Speaker 1: This is the most traumatic podcast ever and iHeartRadio podcast.
Speaker 1: If you have listened to this podcast at all, you
Speaker 1: know that we deal with a lot of health related
Speaker 1: topics because it is obviously something to do with our relationships,
Speaker 1: not only our external relationships, but just the relationship with
Speaker 1: ourself and our body and taking care of ourselves. One
Speaker 1: of the big topics that we have covered is intermittent fasting.
Speaker 1: You know, there are diet fads that we talk about
Speaker 1: all the time. We've gotten into even what's going on
Speaker 1: with ozimpic and Menjaro and all this stuff, but intermittent
Speaker 1: fasting has been kind of above reproach. It's not even
Speaker 1: considered a fad by many. It's just been this kind
Speaker 1: of steadfast dietary plan that to this point has been
Speaker 1: really bulletproof. But then, all of a sudden, from very
Speaker 1: credible sources, including the American Heart Association, a study of
Speaker 1: over twenty eight thousand adults finds that those who followed
Speaker 1: an eight hour time restricted eating schedule i e. This
Speaker 1: is you know, intermittent fasting, have a ninety one percent
Speaker 1: higher risk of death from cardiovascular disease. Now, when you
Speaker 1: hear those numbers, you think, my God, and there's more
Speaker 1: to that that we'll talk about in this study. But
Speaker 1: I immediately started scouring the internet, got deep into this
Speaker 1: rabbit hole and I know what I don't know, and
Speaker 1: that's important in this world to know when you have
Speaker 1: reached your limit, hit that ceiling, and you need to
Speaker 1: go to an expert. I have found an expert joining
Speaker 1: me now on the most dramatic podcast ever is doctor
Speaker 1: Jason Fung. Why is he an expert? Well, not only
Speaker 1: is he a doctor, but he literally wrote a book,
Speaker 1: The Complete Guide to Fasting. So if there is anybody
Speaker 1: in this world, doctor Jason Fung, I think you are
Speaker 1: more than qualified to get into what we just read
Speaker 1: about intermittent fasting. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me. It's good to be here.
Speaker 1: And by the way, I should also say New York
Speaker 1: Times bestseller. He has written many books, so go check
Speaker 1: out doctor Fun. But one of those books is about fasting. Obviously,
Speaker 1: you are well read. You were up on this, the
Speaker 1: latest news that came out from the American Heart Association.
Speaker 1: What was your initial take? What do you make of this?
Speaker 2: Well, the thing is that the study is basically garbage.
Speaker 2: It's not really a study. So First of all, it's
Speaker 2: you know, it's an abstract that was presented at a meeting,
Speaker 2: which usually has to go through peer review to get
Speaker 2: over it. But the main problem with the way that
Speaker 2: it is presented, it's not that the study is garbage,
Speaker 2: it's that the interpretation has been sort of very well overplayed.
Speaker 2: So in science we have to, you know, very carefully
Speaker 2: distinguish between what when two things are correlated and when
Speaker 2: one thing causes the other, because you know, two things
Speaker 2: can be correlated, but they don't cause one another's. So
Speaker 2: for example, if you look at people with gray hair
Speaker 2: versus people without gray hair, the risk of dyeing is
Speaker 2: probably like ten times. Why because the people with gray
Speaker 2: hair are older, So you can't compare the two groups
Speaker 2: because they're very unequal. However, there's a very strong correlation
Speaker 2: between the grayness of your hair and how much your
Speaker 2: risk of dyeing is, or the wrinkles on your face
Speaker 2: and how you know your risk of dying. But obviously
Speaker 2: it doesn't mean that you should dye your hair black
Speaker 2: and that will reduce your risk, and it doesn't mean
Speaker 2: that you should get you know, botox and that will
Speaker 2: reduce your risk. It's completely irrelevant. So those two things
Speaker 2: are correlated because they're caused by a third external factor.
