Dr. Caryn Zinn - '...On Fat and Fasting'

I'm absolutely privileged to be kicking off the next two days worth of presentations particularly because I can just do my thing and then sit down and relax afterwards and enjoy everyone else's fat and fasting fasting is is something that's been around for ever pretty much in fact I came across a book last week from the 80s and it talks about the fact that intentional fasting is cited in the Bible 78 times so interesting but you know it's been around forever yet when you look at the research we've got a we haven't got a wealth of research to inform us we've got a good starting body of of literature particularly in in rats and mice there's a there's a small body of research in humans and and I'm going to communicate some of the research to you I have been doing fasting with my clients in clinical practice I'm a I'm a practicing dietitian and I've been doing low-carb for the last five or six years and have only kind of incorporated intermittent fasting into my practice the last year or so so for those of you who who know and love what the fad as much as myself and my co-authors grant Scofield and Craig Roger do we do have another book coming out it's it's timely and and there are no prizes for guessing what the name of it is called what the farm so so I'm going to give you a little bit of a sneak preview as to the the method that we've come up with that we think it's going to help a lot of people with a lot of the issues and ailments but before I want to talk before I do that I want to talk a little bit about the benefits and the science around fasting and really in a nutshell it's about it's about creating optimal health finding optimal health that's that's why we all here we all want to subscribe to the live long drop dead philosophy we want to live to the ripe old age of 90's or beyond but we want to live well and then we want to just die in our sleep I mean that's the ultimate goal or I'd be happy to get knocked off my mountain bike when I'm ninety eight to the forest that would be that would be excellent I'd die happy so to achieve optimal health it's about creating a balance between living in a state of enable ISM and catabolism and what I mean by that is an anabolic state or enable ism is where we where we have growth and development so typically when you feed the cells when you eat and catabolism is where we break down so we have to be able to break down things before we can build up new things so so fasting it's quite good because of course our typical typical day as guided by our as a guided by our Ministry of Health and wider guidelines suggest that we need to eat every two or three hours so we're constantly in that anabolic state we're constantly feeding ourselves and I have to say thank goodness for mother nature who has who definitely has our backs and it has has placed sleep as a non-negotiable so at least we are getting a period of time where we are in in a catabolic state but unfortunately we have busy lives and you'll love our phones and you'll get up early and do things so our period of sleep is getting shorter and shorter so again we want to we want to extend the period that we are in a catabolic state so that we can build and regrow right so onto fasting so I you know there are so many benefits to fasting and there's so many different ways and there's no one is stablished protocol so I want just I want to summarize fasting benefits and science into six key points the first one is weight loss and I think weight loss you know it always deserves a category on its own because so many people are trying to achieve a healthy weight for themselves and I think we've been very unsuccessful in the past in in in achieving and obtaining weight loss maintenance you can jump up and down and lose weight loss it's kind of easy but keeping it off long term is not so easy and our current way of guiding people which is really or about persistent daily calorie restriction doesn't work long-term so typically you know if you want to lose weight you reduce your calories by about five six hundred and you know you establish their calorie deficit and you lose weight but we know that doesn't work long term for various reasons and one of the reasons why we believe it doesn't work long term is that it creates hormonal havoc so it's it causes changes in our hunger fullness hormones are leptin and our ghrelin and eventually we get to a point where we just get too hungry and and we can't really maintain the hours and hours of energy out exercise to to obtain that that lower weight that we just get hungry and start eating and we tend to pile on more weight than we did before so fasting can potentially come into its own here and simply by keeping the body guessing and what I mean by that is that on some days you might have very low calories or even no calories and on other days you might have higher calories than you would otherwise have if you restrict in so the body doesn't see that as a massive threat and it doesn't adjust its hormonal Malou to try and establish the weight at a certain point so that it that so that it doesn't actually get into any strife so fasting can be very helpful for that I use fasting for weight loss for two types of people people who have a lot of weight to lose and for people who have very small amount of weight to lose and particularly for people who are stuck in that lchf space they're doing everything right and they're not moving and fasting can be an incredible tool to help just get that one two or three Ches off and keep it off of course it's got to be sustainable glycemic control and another another condition so so fasting it's just really an extension of lchf or the ketogenic diet which of course is just the extreme end of lchf and it helps to improve insulin sensitivity and one of our biggest problems we have is hyperinsulinemia it's a great hangman word for those people who play online hangman and it's a term that is not it's not really on the map as much as it should be and it's one of the biggest problems that we have it's chronically elevated levels of insulin and that often goes undiagnosed because we can have very