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The Miracle Doctor: Get Your Sex Life Back, Melt Belly Fat & Heal Your Injury! Dr. Mindy Pelz | E256

In this new episode Steven sits down with the nutrition and functional medicine expert Dr Mindy Pelz. 0:00 Intro 02:17 What mission are you on, and why does it matter? 04:19 Where did we go wrong as humans? 05:27 Fasting 07:32 The research on fasting 19:00 The six types of fasting 21:18 Autophagy fasting 26:12 The things we're putting on our bodies are poisoning you 36:26 Belly burning fat fasting 39:51 Dopamine reset fast 43:41 Immune reset fast 47:53 Coffee while fasting 50:02 Power of personal nutrition 53:25 Calorie counting 56:29 Our relationship with sugar 01:02:34 Men and women's relationship with stress 01:09:59 Hormone cycles in women and what to do 01:21:05 What we need to know about menopause? 01:33:27 How would we rewrite how men and women attend work? 01:36:43 How men and women should be eating 01:39:11 What supplements should we be taking? 01:41:36 Opening up our detox pathways 01:48:36 Weight loss drugs 01:50:51 The importance of muscle 01:53:18 Cardio for weight loss 01:56:02 The damage of eating too much sugar 01:56:49 Does fasting break down muscle? 02:01:32 Where do we start with fasting 02:08:12 The last guest’s question You can purchase Dr Pelz’s newest book ‘Fast Like a Girl’, here: https://amzn.to/49sHgBf Follow Dr Pelz: Instagram: https://bit.ly/461aBB0 YouTube: https://bit.ly/3qHdIht The conversation cards are back in stock! - https://bit.ly/41JuSYH My new book! 'The 33 Laws Of Business & Life' per order link: https://smarturl.it/DOACbook Join this channel to get access to perks: https://bit.ly/3Dpmgx5 Follow me:  Instagram: http://bit.ly/3nIkGAZ Twitter: http://bit.ly/3ztHuHm Linkedin: https://bit.ly/41Fl95Q Telegram: http://bit.ly/3nJYxST Sponsors:  Huel: https://g2ul0.app.link/G4RjcdKNKsb Blue jeans: https://g2ul0.app.link/NCgpGjVNKsb AirBnB: http://bit.ly/40TcyNr

Dr. Mindy PelzguestSteven Bartletthost
Jun 15, 20232h 13mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 2:17

    Intro

    1. MP

      The feminist women out there are not gonna like this. Women are perishing in this modern world more than men.

    2. SB

      Well, that's terrifying.

    3. MP

      If we want to exist on this planet, we're gonna have to do it.

    4. SB

      Dr. Mindy Pelz.

    5. MP

      Renowned functional health expert. Bestselling author. And keynote speaker.

    6. SB

      One of the leading voices in educating us about our bodies. Spending two decades helping millions worldwide. You got pretty famous from talking about this certain subject matter, which is fasting. What do I need to know?

    7. MP

      Research shows it's gonna make me stronger. More lean. 1300% increase in testosterone in men.

    8. SB

      Oh, wow.

    9. MP

      We see inflammation go down, growth hormone go up. It's the hormone that keeps you young and helps you burn fat. You know where it drop the most amount of weight?

    10. SB

      Belly.

    11. MP

      Yep. Literally takes cells that are turning into cancer and it gets rid of those. You are tapping into a healing state that you never knew was there.

    12. SB

      I'm sold. Where do I start?

    13. MP

      So, the first place to start is ... Menstruation, or the big M, is considered a taboo topic.

    14. SB

      I'm gonna say something which is really embarrassing here. I know nothing about menstrual cycles. I'm in a relationship. What advice have you got for me?

    15. MP

      Well, the first is, do you know her cycle?

    16. SB

      Moving on. Tell me about your childhood. (laughs)

    17. MP

      (laughs) Let me give you gold. The first two days, give her some space. If you have any conflict you want to resolve with her, do it between day two and day 12. Her libido is gonna be the highest between day 10 and day 15. And then, here's the gold. You're gonna have to report back to me how this works. Around day 17, this is where you gotta ...

    18. SB

      Once in a while on this podcast, I have a conversation that I desperately wish I'd had sooner. This is one of those conversations. I'd heard about fasting, but I had no idea, no idea at all, of its potentially life-changing impact. Weight loss, your sex life, a woman's menstrual cycle, how to heal from illness and injury, the incredible power of fasting. I'm incredibly happy that you chose to listen to this particular conversation, because if you're like me and you've never really taken the time to understand fasting, and you don't understand the six types of fasting, then maybe this is the conversation you've always needed to hear, because it certainly was for me. You are really, really gonna enjoy this one. Take my word for it.

  2. 2:17 – 4:19

    What mission are you on, and why does it matter?

    1. SB

      Mindy, if you took the full body of work that you've produced over the last, let's say, 10 years, and the work that you're going to produce over the next 10 years, and you had to summarize the mission that you're on and why it matters, how would you do that?

    2. MP

      Wow, that's a great question. Um, I- I'm trying to empower people to believe in themselves again, and I want to do that through everything that, in our lifestyle, that taps into our body's own ability to heal itself. We've gotten so far off course. We don't even realize that we're giving so much of our health power away, our happiness power away, and all we've got to do is come back home to ourselves and learn that every single thing inside of us, every cell, every neuron, everything is working for us, not against us. And we have to stop villainizing our body. We got to figure out how to believe in ourselves again. We're the ones that are gonna save ourselves, and we've just lost our way.

    3. SB

      What have we fallen into the trap of believing?

    4. MP

      Well, in the health world, we've totally fallen into the trap that, "If I take this pill, if I do this diet, if I do this exercise, then that will cure me." Nobody cures you. You cure yourself. And so, you have to start to look at the human body as this self-healing organism that's always figuring out how to keep you alive, how to keep you at your best, and if you're not feeling at your best, then the only thing you need to look at is that there's an interference. There's a physical, emotional, spiritual, chemical interference that is pulling you away from this power that's inside of you so that you can start to heal. Once you pull those away, you see yourself in a whole new light. I mean, this is what fasting did for millions of people. You just see yourself so differently and what you're capable of

  3. 4:19 – 5:27

    Where did we go wrong as humans?

    1. MP

      doing.

    2. SB

      Wh- where have we gone wrong in terms of our attitude towards what it is to be a human? 'Cause you know, I often think much of the health advice that we're- is thrown at us these days has this underlying belief that, like, in some way, we're broken.

    3. MP

      Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my- I- I so agree with you. It's the messaging, is like, "You did something wrong. You have a genetic profile that you're doomed to- to have a f- you know, a disastrous outcome," and everything is- is- is exogenously blamed at us. And I really think that that comes from not only our healthcare system, and I- and I'm not trying to bash the healthcare system, but we have lost our way, and it comes from, for women specifically, it comes from the messaging we get from, you know, social media and magazines, like, everything is outside in. We gotta go inside out now and start asking what we want on a physical, spiritual, emotional level so that we can create the life we want and stop looking outside for the answers. We gotta go within.

    4. SB

      I love that. Inside, inside out.

    5. MP

      The inside out. Inside

  4. 5:27 – 7:32

    Fasting

    1. MP

      out living.

    2. SB

      You got pretty famous from talking about this certain subject matter, which is fasting.

    3. MP

      Yeah.