Speaker 2: That is the age is the confounder here. So if
Speaker 2: you're older, you have gray hair. If you're older, your
Speaker 2: risk of dying is higher. But one doesn't cause the other.
Speaker 2: So that's very very important to keep in mind. So
Speaker 2: the point of this study was that they correlated two groups.
Speaker 2: One group that was, you know, sort of fasting. They
Speaker 2: weren't fasting, they were not eating over a period of
Speaker 2: time compared to those that did. And they said, well,
Speaker 2: one group has a higher risk, but that doesn't mean
Speaker 2: that one cause the other. And what happens is that
Speaker 2: people took that to mean one cause the other. And
Speaker 2: that's where it gets very dangerous because it's in medicine.
Speaker 2: There's something called the healthy user bias, which means that
Speaker 2: if you look at two groups of people that are unequal,
Speaker 2: then of course you're going to find a risk that
Speaker 2: may go up. For example, we did this when we
Speaker 2: looked at hormone replacement therapy. So if you look at
Speaker 2: women who took hormone replacement therapy, this is twenty years
Speaker 2: ago when we put virtually, you know, every postmenopausal woman
Speaker 2: on hormone replacement therapy. My mom was on it, all
Speaker 2: her friends were on it, everybody was on it. And
Speaker 2: they did this because there's a strong correlation between I mean,
Speaker 2: the women who took hormone replacement therapy and the risk
Speaker 2: of heart disease was about fifty percent lower. So people
Speaker 2: took this and said, well, that proves that taking it
Speaker 2: reduces your heart risk, which is the same as saying
Speaker 2: dyeing your hair black reduces your risk of dying. It doesn't.
Speaker 2: It turns out that the group that took hormone replacement
Speaker 2: therapy was much healthier in many other ways. They looked
Speaker 2: after themselves, they saw their doctor, they got their blood work.
Speaker 2: So when they actually did the study, they found that,
Speaker 2: in fact, taking hormone replacement doesn't reduce your risk at all. Zero.
Speaker 2: It had zero benefits. So we literally put millions of
Speaker 2: women on based on this flawed understanding. And by the way,
Speaker 2: this understanding that correlation is not causation, That is that
Speaker 2: two things are correlated does not mean that one causes
Speaker 2: the other. That sort of very basic, sort of first
Speaker 2: year you know, statistics sort of thing. Everybody should know this,
Speaker 2: but we we spent you know, hundreds of millions of
Speaker 2: dollars to put women on women, millions of women on
Speaker 2: needless drugs. We did the same thing with multi vitamins,
Speaker 2: for example. So people said, well, if you take a multivitamin,
Speaker 2: there's it's correlated with the risk of dying that is lower.
Speaker 2: But when they actually gave people multi vitamins, it didn't
Speaker 2: lower the risk of dying. Same thing. Healthy people who
Speaker 2: took multivitamins were healthier in many other ways. So you
Speaker 2: have to look at this idea that okay, eating you know,
Speaker 2: not eating for sixteen hours a day. Were those people
Speaker 2: different than the people who were eating, you know, six
Speaker 2: times a day, that kind of thing. And what I
Speaker 2: have to understand is that the database that they used
Speaker 2: from two thousand and three to two thousand and eighteen,
Speaker 2: at that point, nobody was doing intermittent fasting. So if
Speaker 2: you look at Google trends, for example, and I wrote
Speaker 2: about this, you know, if you look at Google trends,
Speaker 2: there was zero interest. In two thousand and four, twenty ten,
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen, nobody was interested in fasting for either health
Speaker 2: reasons or weight loss. It was considered the stupidest thing
Speaker 2: you could do. I know, because I was writing all
Speaker 2: about it, and I got all kinds of flag. It
Speaker 2: wasn't until I published my book The Obesity Code and
Speaker 2: then The Complete Guide to Fasting that it started to
Speaker 2: go up because I pointed out that, hey, there's nothing
Speaker 2: wrong with intermittent fasting. But if you think about the
Speaker 2: group that was not eating during the period for ninety
Speaker 2: percent of their database, those people were different because those
Speaker 2: people were probably people who had, you know, drug problems.