high levels of insulin while we still have normal glucose control so you are seemingly normal but you've got high levels of insulin circulating and when you've got high levels of insulin circulating you can't burn fat switches or fat burning and it also is toxic to almost every system in the body so fasting can help them inflammation again fasting as an extension of lchf studies have shown that they've been reductions in some of the inflammatory markers TNF alpha interleukin 6 and CRP again you know Stephanie and Jeff vorlick have done some fabulous work on lchf and looking at inflammatory markers and again Valter Longo is the guy that we can attribute a lot of this fasting research I'm sure he's really extending this into some fabulous areas very exciting the immune system is also well influenced by fasting and we know that fasting has the potential to help stem cell regeneration and that has a potential for it has huge potential for the management of immune conditions autoimmune conditions and also periods of time where you have treatment that damages the immune system such as cancer so Dawn's going to talk a lot more about you know how kita and fasting can influence cancer therapy and in issues around it we have the brain and of course we know that when you get into ketosis you produce ketones you get into nutritional ketosis and that you know evidence is showing us that ketones are very neuro protective and there's some good starting research showing that there was a protective effect of circulate and ketones with neurological conditions like dementia and Alzheimer's and also brain cancer is another one so a very very exciting area there like I said the science the actual studies they don't exist in a form that we can say this is this is definitely the case but the proof of concept and and the potential is definitely there and exciting I saw a BDNF is brain-derived neurotropic factor it's it's basically the brain fertiliser and what fasting does is it helps produce more BDNF another thing that helps produce BDNF is exercised so remember we can't forget about all our other important aspects of life and lifestyle it's all one big holistic package and then the most intriguing of them all I think is this as the cell repair these these buzzwords apoptosis which is programmed cell death and auto Fugees where the cells actually consume themselves really they're old used by dead cells actually consume themselves and produce energy to use for other things and classic example to relate this to is is think about your your fridge at home and if you had food in your fridge that had past it's used by a date like old yogurt or you know cream that you know just start smelling a little bit nasty if you left those things in your fridge and just purchased more and fill up your fridge after a while your friends would not look or smell so good or be that healthy and it's a little bit like the cells if you don't get rid of the old you can't build up the new and or tougher G seems to seems to do that it helps clean up the cells so you can start afresh and it's no wonder that the Nobel Peace Prize last year was in Physiology and medicine was awarded to a Japanese researcher about his work in establishing the mechanisms behind Auto Fuji so I guess you know how does this work in practice I guess the side of your you know on your right hand side and these benefits are really about managing existing conditions and I think to to help manage that you could do fasting it intermittently and frequently and we'll talk a little bit more about that on the other side you know to try and achieve some of these benefits it's more about the longer term fasting we don't know the exact number you know people said to me you know what time frame does Auto 40 start well the research you know it's not there yet but we come across around a 24-hour time period so you know anything 24 hours or beyond I think it's it's it the more you fast the more you get the benefits from auto Fuji and the science has got to catch up there for sure and of course there's overlap right so what happens when you fast this is what people think happens it's a very negative it's a very negative thing people think fasting or deprivation I mean I'm going to be hungry I'm going to be walking around the state of tiredness and my energy levels are going to drop and you hope you hear that all the time and in fact it couldn't be further from the truth and people who fast regularly but fast well and that's really important they feel they feel amazing it can it can really enhance how you feel so here we've got a graph from a group of people who have studied over 84 hours and it's want to go through some of the physiology here you've got at the top ghrelin which is a hunger hormone and you can see that greenland pulses so you get hunger in the form of little waves and for those of you who are already on lchf which is probably 99% of you if not 100 you will know that missing a meal when you're already fed adapted is not a drama at all you probably are all intermittent fasting if you must breakfast this morning your intermittent fasting and you know when hunger comes it comes and it stays for 10 minutes and you you don't actually get what I call Hank what we all call hangry when you are addicted to carbs and you missed a meal you kind of just climbing the walls and and that doesn't tend to happen when you fit adapted and you get into some fasting of course ghrelin goes down over time so so we again you think you know day to day three you're going to feel a lot hungry and actually that is not what happens um cortisol hormone which is just stress hormone that does go up so it's a acute stress is actually important for the body um you might have heard of hormesis where you get an acute stress that's good for your chronic stress no good so for those people who are you know though those people those highly stressed people sure there's no one here that you know you'll type A personality highly anxious people you need to be honest to recognize that about yourself if that's you long term fasting might not be for you because that I can actually make things worse growth hormone