    4. SB

      Now, I wanna talk about fasting, because I've heard about it, and I- I- I'm sure here I represent a lot of my audience right now. I've heard the term fasting. I've heard loads of people in recent times, over the last, I'd say, two years, get really excited about it and say that it's a good thing.

    5. MP

      Yeah.

    6. SB

      But that's really the extent of my knowledge on the subject. So, let's just start right there. I mean, you wrote a book called Fast Like a Girl. You've got so much content out on the internet about fasting for both men and women. This book was written in 2022.... why, why, why are you so focused on fasting? Why do I need to care about it?

    7. MP

      Mm-hmm. Yeah.

    8. SB

      What's it gonna do for me?

    9. MP

      It, it's the quickest antidote to what we just said. If we've got all this physical, emotional, chemical stress coming at us, we've got taste buds we've gotta change, we've got behaviors we have to change, there's a lot there. But I can show you how to compress your eating window into a 10-hour eating window, leaving 14 hours for fasting, something as simple as 14 hours, and I can show you how you can start to heal yourself without money, without time. It's, you are literally tapping into a healing state that you never knew was there. And I think part of why w- we've had so many people pour onto YouTube and so many women gravitate to the book is that it's, it's so... Once you learn how to fast, you start to see your body in this whole new way. It can absolutely heal itself. So, for me, fasting became this incredible tool that everybody could do, and we just had to learn how to do it. The women that I'm watching that are just dropping - I mean, men and women - hundreds of pounds, and medications they're getting off of, and mental health that's coming back just 'cause I taught them how to compress their eating window and leave a longer time for rest so their body can repair, that is all ... Each individual is doing that. I didn't do that.

  5. 7:32 – 19:00

    The research on fasting

    1. MP

    2. SB

      I'm the type of person that very much needs, like, stats-

    3. MP

      Yeah.

    4. SB

      ... to believe things. I'm one of those people.

    5. MP

      Excellent.

    6. SB

      And once I've got the stats or some kind of, like, scientific evidence, then I'm all in.

    7. MP

      Beautiful.

    8. SB

      What do I need to know? From a scientific standpoint, what research has been done on fasting?

    9. MP

      Okay. So, let's, let's go through the b- basic principle of fasting, and I think this will help everybody, is that you have two metabolisms. So, you burn energy when you eat, and you b- burn energy when you don't eat, but there are two different mechanisms. So, when you eat, like, let's use myself as an example, I had eggs and some avocado for a, like, around 11 o'clock today. So, that's gonna bring my blood sugar up. Now, as my blood sugar starts to drop, what's gonna happen is my body's gonna switch over into this other energy system, and I call this the fat-burning energy system, I call this one the sugar-burner energy system. When it switches over into this fat-burning energy system, it starts to make a byproduct called a ketone, and that ketone will go up into the brain and it starts to repair your brain. And what most people don't realize is your brain is f- needs 50% ketones, 50% glucose, so you're giving a fuel source to your brain that it desperately needs, which is why people when they fast are like, their mental clarity goes up, their cognition improves, their brain fog goes away, because you're literally giving a fuel source to your brain that it may never had, have been given before. It takes about eight- somewhere between eight hours to metabolically switch over into this fat-burning place.

    10. SB

      Ah, okay. So, if I'm doing a podcast and I want to be sharp-

    11. MP

      Yes.

    12. SB

      ... I shouldn't eat f- eight hours before?

    13. MP

      Yes.

    14. SB

      Ah, fuck.

    15. MP

      (laughs)

    16. SB

      Could you come back in seven hours? (laughs)

    17. MP

      (laughs) Seven hours? (laughs)

    18. SB

      (laughs)

    19. MP

      Yeah, sure. (laughs)

    20. SB

      (laughs)

    21. MP

      I should've given you the memo before we got here.

    22. SB

      Yeah. (laughs)

    23. MP

      Yeah. So, I think of it like a hybrid car. You know, you s- you sw- you switch over into this fat-burning place, so at e- eight hours you start to make the switch. By about 12 hours, your body's now starting to make a good dose of ketones, the brain is excited, so you're getting that mental clarity. Ketones turn off the hunger hormone.

    24. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    25. MP

      So, you also, when you switch over, uh, there's gonna be a point at which you're not hungry, um, and that all happens at about 12 hours. But you're also, if you stay there a little longer, if you stay there and you go 14 hours, 15 hours, so check this out, research shows at 15 hours we see growth hormone go up. Okay. Growth hormone is the hormone that keeps you young and helps you burn fat. We also see in men 1300% increase in testosterone just from somewhere between a 13 to 15-hour fast. 13% increase in natural testosterone stores, and we can explain why that happens in a moment. And then we start to see inflammation go down. So, all of a sudden, if you have people who have, like, joints that are hurting, they start doing 15 hours of fasting every day and they're like, "God, you know, my joints just don't have that same stiffness in them anymore." But if you stay in that fasted window, you keep going, 17 hours, your brilliant body turns within and it goes, "Wait a second. No food's coming in. We better get stronger." So, it literally takes the s- the bad cells, the cells that are slowing you down, the sl- cells that are turning into cancer, and it gets rid of those. They're called senescent cells. And it, it literally recycles them out of your system and it, it goes into the cells that are still usable and it makes them stronger. It fixes the inner cellular parts. We call that autophagy. And that actually was the, if you want stats, the Nobel Prize in 2015 by a Japanese scientist, Dr. Ohsumi, he won the Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology for this term called autophagy. And that's when you go without food, your sel- your cells will heal themselves. That was back in 2015.

    26. SB

      So, I wanna go into all of that. I wanna start with, why? Why does, why does fasting help so much? And really, like, what I'm getting at there is if this, if the effects of this are so profound in so many ways, then where did we go wrong? Because from what I, you know, have been told, breakfast, lunch, dinner.

    27. MP

      Yeah.

    28. SB

      Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and then maybe, you know, dessert.

    29. MP

      Yeah.

    30. SB

      ... and then-

  6. 19:00 – 21:18

    The six types of fasting

    1. MP

    2. SB

      Okay. Historically, people have thought that fasting is a one-size kinda fits all, um, technique, and there's one kinda fasting, which is you just, I don't know-

    3. MP

      Yeah.

    4. SB

      ... you might just not eat for a prolonged period of time. But in your book and it, throughout your work, you described these six different types of fasting.

    5. MP

      Yeah.

    6. SB

      What are the six types of fasting? And tell me what the, the difference is in outcome and benefit.

    7. MP

      Yeah. It's a great question. So again, fasting is when we switch over.

    8. SB

      Yeah.

    9. MP

      So now we're in the fat-burning, uh, place. At about 13 to 15 hours, we start making ketones. This is intermittent fasting. That's pretty much what most people, when they say they're intermittent fasting, that's what they're doing.

    10. SB

      Okay, they take 12 to 16 hours?

    11. MP

      Yeah. They're making ketones, they're m- testosterone's going up, inflammation's coming down, hunger might be going away. They're kinda having this, they might be, a lot of people lose weight with that. It's, it's kinda the most common fast.

    12. SB

      Does it matter if I, the, the window, does it matter what time I start and what time I end?

    13. MP

      Mm-mm.

    14. SB

      No?

    15. MP

      You get to choose. You choose what that window should be.

    16. SB

      So I could eat at 3:00 AM?

    17. MP

      You could. There's a whole nother level we can talk about-

    18. SB

      Okay.