Speaker 2: They might have alcoholism, they might be smokers. They might
Speaker 2: not be eating because they had other illnesses such as cancer.
Speaker 2: So any of those things could have caused this seeming
Speaker 2: this correlation, but it doesn't mean that one caused the other.
Speaker 2: So the entire premise of the study was flawed because
Speaker 2: they were saying, well, people were fasting back in two
Speaker 2: thousand and three for weight loss, but nobody was. The
Speaker 2: interest in fasting was abysmal when I started writing about
Speaker 2: in twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen. I mean, people thought it
Speaker 2: was the craziest thing they'd ever heard of, Like, you
Speaker 2: have to eat. Everybody knew you had to.
Speaker 1: Eat well at the time. The fad was the opposite
Speaker 1: of that. You should have like eight small meals a day,
Speaker 1: you know, or ten small meals a day, whatever it was. So,
Speaker 1: I mean when intermin fasting came on, because I've always
Speaker 1: been so into all these trends and things, we really
Speaker 1: was revolutionary because it was so one hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: degrees from where we were exactly.
Speaker 2: And that's that's the point that the group they're looking
Speaker 2: at was a group that wasn't fasting for any reason
Speaker 2: other than there was other reasons they weren't eating, and
Speaker 2: those other reasons were likely what caused it. But now
Speaker 2: they're applying sort of what we think in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: four to the people in two thousand and five. They're saying, oh,
Speaker 2: people were doing it for diet, Like no, nobody was
Speaker 2: doing it for health or any other reason. So the
Speaker 2: entire premise that is these are sort of basic, basic
Speaker 2: sort of errors in interpretation. The study is the study,
Speaker 2: the correlation is the correlation, but the way you interpret
Speaker 2: it that one causes the other is so erroneous, like
Speaker 2: such a basic Like if anybody said that to me
Speaker 2: above high school, I'd say, you're an idiot.
Speaker 1: Right, It's well, and it was interesting that I read.
Speaker 1: I started reading deeper and you know, they didn't take
Speaker 1: into account, for example, when you were in that window,
Speaker 1: say you had an eight hour window or of eating
Speaker 1: what these people were eating in that eight hours. How
Speaker 1: you break your fast is very important, what you're eating
Speaker 1: when you break your fast and in that so they
Speaker 1: didn't take into account. You know, so I could have
Speaker 1: broken my fast and eaten croissants for eight hours. You
Speaker 1: could have been on a high protein diet. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're probably going to be healthier than me. And they
Speaker 1: didn't take into account. They were saying, like you know,
Speaker 1: cancer and diabetics had a higher risk. Well, no kidding,
Speaker 1: like you said, of course they did.
Speaker 2: Well. The other thing was that this eyes of the
Speaker 2: effect is ridiculous. It's like laughable, right, So let's let's
Speaker 2: figure let's let's put into real context what they're saying.
Speaker 2: So an eight hour eating windows, so say you eat
Speaker 2: breakfast at nine am and you eat dinner at five pm. Okay,
Speaker 2: that's what they're considering so dangerous for you that you're
Speaker 2: going to raise your risk of heart disease. That is,
Speaker 2: that is more powerful than any other risk factor we
Speaker 2: know about, short of smoking. So it's worse than diabetes.
Speaker 2: It's worse than not exorc say, it's worse than being overweight.
Speaker 2: It's worse than you know, living next to you know,
Speaker 2: power lines. It is worse than taking all kinds of carcinogens.
