

Roles of Your Tongue has a bit of a catch to it and I like the .com as well. It's a bit more, even though co is trusted as well, like there's nothing against co, a lot of people just probably will feel a bit more safe. Oh, it's a .com. Let's go with that.

Melanie Avalon

That's what I feel. I actually, that's what I was going with. But then we had, you know, like I said, this really big meeting today with lots of people. And they were saying that maybe it was easier to remember, remember glow coffee.co. I don't know. They were like fans of.co. But I was like, I think I like glow coffee.com.

Barry Conrad

I like it too. It sounds cool too to say, cloakofico.com

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I like glow coffee co like saying it that way sounds sounds cool. So yeah, listeners friends get excited. I'm sure we'll be doing some sort of launch special. Again, this is so much in the future, but go to glow coffee co.com. And definitely get on the email list there so that you don't miss the special and the launch and the discounts and all the things

Barry Conrad

That's so exciting. Congratulations. That's amazing.

Melanie Avalon

Thank you, knock on wood. But yeah, no, thank you. Anything else new in your life?

Barry Conrad

Yeah, by the time this airs, I'll be back in New Zealand, actually. My family live in New Zealand for listeners who don't know that yet. So I don't get to see them a whole lot. So I'm excited to spend Christmas with them, news with them. It's going to be amazing. I can't wait for that, actually.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, we were talking about it. I so value family and it's just so wonderful when you can spend the holidays with family, especially with how crazy the world is with, at least for me, like work and everything. It's nice to slow down for a second.

Barry Conrad

What about you? Are you doing anything for the holidays? Are you going away anyway? Are you staying put?

Melanie Avalon

Again, this will be quite in the past by the time this comes out, but I will have gone to Florida for Christmas. And then in the new year, January, I do have some travel planned for January. Actually, when this comes out, I might be traveling when this comes out.

Barry Conrad

To Australia.

Melanie Avalon

No, to Sundance.

Barry Conrad

Wow would be just sundance that's amazing what's the like what made you want to go who did someone invite you to check something out specifically have you been sundance i'd never been yet i really want to.

Melanie Avalon

you should come when I go for listeners to Sundance. It's the biggest festival in the US for independent films and it's probably the most in the US the most respected film festival I would say. It's kind of like when you think of like film festivals, you think of like Cannes in France and you think of like Sundance, at least for me. Those are the two I think of. Does Australia have an equivalent?

Barry Conrad

Not really, like we have the Australian Film Festival, which happens every year and that's pretty procedures pretty great, but I mean nothing beats, you know, Khan or Sundance. Is there a film or project that you really want to, you're excited to see there or did someone say let's go and you just decided to just do it? Like what, what made you want to go?

Melanie Avalon

So in usual Melanie fashion, I am just going to go for one film.

Barry Conrad

Oh, that's so funny.

Melanie Avalon

I'm gonna go, go to the film, come home. My best friend from college, like in the entire world, he directed his first feature, I'm just so proud of him. He directed, he wrote his own movie. He wrote the screenplay. He was working on it for years and years. I was like there like reading the screenplay for like the past like three or four years. And he got it picked up. He got a major casting director. He got like for the casting, like one of the main guys from the Hunger Games and he got into Sundance, which is like shocking. I mean, not shocking, not shocking for him. Like I knew it was gonna happen, but the fact that this is his first thing, like it's crazy. Yeah, so I have to go. And what's crazy is I haven't seen him since college. I mean, I have not seen him since college. We do monthly like catch up Epic long calls every month. And I haven't seen him in person and since college. So I'm so excited.

Barry Conrad

Oh, that's special. I'm stoked that you get to celebrate that with him. That that's meaningful and fun and amazing, like props to him. What's his name? Can you shout out?

Melanie Avalon

The reason I'm pausing is I'm not supposed to tell anybody up, but it should be announced in a few days. So, don't tell anybody, okay? Don't tell anyone. Shh. Don't say anything. They really should be announced really soon.

Barry Conrad

It's actually so, that's so wild though. That's amazing. Like it's not.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, it's it's literally it's I'm like mind blown by I mean, it's a mate I knew it was gonna happen, but it's just literally like all your dreams coming true type situation. Yeah, so it's Carmen and me and the movie is plain clothes. It's about in the 1990s, like true story. It's not a true story, but it's set in a true story environment, which is like in the 1990s, there'd be cops that would go into malls and set up to catch gay people. And then arrest them. And so it's about that. And it's about one of the undercover cops who's played by Tom Blythe. So I say his last name. He's the one from the Hunger Games. Yeah, I think it's Blythe. Yeah, so he is the main lead and he actually like, he's closeted. And so he actually falls in love with one of the people he's supposed to arrest one of the guys.

Barry Conrad

Wow. It's heavy. It sounds heavy. And also, I feel very, probably, universal for a lot of people out there, you know, feeling that going through. Yeah. Wow.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, definitely. So, yeah, so it should be around this time when this airs.

Barry Conrad

We'll get the Sundance content from Mel.

Melanie Avalon

If you want to come to a screening, Oh, that would be so great. We could go. It would be epic.

Barry Conrad

Listen, it's really funny because whenever Melanie has something exciting, she's like, so I'm doing this this weekend. Do you want to come? It's like, Melanie, she always does that.

Melanie Avalon

I want to keep inviting you until you come. On that note, before we jump in, would you like to go over the restaurant that I picked for today?

Barry Conrad

Yeah, should we go to a new restaurant? Let's go.

Melanie Avalon

listeners the purpose of this is to around here we're all about intermittent fasting and we're also all about what you eat in your eating window. So we love celebrating food and we love finding really cool restaurants in the world. So we profile a restaurant every single week and the one I picked for this week it's called the Hobbit Cafe. Good name. I know it's it was this what's crazy it was started in 1972 to honor Tolkien's Hobbit world for all the Lord of the Rings fans out there. So it's all like themed according to the Hobbit they've had a lot of celebrity guests there so on their website they said they've had like Neil Young, Jack Nicholson, Leonard Skinner a lot of other people yeah and it's like it looks like a whole like vibe so it's a cafe it's not like you know fine dining. Are you a Lord of the Rings fan Barry?

Barry Conrad

I'm a Lord of the Rings fan for sure and this food, it's almost like now I want to put it on Netflix while ordering this for real and having it delivered because this food looks really good.

Melanie Avalon

Yes, yes, the thing about Lord of the Rings, it like holds up, you know?

Barry Conrad

That actually does.

Melanie Avalon

It's from when I was in, ah, man, middle school and high school, and it still looks incredible.

Barry Conrad

Do you ever rewatch the films or have you actually, actually, wait, have you read the books and then watch the films and also do you ever rewatch the films like when you get.

Melanie Avalon

My favorite movie of all time is The Fellowship of the Ring, the first one. Of all time. And like Lord of the Rings in general is just my favorite. Yeah. So I have seen that movie, I don't even know how many times. I haven't seen it recently though. I haven't, I have not rewatched it recently. I have read all the books. I probably read, I think I read The Hobbit maybe, maybe like five times. And the Lord of the Rings, I probably read all of it twice.

Barry Conrad

Wow, that's impressive.

Melanie Avalon

But here's a little confession. I actually don't like the books that much.

Barry Conrad

Don't don't even be mad at me. I don't even read the books. I just watched the films and people get so offended like if the diehard fans I'm like, why are you watching the film without reading the books first? I'm like, is that the rule? I don't know. I'm glad that it's not. They're not as good though.

Melanie Avalon

And like Two Towers is like so long and like not a lot happens. Kind of like the Two Towers movie, which I still love, but it's like just a lot of like fighting, a lot of like walking. It's like a lot of fighting, a lot of walking.

Barry Conrad

You say these things with legs that just sound so like, you know, like dead pen, like dry look. It's just really funny.

Melanie Avalon

But I mean, things catch up with Return of the King and yeah, I love this movie.

Barry Conrad

Do you have a favourite character? Oh, do I?

Melanie Avalon

I was obsessed with Legolas, obsessed.

Barry Conrad

How did I know you were going to say that?

Melanie Avalon

Did you know that? Did you guess that? I did. The level of obsession I had with that man, Elf, Orlando, Legolas, Bloom, crazy. Crazy. Like the background of my computer, like posters, dreams, yes, I was obsessed.

Barry Conrad

Is it because he's blonde or is it because, like, what made you try to do?

Melanie Avalon

Going back to that glow coffee thing, I love elves. I love etherealness and beauty and light, and then you put that into a man who happens to be Orlando Bloom, very attractive. It's just my cup of tea, my cup of coffee.

Barry Conrad

Key glows, so you probably drink glow. Coffee co.

Melanie Avalon

He does glow. I did see him in a Q&A. I'm also a major Pives of the Caribbean fan.

Barry Conrad

They're fun. I like the products that grew in movies. They're really funny. I'm trying to end up.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. What was the Q&A? It was for Pirates, I don't know. It was just, it was Pirates Q&A. It was when I was living in LA and it was at the Pantages Theater. Good times.

Barry Conrad

I wonder what would happen if you, how do you think you'd react if you were out and about and you bumped into Orlando Bloom? Would you freak out?

Melanie Avalon

I don't get starstruck anymore for two reasons. One, living in LA is really helpful for that because there's so many celebrities everywhere. And then B, having this podcast, I get to interview all these incredible people I've looked up to for so long. I think it's made me more used to seeing somebody that I really idolize or engaging with them. Johnny Depp, though, I would probably freak out.

Barry Conrad

Thank you.

Melanie Avalon

Barry Conrad

Taylor Swift. Yeah, I was going to guess Taylor Swift because you love, I mean that's because of that saying like you love T Swift. So if you met her, or you bumped into me, really.

Melanie Avalon

I think I could keep it together and play it cool, but I'd be like inside freaking out. I don't think I would have like, you know the people who like meet the celebrities and they literally like panic because they're so like in shock and they like can't function. I don't think I would have that experience. And cry. Yeah and cry. Yeah, how about you? Is there anybody that you would be like superstar struck with?

Barry Conrad

I actually don't, I don't actually think so now that I can think of, but I mean, Denzel Washington's my favorite actor of all time. So I'd probably still like more, not freak out, but I'd be pretty more like out of just like respect and that's so cool, but I probably wouldn't freak out.

Melanie Avalon

I didn't know that. I'm surprised we haven't discussed this. Denzel Washington. Awesome. Well, so back to this Hobbit menu, what would you order?

Barry Conrad

This is, I'm looking at it right now and this looks amazing. And listen, I hope that you're checking it out with us as well. Can you see all this crazy food? Okay, I have to definitely go with the dragon wings for sure, but that's not the only starter I'm having. So the dragon wings always got to do a guacamole because it's just light and easy to eat. And then I'm going to also go for the all poppers. So that's my starter.

Melanie Avalon

And the pork poppers, they're jalapenos stuffed with cream cheese, lightly fried and served with salsa.

Barry Conrad

Have I asked you, have you said before if you like spice? You've said, you talked about this before.