    19. MP

      ... why you don't wanna eat in the dark.

    20. SB

      What's ideal, an ideal window do you think?

    21. MP

      Um, I really like it, depends on the, on the time of the year. But in the summer, I really like somewhere, if you're gonna do an eight-hour eating window, like 11:00 to 7:00 in the summer. And then in the winter, because it's darker earlier, you would do more like a, like a 10:00 to 5:00 kinda eating window.

    22. SB

      It's not so hard to do 11:00 to 7:00.

    23. MP

      Right? Not hard at all.

    24. SB

      Not hard at all. That's not, that's not fasting. That's, that's just a slight, having a, a slightly later breakfast and a slightly earlier dinner.

    25. MP

      Yeah.

    26. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    27. MP

      But it's, it's like being intentional, right?

    28. SB

      Yeah, exactly.

    29. MP

      'Cause you don't wanna, you gotta, you gotta keep blood sugar low. Otherwise, the minute blood sugar goes up, you're gonna switch over.

    30. SB

      Right.

  7. 21:18 – 26:12

    Autophagy fasting

    1. MP

      I've kinda-

    2. SB

      You can tell me I said it wrong (laughs) .

    3. MP

      ... I, I've kinda landed on autophagy.

    4. SB

      Autophagy.

    5. MP

      I feel like autophagy is the best way to say it.

    6. SB

      Autophagy fasting, what's that?

    7. MP

      Yeah. So autophagy fasting is w- about 17 hours in without, without food, your cells will turn within, and they'll start to heal themselves. And that was what Dr. Ohsumi's big, uh, discovery was, is that the cells clean themselves up. So what's interesting on this one, and this is something I really wanna get out to the world, is that when you stimulate autophagy, what you're doing is you're turning on the intelligence inside the cell, and that intelligence is looking around, and it's going, "Hey, there's a virus, there's a bacteria. Get them out. So let's push these infections out of the cell. That mitochondria, it's not working well. We need to repair it. That endoplasmic reticulum inside here, it's, it's lagging. We need to fix it." So it literally goes in and fixes everything inside the cell just at 17 hours. But one of the greatest studies that was, I've seen in fasting was done during COVID, and it showed that if a virus comes into a cell that's in a state of autophagy, it can't replicate. Viruses have to live off of your energy system. So when viruses go into a cell that's l- laden with glucose, they have a party in there. They love that. They munch on that, and then they go out and they start replicating. If you were in a fasted state when a virus comes in, it can't replicate. There's nothing inside that cell for that virus to take over, and it dies.

    8. SB

      Why does that happen? What's the reason for the, the, that sort of the CEO within my cells looking around and saying, "Right, let's clean all this stuff up"?

    9. MP

      Well, because the, it, when, once you've stimulated autophagy, there is one goal for that cell, and that is survival. So everything in there is on high alert.

    10. SB

      Okay.

    11. MP

      Everything is gonna be in your survival interest. So a virus is not in your survi- survival interest. So it pushes it out.

    12. SB

      So it's kind of like an emergency signal, because there's not been food for a while, so it-

    13. MP

      That's right.

    14. SB

      ... it's kinda like the last, the last attempt to do everything the body can to help you make it through this period of hunger, or-

    15. MP

      That's right. That's right.

    16. SB

      ... yeah.

    17. MP

      You've put yourself in this state of extreme healing, and it's all based off of this idea that your body wants to stay alive.

    18. SB

      Okay, so that's, uh, you write in your book that that's good for balancing sex hormones and preventing colds?

    19. MP

      So yeah, with, with autophagy, it's great for preventing colds. What, here's what's interesting about autophagy for sex hormones, is that the major part of your brain for both men and women that control hormonal, uh, all hormonal control is your hypothalamus and pituitary. That part of the brain does not have a blood-brain barrier, so it's very vulnerable to toxins. So whenever we have massive toxic exposure, that part of the brain starts to malfunction. We see this with, uh, polycystic ovarian syndrome, most common hormonal imbalance for women. Well, a lot of that is this imbalance of testosterone and estrogen, and there's a huge toxic piece that has destroyed or, or in- interfered with the part of the brain that controls hormones. So when we look at autophagy...There are certain parts of our system that are more, uh, easily influenced by autophagy than others. Well, it turns out the hypothalamus and the pituitary are easily influenced by autophagy and can repair themselves when they're in the state of autophagy. The other interesting cellular makeup that is highly influenced by autophagy are th- the cells around the testes and the cells around the ovaries. Those are th- the cells that are putting out sex hormones. And if you... That whole system is malfunctioning, when you go into a state of autophagy, those cells will respond and become better cells and be better at producing these hormones because of you dipping in and out of the state of autophagy.

    20. SB

      That really got me thinking, because I've been looking at a lot of companies from an investment standpoint at the moment that are trying to solve for this macro decline in male testosterone.

    21. MP

      Mm-hmm.

    22. SB

      You know, I was... I had a few guests come on this podcast and tell me that male testosterone has been declin- declining year over year. And then kind of paired with that, we're becoming more and more sexless.

    23. MP

      Mm-hmm.

    24. SB

      Our libidos seem to be in decline.

    25. MP

      Yeah.

    26. SB

      I've got a lot of close friends of mine that are taking certain hormonal, um, supplements to try and get their libidos back up.

    27. MP

      Yep.

    28. SB

      And for the first time ever, in... on a show called Dragon's Den that I'm on in the UK, we had someone come into the den for an investment that was producing a supplement to try and get our sex drives back.

    29. MP

      Mm-hmm.

    30. SB

      Feels like a big macro conversation that we're not having.

  8. 26:12 – 36:26

    The things we're putting on our bodies are poisoning you

    1. SB

      and our libidos.

    2. MP

      There's a beautiful book, I don't know if you've read it, called Countdown, and it's about the sperm counts going down in... across the world. And I actually brought her onto my podcast, the woman who wrote the book, and she said that there's one chemical that's reducing, uh, sperm counts more than any, and it's phthalates. And phthalates are in fragrances.

    3. SB

      Uh-huh.

    4. MP

      They're in our colognes. They're in our perfumes. They're in our laundry detergents. They're in our air fresheners. They also n- are now infiltrated into our water. So, they've infiltrated into... They're now being sprayed on our foods. Animals that are drinking the water have phthalates in them. So, it's the number one toxin that's destroying testosterone levels. And sh- it's a brilliant book that she wrote.

    5. SB

      You talk about, in The Reset Factory, your first book from 2016, Chapter 10, you said something which I hadn't quite, um, appreciated. You said that even the things we put on our skin are absorbed into our body, um, and then they go directly into our bloodstream and into our kidneys. I didn't think... When I read that, it got me thinking, because there's so many things that I sort of unconsciously just spray on my body-

    6. MP

      Right.

    7. SB

      ... every day, and I never look at what's in them because I just think it's on the outside and it'll wash off.

    8. MP

      Yeah.

    9. SB

      But now you're saying that.

    10. MP

      Yeah. Your skin is a breathable organ, so it's gonna push toxins out and it's gonna take toxins in. So, think about it, if you've ever, like, eaten something that didn't react well with you, you might get a rash.