is is passes as well and growth hormone is secreted and that's really important because what it does is along with a higher protein intake when you do eat and along with exercise it helps to preserve muscle mass and that's really important I just thought I'd throw my I did I did a three day fast just over a month ago and it was my first one actually it was it was fascinating if you want the whole story you can read it on my Facebook page because I don't have time to to go through the psychology of it but I checked my ketones and I just wanted to show you that you know started off under the threshold of nutritional ketosis which is said to be 0.5 millimoles per liter and you can see it trekked up to 72 hours where I finished at just over 4 so again it gets you to that level of ketosis and that is the place where a lot of people and I'm not saying all people a lot of people experience that that immense clarity and that immense productivity and like I said it doesn't happen to everyone and it's not for everyone but a lot of people get a lot of benefit right onto super fasting super fasting is the term that we've coined for our what the fast and you know we've taken what's out there in terms of the 5:2 and the 16-8 and then warrior dies and we have you know looked at the pros and cons and come up with our own system that we think will work and it's it's a combination between fasting and fasting mimicking which is the lchf way of eating and we believe that it is a potent synergy that works with your biology and not against it it also works with your psychology in your lifestyle and I'll show you how it does that rule number one you'll know people who know what the fad know that we love our 10 rules and we have 10 rules are fasting but I'm summarizing it into seven for today first one be affect Benna if you are a carb edit and you are high carb eater you can fast tomorrow but it's going to hurt so getting fed adapted first just allows the whole process to be a bit more pleasant and a bit more easy and of course the more pleasant and easy it is the more likely you will do it long term to get the benefits so it lchf to get to get you set up rule number two simply gets super fasting fast on Mondays and on Tuesdays fasting on Monday and Tuesday will will kick you off on our super fasting method and we've designed it that it works with with your own biology and your own biology tells you when you look at the you look at the waves of hunger based on circadian rhythms on normal biological rhythms we are most hungry at night and least hungry in the morning so let's actually do something that works with your biology and of course at night you might be cooking and preparing meals for your family so engage with them in a meal just to make it work with your lifestyle we again there are no rules whether you should have water tea coffee bone broth there are no rules it's finding your own way and having what we've come up with is that definitely have water you need to be well hydrated we do allow whatever that means tea and coffee with a splash of milk and the jury's out on coffee but we really want to get people to do this so we SEC we might sacrifice best practice to get some practice we'd rather people actually do this with their coffee then not do any fasting because they don't want to give up their coffee and there are lots of people who don't want to give up the coffee rule number three eat super meals for food done on Monday and Tuesday and this is one of Craig's dishes it's a salmon Pocky Bowl underneath the the salmon marinated in Asian flavors we've got cauliflower and broccoli rice underneath there and these weird things here are just crunchy nori sheets which are loaded with iodine so you know a meal that's packed with nutrient packed with new and micronutrients we are all about nutrient density when you eat to make up for the lack of nutrient density when you're not eating rule number four don't over eat and then it that's better mess of and I can't emphasize that enough just enjoy your food what we don't want to do with encouraging fasting is get people into you know bad behaviors and while you might not you're unlikely to make up for calories that you've missed from fasting during your 24 hours if you are overeating that's it's just not good behavior and you end up developing a poor relationship with food and and actually we want to create the exact opposite we want you we want to we want you to create a good relationship a healthy relationship with food this this quote that I came across is is quite interesting a diet changes the way you look a fast changes the way you see and what fasting does is it really forces you to examine your relationship with food and it's just a fascinating experience for people who choose not to fast or don't want to fast and just try it once and see the psychological things that happen it's just a fascinating experience rule number five eat lchf from Wednesday to Sunday so what we want to do with the super fasting system is to create a level of higher level clarity and building up ketones on Monday Tuesday so you can have a productive Monday Tuesday you can go to work and tackle it head-on and then the rest of the week you are eating in a way that is fasting mimicking so you might still have a higher level of circulating ketones that drops off towards the end of the week so we want to carry the benefits on rule number six the rules are there to be broken rule this is one of my this is one of my mentors I I know there are lots of zealots out there they don't even want to you know look at a carrot because it's got too much starch in it only 5 grams really but but I think to make this Dayna belong to him whether it's lchf or whether it's fasting or hopefully a combination of them both you need to you need to be able to work with your you know your your situation and you don't want to be that person or that couple that doesn't get invited anywhere because so let me get this straight it's not a license to go crazy it's not a cheat day it's not a license to overeat but it's a license to go you know what on the weekend I've gone gone out with some friends and