Melanie Avalon

I'm not. Yeah, I'm not a huge spice fan. I don't get the dopamine hit from it.

Barry Conrad

So you wouldn't share the old copies with me? You wouldn't have it if I like have some of this.

Melanie Avalon

though yeah those would wipe me out fried jalapenos and cheese not will not do well with that

Barry Conrad

Would you have one of the dragon wings?

Melanie Avalon

Are those, I'm trying to say, oh, chicken wings, I, you know.

Barry Conrad

Okay. Okay. You go. Tell us your status. This would be interesting.

Melanie Avalon

I would probably pass on the starters. I might have a little bit of guacamole. Okay. Yeah. Guacamole, I think. And then, yeah, what would you get for your main? So they, they have a big focus on burgers. They have a ton of burgers, all, all like named like Aragorn's burger or Aragorn's avocado burger, Boromir's Boudin burger. I don't know what that is. Balrog burger. There's so many burgers. Fire's a Mount Doom burger.

Barry Conrad

So good, Melanie. I haven't actually, I don't know if I've told you this, but burgers are actually one of my favorite. It's not even a guilty plate. It's just a pleasure. Like, and I, and I always get a beef and a chicken. That's like a two burger minimum. My friends all know that it's like burial, get two burgers. So I'm going to have to go with the bell rock because it's a double meat patty, which is my jam. And then is there a chicken one?

Melanie Avalon

Trying to see they have a whole sandwich section. This is a massive menu friends It like keeps going. I keep thinking I'm at the end They do have a chicken breast. Where's that Rivendell chicken? You got to go down to like the south of the border

Barry Conrad

Where's the sandwiches this is a mess this is a lot of

Melanie Avalon

food. It just like keeps going. Second breakfast. Oh my goodness.

Barry Conrad

Okay, I'm going to do the for something different because I can't find a chicken burger. I'm going to go with a smorg's delight, which is a smoked turkey topped with avocado, tomato and melted Jack cheese. That's my main dish is dishes.

Melanie Avalon

choice. I think I would get, in the spirit of all the burgers they have, I would get the Eowyn's elk burger, which is elk, ghost pepper, cheddar, fig jam, caramelized onions, and arugula. I would edit that and just get the elk burger and no bun.

Barry Conrad

I was gonna ask that next, like, are you gonna have the bun?

Melanie Avalon

No, so I'd have a rare out aowans elk burger and I might add on if we're doing if we're doing well Yeah, we're doing like dinner then I would probably also get So gotta have two entrees might get some rippendell chicken or some rippendell salmon. I gotta have something from rippendell It's got to represent my favorite town

Barry Conrad

And then can I have like a morsel of your chicken? Yes, of course.

Melanie Avalon

Of course you can.

Barry Conrad

And you can have a morsel of the bun of my burger? Nope. I knew the answer for that. Okay. Where's the dessert? I'm trying to scroll down to find it. There's like.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, smoothies and desserts are at the end.

Barry Conrad

They do. Oh, wow. This looks amazing.

Melanie Avalon

There's so many.

Barry Conrad

I know what I'm getting what Nutella pancakes

Melanie Avalon

Oh, Nutella Pancakes, ah, smart choice.

Barry Conrad

Which is, do you say Natalo and Nutella?

Melanie Avalon

Nutella and I feel like there or is it Nutella maybe I'm not a Nutella person

Barry Conrad

All that tracks, because you prefer...

Melanie Avalon

the hazelnut.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, that's true.

Melanie Avalon

Like, you know, people like people love it. I had friends growing up who like were obsessed and I did not love it. Oh, my gosh, they have a legolas. What is it?

Barry Conrad

Oh, it's a smoothie. Can I take that back because I didn't see the bottom beneath that? I'll give the chocolate chip pancake because that's more true to me. And then I'll also add two scoops of vanilla ice cream to that.

Melanie Avalon

Nice. Okay, that's what I do. So for my meal, I would get the elk burger with the Rivendell chicken. And then for dessert, I want the Rivendell salmon.

Barry Conrad

Savory dessert. Yep. That's so good.

Melanie Avalon

So friends, check out, we'll have to see if they have an Instagram. We'll put a link to all of that in the show notes. But Hobbit Cafe in Houston, their menu is so big.

Barry Conrad

I would actually, I was thinking this. I would actually, I want to go there. When I go to Houston next, I need to hit these guys up because I.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, you should. Let me know. Take pictures.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, I'll do like a whole thing like a tasting situation and have all you

Melanie Avalon

Awesome. Shall we jump into some questions for today?

Barry Conrad

Let's jump in.

Melanie Avalon

All right, would you like to read the first question? This is the first time I think I'd be reading a listener question, right?

Barry Conrad

Yeah, I think so too, which is really exciting.

Melanie Avalon

Oh my goodness, moment.

Barry Conrad

Here we go. Take it in. OK, so Christine asks, are there any long term studies on IF and muscle retention?

Melanie Avalon

All right, Christine, thank you so much for your question. So I actually wanted to start with this question because I wanted to do some research on it, provide some sources and then also want to talk to Barry about it. So it's perfect. Here's the thing, I could not find any super long term studies on this. That said, I found a lot of studies on like decent size, like one or two months of fasting and its effect on muscle and just what happens, like what it does. And I think presumably that what we can learn from that, in theory, should continue on. And I also found a study that looked at 10 days of just straight fasting, which to me seems much more extreme for its ability to affect muscle than daily fasting. And so we can kind of take away what happens to muscle during that. Well, first of all, there are some there's rodent studies. For example, there was a 2023 mouse study. It was called intermittent fasting reduces mouse body fat while maintaining muscle mass by regulating protein synthesis and autophagy. So basically, they wanted to look at intermittent fasting and how it affects skeletal muscle protein metabolism. And they found they found that the fasting group had better insulin that they had lower body fat, lower body and fat weights, and that they maintained the skeletal muscle mass the same amount as the mouse group that was eating ad libitum. They found that a reason for this was because of the role of autophagy, which is something we've talked about a lot during this show, which is where the body actually goes down and breaks down old and dysfunctional proteins in the body and reuses them. So basically, while you're fasting, you may not be taking in protein, but the body actually can go and, for lack of a better word, create new protein from old and broken protein in your body, which is super cool. So their conclusion was our findings suggest that adaptation to IF regulates protein synthesis and breakdown, leading to the maintenance of skeletal muscle mass while reducing body fat, which is another cool thing because they often say, Oh, you can't lose fat and, you know, maintain muscle at the same time, you know, this shows something different. Again, that was in a mouse though. So let's move to humans. We have, I'm trying to say where to go first. So there was a review, and I love reviews because it looks at a lot of studies and helps to find, you know, what is the data at large saying. So it was called intermittent fasting. Does it affect sports performance? A systematic review. This was published in January of 2024. It looked at 25 studies. And after looking at those studies, it concluded that intermittent fasting could be considered an adequate nutritional strategy to reduce body fat to an adequate number for the athlete and maintain lean mass or muscle mass. So basically they looked at a lot of athletic people practicing fasting, and they found that fasting helped them reduce fat and that it maintained muscle mass. Super important. And then, so this is the one that, let's see, this is the one that looked at a 10-day fast.

Melanie Avalon

It was called, is muscle and protein loss relevant in long-term fasting in healthy men, a prospective trial on physiological adaptations? So this study actually looked at a 10-day fast coupled with physical activity in men, in 16 men. And they found that, let's see, they found that the men decreased their body weight by 7% and that their metabolism went down by 12% and that their fat, okay, so their fat mass and their lean soft tissue accounted for about 40% and 60% of the weight loss. So like 40% of that was from fat, 60% of their weight loss was from muscle. All that said, the muscle loss was explained by losing water. There was a lot of that. So 44% was water extracellular, so like basically like bloat inflammation like under your skin. And then 14% of that was muscle and liver glycogen associated with water. And then the remaining 42% of that was actually tissue. So only 42% of the 60% was actual muscle loss. All of that said, as far as like what they actually did during this, they were walking. So they increased their walking by 60% while fasting. They did strength training. And the ultimate conclusion was that a 10-day fast appears safe in healthy humans. Protein loss occurs in the early fast but decreases as ketogenesis increases. Fasting combined with physical activity does not negatively impact muscle function. And then they said future studies will need to confirm these first findings. So the reason I'm talking about this one is, like I said before, 10 days straight. I think that's where you're really going to see, like if you're going to be like losing muscle, that's where you're going to see it. And I find it interesting that they did lose muscle, but they also lost fat. And it didn't affect their muscle function. And the longer they fasted, the less muscle they lost going into the fast, which kind of indicates that there must be protective mechanisms that start up as you get like longer and longer into the fast. I think that's so fascinating. One more thing kind of going out of order, but this is the one I really like. So this is called the effects of intermittent fasting combined with resistance training on lean body mass, a systematic review of human studies. And so this also looks at intermittent fasting combined with training. And I'll circle back to this, but I think a huge key for maintaining muscle while fasting, definitely from what we're seeing in this literature, is doing muscle training and doing resistance training. So giving your muscle a stimulus and a motivation to stay there and not waste away. And then also eating a lot of protein in your eating window to support that. So this 2020 review, it looked at eight studies, and they found that for these people who were fasting and doing resistance training, that lean body mass was generally maintained. They did find in one study that they actually increased their lean body mass, and they also lost body fat at the same time. So they maintain their muscle, but they lost fat. And so they said that results suggest that IF paired with resistance training generally maintains lean body mass and can also promote fat loss.

Melanie Avalon

Future research should examine longer term effects of various forms of IF combined with resistance training compared to traditional forms of energy restriction. And so I mean, on the one hand, they say at the end that we need more studies on longer term, which I realize is Christine's question. But just my reading of literature and data, it really seems to show to me that things happen during fasting that actively you know, maintain and protect muscle. So I couldn't find any super long term ones. But those are my thoughts on the mechanisms at play, assuming you're giving them a stimulus, you know, training those muscles and having enough protein. So that was a lot. What are your thoughts?

Barry Conrad

One of the biggest things is, as we know, intermittent fasting does promote autophagy, which helps that repair and the regeneration of cells. As Mel was saying, the human growth hormone, which is such a magical thing that happens during the fasted state. It was interesting, the study that you talked about, the deeper these guys went into the fast that the muscle loss stopped, which is really fascinating, and also telling that it's protective. I will say that, again, taking in enough protein is really important as well. We know that the FDA currently suggests a daily intake of 0.8 grams per kilogram body weight. For someone like myself, for example, I will often have about 160 grams of protein a day, which is more than double of the FDA. I think to build muscle, it's important to not just have that base level intake, but to even double or even by 1.5 to take in to build muscle and to stimulate muscle growth. Pairing that with resistance training with intermittent fasting, I think, is a recipe for success in terms of not just retaining muscle, but building muscle as well. I think I mentioned this to Melanie before. When I broke my ankle, I was on bed rest for maybe five or six weeks without being in the gym, and I was in bed rest for a large amount of time. I did not significantly lose muscle. The only thing that's changed was the intermittent fasting. I kept my protocol up, and I kept on taking in that protein. It's great.