    11. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    12. MP

      That's your brilliant body trying to push that toxin out. But the same thing happens when you put something on your skin, it actually goes into your body. So, a good general rule is if you aren't willing to eat it, don't put it on your skin. And beyond that, if we even look at, at the microbiome, you have bacteria on your skin that protect you. And that bacteria i- are actually talking to the bacteria in our gut. There's actually a connection between the two bacteria. So, if you start putting things on your skin that destroy that microbiome, you're actually going to ha- ultimately have an adverse effect on the microbiome in your gut. So, what you put on your skin is massively important. And then the smell, we know the hippocampus, which is the seat of Alzheimer's and dementia, is also where the olfactory nerve i- i- innervates. So, when we smell something toxic and breathe something toxic in, it goes straight into the hippocampus and starts to create degeneration in those neurons that are... ultimately can lead to dementia and Alzheimer's. Toxicity is a hu- huge human problem.

    13. SB

      Toxicity. When you say the word toxicity, how are you defining that? You're s- you're saying like toxic chemicals that we introduce into our lives on our skin, consume, inhale, have around us.

    14. MP

      Yep. Bingo. Yeah.

    15. SB

      And that are in our foods, et cetera.

    16. MP

      Yep. Bingo.

    17. SB

      What are th- what are some of the, the most toxic chemicals or foods or products that we consume without thinking that you think we need to stop consuming on a day-to-day basis?

    18. MP

      Oh, here's the most... the easiest one is plastics, BPA plastic. They say that it's... that there's n- it's not an... a matter of if you have plastic in your body, it's a matter of how much. So, let's use it in a... in context of something that people are really motivated by, which is weight loss.

    19. SB

      What's BPA plastics?

    20. MP

      It's a... it's a... it's a chemical within plastic that's within our water bottles. It's on... in our Tupperware. Um, they actually are putting... they're saying that they're now in the microfibers of our, of our clothes, and that's being washed out too. Th- it gets really depressing when you start talking about toxins. Gets washed out into our oceans. So... But th- for the sake of simplicity, it's, it's, you know, bottles mostly that you see, but, you know, we've got plastic containers, we've got plastic plates, we've got plastic everything, and that is... has BPA in it, and that is, uh, a, a, a toxin that destroys human health. And the biggest and most interesting thing that BPA plastics do is there was a study c- around something called an agouti mouse, and they took this mouse that had a gene for obesity, and they were twins. They fed them the same food, they gave them the same amount of exercise, but one of the m- mice got introduced BPA plastic. And the one that got the BPA plastic all of a sudden started to gain weight and the hair color started to change.And they-- that was the only difference between these two mouse-- mice with the same genetic profile. And so then when they detoxed the BPA plastic out, the mouse lost weight. So that was the beginning of us understanding a term called obesogens. And obesogens are toxins that actually make us insulin-resistant, actually cause us to hold onto- to more weight, and that's just one category of toxins.

    21. SB

      Well, that's terrifying.

    22. MP

      It is terrifying. To be completely, you know, from the center of my heart, this is-- it's-- this is why we have to educate ourselves. This is why we have to wake up. We have to understand that we are living in the most toxic time in human history, and it doesn't-- it's not just mental stress. It's not just social media. It's a barrage of all of that that is pulling us off course, and I can tell you that I have sat with some of the most brilliant doctors who are generally so concerned on the direction of h- humanity and where we're going because of the abundance of these toxins.

    23. SB

      As you said that, I could see a sadness in your face. Where does that come from?

    24. MP

      I- I think it's really easy when you hear a podcast like this and- and what I'm saying to reject what I'm saying, because it's- it's too overwhelming to understand what the evolutionary mismatch we're in right now. We... So many people are suffering, whether it's physical or mental- mentally, and they don't realize that it's everything from the food, to their shampoos, to the plastic water bottles. It's- it's so vast, and yet nobody's doing anything about it, and- and that's where my heart hurts. It's like people are suffering that don't need to be suffering, and if they understood that the modern world we're living in has taken us so off course with our health, and we've got to start to one by one figure out how to bring it back on course. And I- You know, yesterday, I sat with, um, Dr. Dale Bredesen on my- and interviewed him on my podcast. He wrote a book called The End of Alzheimer's, and he laid out seven things that we need to do to stop Alzhe- Alzheimer's, and he strongly feels that Alzheimer's is optional. You don't have to- you don't have to get that. And those seven things are so intense, like it's everything from detoxing, to metabolically switching, to prioritizing sleep, to human connection, to, um, understanding e- you know, what the best exercise is for you. And it- it's easy for humans to look at those seven things and go, "I'm out. I can't do all that." But we- if we want to exist on this planet, we're gonna have to do that. That's the new level of health we're in right now, and I'm- I love being the cheerleader. I wanna be the one that's like, "Come on, we can do it," but I also need people to understand that where we're living as humans right now is a very, very dangerous place, and it's just in the existence of moving in and out of grocery stores and restaurants and, you know, and the drug store. Everything has a toxic insult on us, and it's overwhelming. It's overwhelming.

    25. SB

      Drastic action because we've- we're so drastically far away from where we're supposed to be-

    26. MP

      Yup.

    27. SB

      ... where our ancestors were.

    28. MP

      Yup.

    29. SB

      We've built up this society that's full of plastics, and toxins, and alcohol-

    30. MP

      Yup.

  9. 36:26 – 39:51

    Belly burning fat fasting

    1. SB

      to the episode. You told me about the first two styles of fasting. The first one was intermittent fasting, which is 12 to 16 hours, which is good for weight loss, brain fog, that kind of thing. The second is autography.

    2. MP

      Autophagy.

    3. SB

      What did I say?

    4. MP

      A- autography, but I like it. (laughs)

    5. SB

      No, again, I said autophagy. I said autophagy.

    6. MP

      Works for me.

    7. SB

      We can play that back. I definitely-

    8. MP

      (laughs) .

    9. SB

      ... said autophagy, and if I didn't, we'll fix it with AI. Um, autophagy fasting, which is 17 to 72 hours, good for balancing sex hormones and preventing...... illness-

    10. MP

      Yeah.

    11. SB

      ... probably.

    12. MP

      Yeah.

    13. SB

      Number three, we haven't spoken about gut reset fast.

    14. MP

      Yeah.

    15. SB

      What's that?

    16. MP

      Yeah, so that's based off, uh, a study that came out of MIT that showed 24 hours without food and your intestinal stem cells inside your gut actually start to reboot themselves. Now a stem cell is a cell that can go to anywhere in the body and repair itself. But at 24 hours, you get a plethora of them in your gut. And in the gut, we've got a damaged microbiome from everything that we've just been talking about. So what I discovered in this 24-hour fast is I could take women that have been on birth control pill for years, um, w- people that have been on multiple rounds of antibiotics, people who had been eating horrible food, and I could actually put them through a 24-hour fast once a week, once every couple of weeks. And these stem cells would come in there, and they would start to repair. And so now if I teach, uh, that person how to eat right, their food is actually starting to build a better microbiome in the gut. So that 24-hour fast became this go-to in my clinic where I could take all these gut challenges and I could start to unwind them just because I knew the body had this capability of making these intestinal stem cells. And it was crazy, like we got people off supplements, we got people that were... didn't... weren't making serotonin, which affects moods, comes from the gut, all of a sudden started to become happier. People who hadn't had bowel movements in, like, three days, all of a sudden we started to put in these... this gut reset and it was like a miracle. It was incredible.

    17. SB

      Number four, fat burner fast.