Speaker 2: So this thing where you eat at nine am and
Speaker 2: eat at five to five pm, which is not that bad,
Speaker 2: is this horrible, horrible risk factor that somehow, you know,
Speaker 2: evaded us. And you have to realize that fasting is
Speaker 2: not a new idea. Okay, people have been fasting for
Speaker 2: thousands of years, right, so if there was a problem
Speaker 2: with fasting, we probably should have known about it. And
Speaker 2: the other thing is that in the same study they
Speaker 2: showed that if you fast for eight to ten hours,
Speaker 2: that is, say you eat breakfast at nine am and
Speaker 2: dinner at seven pm, your risk of heart disease went
Speaker 2: up by sixty one percent, sixty six percent. That's ridiculous,
Speaker 2: Like that's called every single person in the nineteen seventies eight,
Speaker 2: like they didn't eat snacks after dinner, so they might
Speaker 2: eat at nine am to seven pm. That's just a
Speaker 2: normal day. Literally millions of people did that. The thing
Speaker 2: is that it's click baity, right, so of course it
Speaker 2: got in the newspaper and so on. And what bothers
Speaker 2: me is that then these sort of elementary mistakes where
Speaker 2: people are interpreting a study. You know, basically they're saying
Speaker 2: the equivalent of get botox. You know, they'll save your life, right,
Speaker 2: It's like, no, it won't. Just getting you rid of
Speaker 2: your wrinkles doesn't do anything for your buy your hair,
Speaker 2: it'll save your life. It won't. So they're making this
Speaker 2: sort of elementary mistake, but they're scaring people. It's fear mongering.
Speaker 2: It's scare mongering from people away who from something that
Speaker 2: could potentially help them. I'm not saying it's the right
Speaker 2: answer for everybody, but clearly some people have benefited tremendously
Speaker 2: from doing intermitt and fasting, and those people might get
Speaker 2: scared away and therefore actually be harmed from this sort
Speaker 2: of awful sort of interpretation mistake, sort of basic elementary
Speaker 2: mistake of correlation and causation.
Speaker 1: You bring up something you know very smart. Before you
Speaker 1: start any major diet, any major change, talk to your physician,
Speaker 1: make sure you talk to the experts that people that
Speaker 1: you deal with for your health and you you're well being.
Speaker 1: But so we debunk this thing as BS and I agree,
Speaker 1: the more I dove into it. I found it laughable
Speaker 1: and I'm not a doctor at all, but I did
Speaker 1: play one on TV. No I didn't. So now that
Speaker 1: we know this is BS, we believe intermittent fasting is
Speaker 1: a good thing. What do you see are the major
Speaker 1: benefits of fasting?
Speaker 2: Well, I think that there's a lot, and especially in
Speaker 2: this day and age where we're really a lot of
Speaker 2: people suffering from being overweight and type two diabetes. So
Speaker 2: type two diabetes is of course a huge risk future
Speaker 2: for all kinds of heart disease and cancer. Nobody debates that.
Speaker 2: But the thing is that if you do intermitted fasting,
Speaker 2: some people will be helped because obviously, if you don't eat,
Speaker 2: your body will burn off some of that glucose, and
Speaker 2: if it burns off the glucose, then your blood glucose
Speaker 2: goes down and you don't need the medications or you
Speaker 2: can even completely reverse your type two diabetes. So the
Speaker 2: idea is very simple. Intermint fasting is not heard to understand.
Speaker 2: Your body can store food energy, which is calories. Right, eat,
Speaker 2: You're going to store calories. That's what you do. It's
Speaker 2: a good thing you can otherwise you die in your
Speaker 2: sleep every single night. Right, We're not like moles you
Speaker 2: have to eat like every one hour or they die
Speaker 2: sort of thing. We can store energy. So your body
Speaker 2: stores energy, and it stores it in the form of sugar,
Speaker 2: which is glucose and fat body fat. Right, that's what
Speaker 2: it's there for. When you don't eat, that is fasting.
Speaker 2: That's the time that your body now says, oh, I'm
Speaker 2: going to take those calories that I store and pull
Speaker 2: them out of storage, because that's the logical thing to do.