Melanie Avalon

That's so telling about the bed rest and you're, you know, not losing muscle. Yeah, I think, I just really think the importance here, like we keep harping on, but eating enough protein in the eating window, doing that resistance training, because when you're doing that training, that's telling the muscle, even though it's breaking down, like it's catabolic and breaking down muscle, you're then building it back up and it's signaling to the body to keep that muscle around. It's like needs to keep it. So I think that that communication is so, so important.

Barry Conrad

Because Melanie, what do you think when people say, if I fast, I'm going to lose my muscle? Do you think that with intermittent fasting, even the body just in general, the preferential thing to burn first is not going to be muscle when you go with that food, right?

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, that's what Jason Fung talks about a lot. He's like he talks about how like evolutionarily it doesn't make sense. Muscle is so important. So it doesn't make sense the body would want to burn muscle first compared to though an example. So here's a good example. So if you're in the facet state and you're burning fuel, and we just looked at all those studies that show that you can burn fat but maintain muscle, that makes sense because your body is since a starvation, it needs energy. So it makes the most sense to burn fat and maintain muscle, especially if you're using that muscle and you're telling your body you want to keep it. Compare this to something like chronic cardio and like marathon runners, they actually benefit from losing muscle because their body needs to be lighter to be doing that endurance sport. So that's an example of like communicating a different message to your body where the body needs fuel, what is it going to choose. So I think like being in the facet state during resistance training, you're signaling to your body to keep the muscle compared to like trying to lose weight by running it off, you might actually be telling your body to burn muscle.

Barry Conrad

Right and even conversely interestingly when people just count calories to lose weight what happens to the muscle versus when the intermittent fasting and taking enough protein.

Melanie Avalon

I think because there seems to be something really magical about this signaling with the facet state that's really protective. And so I feel much more comfortable actually maintaining muscle with a fasting approach compared to like a calorie restriction all throughout the day approach.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, same. Definitely. It's such a flex as well to be able to say to guys that are intermittent fast because they're like, really? They genuinely shocked that I'm not eating all day.

Melanie Avalon

They're shocked that you are not eating all day.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, they're not that I'm eating all day like still like the general consensus is like, particularly weightlifters or whatnot. They're just like, what? So do you how do you keep your muscle? How do you build muscle? So I just love that reaction.

Melanie Avalon

I love knowing people like you because I can be like, well, see, because although I think I do, I don't know. I'm toned. I have muscle. People comment. It's funny. When I go on my Costco hauls, which I was going to right before this, people are like shocked at everything I carry at the store. You're pretty strong? I think so. Literally today, like right before this, I was at Costco, she was like, you're like really strong. I was like, it's my workout. And that's something I really like, is like turning life into a workout, like carrying. It is a lot. I want to show you everything I carry at Costco is a lot of stuff.

Barry Conrad

You also said like you wear like weights and stuff like you wear body weights and stuff.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, like I wear weights around the apartment. I never use a cart and I carry a ton. Like we're talking, I mean, it's, I should actually weigh how much it is the two bags I carry. It's a lot. And then I do M sculpt still. I love M sculpt.

Barry Conrad

The scallops man, they they're heavy and the cucumbers, you know, and what Melanie saying as well is as funny as it is, like, that's still stimulus, like, people can often get the misconception or the conception that stimulus or muscle building, you need to be in a gym lifting a dumbbell, that's not necessarily the case, it's any resistance, that's still stimulating the muscle, right, Melanie?

Melanie Avalon

pick up heavy things. And I'm actually, I'm really excited. I'm prepping right now. The episode will have already aired when this comes out. I will have aired an episode with Mark Sisson. I'm actually right now in my current present time finishing up that book to prep to interview him. But his newest book is called Born to Walk. It's incredible. He did it with Brad Kearns and it's all about the myth of chronic cardio and marathon training and endurance running and how what we're naturally made to do is like move, you know, move naturally walk, lift heavy things, do more ancestral movement in that way. And he's a big fan of like non-structured play and exercise. I mean, if you love the gym and like more power to you, but you can get a lot of support of the body and you know, muscle support even just like living your life. If you do it on purpose, like if you purposely try to make your life heavy physically, not emotionally.

Barry Conrad

That's a great thought. Even just that, make your life heavy, physically and unemotionally. I love that.

Melanie Avalon

Wait, we should like, we should do something with that.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, that's really good. That's like a slogan. That's a good slogan. Write it down. I'm going to write it down right now actually. Make your life heavy physically. That's like a tagline for like a book. Book title then underneath. Make your life. Yeah, that's great. That's awesome.

Melanie Avalon

I love that. OK, shall we go on to our next question?

Barry Conrad

I feel like we should.

Melanie Avalon

So our next question comes from Jennifer and she says is there anything you might recommend for a person like me who faces a general feeling of tiredness in the morning? I work in a typical office environment 8 to 5 Monday through Thursday. I also pick up a few shifts at a local coffee shop on the weekends to keep me young and active. I'm doing roughly 16 8 clean fasting for the past 13 months. I drink water, 1 to 2 cups of black coffee during the early and mid morning and occasional cups of hot water. I notice that once noon rolls around I start to feel like myself and the energy level increases. What might you suggest I tweak or adjust? And I will say before we answer this, I so am jealous of Barry's circadian rhythm.

Barry Conrad

Okay, why? Tell us again, why?

Melanie Avalon

Mr. Morning Person, Mr. Wake up, bright eyed, ready to go, hit the day.

Barry Conrad

I love it. It's just like, I feel like I can dive straight into anything that I need to do with efficiency, focus, strength, determination, no like feeling sloppy or slouchy at all.

Melanie Avalon

So, and you've always, because we're trying to help out Jennifer here, like have you always felt that way? Like, because Jennifer wants what you have, like I do too.

Barry Conrad

I feel like it's becoming more and more of a morning, quote unquote, morning person. I'm traveling at the moment as well, and wherever I am, I just wake up at 6.30. I don't know what, I'll look at my phone, and 6.30 seems to be the time that my body's starting to wake up now normally. And I've decided, just go with it, don't think it's too early, just have a sleep in. Granted, if I am tired, I'll have a lay-in, but 6.30 seems to be that little magic number for me. Jump out of bed, for me it's straight to the gym, straight into the day.

Melanie Avalon

So here's my question, I guess, what would make, cause then we can like, we can reverse engineer. What would make you not feel that way? What would make you feel tired in the morning?

Barry Conrad

Having too much of a late night than I before could be one thing. Another thing could be my food choices the day before, which a lot of people might not think about that could also make me feel sluggish and stowshy and lack energy, not having enough water throughout the day. Because for example, I've seen here, Jennifer, that you have your one to two cups of black coffee, all about the black coffee. And also, I would also point out that coffee is deodorating. So you want to make sure that when you are drinking other water, stay hydrated. So a hack could even be adding electrolytes to your water. That could help when you do open your window to eat, making sure that you're taking in nutrient-stance foods and knowing what your body's good at processing because you might not process certain macronutrient as efficiently as others. So maybe some will make you feel more sluggish or maybe looking at what you're eating could be a tweak, even increasing your fasting window could be a tweak or a hack because I know for me, and we've talked about this before, Melanie and I, that you just get that energy and that focus. And I find that for me, that kicks in like around the 18-hour mark for me. So not 16. So that's another thing that you could possibly look at. What do you think, Melanie?

Melanie Avalon

Okay, you hit on so many good things and so many of my own thoughts as well. We don't know when she's actually eating. So she works from eight to five. We know she's doing 16, eight, but we don't know. Well, I guess she's drinking coffee in the morning, early mid-morning, around noon. She tries to feel like herself. So I'm wondering when she's actually eating. So I would have a lot of different questions. One would be, well, okay, well, first of all, the very first thing I think, and it's something that you touched on, Barry, sleep, like looking at your sleep. Can you optimize your sleep? Out of all the things like diet, fitness, food, sleep, I just think sleep is so, so important. And if you're feeling tired, I would definitely start there. There's so many things you can do to help optimize your sleep, having a sleep sanctuary of sorts. So having a really specific wind down routine where you're not exposing yourself to blue light. So you're wearing blue light blocking glasses, using red light in your apartment. It doesn't necessarily have to be like red light devices, but just not lighting your apartment with like bright light in the evening is really important. On YouTube, there's a lot of these different like Zen music frequencies that can really help you wind down. Like I use one called like love frequency, but it's like a certain hurts that is very calming. And if you're into like sound therapy, it relates to that. That's what I'm always playing in the background of my phone. What I was asking you if you could hear the music. No, I couldn't hear it. I'm gonna blast it next time. Blast it next time. I'll put a link in the show notes to my favorite one that I have. That's like a game changer for me. And then having your sleep environment, keeping it cool is really important. I use a cooling mattress. I turn down the air. Sorry. I'm laughing because I turned down the air really cold and my AC like a few days ago, I think it ran out of Freon, but it was like really cold here. It was like in the twenties, which I don't know the equivalent for Celsius.

Barry Conrad

God, that's... no, that's freezing.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, it was like really cold. But my air conditioner was broken because that was what it was outside, but inside it's not that cold and I needed it to be cold and so it broke. And so the maintenance guy called and he was like, are you sure? He was like, is it the heater broken? I was like, no, it's the AC. And he was like, are you sure it's not the heater? I was like, no, it's the AC. And he was so confused.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, because it's cold outside.

Melanie Avalon

And he was like, why? And I was like, I was like, it's broken.

Barry Conrad

Solaris, he's like confused

Melanie Avalon

I know he was really confused. So yeah, keeping your sleep environment cold is really important. And what else using like, you know, blackout curtains, earplugs, a mask, all the things. So looking at your sleep and then supplement wise, I really benefit from CBD. I really love Dr. Kirk Parsley sleep remedy. That works really well. I will use melatonin at night. Oh, my Avalon X magnesium three and eight. Amazing. It's a magnesium that crosses the blood brain barrier, helps support mood and rest and relaxation. You can get that at Avalon X dot us and the coupon code Melanie Avalon will get you 10% off. Okay, so that's sleep. And then moving on beyond that, and a lot of this is going to overlap with what Barry said, I would ask yourself, Jennifer, when did this start? Because you say that you start to feel like yourself around noon. Have you always been that way? And it's kind of like what I was asking Barry, like, have you have you always been the type that you don't really start to, you know, perk up until noon, which is me? Hello. Or did you used to like wake up early and feel energetic? And now this is a new change. And was that did that change with the fasting? Because it could be a lot of things if you haven't always been if you've always been that way, you probably have a circadian rhythm that's like me check out the work of Dr. Michael Bruce, who Okay, he's the sleep doctor. He wrote the four chronotypes book about the different sleep chronotypes. And I got to meet I've had him on the show twice. I got to meet him in person and hang out with him recently. Really? Yeah, I went to the Unimonia conference and West Palm and I met him in person. He was so nice. And then he actually he was able to take me like as his plus one to like this networking party for the conference. So that was great. So I got to like meet all these people. In any case, he's amazing. His book is really great for helping to understand the different sleep chronotypes. And the point of that is that he understands that some people just are not morning people, which I really appreciate because I am not one. But that said, if you were not really experiencing this before, and it's a new thing, I would definitely look more at everything. For the fasting, like Barry was saying, either increasing the fasting or like changing around when you're eating window is that might play a role. I definitely agree with what Barry said about the food choices. Like do not underestimate the impact of food on, you know, how you feel the next day, I would really look at hormones and you could work with a practitioner and get a Dutch test. And they'll be able to look at your, your cortisol levels throughout the day. And you can kind of see what's going on there. Oh, and then also coffee to bring everything full circle with how we started this episode. So it's ironic because like I said, I'm really passionate about coffee, I think has a lot of benefits. I actually don't drink a ton of coffee. So I've gone through periods where like in college, I would drink like so much coffee.