    18. MP

      So the fat burner fast is probably my favorite for those people who want to lose weight. The research was done that 36 hours without food followed by 12 hours of eating and then another 30... they actually did it over a 30-day period, but we've been using it in our community, just dosing it in, that at 36 hours, what happens is that's enough time where the blood sugars come, come down, where all of a sudden the body, it's so smart, it goes, "Okay, blood sugar's not coming. We've been in this fasted state, we've triggered autophagy, we've brought inflammation down, we've made you ketones, we're trying to go find food, but this extra weight, it's not serving you." Y- 'cause remember, you got to go find food. So it drops weight, and it's the most beautiful way to get s- a person to unstick any kind of weight loss resistance. But most importantly, you know where it, it dropped the most amount of weight from? Where does everybody want to lose weight?

    19. SB

      Belly.

    20. MP

      Yep. So it is the b- I should probably should have called it the fat burning, belly fat burning.

    21. SB

      Yeah, the belly fat.

    22. MP

      Yeah.

    23. SB

      Yeah, that would have banged. Yeah. (laughs)

    24. MP

      But yeah, and so that's what they showed, is that actually a 36-hour fast started to unstick weight loss, and it was started with weight around the belly.

  10. 39:51 – 43:41

    Dopamine reset fast

    1. SB

      Compelling.

    2. MP

      (laughs)

    3. SB

      Number five, the dopamine reset fast.

    4. MP

      Yeah. So number five, um, I found some research showing that when people go without food for 48 hours, the whole dopamine system will be rebooted. So what's important to know about the dopamine system is it is our molecule of happiness, it is the thing that... it's actually a motivation molecule, and it's a neurotransmitter that a- allows thoughts, happy thoughts to go across from neuron to neuron. And so what happens, and I'm sure you've talked about this on your podcast, that we're so dopamine saturated right now.

    5. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    6. MP

      But specifically people who are overeaters, they actually are finding, the study I quote in the book, is that they found that people who had food addiction, people who had e- extra weight, like obese situations, they were not getting as much happiness out of their food because their dopamine receptor sites were saturated, so they had to eat more food to get more happiness. And a lot... and, you know, food is a state changer. It does make us happy.

    7. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    8. MP

      So what they found is if they put them into a 48-hour fast that they actually rebooted the whole dopamine system and new dopamine receptor sites appeared, so that when they brought food back in to the equation, they actually got more enjoyment out of food with less food.

    9. SB

      This kind of got me thinking about a conversation I was having yesterday with some of my team here. We were talking about how, um, it almost feels like sometimes if I've eaten sugar, I can go into a bit of a sugar cycle. And what I mean by that is I'll have some sugar and then, uh, like a couple of hours later, I'll have another craving for sugar-

    10. MP

      Yeah.

    11. SB

      ... and then a couple of hours later, I'll have another craving for sugar. But then at other times, specifically, for example, when I did keto, I was... I did the keto diet for about eight month, uh, eight weeks. Bloody eight months, I wish. Um, eight weeks, and throughout that period I didn't have any cravings for sugar.

    12. MP

      Yep.

    13. SB

      I would... we had some chocolate come into the studio and I walked over to the chocolate and I smelt it. (sniffs)

    14. MP

      Yep.

    15. SB

      And I didn't want any of it.

    16. MP

      Yep.

    17. SB

      It had gone.

    18. MP

      Yeah.

    19. SB

      But then when I'm in my, what I call, like, the sugar cycle, I'm eating sugar maybe, you know, once or twice a day and I'm getting, like, the craving for it where... which I just can't seem to resist.

    20. MP

      Yeah. Well, dopamine's the molecule of more. It's not the molecule of enough. So what it does is when you get sugar, you get this dopamine rush-

    21. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    22. MP

      ... and the brain goes, "Whoo, love that. Give me more of that."

    23. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    24. MP

      And so you can't... you... it's, it's endless. You will never be fully satisfied. It constantly wants you to come back for more and more and more. So when you start to go off the ketogenic energy system, you're getting the same euphoria. You probably felt the same high, the f-

    25. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    26. MP

      ... the same mental clarity, but you've totally taken this molecule of more out of the, out of the picture. It's... it... in fact, dopamine will actually... you know, you, you get those receptor sites that will be repaired, but you're not getting a big dopamine buzz when you're in a ketogenic state. You're getting ketones.

    27. SB

      I was... I was mulling it with my team how long I had to stay away from sugar to kind of get out of that-

    28. MP

      Yeah.

    29. SB

      ... vicious give me more cycle.

    30. MP

      Yeah. My experience has been, it's about three days.

  11. 43:41 – 47:53

    Immune reset fast

    1. SB

      switches m- metabolic state.

    2. MP

      Yeah. Yeah.

    3. SB

      Got ya. The last and final fasting style, immune reset fast.

    4. MP

      Yeah. So, immune reset was built off of Dr. Valter Longo's work, and he did a study on people who had cancer and were going through chemotherapy. And one of the challenges we know about chemotherapy is that it wipes out the whole immune system. And so he wanted to see, well, what if I put somebody in a fasted state as they went through chemotherapy? Would there be a difference? And what he found is, after three days of fasting, the white blood cells in our system actually reboot themselves. So, what they do is all old white blood cells g- are, are sloughed away, and new white blood cells emerge. So, people were able to come out of that chemotherapy experience and have a stronger immune system as opposed to what we were seeing, was that it was wiping the immune system out. So, that launched the whole three-day water fast sort of craze. At least here in America, we're seeing a lot of people that are just going after three-day water fast to prime their immune system. But you also, also at three days, get stem cells, full systemic stem cells. So, all of a sudden your body's got in, p- surging with stem cells going to all parts of the body repairing it. The great example I always use on this one was I had a, an Achilles tendon injury, and nothing was, nothing was helping it. So, I threw a five-day water fast at it. On the fourth day, I felt this buzz in my Achilles tendon, and I was like, "Oh, wonder what that is." And it stayed, uh, all the way through. I went five full days, and, um, about the fifth and sixth day, so sixth day I was entering food back in, all the pain completely went away, and it never came back. I tried everything. I tried everything, and that was the only thing that repaired it.

    5. SB

      It does make, again, evolutionary sense that if our body senses we're injured, because we're not eating or, you know, some other signal that we are on a course to not survive, to put it nicely, it does make sense that it might set about to repair whatever needs to be repaired.

    6. MP

      You're getting at. Yeah.

    7. SB

      You know, 'cause like if I was a wounded human back in, on the savannas of, I don't know, Africa or wherever we came from, um, and I'm laid there, and I'm not eating, my body should probably go, "Okay, S- Steve might need something fixed-"

    8. MP

      Yeah.

    9. SB

      "... so that he can get back to-"

    10. MP

      Yeah.

    11. SB

      "... hunting."

    12. MP

      So, s-... so you're getting at. So, survival, that is the number one priority of the body. So, when you go without food, you amplify every resource it has to keep you alive. And if repairing my Achilles means I can now go hunt for food, it's gonna do that. It's gonna make me stronger. And I, in the book, I, I stumbled, when I was writing the book, I stumbled up- pa- upon a really cool hypothesis that's called the thrifty gene hypothesis. And it said that w- it's, it's a theory. Obviously, it's a hypothesis. It's a theory that the people, the humans that evolved out of the primal days had a very specific genotype. And this genotype allowed us to metabolically flex and, and be stronger in a fasted state, because we had to survive. And the people that didn't make it from that time period didn't have that gene. But think about this for this moment. So, they think we all have this gene inside of us right now, this thrifty gene, where we can go long periods without food, and we can survive. So, what happens when we're eating all day? What happens when we're ignoring and we're not actually activating that genetic profile? So, what they are now believing is that diabetes, metabolic syndrome, all of that, is largely happening because we are going against the g- the genetic profile that we are now seeing in humans. We're like on the opposite end of this spectrum.

