Intermittent Fasting: Destroying Your Heart?

Hello, Health Champions. Can fasting actually  increase the risk of heart attacks? Well,  

according to a new study presented at a  conference by the American Heart Association,  

there is a 20,000-people study where they  found that if you eat your meals in a  

period of less than eight hours per day,  as opposed to the normal 12 to 16 hours,  

then there would be an increased risk of heart  attack of 91%. This would come as quite a shock  

to all the millions of people who are practicing  intermittent fasting for the opposite reason,  

to actually save their heart and improve their  metabolic health. So, let's talk about this.

Well, there are some serious limitations to  this. First of all, it is not a study yet; it's  

abstract, like a preliminary study. It has not  gone through the peer review process, meaning that  

experts actually look at this and validate the  data, and that the conclusions and the reasoning  

are sound. Secondly, the data is self-reported,  and they sent out a survey and asked people a  

couple of times during a several-year period, and  they ask, "Do you remember what you ate?" Even the  

author of the study admits that this depends  on recall and therefore may be inaccurate.

But perhaps the biggest problem with this is  that they don't survey any other factors; they  

don't control; they don't ask about anything else  other than the time period during which food was  

consumed. So, there are some factors of critical  importance, such as what kind of food do you eat,  

what sort of nutritional value does it have,  but they also excluded factors such as sleep,  

stress, exercise, and smoking, which  have huge impacts on heart health.

But here's where we really need to question  the validity of the study and their conclusions  

because the study, the data was collected during  the period from 2003 to 2018, and then in the  

study, they reported it as intermittent fasting.  But intermittent fasting is a very new concept,  

even though certain cultures have practiced  it for thousands of years. The concept of  

regular intermittent fasting wasn't  really a thing until the late 2010s,  

which means that it was either after or toward  the very end of when this data was collected. So,  

there was probably no one in this study, or  extremely few people in the study surveyed,  

that thought they were actually practicing  intermittent fasting on purpose.

And then you have to ask yourself, if they're  not consciously practicing intermittent fasting,  

then why are they doing this? What type of person  would be eating during a shorter period of time  

if they're not consciously doing intermittent  fasting? And my guess is that this would be  

something like a type A personality, someone  who is very driven, very busy. They're probably  

too busy to eat, and that's the reason that they  skip breakfast and eat during a very short period  

of time. They probably skip breakfast; they  may even be the type of person that just goes  

through the first half of the day on cigarettes  and coffee, maybe the occasional donut. And when  

they're very short for time, chances are that  they're going to frequent fast-food places.

So, I don't know this for sure. This would be  my suspicion. But the fact is, the people in the  

study don't know this either because they didn't  ask. Now, what's really disturbing to me is the  

fact that this study isn't even published, and yet  the American Heart Association jumps on it, and  

then as a result of the authority of the American  Heart Association, now of course, all the media  

like NBC News are going to cover it, Washington  Post, US News and World Report, USA Today,  

and New York Times. I think there were about 6,000  different instances that had restated this study,  

and then, of course, all the people writing for  these news media, they're not health experts.  

They are not versed in critically evaluating or  assessing such a report. No, they just want to  

create some sensationalism and tell everybody  about the dangers of intermittent fasting.

So, now millions and millions of people who had  their hope in getting healthy from intermittent  

fasting now get really scared. What are you  supposed to believe? And what's also disturbing  

to me is that to me, it seems like the American  Heart Association is not anchored in science  

because there is no foundation in physiology.  There's no way to open up a physiology textbook  

and read something that makes sense to why this  study would have that particular outcome. And if  

it doesn't match physiology, then it should be the  very last study that they bring out prematurely,  

not the very first one. But yet, they jump  at the chance to get this information out  

there. It's as if they're just waiting for an  opportunity to silence the voices of people who  

do things differently than mainstream medicine.  And whenever there's a movement that threatens the  

American Heart Association and the establishment  because people can get healthy on their own,  

then of course, that's not good news for  the American Heart Association or anyone  

in that establishment because most of these  organizations and most teaching hospitals and  

research universities depend on funding,  and a lot of that will come from Pharma,  

who depends on a system where they  can distribute their medication.

So, we always have to ask ourselves why  they jump so quickly on this information,  

and we have to ask ourselves who is  involved, who has anything to gain or  

lose by this information. And unfortunately,  what's so disturbing is that a lot of times,  

it comes down to politics, power, and  finances rather than patient health.

Another reason they shouldn't jump on the  premature study is that there is now abundant  

evidence in just a few years about the power of  intermittent fasting, on how, if you eat real  

food and you time-restrict your eating, then  it will very reliably and very consistently  

improve all markers of metabolic disease that are  related to cardiovascular disease. And when I say  

all markers, I don't mean every single marker in  every single person every single time. I mean that  

on a study scale, we consistently improve  these markers for the majority of people.