Melanie Avalon

I don't know how I survived that. And then after college, I drank coffee. Now I just have like a little bit every morning. Like I found like the perfect dose and it's just like a little bit every morning. And it kind of like gives me a, it's like a hormetic stressor to me. And, but I don't have a ton of coffee. And I guess what I would be curious about is there can be a substantial amount of difference of caffeine and like between one and two cups of coffee. So like, what is your relationship to that caffeine and the coffee? And is it like, are you needing it to wake up? And then, although ironically, you're not really waking up until around noon, this is interesting. So Dr. Michael Bruce believes, and I've read this from other people as well, that you actually shouldn't have the coffee right in the morning because you naturally in theory should have a cortisol spike then anyways. So you actually would have it a little bit later when you have like a lull, although that's reverse of what Jennifer's experiencing. But that's more just like a little fun fact about coffee, coffee timing. Interesting. Yeah. Cause you said you have it Barry, right? When you wake up.

Barry Conrad

Like, not right, right, but I'll usually have it maybe around seven-ish, like I'll head to a cafe and grab a coffee or two right before the gym. That's like my pre-workout.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, yeah. So he's a well that makes sense because you would for you want to do it before working out. I guess if you weren't working out right away, it would be interesting to experiment. But if you're working out right away, you definitely want to take it before. But yeah, so Jennifer, you could also look at your stress levels surrounding your job. And maybe how is that coming into play? Yeah, I'm just trying to like like the one I mean, I would really, really look at the sleep food choices. Like are you eating foods inflammatory for your body? Because if you are, then you might especially, especially if you have like a later eating window, you might be eating foods that are actually having a, like a delayed response inflammatory effect where you're like kind of recovering from that in the morning. So I would look at the foods that you're eating, your sleep choices, your relationship with coffee, and maybe work with a doctor who can give you a more enlightened view of your hormones.

Barry Conrad

I think as well I think the eating the eating window could also be key you mentioned that before we don't actually know when she doesn't say when she's actually eating.

Melanie Avalon

So she's probably eating for eight hours. Sounds like she drinks coffee mid-morning, noon, she starts to feel like herself. Yeah, I don't know. I'm guessing, yeah, I don't know. I would maybe start with sleep and start there, like the window.

Barry Conrad

because you're right. There's so much that we can say. And also, one of the most basic, necessary, important things is just sleep. It's an electro. You feel much better the next morning. If we don't get enough sleep a couple nights in a row, it has a domino effect and you get into sleep debt. It's really important for recovery, for keeping your circadian rhythm well, making sure that you digest food properly. Everything just has an effect on everything. So that's different grade of our smell.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I think it's literally so important. And it's interesting or funny to me because people wear lack of sleep, like a badge of honor. They'll be like, Oh, you know, I, you know, I only got four hours of sleep. And it's like, you're kind of proud of it, because it shows that you're like working and doing all the things. And I'm like, I'm like, I am not proud of that. I want all the sleep. And I protect my sleep, like nothing else. That is the reason that, like we talked about last week, if I'm out late at the Biohack Yourself premiere in Vegas, I will be going back after that. Even though what's crazy to me is my circadian rhythm is so late that it will be very late that I'm up, but it's on my timing, you know, it's like on my circadian rhythm, I don't stay up, I try not to stay up past my natural rhythm.

Barry Conrad

Here's a question about sleep. If you, for example, you had to do something that fell outside of your sleeping time, for example, and then you got the same number of hours of sleep, but at a different time, would you feel different?

Melanie Avalon

So I love this question and I have an answer that makes me so happy because I had heard, maybe there's conflicting research on this as I'm saying it, I'm like listening to myself. They say, they say that going to sleep, okay, there is research showing that going to sleep earlier and waking up earlier is better sleep for you. Matt Walker, I think, has done research on that and I'm using that as an example because you're saying if I were to change my sleeping hours at a different time, basically.

Barry Conrad

window, I guess.

Melanie Avalon

I've got to find like the original study about this. Somebody was talking about this and there was research showing that so for people who are like night owls versus like early birds. So if an early bird person goes to bed later and wakes up later but it's the same amount of sleep as their normal sleep they will actually be more tired. On the flip side a late night owl person like me if I go to bed earlier and wake up earlier same hours of sleep I'll be more tired which I love. I find that so validating for my experience because to answer your question personally I do find that if I because there are occasions where I have to get up like super you know well early for me I can get the same amount of sleep and I will be tired I'll be more tired the next day even if it's the same amount of sleep.

Barry Conrad

It's just interesting how that works. How about you? Yeah, I agree. As soon as you said that about the later sleeping later, waking up later, I a hundred percent agree with that. I don't know why it just happens. I feel sluggish and lethargic.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, and that's the way I would feel about the reverse. So I'm all about finding what works for you personally.

Barry Conrad

Almost like how is that set how is that even determined within each person that this this is your sort of window of sleep this is when you should go to sleep and you'll feel amazing waking up and if you don't even if you get the same number of hours of sleep you'll feel bad it's just interesting.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, so definitely you would love Dr. Bruce's work. One of his books is The Power of Wind. This is the chronotype guy. It's genetic. The thought of it, like why that evolved that way? The theory is that historically when we were like hunter-gatherers, somebody had to be awake all the time to protect the group. Everybody couldn't be sleeping at the same time because then we were in the wilderness, enemies, animals. So people developed different circadian rhythms so that somebody could always be awake, keeping watch. So the night owls, like me, we were the night guards. We were keeping you guys. Actually, I'm actually a dolphin.

Barry Conrad

The track is you so strong you said you're strong and your cost current stuff so that.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, although actually I'm not so that's actually the wolf his wolf chronotype. I'm actually not that I'm the dolphin the dolphin has just like a really messed up circadian rhythm. We're basically like We're basically I think he like it's one who like found this in the literature and then like kind of popularized it so so most people's like cortisol rhythms, it should spike in the morning and then like Goes down a little bit until noon and then it's like up a little bit and then it's like going down until the evening The dolphin type like me we get this random cortisol spike in the evening like regardless of context. So Doesn't matter like how much I slept or I always come nighttime. I'm like I'm ready

Barry Conrad

Maybe that's why you always like you love your your one night out like you know how you go to events and shows and stuff like you love

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. So hopefully, Jennifer, that was helpful. Listeners, please submit questions, especially now that I feel like listeners are probably getting to know you, Barry. Submit questions for both of us, but questions, you know, with Barry on board, we would love to have some more around in that context, especially since he brings a lot of experience that we haven't really had on this show before, which is A, a man.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, it's a very important factor, yeah.

Melanie Avalon

Be like your routine and your work ethic at the gym and all of that stuff. Any topics in particular you love talking about?

Barry Conrad

Well, I love, I do love talking about, you know, working out and the relation of muscle to fasting protein and whatnot. I also do like talking about dietary choices as well, but I'm open to everything. I'm, I'm happy to take in any questions that you guys have. If, if there's something that I don't feel that I'm experienced in, I'll just pass it on to Mel because for example, like female hormonal questions or something like that, I'd probably pass the buck. I'd do my best to answer, but then I definitely, what do you think, Melanie?

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, very. And in our prep doc, I will make sure to give you a question that's like all about just like the female experience of hormones and you can answer it.

Barry Conrad

metaphors and the

Melanie Avalon

What happens when I have

Barry Conrad

Yeah. I'm gonna stop talking there. Yeah.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, oh my gosh, so amazing. Well, this has been so, so fun. Listeners, you can submit questions by emailing questions at ifodcast.com. You can also go to ifodcast.com and submit questions there. The show notes for today's episode will be at ifodcast.com slash episode 407. Those show notes will have a full transcript and they will also have links to everything that we talked about. So definitely check that out. And I think that's all the things. Oh, you can follow us on Instagram. I am Melanie Avalon. Barry is Barry underscore Conrad. And we are, I have podcasts on Instagram and yeah, anything from you, Barry, before we go.

Barry Conrad

I hope that you all have an amazing week, rest of your week, and this has been fun.

Melanie Avalon

Yes, this has been so fun and I will talk to you next week.

Barry Conrad

I'll talk to you next week.

Melanie Avalon

Bye. Bye. Thank you so much for listening to the Intermittent 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, 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! you

Jan 26

Episode 406 – Eating Socially With IF, Brain Benefits Of Fasting, Whether Or Not To Weigh Yourself, Happy Scale App, Tracking The Fast Hours, And More!

Welcome to Episode 406 of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast, hosted by Melanie Avalon, biohacker, founder of AvalonX, and author of What When Wine Diet: Lose Weight And Feel Great With Paleo-Style Meals, Intermittent Fasting, And Wine, and Barry Conrad, actor, singer-songwriter, and creator and host of Banter with BC.

SHOW NOTES

SPONSORS & DISCOUNTS

LINKS:

Melanie's Podcast: The Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast

TRANSCRIPT

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

Melanie Avalon

Welcome to episode 406 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, founder of AvalonX and author of What, When, Wine. Lose weight and feel great with paleo style meals, intermittent fasting and wine. And I'm joined by my co-hosts, Barry Conrad, actor, singer, songwriter, and creator and host of Banter with BC. For more on us, check out MelanieAvalon.com and BarryConradOfficial.com. You can submit questions for the show by emailing questions at iapodcast.com or by going to iapodcast.com. We would love to hear from you. Please remember the thoughts and opinions on this show do not constitute medical advice or treatment. 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 everybody and welcome. This is episode number 406 of the intermittent fasting podcast. I'm Melanie Avalon and I'm here with my co-host Barry Conrad. Barry, how are you today?

Barry Conrad

I'm doing really good actually i'm in beautiful melbourne australia for people who don't know australia melbourne's, really i said it's got lots of vibe good restaurants bars you love it but i'm doing really good it's a sunny day with a bit of a chill in the air which melanie would appreciate.

Melanie Avalon

we were talking earlier, I really should just live like half of the year in the US and half of the year in Australia.

Barry Conrad

I don't know how you go with the flying situation though, because it's like you'll be there for more than a day. You know that, right?