Speaker 2: That's all it is. That's all fasting is you store
Speaker 2: energy like body fat for a reason. It's not there
Speaker 2: for looks. It's there for you as a source of
Speaker 2: energy when you don't eat. If you never fast, if
Speaker 2: you never don't eat, how do you expect to burn
Speaker 2: that body fat or that blood glucose. You can't. It's
Speaker 2: actually impossible because if you're eating, you're telling your body
Speaker 2: to store energy. It's only when you don't eat that
Speaker 2: you use the energy. In other words, if you're eating
Speaker 2: all the time, which is the big fad you know
Speaker 2: in this eighties, nineties, two thousands, well you're not giving
Speaker 2: your body a chance to burn it. So of course
Speaker 2: you're gonna of course you're going to gain weight, right,
Speaker 2: there's no other way. So if you want to lose weight,
Speaker 2: all you have to do is to extend the period
Speaker 2: to give your body a break from the eating and
Speaker 2: let your body burn off what you store. And it's
Speaker 2: completely natural. There's nothing wrong with it. Our bodies have adaptmed.
Speaker 2: That is, if you think back to cave men cave women,
Speaker 2: it's winter, there's nothing to eat. Well, when we have
Speaker 2: all died by now, if fasting was really this bad
Speaker 2: for you, right, our bodies like why do we think
Speaker 2: our bodies are so incredibly stupid that we have to
Speaker 2: like figure out Look at the watch. Right, as a caveman,
Speaker 2: you don't have a watch, but you're going to figure
Speaker 2: out that you need to start stuffing them up, which
Speaker 2: you don't have. Of course, you have to go hunt,
Speaker 2: you know, a beaver or something to get food because otherwise,
Speaker 2: if you don't eat, you're gonna die. It's like, uh no,
Speaker 2: your body has started away. That's the entire point. It's
Speaker 2: part of a natural cycle of feeding and fasting. That's
Speaker 2: all it is. That's why we have the word break fast.
Speaker 2: It's the meal that breaks your fast, but you can't
Speaker 2: break it if you're not fasting. So the whole point
Speaker 2: is that fasting is not a fat like everybody says
Speaker 2: it's this big fat. It's like it's been around for
Speaker 2: thousands of years. It's mentioned in every major religious text,
Speaker 2: so we know that people have been doing it for
Speaker 2: two three thousand years. And in that time, where people
Speaker 2: have talked about fasting, it's always in a healthy connotation.
Speaker 2: That is, they talk about it as a detox or
Speaker 2: a clensing or a purification or something like that. So
Speaker 2: the whole thing is that everybody thought fasting was really
Speaker 2: good for you, and then until the eighties and then
Speaker 2: they thought it was really bad for you. But you know,
Speaker 2: it's really just part of this natural cycle. Feeding all
Speaker 2: the times bad, Fasting all the time is bad.
Speaker 1: It's a balance, Doctor fun. Thank you. I think we
Speaker 1: have officially debunked this clickbait headline, which is important and
Speaker 1: I truly appreciate your wisdom, your knowledge. The Complete Guide
Speaker 1: to fasting just one of your books, by the way,
Speaker 1: the obesity Code, the Diabetes Code, and then there are
Speaker 1: the cookbooks for those books. And I saw I was
Speaker 1: reading up and by the way, I also learned a
Speaker 1: new term today. Maybe I'm a complete idiot, which is
Speaker 1: probably true. You're a nephrologist, which is a specializing in
Speaker 1: kidneys and the renal glands, So there you go. I
Speaker 1: also learned something today about nephrology. Perfect, but doctor, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for your knowledge. Truly appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: My thanks to doctor Fun and for all of you
Speaker 1: for tuning in. And we will do it again next
Speaker 1: time because we have a lot more to talk about.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. Follow us on Instagram at the most
Speaker 1: Dramatic pod ever, and make sure to write us a
Speaker 1: review and leave us five stars. I'll talk to you
Speaker 1: next time.