But that is also why you don't ever want to  trust anybody's opinion explicitly, not mine,  

not the American Heart Association, because  everyone can be different. So therefore,  

what you need to do is you need to study  health, not just read lists off of the  

internet. You want to watch some videos  that will actually teach you mechanisms  

to help you understand the body and some of  the basic mechanisms in the body until you  

can see the information on the internet come  together. When does it make sense? When does  

the information confirm other information?  When do you see the trend and the tendency?

And then you want to do your own study with  an N of one, and that means that the sample  

size is one person, you. Normally, in terms of  research, that's a joke because that means if  

you only have one person, then it's not  statistically significant. But when you  

do your own study on yourself, it's the most  significant because you are learning about you.

And then you want to measure your actual risk  markers, the real markers for heart disease,  

the risk factors. And I'm going to share those  with you in just a second. Then, of course,  

you do something, you change something, so you  limit your feeding to 6 to 8 hours a day. And  

it's probably not absolutely necessary  that you change what you eat so much,  

even though I would strongly recommend  it because your chances, the probability  

of getting good results, are going to go up  dramatically if you start eating real food,  

which means you cut back on sugar and soda and  ice cream and cookies and all the packaged foods  

that are basically primarily made  up of sugar, flour, and seed oil.

And if you do that, if you start eating real food,  

you will automatically cut out at  least half of your carbohydrates,  

maybe more. And you don't have to go into ketosis  or go extremely low carb for any of this to work.  

The fasting works in itself, but your chances  are going to go up if you eat real food.

And then you keep that up for three months,  and then you run those blood tests again to  

reassess all those markers. And what is it  that you're going to measure? What are the  

real risk markers for heart disease?  Well, they fall into two categories:  

things that measure insulin resistance and things  that measure inflammation and oxidative stress.

So, the first few markers are glucose, A1C, and  insulin. Glucose is how much blood sugar you  

have at any given moment. A1C is the average  glucose over a 3- to 4-month period of time,  

and insulin is the hormone that controls  glucose. So when your glucose goes up,  

your insulin goes up correspondingly to bring  the glucose down. But when you become insulin  

resistant, then it takes more and more  and more insulin to keep the glucose down.

So now, there's something called HOMA-IR. And  what you do now is you multiply the glucose by  

the insulin and you divide by 405 if you measure  glucose in milligrams per deciliter. If you  

measure in millimoles, now you divide by 22.2. And  the result is a number called HOMA-IR, homeostatic  

model assessment of insulin resistance. And this  would be the strongest indicator there is of  

your risk of heart disease because, by far, the  strongest correlation to heart disease is type 2  

diabetes, and this is the best marker to assess  your risk or your tendency of type 2 diabetes.

Some other strong indicators of insulin  resistance would be your triglycerides,  

how much fat is floating in your blood because if  you're insulin resistant, it stays in the blood  

for a long time. If you're insulin-sensitive,  your cells will absorb it and use it. Waist  

size is another strong indicator because once you  get insulin resistance, you get fatty infiltration  

of the liver and your abdominal cavity, and  your belly grows. Another strong indicator is  

hypertension or high blood pressure, which is also  very strongly associated with insulin resistance.

Measuring inflammation and oxidative  stress is not quite as straightforward,  

but we have some really good indicators. HDL and  LDL cholesterol will give us a good indication,  

and it's not about how many milligrams you have  of each, but it's the ratio because when the ratio  

goes down, meaning there's less HDL in relation to  LDL, that tends to indicate inflammation. We also  

want to look at the size of the LDL particles, and  you have to run a test called an NMR test to get  

this information, but it's well worth it because  you're assessing the actual risk factors. What  

you're looking for on the test is to have what  we call large and fluffy LDL particles because  

a lot of inflammation and oxidative stress  will shrink and increase the density. So,  

if you have small, dense LDL particles, then  that is a strong risk factor for heart disease.

One more factor we can measure is called  high-sensitivity C-reactive protein,  

which is a general inflammatory marker.  Now, these are not the only markers,  

but they are the main ones. And if you  really want to dig into this and start  

understanding your blood work in terms of how  the body works, I created a blood work course,  

and I'll put a link down below for that,  and we can also get you some discounted  

blood work where we measure all of  these factors plus a whole lot more.

But the biggest problem in making change is that  there is so much attachment to the status quo.  

There are so many people, so much money invested  in keeping things the same. So, when something  

like low-carb or intermittent fasting becomes  popular because hundreds of thousands, millions  

of people see improvement, they get healthy, they  make changes that they've never been able to do  

before, that threatens this status quo. So now,  people desperately cling to their old beliefs and  

they say, "Well, we admit that you can reverse  diabetes, we admit that you can lose weight,  

we admit that it's really good for reducing  visceral fat, but we don't know the long-term  

effects." That's kind of their fallback that  will save the day for them in any situation.