Melanie Avalon

I know, but like if I can set up my whole living situation, then it's okay. It's like the living out of hotels part that is not the best for me. But if I like lived there, yeah.

Barry Conrad

I'm in an apartment at the moment for a job but then straight after this i go to a hotel so i'm trying to copy and paste that to how you would handle that you in apartment for like three days and then change the hotel for like four days like you be like what was almost.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, that's see that's rough. Oh and don't downplay it. You're there for an awesome play that you're gonna be in

Barry Conrad

I'm so excited. It's called Destiny, and it comes out. Well, we start doing it next year, but we've started preparing here in Melbourne. So, I'm stoked. If you ever come to Australia, come and check it out, guys. Anyway, how are you? How are you doing?

Melanie Avalon

role in the play.

Barry Conrad

I have played the male lead called his name's as returns and he's like an activist he's so much fun he's a young guy who comes back into the picture of a formal love and checks up world it's a story about loyalty family and it's set in the apartment in south africa so really intense and dramatic but also very funny and really harkens from my background i'm so that we can too so it's even more meaningful to be part of.

Melanie Avalon

Sounds so amazing. Have you met your, I guess obviously you've met your fellow cast members. Are you getting along with them?

Barry Conrad

It's kind of a blind date. I don't know. You'd probably know this as well, Melanie, as like, you know, when you meet people for the first time, it could kind of have a vibe or no vibe. But all of us are heading it off. So it's really good. Any intermittent fasteners?

Melanie Avalon

You got to start pulling everybody you meet now that you're the co-host. I'm like, not really, but you don't have to do that.

Barry Conrad

That's really, that made me laugh. Not that I know of yet because everyone ate during lunch break yesterday. So maybe that was their window. I don't know.

Melanie Avalon

Did you eat during the lunch break?

Barry Conrad

I timed my windows so that I could have a meal with everyone for the first day just to be a team, you know, like be a team player, so I did time it so that I could have something.

Melanie Avalon

So you're like, you're going to ease them in to you, like, to your lifestyle habits. Situation, yeah, exactly. That's like what I do. It's like if I'm meeting somebody new, I might, well, I guess I do tell them about my intermittent fasting, but I like try to set up the first things where it's not a situation where I'm just like not eating at the thing they're eating at. I like have my system down, my easing people in system.

Barry Conrad

So give me an example. If I was like a newbie, you were meeting me for the first time like a work colleague or whatever, and you knew this was coming up like in two days, what would you do?

Melanie Avalon

And I knew that I was like meeting people and like meeting you in two days.

Barry Conrad

And we will be like at a restaurant all kind of getting together here.

Melanie Avalon

Right. Yeah. So I would move gently the meeting towards drinks or drinks. I don't really do daytime meetings with people in real life. I do a lot of virtual meetings, but yeah. Or I move it towards when you can get drinks or eat type situation thing where you do what you want. So not like a dinner dinner. That works too. Yeah.

Barry Conrad

This, this, I can't, you know, listeners, I can't wait to have a meal with Melanie in person because it's just going to be entertaining. I can't wait just to see, you know, I'm not going to say anymore.

Melanie Avalon

It's gonna be so fun, I'm so excited. Which speaking of, you have a restaurant for us today?

Barry Conrad

I do have a worship, but I still haven't asked you how you're doing. How are you doing?

Melanie Avalon

I am doing, thank you. You're so kind. I'm doing really well. So this airs, this episode airs like end of January. So things I talk about right now will be in the past. But regardless, I am about to go this week to host on the red carpet for the biohack yourself premiere, which listeners may have, may be familiar with, but it has, has so many people in it. So many guests I've had on my show, like Dave Asprey and Aggie, and there's like a whole laundry list of people and then even RFK is in it. So I'm excited. I'm going to be traveling to Vegas. I already told you this, but I'm going to go for one day, host the carpet and go back. So that'll be fun. There's a few people there that I've been dying to meet in real life that I haven't met. So Ben Greenfield is going to be there. I have yet to meet Ben Azati in real life and I adore him. So yeah, there's like a quite a few people I'm excited to actually meet in person. It's always, it's always really exciting to meet people. I mean, you and I have not met in person. It's always so excited, like meet somebody finally in person that you know, virtually, you know.

Barry Conrad

Yeah i agree i think as well melt it's amazing what that opportunity that's gonna be good i think you're perfect for so i can't wait to see all the clips in the footage and make sure you post so we can keep up.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, thank you. I will. I'll be doing all the stories. Have you been to Vegas before? I'm sure you have.

Barry Conrad

I've been to vegas but not really be on the airport that much so i don't really have i don't know enough to have like a proper opinion about it but it seems like a pretty pretty fun city have you.

Melanie Avalon

I'm just reflecting on how that was such a wonderful perspective of the world to say you don't know enough to have a proper opinion. If everybody could realize that about so many things, I feel like we would be a better society.

Barry Conrad

It's like you talk to someone it's like what do you think of i hate america so when did you go well i haven't been but i just i just don't like it.

Melanie Avalon

Exactly. It's like, okay. So in college, my roommate actually was from Vegas. And that was a moment I was like, Oh, you can actually like be from Vegas. You know, you don't really think of people like living there. I actually only went it's very close to LA, but I only went once, I think. And it was for a convention. So it was not I like didn't do the Vegas thing, you know, and I'm not doing it now either. I don't know. Am I? I'm going to be at like the Venetian hotel, which is nice. There won't be time to like gamble or anything. Do you gamble?

Barry Conrad

I mean, I have on a TV show that I was on, but I don't really do it in real life, but I have to learn for that reason. But I think, I mean, what about after the situation? When you're done with your work, you've done the whole situation, you've met everyone, done the hosting. What about going out that night and just going out on the town with some of the peeps? Well, but...

Melanie Avalon

agenda, it goes until really, really late. It's like a, it's like an all night thing. Like they start the screening and it's not a full screening. It's just like trailers because I think it's like a whole docu-series, but I think that starts at like 10. I don't know. I think it's going to be over, that part will probably be over at like 1am. So I don't think I'm going to, yeah. We'll see. We'll see where the night goes.

Barry Conrad

It's just you getting started though, like you wake up at like what so late anyway, right?

Melanie Avalon

This is true. Although the time difference and with me not getting there any earlier, it's a three-hour time difference. So 1 a.m. there is like 4 a.m. here. It's gonna be fun. You should come. Do you want to come?

Barry Conrad

I'd love to come, but yeah, I'd probably be trying to pull you into the festivities afterwards like let's go out. Let's check out the city Blackberry. I can't. I'm too tired.

Melanie Avalon

I wouldn't it's not that I'm tired. It's that I have to like go to bed. Those are two different things. Yeah, next time next time

Barry Conrad

And you can try the food while you're there, and speaking of food, we have a restaurant.

Melanie Avalon

Yes, so a little tradition, tradition, I guess so. Something that Barry and I are starting where every episode we're gonna profile just quickly a restaurant and we're gonna tell you guys what we would personally order during our eating window from the menu. What restaurant do you have for us today?

Barry Conrad

So today, I've got a restaurant called Bar Milano on Maroubra Beach in beautiful Sydney. It happens to be the resident venue where I film Bent with BC, but there's not an ad. This is only because I love it so much. It was founded by Patrick, Georgette, and the team. It's a fusion of the best Northern Italian food you can think of with Australia's coastline. So it's this really awesome concoction of flavor culture heritage. So I think you'd love it, Mel. You wouldn't want to leave. You'd be dining and whining and dining and whining for hours, I reckon.

Melanie Avalon

I did not realize that this was the restaurant where you filmed that show. Awesome. That's amazing.

Barry Conrad

And you've seen stuff before, so you know it looks good.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, so I'm looking at the okay, so it's a it's an a la carte menu it says

Barry Conrad

Yeah, so you go. So basically, you can see see there's some starters. Okay, we got to talk about this. So starters, main dish, and dessert. Is that what we said?

Melanie Avalon

Yes, we had to come up with the terminology. Yes. So what would you get for the starter?

Barry Conrad

love calamari so i would definitely get calamari with the rocket and the aioli there i love i love the arancini arancini balls they're so good i'll get that and burrata which you know like the cheese yeah that's me

Melanie Avalon

Okay, I would probably get the cold cuts and cheese, but only eat the cold cuts. Oh, and the prawns. That's shrimp, right? Prawns are shrimp or no?

Barry Conrad

Melanie, they're really good, really good.

Melanie Avalon

Is it different than shrimp? No. It's the same thing. Yes, and that. Yeah, prawns and cold cuts. I'm going to be really predictable by the time we've done this a few times. I couldn't order the same thing everywhere.

Barry Conrad

people, listeners will be like, I know Melanie and Zoda, like give me any restaurant, I could just choose.

Melanie Avalon

Pretty much. How about for your main meal?

Barry Conrad

The main dish situation, this was a really hard choice, but I'm gonna have to go with the pappardelle, the pasta, because I love that beef ragu, that's my jam. It's gotta be me.

Melanie Avalon

Pasta is one of my favorite things that I don't eat.

Barry Conrad

That's the sound butt of this episode, the intro.

Melanie Avalon

Like, on my deathbed, I am just eating fettuccine alfredo, like, on repeat. Oh, so good. And so I would get the pork cutlet.

Barry Conrad

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. For sure. What about – would you have anything with that, like a side or anything? Like, would you just have that?

Melanie Avalon

if they have like, I don't, I'm seeing, I'm trying to see, oh, here's a little fun fact for listeners. It's not too annoying for the kitchen, but you can usually get sides that are not listed if you see them somewhere else with something else. So like right now I'm looking to see if they have spinach on anything because I would see if they had like steam spinach, but I don't see that anywhere. Yeah. Typically, I just see if they have like steam spinach.

Barry Conrad

Sell it? Like, cost letters and soft herbs?

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I really like the meat a lot.

Barry Conrad

That's your thing.

Melanie Avalon

And then for dessert, what would you get?

Barry Conrad

You know I like to get two of things too.

Melanie Avalon

Yes, like I sometimes I usually get two entrees, but not this time.

Barry Conrad

Do you really? I have to go with the tiramisu and the gelato and the crosstata, diperia, poached pear, tart, and mascarpone. So those three, I have to do it. It just all looks too good doing it. I support it.

Melanie Avalon

I probably get more prawns.

Barry Conrad

But like, would you guys like some dessert? I'm like, I'll have this, this, this, this, and I'll, can I have some more prawns, please?

Melanie Avalon

I'm just prepping you for when we get our meal together for the first time. You're going to be so ready. I'm going to do this. I'm not kidding. Like this is not a joke. Really? No, this is no, this is not completely serious. It's called a savory dessert. People do it. And I learned that term because a waiter said that to me because I, one time I ordered the salmon for dessert. He's like, Oh, I asked him, I was like, do other people do this? He's like, yeah, sometimes people get savory desserts. And I was like, Oh, see, it's a thing. It's a rare thing, but it's a thing.

Barry Conrad

I think I might just try just to see how I go like if my system freaks out that I'm not having a sweet treat or if it's all good maybe I should try it.