they've ordered pizza I'm gonna have some pizza and most importantly I'm not gonna beat myself up about it I'm not gonna feel guilty I'm really gonna enjoy it because it's part of the plan it's not off the plan it's part of the plan and then you know get back into Sunday and Monday and what you need to be aware of is that you're eating slightly left of what you know what you normally eat that it doesn't derail you there are certain people that have a little bit of chocolate and then bang they're back into carbo diction so you've got you've got to watch that you've really got to work out how this works for you and you're the only person that can know that be flexible if you're thinking Monday Tuesday that's when I'm you know spending my time working around food don't do it on Monday Tuesday turn on Winston Thursday it's fine like this is a rule but it's not a rule it's for you to take what you want to take from it you might find that a 24 hour on Monday and a 24 hour and Tuesdays too much I'll just try a 24 hour Monday the method that we have come up with we want we want people to actually give it a good go for a month so Monday Tuesday fasting for each week for a month and then assess how they go and then they might carry on going Monday Tuesday at the start of each month after that or they might go this is awesome I'm going to carry on it's it's very much a navigated process this is an example of one week super fasting from yours truly and Monday Tuesday clearly there's nothing apart from super meal wins that is their Friday low carb stuff and in general you guys would be familiar with us Saturday I I was really busy during the day so I just had you know milky coffee and some belt on my favorite stuff in the whole world which you know I kept me recently formed for the rest of the day and then of course Saturday night I sort of broke out a little bit and probably ate too much chocolate so you know so that's how it goes Sunday back into it and then getting back into it on Monday and here at the bottom are my ketone so what what really fascinated me was that even after 24 hours of fasting I was already on point seven which is the first doctor and what fascinated me even more is that on day two in the evening I was I was up there to point to my ketones were two point two which is indicating a deep level of ketosis and I'm had dinner the night before so you can see the fasting mimicking effect of of eating low carb and then on not sure why I popped up over 0.5 on Thursday evening but again this is where the individual variation comes into it we also don't know a lot about how exercise influences ketones but this is what it can look like and my colleague professor grant Schofield did the same and his really mimics mine as well so that's really the picture that that we've both got okay so to finish off top three takeaways but I do want to just say I just wanna say one thing intermittent fasting is a bit of a no-brainer it's kind of easy and there's not a lot that there can go wrong of course there's a whole group of people that shouldn't be doing fasting and we won't talk about that right now but longer fasting we don't really know a lot about the effects of it it's so it's not something to take on lightly at all and I just wanted to say that just to make sure that no one goes out for the neck seven days and doesn't eat and then something happens and blames me so top three fasting takeaway points the first one is start low and go slow if you've never fasted before just miss a meal if you've only ever missed a meal most two meals and then you can progress into something which is a little bit sort of bigger bigger and better number two I know it sounds cliched but it's so true no you're why why are you fasting if you're doing it for weight loss you should be achieving weight loss if you're doing a longer fast for health and longevity and Aging and anti-aging when you get to day two and it's feeling a little bit psychologically hard go back to why you're doing this I'm doing this to prolong my life and to live according to the live long drop-dead philosophy and once you know that it will give you what you need to carry on and kind of be be strong willed and strong minded about it you only need to be strong minded psychologically because you're not hungry and the last one is don't overthink us I think we spend too much time thinking about food and when you think about food you tend to want it so really take your thoughts away from food and keep busy and that's a way that that it will that it'll work for you I should have said taught for fasting points because I'm actually gonna just add a fourth one now which is to pay attention you need to pay attention and what do I mean by that pay attention to to how you feel if you don't feel good it might not be for you you need to pay attention to how you feel you need to pay attention to whether your weight is going down if that's what you you need it are you doing it for you need to pay attention to your blood sugar to your ketones to your hba1c to your markers and you will soon work out whether this is working for you or not so so please avoid any kind of unsafe practices take these top three fasting points and wait for the research to guide us even further so that we can you know never get an imperfect the system but yeah thank you very much enjoy the rest of the conference and I was a pleasure to talk to you this morning [Applause]

Channel: Low Carb Down Under

Views: 319,448

Rating: 4.8386168 out of 5

Keywords: Low Carb Down Under, LCDU, www.lowcarbdownunder.com.au, Low Carb Gold Goast 2017, #LowCarbGC, What the Fat, What the Fast, Caryn Zinn, Intermittent Fasting, Low Carb Healthy Fat, Superfast, LCHF

Id: 8BYvHgs-oww

Length: 28min 9sec (1689 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 03 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/unibball]

No discernable science in this presentation.

[u/InfantileReptile]

I actually really like her take on it. I'm at a point with keto where I don't feel that I need to be in deep ketosis all the time and I've been trying to come up with a structured "cyclical" keto plan. Thanks for sharing!