    13. SB

      We're overloading our bodies?

    14. MP

      Yeah.

    15. SB

      Which is meaning that the survival gene you reference there is not being activated to help us?

    16. MP

      That's right. That's right.

    17. SB

      Interesting.

  12. 47:53 – 50:02

    Coffee while fasting

    1. SB

      What about, what about coffee? You know, if I'm gonna fast for... I know people are so addicted to coffee, so I feel like I have to ask a question as their representative.

    2. MP

      (laughs)

    3. SB

      If I'm gonna fast, do any of these six fasts that you just mentioned, does coffee break that fast?

    4. MP

      Yeah.

    5. SB

      It does break it?

    6. MP

      Uh, no. Well, it depends. Okay, so this, this, I'm just laughing-

    7. SB

      I need a yes or no. (laughs)

    8. MP

      (laughs) Um, I can't give you a yes or no on it.

    9. SB

      That's fine. Okay.

    10. MP

      I'm gonna give you most likely.

    11. SB

      Okay.

    12. MP

      No. Let me give you most likely, it's okay.

    13. SB

      Okay. Most likely, it's okay?

    14. MP

      Yes.

    15. SB

      Y- there's not a high degree of inc- certainty and conviction there?

    16. MP

      No. Let me, let me explain myself.

    17. SB

      Okay.

    18. MP

      So, when you drink a cup of coffee, it shouldn't spike your blood sugar.

    19. SB

      It shouldn't?

    20. MP

      Should not.

    21. SB

      It doesn't?

    22. MP

      So, if it does, it shouldn't. So, if you have black coffee, and your blood sugar doesn't spike, and you're, you're trying to metabolically switch over into your fasting window, you're good. You're golden. Drink that black coffee.

    23. SB

      Okay.

    24. MP

      Okay. Now, I'm gonna add some sugar to it. Okay. Now, now you're not switch... now you've pulled, you've pulled yourself out of a fasted state.

    25. SB

      Uh, okay. So, w- no sugar, just a plain coffee with n- no milk or sugar in it?

    26. MP

      ... is, is most likely going to keep you in a fasted state.

    27. SB

      Most likely?

    28. MP

      Uh, well, I've seen a few occasions where it didn't.

    29. SB

      Okay.

    30. MP

      Um, this is why we have people test their blood sugar. Like, it, it, it's unique to you. So, you can test your blood sugar, have the cup of coffee, half an hour later check your blood sugar again. Those numbers should be equal.

  13. 50:02 – 53:25

    Power of personal nutrition

    1. MP

      state-

    2. SB

      Ah.

    3. MP

      ... and switch over.

    4. SB

      I had Glucose Goddess on the podcast, who, um ... Jessie. She talks a lot about glucose spikes and it was the first time my eyes were really opened to the consequence of living a life where your-

    5. MP

      Yeah.

    6. SB

      ... glucose levels are spiking and crashing and spiking and crashing. And I've invested in this company called ZOE, where they give you a glucose monitor, which I had attached for my own for 14 days as part of the initial test, and then they give me this big sort of nutrition plan and profile. And, um, that was the first time I got to see. And I was in America at the time, I was-

    7. MP

      Hmm.

    8. SB

      ... I was in LA for a couple of months, and I ... In LA, I mean, uh, I pulled up at a gas station. And I was ... It's funny, I was walking through this gas station and everything in there was sugar.

    9. MP

      Yeah.

    10. SB

      It's f- 'cause, 'cause now I was looking.

    11. MP

      Right.

    12. SB

      Now I had my eyes open 'cause I'm wearing this bloody monitor-

    13. MP

      Yeah.

    14. SB

      ... so I'm about to see the impact within minutes of, that it has on my body. And I was just looking around thinking, "Oh my god, the only thing that I can see in this whole store that I can eat without spiking my glucose is water."

    15. MP

      D- so is it a monitor where you can see it, you can scan it?

    16. SB

      Yeh- yeah. So, so they've got two.

    17. MP

      Game changer.

    18. SB

      Yeah. So they've got two. One of them, you scan the new one they've got, it's automatic.

    19. MP

      Yeah.

    20. SB

      It's via Bluetooth. So it just keeps constantly updating-

    21. MP

      Yeah.

    22. SB

      ... on your phone.

    23. MP

      I honestly think we could dramatically change the health of the world if everybody put one of those on.

    24. SB

      Amen. Amen.

    25. MP

      Because then what you would do is you would just go ... 'Cause I, uh ... You know, this is like coffee. Like, you sh- it should be so simple for me just to say, "Yes, drink your coffee, you're fine." But c- your microbiome in your gut is gonna determine what it does with whatever hits that, so it's gonna determine your blood sugar levels. Your microbiome, my microbiome, completely different.

    26. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    27. MP

      So, w- food no longer is a one-size-fits-all. There's an individual approach, so you have to know what your blood sugar is doing.

    28. SB

      Yeah.

    29. MP

      You know, like, when I eat ... Believe it or not, when I eat a grass-fed steak, my blood sugar goes down. It's amazing.

    30. SB

      Wow.

  14. 53:25 – 56:29

    Calorie counting

    1. MP

    2. SB

      That calorie counting point, though. There's a, there's a big school of thought that in order to lose weight and be healthy, all you've gotta do is count those calories.

    3. MP

      Yeah. You know, there's something called a set point. Have you heard about the set point?

    4. SB

      Yeah, which is the amount of calories that I need to consume in order to hit my ...

    5. MP

      That's right. So, we all have a set point. If you're gonna go down the calorie path, you ha- y- you have to understand you have a set point. And the set point is, there's a mo- uh, how much calories coming in and how much calories going out, what's the delta of that? And that will keep you at whatever weight you wanna be. So, let's use an example. You eat 1500 calories a day, you exercise 500, you have a delta of 1000. So, if you wanna keep your weight where it's at, you always have to do 1000 calories every single day.

    6. SB

      Yeah.

    7. MP

      Okay, but what happens on the days you d- decide not to work out? So, now you have 500 extra calories that your body's not used to, and so what does it do with those calories? Stores it. So then, w- you all of a sudden start noticing you're gaining weight and you don't really understand why, so you're like, "Well, let me count ... I need to restrict calories."

    8. SB

      Yeah.

    9. MP

      So then you start eating maybe ... I mean, I, I've ne-

    10. SB

      500 less?

    11. MP

      Yeah. And then you bring the set point down. Well, that's your new m- that's your new set point. You're gonna have to stay at that set point now if you don't ever want to l- gain another pound. You see the game?

    12. SB

      Oh, okay. So my set point is moving the crafty ...

    13. MP

      It moves.

    14. SB

      Okay.

    15. MP

      Because as you restrict and you ev- as food restriction goes down and energy output goes up, your set point goes down, and now you're like, "I feel great." But you can't leave from that set point. You're gonna always have to make sure that that set point is 1000 calories or 800 calories.