Melanie Avalon

It's definitely awesome to get in even more protein. People say you can't get enough protein in one meal. Try me.

Barry Conrad

You can, trust me.

Melanie Avalon

You can. Okay. Well, that was fun. We will put a link in the show notes to your show so people can see Bancer with BC so people can see this restaurant.

Barry Conrad

see the food more importantly and the amazing guests but the food too. You're so funny. What did you say? Fettuccine is like pasta is one of my favorite dishes that I don't eat.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, that and Funfetti. Okay, well, on that note, so we have some questions for Barry, although, okay, so Barry, the context of this, these are questions for you, and the people who asked them actually don't know it's you yet. Because I asked question, because while we're recording this, we have not yet aired your first episode, so it's still a secret. I think in this post, people knew that you're a male co-host, but they don't know who it is. But here's some listener questions for you, and some we kind of touched on like two weeks ago, so we can like briefly recap those. So Michelle, for example, I'm actually gonna combine these two different ones, because you can answer both together. So Michelle wants to know what brought you to IF, and Andrea wants to know how long have you been intermittent fasting? And then Andrea has another question, but yeah, so when did you start again, and so how long has it been?

Barry Conrad

started around late 2018, late 2018, beginning of 2019. So it's been a few years now. And, you know, I started hearing about it at that time. And that's how I found this podcast cue. And, you know, how I could potentially, you know, help with my body composition and muscle that really attracted me to it. I heard about the energy and the focus that you can get, which was like, tada, there was like a bulb in my mind that went off. So went straight in, I dove straight into that, and have been sort of hooked ever since.

Melanie Avalon

The energy and focus is so incredible. It's like something you just don't know until you experience it, in my opinion.

Barry Conrad

You're right. It's like a razor sharp focus that you get listeners. You have to like, you'll know what we mean if you're already an intermittent faster. And if you're not yet, it's definitely something that you will experience.

Melanie Avalon

The thing it reminds me of is I remember before I was fasting, there would be times that I would be like really excited about something or like in the zone. And I would just have this feeling of like, Oh, this is like the feeling of, of just energy and focus and like dopamine, but it was rare. It would really only happen and like highlight key moments of my life. And then I started fasting. I was like, Oh, you can feel like this every day. This is so great.

Barry Conrad

Who knew? She's not wrong. It's true. You do.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. And then Andrea also wants to know, do you have any particular diet that you follow? And I don't, I actually don't think I asked you that two episodes ago. So do you have any particular diet that you follow?

Barry Conrad

Andrew, that's a great question. You know what? I used to follow a paleo style approach back in the day. Then after I started fasting, I gravitated more towards just prioritizing my protein, making sure it's high protein meals and having carbs in there. But depending on what I'm preparing for, if it's a shoot or performance or whatnot, I'll tweak the carb limitations, like how much carbs I have, if that makes sense. It's about staying flexible for me and intentional about keeping that focus on the high protein. That's a big deal for me. Does that answer your question?

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I think it does. So so basically, here's my question, my follow up question. So are any foods off limits for you? Or is it more about, you know, the protein, the macros, things like that? And how strict were you when you were doing paleo? Were you like really strict?

Barry Conrad

I was really strict during Paleo, actually. I'd go out to eat with people and just have, for example, if I'm going to a breakfast spot, I would order a big breakfast always, and I'd just lose the bread, lose the hash brown, which is a potato fried situation, lose any of that stuff, and just have the poached eggs, bacon. I would have the halloumi cheese, tomato, mushroom, spinach. I was pretty strict with that. And I would just never have bread, pretty much, ever. But now I definitely have rice, lots of rice. I don't have still as much bread, because it bloats me, depending on what kind of bread it is. But I don't steer away. I'm not as strict. But yeah, in terms of ultra-processed, it's like a no zone for me until I'm unless I planned it most of the time.

Melanie Avalon

Do you find that since you started fasting that you can quote, get away with more with what you eat compared to before you were doing that?

Barry Conrad

I definitely think that I can and I try I sometimes it's kind of cheeky because I'll play with that and and sometimes I've tipped it too far admittedly like let me just have a little something more but I usually just pull it straight back in again because I know what effect it has on me and and not just to look how I feel. You just feel that there's you know what I mean Melanie like having the ultra processed all that sugar and whatnot you just don't feel as good but yeah I can get away with a lot more which is interesting because before fasting I didn't eat as much and I would gain like a lot of body fat for example or look a lot more bloated now I can I actually eat more every day and I can incorporate like some trinkets here and there and be fine you know.

Melanie Avalon

That's definitely my experience as well, which I just really really really appreciate and love. Okay, well actually speaking of because Jackie has two questions and I'm gonna read them in reverse order. She says have you ever had a weight problem?

Barry Conrad

Hi, Jackie. What's up? How's it going? Hope you're having a good day. I've never had a weight issue per se, but I would definitely say before fasting, I looked stockier. I don't know how you would say that in America, kind of like more full-faced, a bit more bulky. Puffier? Maybe a bit puffier, like holding a bit more water. Only in hindsight, I can say that now, looking back. But I definitely was a bit more puffy, holding a bit more water weight and I found that harder to shift. So in terms of like a weight issue, it wasn't really an issue, but that's the difference. But yeah, there's a noticeable difference now for me.

Melanie Avalon

And then her second question was, why are you qualified to co-host an intermittent fasting podcast? It's like you're in a job interview. Did I even ask you this? I don't think so.

Barry Conrad

It's like, Barry, why are you qualified? Like, what makes you here for this position? I would say my qualification, it comes from experience. I've been living this intimate and fasting, like lifestyle consistently now for a few years, I've, I've gotten results from it. I've, I've learned what sort of works for me and also what doesn't work for me. So I feel like I can comment on that. People that follow me will also say that's something that, you know, Barry's done consistently. Like we would trust his opinion, what he has to say, cause he hasn't deviated from that. So that's, I mean, that's what I would say. That's what qualifies me. What do you think, Melody? Do you think that qualifies me?

Melanie Avalon

I think it qualifies you. I am super excited having you here because you walk the walk, not just talk the talk. Like you were saying, and I'm saying now, you've been doing the intermittent fasting, you see how it works, and you really understand the importance of protein. And I think we are two good examples of how you can embrace an intermittent fasting lifestyle with different levels of intensity and strictness, like with the food and everything. So for me, I'm like really crazy. But I like it. I'm not doing it out of fear or because I feel like I have to. I just like it. It makes me feel good. And then you know what works for you. We just talked about it, the protein and adjusting the carbs if needed, but then also having that flexibility. And then I also love that you do exercise and weightlifting and things like that because that's a whole another perspective that you can touch on.

Barry Conrad

I was going to add, thank you so much for saying that, by the way, Mel really appreciate that I was going to add as well, I feel like what I bring what I can bring to this is, you know, a perspective that other people can relate to particularly guys because I am really into my resistance training and I'm not like a gym bro, but I go to the gym a lot, you know, and so that's a big part of my life and a lot of guys might have the misconception that fasting is going to make me lose my gains here to tell you guys. That's not the case and I'm super excited for just more guys to hear that. So that's a huge thing for me. I'm really excited.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I'm super excited about that. And we actually have a good question next week where we're going to talk about a lot of muscle stuff and science on it. So listeners get excited for that. And you're you're very like smart and intelligent. And so I'm really excited. You know, because we get a lot of questions that require doing research and things like that. And I'm really excited to see where we go down the research rabbit holes. It's gonna be fun.

Barry Conrad

I'm stoked i'm so excited about that i love researching so let's go coming.

Melanie Avalon

fun. Okay, Kyoko says I like this one. Do you have it is very cool name. Do you have any disagreements with Melanie about certain IF or biohacking protocols?

Barry Conrad

all the time, all the time. Just before this episode, we had a huge fight. It was so hard to...

Melanie Avalon

argument. I was crying. It was...

Barry Conrad

No, not yet. Not yet. Right. Well, but I mean, honestly, no. And I know a lot of people like lie about stuff like that. But Melanie, you're incredibly knowledgeable about intermittent fasting and biohacking and what you know what you're talking about. And so far, we've been on the same page about most of that. And I love I also love that we can have open conversations and never never feels like anything's out of bounds. When we talk about this, we can share different approaches. But at some point, at some point, we'll find things that we probably see differently. But I'm here for that because I feel I feel like it would be boring if we saw things exactly the same way. What do you think?

Melanie Avalon

I feel the same way. I'm really excited. I'm excited to see where it goes and what things we do find that we have differing opinions on. And something I think that is so important just in general is I really value having an open mindset, an open perspective. I love when you can engage with somebody and you don't have to worry about offending them or having differing opinions because I just think differing opinions and opinions in general are just important. So yeah, I'm excited to see where it goes. We'll have to see.

Barry Conrad

Well, we'll see. Watch the space listeners if we have any fights or anything.

Melanie Avalon

Oh my gosh. Nydia wants to know what are his non-scale victories. Do you know that term?

Barry Conrad

I do know that term through this podcast, actually.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, yay. So people often abbreviate them NSVs, which, so for listeners, basically non-weight related benefits that you've experienced from intermittent fasting.

Barry Conrad

It's a good question. I have so many and listeners, if you check out, was it episode four or five, Melanie? We actually, Melanie and I actually go through our top I have benefits, which it's a really, really good episode, really good takeaways. So I won't go through all of them, but I can't get past the energy and the focus. Like it's such a huge thing for me because my days, they fall on. So that razor sharp focus, I can't get past that. It's one of the most attractive things for me. And second of all, I'll just say that eliminates a lot of decisions around food and takes, I have enough decisions to make on the daily. I don't need to be thinking all day, what do I eat? What do I eat? So probably those two things I'll mention now, but definitely go back to that episode and have a listen to both of our benefits.

Melanie Avalon

And some of the reason, like some of the science behind the focus, I mean, it's quite a few different things, but when you're in the fasted state, you're just running off the body fat, you're generating ketones. So you have a really stable energy supply and our brain is a very energy hungry organ in our body. You know, it's responsible for so much of our daily metabolism and it constantly needs fuel. And so when we're in the fed state and living from snack to snack, meal to meal, our insulin is going up and down, our energy levels are going up and down. So it's not giving the brain that, you know, consistent energy stream that it gets when you're fasted. And then fasting also does things like bumps up BDNF, which is a neurotropic factor in the brain that's kind of like miracle growth for the brain. It really helps support the brain's performance and it's anti-aging. And so that's a big deal. And then just like the neurotransmitters in general that are released by fasting are often even things like adrenaline and norepinephrine, epinephrine are very stimulating for the brain. So there's lots of, lots of benefits. I love it.

Barry Conrad

Same and you know what is there is the scale I don't often wear myself because Melanie correct me if I'm wrong it can be really deceiving it just a regular scale because muscle weighs more than fat a and it's just. If from even throughout the day you can have like a couple drinks of water and then your weight on the scale will change so I kind of don't really go by scales anyway.