But that is why it's so important we understand  the real risk factors because if you measure those  

and they get better, then you are getting  healthier. And this is both short-term and  

long-term because so often what they're saying  when they say, "We don't know the long-term  

effects," what they're saying is, "Well, it might  be good for your short-term, but it's probably  

dangerous long-term." And that's not how it works.  If we address and improve the real risk factors,  

and the exception is if we use some chemical, some  medication to suppress body physiology. If we just  

bring in things that the body wants naturally,  and we let the body do its thing, and the body  

uses its infinite intelligence to achieve  homeostasis, to regulate all these thousands  

of variables to find that best balance, now this  holds true. When you improve the markers, you are  

getting healthier. But if we're not allowing  homeostasis to do its thing, if we introduce  

chemicals that interfere, that suppress certain  markers, that block what the body is trying to do,  

now we're not allowing this balance, and now we're  creating a stress load and a toxicity on the body.

And this is probably why a lot of people have  such a hard time understanding this because  

we're trained in the idea that medication will  make us healthy, and medication can't do that.  

Medication is not always a bad thing, but it  cannot restore the thing that isn't working.  

All disease is because of something that isn't  working right, and if we can address the root  

cause, if there's enough healthy tissue and  function in the body that we can support it  

and bring back that function, now we get  healthy. If we don't have enough balance,  

enough tissue, there is sometimes a good idea to  use medication, but it's only going to control  

something at the expense of something else.  It will not restore the original function.

So here is, in my opinion, the real  risk factors and how important they are:  

We have insulin resistance, then we have gut  health and other sources of inflammation like  

leaky gut and autoimmunity and food allergies  and so forth. Then we have LDL particle health:  

are they large and fluffy, or are they small and  dense and damaged by inflammation and oxidative  

stress? And then we have total cholesterol, as in  measured by milligrams per deciliter or millimoles  

per liter. And here is my belief, this is my  opinion. I don't have any data to support these  

specific numbers, and I just kind of grabbed them  to give you an idea of how I feel about this. So,  

I think insulin resistance is by far the strongest  correlation, the strongest risk factor for heart  

disease. It probably accounts for about 80%  of that weighted importance. Then I think that  

gut health and other sources of inflammation  probably account for another 10%. I think the  

LDL particle health, particle size, is another  9% or so. But keep in mind that most of the LDL  

issues have to do with insulin resistance  and other sources of inflammation, so this  

is not really an independent risk factor; it's  dependent on these two other factors. And then,  

maybe total cholesterol accounts for maybe  1%, but this is only in my opinion for people  

with very very large numbers. I don't think  a number of 300 in itself is a risk factor if  

everything else looks good. I think maybe,  and I'm saying that because I don't know,  

if your cholesterol gets up to 600-800, then  you have some severe metabolic imbalance, some  

genetic imbalance that can predispose you, but  for most people, that is not going to be a factor.

This stuff can get really confusing when  you learn something and you believe it,  

and then they publish a study or they talk about  a study like this that contradicts everything that  

you believe. So, your proof is going to come  from your results and your understanding. So,  

if you go through and you do your own trial  study on yourself, a three-month trial,  

pre- and post-blood work, then the question is,  what happened? That's going to be your proof.

So, if there are no significant  changes in most of these variables,  

then chances are that your issue is a little  bit more complex. It's going to be something  

like autoimmunity or inflammation or  maybe you have a chronic infection or  

some emotional trauma. The variables  are unfortunately pretty endless.

It could also be that you get your test results  back, you've gone through these changes,  

and all or most of your markers are worse. If  that's the case, then intermittent fasting is  

probably dangerous for you; it's something you  should stay away from. But if that happens,  

please contact me and report to me on that  because I'd love to know what planet you're from.

Well, kidding aside, we never want to say never,  so it is possible that it could happen because  

there are billions of people on the planet.  There's probably a handful that would have some  

extreme, inexplicable reaction, but it's going  to be so rare that it is extremely unlikely to  

happen. What's much more likely, and I would say  is probably the case for more than 90% of people,  

is that you would see all or most of  your markers improve if you haven't  

done intermittent fasting or low carb or  some healthy living already for a period  

of time. If you're just kind of new to  this and you go through this process,  

then I would say that all or most of your markers  are probably going to show some positive change.

And then, if that's the case, then intermittent  fasting, like for most people, if you can use  

it to reduce insulin resistance, to improve  metabolic health, that is the best thing that  

you could do to improve your health, to reduce  the risk of heart disease, and save your life.

If you enjoyed this video, you're going to  love that one. And if you truly want to master  

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