    16. SB

      So, I was told, I mean, this is the school of thought, that I have to have-... for me as a male that has my weight, 2,000 calories a day, and then if I'm under 2,000 calories a day, then I'll lose weight. That's what I was told.

    17. MP

      Yeah. So you go, now you go to 1,500 calories, you drop weight-

    18. SB

      Yeah, to lose the weight.

    19. MP

      ... yep, you go back up to 2,000 and m- for most people, they start to gain weight again.

    20. SB

      Ah, because my, my set point has moved.

    21. MP

      Yeah.

    22. SB

      So now it's 1,500-

    23. MP

      Yeah.

    24. SB

      ... to maintain my weight?

    25. MP

      Yeah. Which is why, if you think about it, have we, have we ever seen a calorie restriction diet work long-term?

    26. SB

      No.

    27. MP

      Right.

    28. SB

      I haven't. L- l- long-term being the key word there.

    29. MP

      Yeah. In short-term, it, it works great. But this is why I'm such a fan of metabolic switching. How about we watch blood sugar? We put a monitor like you're talking. Let's put a monitor on so that you keep your blood sugar spikes minimal. It's like what I did with this woman, is I was like, "Let's ha- let's... Can we have two pl- two spikes in a day, not eight." And we just keep your blood sugar at a, at a, at a low level so that when you're not eating, you can switch over and now you can burn fat in the fat burning energy system. So metabolic switching is where you're keeping your blood sugar at a stable place. It's not got all these spikes all over the place so that when it starts to go down, the body's gonna want to switch over and it can start to burn fat in the, in, and use that other energy system.

    30. SB

      What do you think our relationship

  15. 56:29 – 1:02:34

    Our relationship with sugar

    1. SB

      should be with sugar?

    2. MP

      Hmm. Well, you know, there's only 12% of Americans that are metabolically healthy. Is, that means that they have the right blood pressure, the right cholesterol. That their hemoglobin A1C, their insulin, all those metabolic markers are in balance. Only 12% of Americans have that right. That is a huge problem and that is largely because we're addicted to sugar. So what's the consequence of poor metabolic health? Obesity, cancer, heart disease, mental health challenges, I mean, you name it, every chronic disease on the planet, at the root, has a metabolic thread. Now, I hate to, to bring back a, a, a, a, a really traumatic concept, uh, topic, but w- during COVID, when we looked at the people that fell prey to COVID, uh, this is no, no disrespect, they were metabolically unhealthy. And the people that had less COVID sym- symptoms were the ones that were more metabolically healthy in general. So, and largely because the virus could gr- could really replicate if you had a lot of glucose in your system. So the consequence is huge. And th- the healthcare consequence, the amount of money we pay trying to help everybody put their health back together because they're metabolically unhealthy, if we just started with metabolic health, we would change everything.

    3. SB

      And metabolic health, people think of metabolic health often as being, you know, I'm in good superficial shape, I'd like to think, um, but that's not metabolic health. You could be... I'm guessing you can be metabolically unhealthy, but also have abs.

    4. MP

      Oh, oh, yeah. You could... This woman I was telling you about with all the spikes? She was, she's actually a, a model and an actress.

    5. SB

      Oh, wow.

    6. MP

      That, that is beautiful and we had to go back in and really work with getting her metabolically healthy. So, yeah, you could, it's... We call it skinny fat.

    7. SB

      (laughs)

    8. MP

      You look, you look skinny on the outside, but you're dealing with excess sugar on the inside that is putting fat around your liver, putting fat in other areas.

    9. SB

      I think a lot of people can relate to that skinny fat concept.

    10. MP

      Yeah, yeah. So it's, it's a major, major issue and, uh, and, you know, we can look at different things like hemoglobin A1C. It's a marker in the blood, everybody gets it tested every year when they go to their doctor, it should be under five. If it's not under five, what's happening is all that extra sugar is, is going around your red blood cells, and your red blood cells carry oxygen to your body. So they're gummed up with sugar so they can't deliver things, oxygen to the brain, to your eyes, to your muscle, so you're not getting oxygenated because of the sugar just gumming up these red blood cells.

    11. SB

      In chapter one of your book, you talk about this, um, metabolic health crisis in great detail. You share some stats, which I pulled out, which I, I thought were terrifying. It's page, page four of your book. You say, "According to the CDC, 41% of women and tw- twenty-one and older are obese. 45% have high blood pressure. Out of two, one out of two will develop cancer in their lifetimes. One out of five will develop Alzheimer's. One out of nine will get type 2 diabetes. One out of eight will develop a thyroid problem and 80% of all autoimmune conditions occur in women." Why is that? That last one. 80% of all autoimmune conditions occur in women.

    12. MP

      Yeah, so autoimmunity is a really interesting one, um, and, um, if you look at what an autoimmune condition is, it's the body attacking itself. And so when we look at where toxins go, we're back at the toxins. Hashimoto's, why is the body attacking the thyroid? There's something there that needs to get out, so it's usually a toxic issue, so the body's attacking the, the thyroid. When we look at RA and joints, there's toxins in there, body's attacking that. So it's happening more to women largely because, well, this is, this is... This could go dark real fast, but largely because we have so many influences, uh, uh, that are affecting our, our hormones. So the best way I can explain this is something I call the hormonal hier- hierarchy, where our sex hormones are gonna be completely thrown off by insulin. So when you get insulin resistant, your sex hormones are off and insulin is gonna be so i- impacted by cortisol. So when you're stressed all the time, you're gonna be insulin resistant, and when you're insulin, insulin resistant, you're gonna have trouble balancing estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone.... but at the top of the hierarchy is oxytocin. And oxytocin is that... W- we're getting oxytocin right now just from connecting with each other. And it'll calm- start to calm cortisol down. And then when it calms cortisol down, you can be more insulin sensitive. And when you can be more insulin sensitive, now your sex hormones can, can balance better. So we need that hierarchy as f- as women to be in balance in order for our bodies to be in balance. But what do we have women doing right now? We have poor diet, lots of stress, uh, s- a- and our h- our sex hormones are way off which-

    13. SB

      Sugar.

    14. MP

      ... and sugar. (laughs) You're going after the sugar.

    15. SB

      Yeah.

    16. MP

      Yeah. So women are m- are, are perishing w- in this modern world more than men. So we've got to help a woman bring back more insulin sensitivi- sensitivity. We've got to get her doing better, uh, stress management. And when we do that, now the immune system can regulate. Now the immune system can calm down and stop being so hyperactive, attacking all the toxins that are in the body.

    17. SB

      I see.

    18. MP

      So it's very complex.

    19. SB

      Does that imply that women and men have a different relationship with stress?

    20. MP

      Oh, yeah. Yeah.

  16. 1:02:34 – 1:09:59

    Men and women's relationship with stress

    1. MP

      Yeah. For sure. We're not... I, uh... Okay, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna be as bold as to say this, and I know all my, my feminist women out there are not gonna like this. And I, I was raised by a strong woman, I am a strong woman, I've raised a s- another strong wo- woman, and I have to tell you that we are not meant to handle the stress loads as well as men. And that's largely because of two hormones. So estrogen makes us very out- outward, makes us very much an extrovert, and we can handle a lot of stress when, when estrogen is present in our body. But progesterone, she can't handle stress at all. So progesterone will start to diminish a- as cortisol goes up. I always say when, when cortisol goes high, progesterone becomes shy. So now, we're... I mean, the number of women since Fast Like a Girl came out that I have heard from, the 20 and 30-year-olds that have no cycle. None. That is because they're insulin resistant, they're more stressed. Progesterone's not making her appearance, so there's no shed of the uterine lining. That is a- absolutely a stress issue. And not having a period for a woman is a m- major problem because that's how we detox. That's how we get these hormones out of us. So if you're not having a cycle, you're not getting rid of estrogen, you're not getting rid of so many toxins and it's just staying inside of you. That's a, that's a major problem.