Melanie Avalon

Scales are interesting. I feel like there's a lot of different opinions. Like some people will say, I think, I think it depends on your goals. It depends on you, like different opinions out there. Like some people say don't weigh yourself. Like because of a lot of the reasons you just mentioned, some people will say, just go off of like body measurements and things like that. Then on the weighing front, some people will say you should weigh every single day at the same time because you want to capture all those little fluctuations. And then some people will say, no, you should weigh like once a week at the same time. I have my thoughts, but so for you, you don't weigh.

Barry Conrad

Well, let me zoom out for a second. I don't not weigh, but I don't own a scale. And that's also in part due to past issues with body image stuff. But at the gym, there's scale there. So what I will do, if I can control this variable, is if I've fasted consistently the same window in a given week and ate relatively the same foods, and I'm going to the gym always in the fastest state in the morning, I've used the restroom, blah, blah, blah. Then I'll jump on the scale before anything else. That is a more accurate representation of what's happening in terms of my weight if I kind of average that out over the week. But if I can't control those variables, it's going to be different for me anyway. I could be wrong, but yeah.

Melanie Avalon

I love that. The most variables that you could control to make it as consistent from that data, I think is so important. So like everything you said, like before you're eating in the morning, there's actually an app I really, really like. It's called Happy Scale. Have you heard of it? What is it? Tell me that. It's really great. Well, first of all, before I talk about Happy Scale, because that's just an app. We talked about this a lot when Jen was the co-host because she was obsessed with her shape of scale. That's a scale that is an actual scale, but it doesn't actually show you a weight number. It just shows you a color and the color lets you know if you're like maintaining, gaining or losing. So some people like that. They don't want to actually see the number. Happy Scale. I love this app. So it's an app on your phone. You put in your weight, ideally like you were saying at the same time, every day. And what it does, it takes into account, I don't know how its algorithms work. And obviously, it's better the more you use it, but it takes into account fluctuations and your overall trend. And so it tells you, it really creates graphs and it really shows you, are you actually losing or gaining fat? So you might find that you put in a number that is the same as yesterday, but it'll be like, oh, you actually lost weight. Or you might put in a number that's higher than yesterday and it'll say that it could be different than what you thought. You might put in a number lower than yesterday and it doesn't say that you lost weight because it takes into account all of the data. I really recommend it. It's called Happy Scale.

Barry Conrad

That's really cool. I actually really like that.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, you can put in your goal weight and it'll tell you like you made progress and it never will tell you that you backtracked the purpose of it is to make you always feel like you're moving forward while giving you very clear honest data.

Barry Conrad

Yeah. I love that. I think I'm going to check that out. Thanks for the rec, Mel. I mean, for example, I'm here in Melbourne right now, a city that's vibrant with food and restaurants and trinkets and all the stuff I love. After this podcast, if I went out and indulged in all the foods I wanted, I'm sitting around 80 kgs at the moment. I know that because it's been consistent. But if I smash all that food, I know confidently tomorrow I'll be up maybe 83, 84, but I wouldn't freak out because I know it's not just fat. It's just the effects that you cannot outrun that food have in your body. So it's just about having perspective on that, knowing your body, knowing what food does to it, and then not freaking out if there's a fluctuation in a day.

Melanie Avalon

Exactly. And like, if you think about it, the human body, like our body is around like 60% water anyways, and it can fluctuate, you know, different numbers, that's a lot of water to fluctuate around numbers, you know, there's just so many different factors that can, that can change. And then the fact that carbs are so worth water or not, the role of burning fat versus muscle versus losing carbs, there's just, there's so many things factors that come into play. So you have to check out Happy Scale. Let me know what you think. And check it out. I'll make a note and actually related because you and I had talked about talking about this. We're talking about tracking weight right now. How do you feel about tracking the fast?

Barry Conrad

Ah, okay. Well, it's really cool because when I first started fasting, I love data. I don't know the email, so I just I loved the idea of getting an app and tracking. I think out of necessity at first, like, am I sticking to this properly? Because I dozed right into like 19 hours. And I just wanted to, I was kind of watching the clock tick to be honest at first, like, as soon as it went 19, I got the food, I had the food in front of me ready to go. But funnily enough, just a couple weeks ago, and I think I even mentioned this to you, Mel, I got rid of it, I got rid of the app. And I, I decided it's time to trust myself and that'll be consistent and build a routine that works long term rather than freak out and have the training wheels sort of quote unquote on the whole time because I've done it long enough now. I haven't looked at any clocks and I feel amazing. And I'm just trusting the process rather than keeping an eye on it. But to be honest, I think it's really helpful in the beginning for people starting out. That's my take. What about you?

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I have a really similar take. And I remember because I think because we were talking and I said, I don't ever track and you're like, Oh, I think I'm going to try that. So yeah, I think, I think definitely in the beginning, I think it'd be really important to help people adopt to the intermittent fasting lifestyle. I know for me, I when I first started, I was tracking, I was tracking like the minimum amount of fasted hours, like I wanted to fast a minimum amount of hours. And I always made sure that I went that number. And I don't even remember what that number was. I don't remember.

Barry Conrad

Look, 16.

Melanie Avalon

I want to say 16, but that doesn't actually make sense based on what I was eating. So it probably was like 18 or 19 or 20. I think having that accountability and something you can track in the beginning is really, really important, like I said, because especially a lot of people have to adapt, their metabolism has to learn to be flexible and switch into the fat burning state. So having a tracker of sorts can just make you commit to it and then let your body figure it out and adapt from there. And then I think after that, it's really what makes you happy. And I know for me, I really like not tracking now. So I don't ever track anything. I just do my one meal day in the evening and that's what I do. I don't count hours. I don't track. I think the only time I would track is if I were wanting to do a longer fast, then I would probably do it for that. But that's what works for me. And some people might, I don't know. I'd be curious, listeners, do any of you guys perpetually track for years and years and years?

Barry Conrad

Yeah, we should put up a poll on the Instagram and see where people and also ask on the Facebook.

Melanie Avalon

about that? That's a really good question. I'm actually really curious. I'd be curious because I know we've had, we'll put a link in the show notes, we interviewed one of the head people of the Xero app, Dr. Naomi Parela. She was incredible. I really loved interviewing her. Her specialty, her background is really helping, she has like a clinical background helping people lose weight. We actually talked a lot about wasympic and things like that as well, but that's your app. It's probably like the go-to fasting app. Is that the one that you use, Xero?

Barry Conrad

That's the one that I used. I didn't want to say like, it's not an ad. We're not sponsored by this, but yeah, that's the one that I definitely used and stuck with that the whole time.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, so that's a really great app. I think it helps so many people and it's evolved a lot. Because when I first used it, I used it like in the beginning that it was created and it couldn't do that much stuff. And then I was revisiting it, interviewing her. Yeah, I can do a lot. So I think it's a great motivational tool for a lot of people, definitely a great accountability tool. So I think you just have to know what works for you. But I think if there's a lot of freedom and knowing that you can use it or you cannot use it, but like not feeling like you have to use it or you're tied to it or a fear based mindset, I would never want that with it.

Barry Conrad

If you had to guess roughly what your average would be like in a week, like how many hours minimum do you think that you'd probably follow generally? Yeah, what would you say? Do you know?

Melanie Avalon

I kind of would have to look at it backwards, which is how long do I usually eat every day? And that's usually probably like four hours. So I probably fast around 20, if I were to guess. Yeah, how about you?

Barry Conrad

generally like my average is always been well in the beginning was nineteen then i went to then i tried eighteen didn't love that went back to nineteen then went up to twenty twenty one that went back to twenty and i told between nineteen and twenty for ages and i just said you know what let me set it at nineteen on the app. Because then i always over like i always got twenty twenty one rather than trying to meet that twenty you know it's just psychologically always work that way.

Melanie Avalon

That's a nice little psychological trick.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, because otherwise, like it's kind of like watching a kettle boil or like watching the clock when you're trying to wait for, you know, it just feels like forever when you do that.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, so we probably fast around the same ish. I think so.

Barry Conrad

Although, I will say I eat pretty quickly, which I'm trying to work on as well, just enjoy it, take my time. So I feel like, generally speaking, I eat in a very short window, but then I just kind of would count from then onwards rather than, you know, because I'm not eating for four hours, quote unquote, but it's still 20 hours fast, so I just start 20 hours from when I finish eating. Does that make sense?

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, but then there must be like a catch up day where, well, I guess because you change around the meal timing of your meal, things kind of like even out and settle.

Barry Conrad

through for work and stuff as well, like I'll eat. Some days will be a completely different time and I'm not freaked out about that.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, that makes sense. When you eat at restaurants, do you eat fast?

Barry Conrad

I'm more mindful that I'm with other human beings and that I don't want to look like a pig, so I try to take my time more, but people genuinely will be like, man, you inhaled that or whatnot. I think with you, I'll probably just be myself and just eat the way I eat, but if I'm at a business meeting or something like that or meeting people the first time, I'm like, I try not to just eat, try to talk maybe a bit, drink a little something, eat, you know what I mean? What about you?

Melanie Avalon

So funny. Yeah, we're different. I'm a slow eater. I'm like the girl at the restaurant. I'm like the last person to finish my plate. Always. I like dragging it out. A, I eat that way anyways. And then B, I just like milking the experience, like dragging it out. And yeah, it's also like, I find it difficult to eat and talk. I mean, like, that's another reason I like eating slow. I feel like it's easier to engage socially if you're eating really slow.

Barry Conrad

I think so too. You know what, Melanie, you've inspired me not just to try a savory dessert, but to really, mindfully, I'm going to try it just to go slower than what I normally do. It'd probably drive me crazy, but let me just try to slow it down, smaller bites, chill, see what happens. I don't know if I want to go.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. Let me know. You can work on that muscle so then when we get our dinner, because it's going to be a long dinner, so prepare yourself.

Barry Conrad

No, well, I know it's going to be a long, but that also means I'm going to go in. I'm going to order more and more food while I wait for you to have your one situation.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, you could just like eat more. While I'm going slow, slow, slow.

Barry Conrad

Are you going to judge me? I'm kind of like.

Melanie Avalon

I don't judge. You do you. I want everybody to do themselves. I want everybody to do what makes them happy.

Barry Conrad

I still really am determined to one day guess what I'm gonna say has to do with you.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, it could be a few different things. Is it to have me like eat cake or something?

Barry Conrad

Yes, that was the first thing. Yeah. Was that it? And watch you do it and like fill it like, you know, be so fun just to see your reaction.

Melanie Avalon

What's funny is i was like starting to answer it but then i was like what he said something that he's doing and i'm answering about me i was like no i think this is a pretty sure this is it.

Barry Conrad

the cake.

Melanie Avalon

You want to, like, be present there.

Barry Conrad

just like one bite of like, well, you don't like chocolate. So you'd probably like a vanilla cake or something like that. Cause I don't know if there's a fun study, unless it's the thing in restaurants in America, it's not a thing here in restaurants. So I don't know.

Melanie Avalon

They do have it at some restaurants, but it's not like what you make at home. But it is at some places.

Barry Conrad

That's happening, I'm going to try even if I attempt and fail, I just want to see what your actions like very stop.

Melanie Avalon

you know, forcing me to eat this. It's funny because I like to encourage people to like follow their dreams and succeed, like you're going to fail. I'm just telling you it's funny, like, like, I just know myself so well. Like I, I won't eat it. Like, I don't know what you could do it unless you literally like forced it down my throat to like make me eat it.

Barry Conrad

We'll do like a scenario at some point. I think we're going to go on too long if I keep talking about this, but we'll throw some scenarios at you in the future and see if it'll change your mind. Like if this happened, would you do it?

Melanie Avalon

Okay. Yeah, that's, yeah, we should do that. Yeah. Okay. We'll see. We'll see. All right. So turning the tables, do you have any questions for me about podcasting? I've been asking you a lot of questions these past few episodes.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, you know what? And I feel kind of greedy about that. You've been asking me all the questions. So I've got a few that I'd like to ask you.

Melanie Avalon

All righty, and you are not greedy. I've been here for like seven years, so I'm excited to hear your questions.

Barry Conrad

Should we dive in? So what originally inspired you to get so deep into the world of intermittent fasting and make it such a sensual part of your life and career?

Melanie Avalon

I tried it for a week as a diet experiment amidst all the other diet experiments and the shocking amount of effectiveness it had, not only for weight loss, which you can't really realize that right away in a few days, but just everything we've been talking about, like the way it made me feel, the energy, the focus, the time, getting that, I think getting that time back might have been one of the main things in the beginning. I was like, whoa, I don't have to be, because this is when I was in college and I was literally like, because I had my classes throughout the day and I would like go to class like feverishly bike to my apartment to like, I mean Barry style, like cram down a meal, then like feverishly bike back to class, like it was so stressful, like having to plan that all out and I was like, whoa, I could just not do that. I could literally just not worry about it until dinner and then at dinner I could eat like all I want, which was so exciting because I've always been the type of person that, I feel like there are different people when it comes to like food and like some people I've never been my entire life. Like whenever you go to like speaking of being at a restaurant, like I feel like there are two main types of people. Like there are people who finish their plate always and people who don't. And it like always blew my mind that people, I mean, I wish I was this type, but like don't eat all their food. Like, like for me, I like just, I could always just keep eating always since I was little. That's how I feel. So I was never the type that I would like leave food on the plate. So the point of that is it was really exciting to be able to just like feast at night and eat all I want and then go to bed and not have to always be set. Literally it's like when I would start eating, it's like, oh, I love this food, but I have to stop soon. Like, and I know that maybe that makes me sound, I don't know, like disordered, but I do think there were some people that really just like eating more than others. So fasting lets me like do all of that and not have the negative ramifications. And on the flip side actually have health benefits. It became more part of my life, like with what I'm doing here, because I was doing it before it was popular, like colloquially in the, in the social world. So I needed, I wanted to have like resources for people because I knew it was going to become more popular and I knew people would be like wanting to learn about it. So you know, that's why I wanted to podcast and I wrote my book originally because people thought it was so weird and I was like, I just got to have some sort of resource I can give to people so they'll know the science behind it. So yeah, it was like good timing, no pun intended for everything.

Barry Conrad

So good. And you've been really open about your journey with food sensitivities. Has fasting helped you manage those better? And if so, how? Oh, yeah.

Melanie Avalon

Yes, for sure, because it's really hard to, well, A, I guess making concentrated specific dietary choices is helpful for that as well, but in addition, when you are fasting and you go into the fastest state, it's very anti-inflammatory, your system clears out from all the food. And then when you eat the food, you really can tell, at least for me, how you're reacting to it. And so I can tell, it just gives me a lot more clarity. It's like a flashlight or a mirror on how I'm reacting to food. And then on top of that, it's really healing for the gut and all the things. And I know, I've been talking about this for seven years, but I know it sounds crazy how plain I eat and simple, but I just genuinely, I found that when I cut out all the other food, I just genuinely love the taste of plain food. So yeah, but no, it's definitely really helpful for me for the sensitivities, for sure.

Barry Conrad

And is there, is this something you're still experimenting with in your own fasting?

Melanie Avalon

Oh, more so maybe with food things, but with the fasting, I so it's interesting because a lot of people will change around their fasting. I mean, you know, you change yours around with like the time that you eat and things like that. And a lot of people, especially women, find that they need to change it up. I know like I, we recently had Megan Ramos on the show around a month ago. We'll I think she said this on the show that like she thinks it's a bad idea to eat, you know, the same window every day, or like one meal a day every day. And a lot of people do think that and I do think that's probably the case for a lot of people. It's often hard, especially for women to get enough protein in that eating window. But for me, like I've been very consistent for years and years and years, like over a decade. And the only really experimentations I've done, I've tried a couple times longer fast, I have tried eating earlier, and that does not work for me. So I'm pretty settled in what I do. I don't foresee many experiments. I kind of tried those and like didn't like them.

Barry Conrad

Okay. Has your, like, has your personal approach to intermittent fasting changed over the years? And what's one thing you've learned from hosting this podcast that's changed your personal approach to fasting?

Melanie Avalon

There's a lot of change with my food choices, but with the fasting, not really, just those brief experiments with like, I've tried fasting mimicking diet before, I've tried longer fasts. Like I said, I've tried eating earlier occasionally, but I don't like it. So there hasn't been a lot of change or experimentation on my part for fasting. Things I've learned from this show so, like honestly so much because we've been getting so, when we get so many questions and it's so many things I would never even think of to research or look up. So it's a ton. I'm trying to think of something that I've learned from this show that I like implemented in my life. I have done, oh, well, that would be something that I've experimented with with fasting. In the past, I did try like Bulletproof coffee, you know, putting like butter in your, not the brand, but like Dave's concept of like putting, you know, butter in your coffee and MCT oil in your coffee. I've experimented with that. I definitely experimented with the MCT oil in the coffee during the course of this show and learning more about it and things like that. It doesn't work for me. It actually makes me like hungrier. Yeah, especially the MCT oil, but it's just interesting because yeah, the majority of my experiments have been food related. And I feel like, so if we go through like the history of the coho, so like Jen, she was pretty consistent with doing one meal a day, you know, every day, but she would eat all different things. Cynthia, she had a pretty consistent window, but much earlier than mine. And I also think she would like change it up a little bit. And then Vanessa would change things up a lot, like experiment with a lot of different things. And then I feel like you are the most varied in that I feel like when Vanessa's doing, like Vanessa changes around a lot, but when she changes, she's pretty consistent with the new thing she's doing, if that makes sense. Whereas I feel like with you, your schedule, with your fasting, like you're kind of like a puzzle where it's like shifting around, but you're mostly getting in that 20 hours. Does that make sense? Like yours seems to be more changing daily than the other cohosts. Those are good questions.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, well, I've got another one for you. Do you have time for one more? Yeah. So you've talked a lot about biohacking, of course. That's a massive part of your life. You've talked a lot about biohacking in relation to fasting. So do you have any biohacking protocols that you think pair really well with intermittent fasting for maximum results?

Melanie Avalon

So I was looking to see if I had let, cause I know we had gotten a question about biohacking and I thought it was here, but I don't see it now. I thought somebody had asked us what was our, oh, maybe that's next week. Okay. So teaser for next week. That's why teaser. Okay. Biohacking protocols that pair well with fasting. Well, so many things. So, well, first of all, like I love my infrared sauna, my sunlight and solo sauna that I use every night in my life. I, do you do sauna sessions?

Barry Conrad

I haven't done sauna sessions yet, but I've done one. And then I have a red light therapy device, devices.

Melanie Avalon

I would be excited for you to try so you kind of like how we're talking about with fasting like you don't really know what it feels like until you do it. I feel like Barry, you're going to be so hooked. You're gonna be like, really? Yeah, I literally can't imagine my life not doing them now.

Barry Conrad

Why, tell me.

Melanie Avalon

because you feel so, well, there's so many benefits to it. I mean, it's great cardiovascular benefits, arguably comparable to the cardiovascular benefits of exercise, like cardio. And then it's great for pain relief. Like when you get in the sauna, it just feels like, oh, like a sigh of relief. But the main thing for me is the detoxing effect. So like sweating out all of that sweat every day, you feel so, you feel like clean from the inside out. Like it makes me, it makes me feel so clean. And I originally started doing it because I was trying to detox heavy metals. It's kind of like if you had an apartment and you keep it clean, but then you realize that you could get like a deep clean and you could actually do that like every day. It's like that, it's just wonderful. The reason I thought of it is I would never want to do a sauna session like on a full stomach. That would just feel so uncomfortable. So I love pairing fasting with, like I love being in the fastest state and doing a sauna session.

Barry Conrad

Well, sounds like I need to try that because I definitely have tried like an infrared sauna session and I felt amazing afterwards, but just one time. So I've got to I've got to keep going back.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, you I think you would love it. I think you would love it.

Barry Conrad

Because that would have benefits for muscle recovery too, right?

Melanie Avalon

Oh, yes. Yeah, it's great for that. It actually, did you know, okay, what is this fact? So, for example, when I interviewed Wendy Myers, I learned that heat is actually required for human growth hormone release from exercise. So like, if you're exercising and you're not actually getting hot, which you are like on a cellular level, typically, even if you're not, you know, feeling hot, but there's something about that heat that is actually involved in the human growth hormone release. And so it's really the sauna can help benefit that as well, releasing human growth hormone and helping support muscle. And then also, yes, recovery in general. Yes, it's great for that.

Barry Conrad

Well, guess who's signing up for more sessions than me.

Melanie Avalon

Very Conrad. Yeah, so awesome.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, it's the end of my session, my questions for putting you in the hot seat. Then this is a taste of things to come, there'll be more to come.

Melanie Avalon

I know so many more things. Well, this was so, so fun listeners. Check out these show notes. They will be at ifodcast.com slash episode 406. They'll have a full transcript. They'll have links to everything that we talked about. You can submit your own questions by emailing questions at ifodcast.com or you can go to ifodcast.com and you can submit questions there. You can follow us on Instagram. I'm Melanie Avalon. Barry is, I've got it. Barry underscore Conrad, right? That's right. Yeah. And the show is I have podcast and I think that's all the things. So anything from you, Barry, before we go?

Barry Conrad

This is a really, really fun episode. I don't know how we're going to just keep topping it. I love it.

Melanie Avalon

I'm excited. Next week, we're going to start on answering the listener questions in the normal format of, you know, fasting questions. So it'll be fun. It's going to be good. I will talk to you next week.

Barry Conrad

We'll talk to you next week. Bye.

Melanie Avalon

Thank you so much for listening to the Intermittent 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. 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!

Jan 20

Episode 405 – Our Favorite IF Podcast Benefits, America’s Oldest Restaurant, Losing Water Weight Fast, Reducing Inflammation, Societal Pressures, Decision Fatigue, Enhancing Mood, Supporting Longevity, Toxic Skincare, And More!