    2. SB

      Controversial idea, but it rings true for a lot of people.

    3. MP

      Yeah.

    4. SB

      And I know this because I've had women very close to me in my life talk to me about this exact thing. And, um, specifically not having their menstrual cycle and then focusing on the stresses in their life and then-

    5. MP

      Comes back.

    6. SB

      ... their menstrual cycle coming back. Um, people very, very close to me, in fact, that I've, I've struggled with because of this exact challenge.

    7. MP

      Yep.

    8. SB

      It is a controversial idea though, isn't it? It's a-

    9. MP

      Yeah.

    10. SB

      ... it's slightly problematic, um, as an idea.

    11. MP

      Yeah.

    12. SB

      Is there any scientific basis for that idea?

    13. MP

      Well, we know, based off science, that when cortisol goes up, progesterone goes down. There's-

    14. SB

      Cortisol is the stress hormone?

    15. MP

      Yeah. So when you're under stress, cortisol goes up. And so if you're... Let's say it's the week before your period, that's when you're supposed to have the most amount of progesterone. If... It doesn't matter if you're trying to run a marathon, doesn't matter if you have a work deadline, doesn't matter if you're skimping on sleep. As long as cortisol's going up, progesterone's not gonna make her appearance. And if she doesn't make her appearance, then the uterine lining won't shed. That's w- ... That's been proven over and over. Every hormone expert would agree. S- multiple studies. But w- women don't realize that. So we ... uh, if there's ever a time to mind your stress, it's the week before your period. Which is why you don't s- fast the week before your period, because that's a, that's a bit of a stressor. It's why you shouldn't train for, you know, a big Spartan race or CrossFitting event or, uh, run a marathon. You should be doing more yoga and recovery the week before your period. This is why we should prioritize sleep the week before our periods, because th- we don't want cortisol up. So in a p- in an interesting world, this is sort of the vision I have for women right now, is what if there is this moment where the week before our period we have a- the, the capability of maybe not working as hard? They're... Like Spain, they're giving a three-day menstrual leave to women. They s- and with no questions asked.

    16. SB

      Before the, before the period or what?

    17. MP

      Well, it's no questions asked. They, uh, anticipated it that women would use it the first three days of her period. But a woman can use it any time. I say use it the three days before your cycle's supposed to come.

    18. SB

      Interesting. Have you shared this idea before publicly?

    19. MP

      Uh, I've... On several podcasts I've talked about it. I had a great interview with Kate Northrup, um, on my podcast, and she's an entrepreneur and she actually maps her whole business cycle around her menstrual cycle. And so we had a beautiful conversation about this. And she said that she doesn't do as many Zoom calls. She tells her team that she's gonna take... get o- get off her, uh, work a little bit earlier on those days. She slows everything down. Her workload goes dramatically down. And she said what ha- ended up happening is that when her period started, her productivity went up. So see, what... When estrogen comes in on, on starting day one, day two of our menstrual cycles, estrogen makes us really mentally clear, makes us very verbal. Estrogen's an incredible hormone for productivity. But if you aren't minding that back half of your cycle and you're not slowing down then-... then you're coming into your period and you're having... You hear so many women who are like, "Oh, I'm cramping, I'm bleeding a lot. It's really painful." That's 'cause you didn't mind the back half of your cycle.

    20. SB

      And what's the sort of evolutionary basis for all of this? Why is the body doing this? Why is the body, um, not gonna give us our periods? I mean, listen, I don't have a period, but, um, well, I have a, a version of it, right? I'm sure men have some kind of-

    21. MP

      Yeah, you guys ha- you guys have a... You work off a 24-hour cycle.

    22. SB

      Okay.

    23. MP

      So every 15 minutes you get testosterone.

    24. SB

      Okay.

    25. MP

      You know we joke about that, right?

    26. SB

      What are you saying?

    27. MP

      (laughs)

    28. SB

      That you joke behind our backs?

    29. MP

      (laughs) Kind of.

    30. SB

      What'd you say?

  17. 1:09:59 – 1:21:05

    Hormone cycles in women and what to do

    1. MP

      off of reproduction.

    2. SB

      So I need some advice then, 'cause I'm in a relationship and I want to understand... I guess this goes both ways. I want my girlfriend to understand how hormones are influencing my behavior-

    3. MP

      Yeah.

    4. SB

      ... and I wanna know how hormones are influencing her behavior.

    5. MP

      Yeah.

    6. SB

      What advice have you got for me?

    7. MP

      Well, the first is, do you know her cycle?

    8. SB

      Moving on. We're gonna talk about-

    9. MP

      (laughs)

    10. SB

      ... sugar again.

    11. MP

      No, no, you... This is too good. (laughs)

    12. SB

      (laughs) So sugar, it's really bad, isn't it?

    13. MP

      (laughs)

    14. SB

      Who's to blame?

    15. MP

      No, seriously, know-

    16. SB

      Tell me about your childhood.

    17. MP

      Y- Yeah. (laughs)

    18. SB

      (laughs)

    19. MP

      No, get to know her cycle. Uh, I'm gonna give you, I'm gonna give you gold right now.

    20. SB

      I should know, shouldn't I?

    21. MP

      Let me give you gold. Okay, so day one of her cycle, day 1 to day 10, she's building estrogen. First couple of days of her cycle, just let her be. Like, she... You know, that... She's transitioning out of the back half of her cycle, she might be having some heavier bleeding, you know, she's moving into that extroverted place. So the first two days, give her some space. Now day three, estrogen's starting to, to build. So she... You're gonna notice she's more verbal, she's gonna be more present. She might feel more outgoing, she's gonna feel like she wants to connect with you. That's gonna go all the way through ovulation, like in the middle of ovulation, which is about day 12, day 13, where all of a sudden estrogen's at its peak. If you have any conflict you want to resolve with her, do it between like day two and day 12 of her cycle. She's gonna be so ready to handle any conflict with you.

    22. SB

      Between... Let me write that down. (laughs)

    23. MP

      D-

    24. SB

      Day, day two and day 12.

    25. MP

      D- Day two... Like l- literally-

    26. SB

      That's where I pick my battles.

    27. MP

      ... I had a, I had a dad come to me and tell me that he was struggling to understand his teenage daughter and I said, "Well, do you know her cycle?" And he's like, "No, I don't." I said, "Well, you would never ever bring a conflict to her on day 18 or 19 of her cycle. Bring it to her on day 10 and now she's gonna talk to you."

    28. SB

      I'm gonna say something which is really embarrassing here. I know nothing about menstrual cycles. At no point in my life did anybody-

    29. MP

      Yeah.

    30. SB

      ... teach me about menstrual cycles. The only insight I have in my life to what a menstrual cycle is, is overhearing my sister when I was younger talking about it.

Episode duration: 2:13:04

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