Episode 095 | Intermittent Fasting - BioHacking To Health

Transcript:

Hello and welcome to episode 95 of Elmar´s Tooth Talk: The missing link to total health.

In today’s episode, we talk about an important part of biohacking. We will talk about intermittent fasting.

What’s in it for you in this episode:

We talk about:

WHAT is BioHacking
WHAT is intermittent fasting
HOW Intermittent fasting can benefit you
WHAT are possible side effects
WHEN intermittent fasting might not be right for you
HOW to intermittent fast?
HOW to implement intermittent fasting in your daily routine
WHAT powerful benefits do people experience
HOW about going to the next level

What is BioHacking?

If you never heard of biohacking that’s fine.

It’s interesting when I searched for synonyms for biohacking all the big engines such as wordhippo or thesaurus, didn’t have a clue.

So here is a simple explanation.

With biohacking you aim to improve your health, appearance, performance, and overall well-being with the desire to be the absolute best version of yourself.

This doesn’t mean you have to become a mad scientist and run crazy experiments with your body. Instead, it means, at least in the beginning until you gather a bit of momentum, making small changes to your lifestyle, giving your body time to adjust, and then seeing how you feel.

Biohacking covers a broad range of techniques from the less invasive practice of intermittent fasting to drastic and invasive procedures, such as the implanting of microchips or injecting of gene-editing enzymes.

However, you should stick with the things that work for you, and ditch the ones that don’t. After all, when it comes to how your body feels, you’re the expert.

I will devote an entire podcast maybe even a series of episodes to biohacking. So, if you are interested in this topic let me know.

Now on to fasting.

Fasting, as old as mankind

Fasting is probably as old as mankind. There were always times when people didn’t have enough to eat and therefore had to fast.

Some remote tribes such as the Hunza, a tribe living in the Himalayan mountains of northern Pakistan, are famous for having a very long life expectancy of more than 100 years. They rarely suffer from any diseases.

In spring they often have to fast because they don’t have any food left.

Already Hippocrates from Kos, the most famous physician in antiquity is cited by saying:” If you want to stay healthy and young, be moderate in everything you do, breathe clean air, keep a daily cleaning and exercise regime, and cure a small ailment through fasting rather than medicine”. How smart was he!!

What do we see people do instead today? For every tiny little cold or niggle they crave a pill for immediate relief.

Gone are the times when you have a cold, you take a hot bath, go to bed early, and sweat it out. Maybe even stay in bed for a day or two to give your body time to recover.

On top of this in our times of food abundance, people often eat even if they are not really hungry.

This also means digestion of the previous meal isn’t yet finished. This slows down metabolism and detoxification processes and leaves behind toxins and acids. Your natural detox- and elimination systems are overwhelmed. Therefore, doesn’t the advice of eating five or more little portions throughout the day escape all logic?

This is followed by a disturbed acid-alkaline balance which then can cause symptoms such as:

Fatigue and exhaustion
Muscle and joint pain
Increased susceptibility to infection
Concentration disorders
Mood swings
Reduced stress resilience

What is intermittent fasting?

A kind of fasting that is growing in popularity is intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting is an eating pattern where you cycle between periods of eating and fasting.

Intermittent fasting gives your gut time to digest the food properly and there is even time for the gut to clean itself.

Numerous studies show that it can have powerful benefits for your body, brain, and longevity.

Feeling hungry is good. Especially for some of your hormones. When you fast adrenalin, Human Growth Hormone (HGH) and many other substances are released. This is invigorating and activating.

Whilst you starve your body starts cleansing, detoxing, and excreting. Digestion is paused and fat burning runs at full blast.

HOW to intermittent fast?

There are different ways how to exercise intermittent fasting. The most popular once are either 16:8 or 18:6.

What does this mean? Well, 16:8 means your fasting phase is 16 hours long and the 8-hour interval is the window you use for eating. 18:8 means 18 hours of fasting and 6 hours of eating window.

During fasting hours, you don’t consume any calories. You are allowed to have water, unsweetened tea, and one cup of coffee. During the eating window, you normally eat twice.

It is best to skip breakfast and wait for your first meal as long as possible. This way of eating is already recommended in Ayurvedic medicine.

The reason for this is that during the morning hours, the body is occupied by excretion. This means that a large breakfast is counterproductive.

HOW to implement intermittent fasting in your daily routine

Wait at least one hour before eating in the morning and stop eating 2-3 hours before going to bed.

Take time transitioning into this new diet by shortening your eating window by one hour per day

Try drinking a glass of water with lemon and salt to temporarily curb your hunger during your fasting window.

People often mistake dehydration or low salt for hunger!!

Keep a consistent eating window, such as 12 pm to 8 pm. This eating window is great because you can eat lunch and dinner at a normal time, so you can enjoy meals with friends, family, or business partners.

Keep yourself in a fasted state by eating less processed carbohydrates and refined sugars and eating more high protein and fibrous foods.

Try lowering your glucose after a big meal by going for a walk, stretching

WHAT to eat?

Whether you intermittently fast or not it is always important to eat a balanced diet that agrees most with you. For many people diet has become the new religion. A dogma rather than an enjoyment.

If you want to stay healthy avoiding foods such as sugar, sweets, sweetener, flour, gluten, margarine, cheap oils, and products containing E-numbers should be a no-brainer.

WHAT are possible Side-effects of intermittent fasting?

May reduce physical activity
May cause severe hunger
Concerns for those on medications
Does not encourage nutritious eating
May promote overeating

WHEN should you be careful about implementing intermittent fasting in your daily routine?

Time-restricted eating may not be right for you.

Those only concerned with building muscle mass and muscle size could be limiting their muscle growth potential.

Time-restricted eating can also cause changes in your hormones, which can lower testosterone or create fertility issues.

Prolonged fasting can lower your overall athletic performance.

Time-restricting eating may make you feel unhappy and unsatiated.

Therefore, please make any nutritional changes carefully, and seek professional advice when necessary.

What are the powerful benefits you may experience when fasting intermittently:

Changes the function of your hormones, cells, and genes
Helps lose weight and visceral fat
Lowers risk for type 2 diabetes
Reduces inflammation in the body
Reduces high blood pressure
Increases mental performance
Increases anti-aging,
Extends your lifespan
May prevent Alzheimer’s disease
Improves sleep
Improves gut health and gives a clearer skin
No fasting crisis

HOW about going to the next level

If you want to take fasting to the next level, have a look at fasting cures.

One of these fasting cures is the so-called F. X. Mayr-Cure.

It is named after the famous Austrian physician Dr Franz Xaver Mayr, who lived from 1875 – 1965. So he got into his 90’s which proves his method works.

Mayr studied his patients very carefully and found that most toxins, which cause a burden to our body, originate from the small intestine.

Toxins from external sources such as heavy metals, insecticides, and drugs are according to Mayr important but mainly secondary to the internal ones.

Obviously, we must take into account that at the time when Mayr lived the external toxins weren’t as bad as they are in our days.

Mayr already in his days said that people eat too late, too much, too fat, too fast, don’t chew enough, and don’t take long enough breaks between meals. Sounds familiar?

For Mayr, the treatment of the small intestine was most important. The elimination of toxins was at the forefront of his thinking to restore the small intestine’s optimal function rather than any kind of weight reduction.

His treatment approach included Resting, Breathing, Cleansing, Detoxifying, and Educating.

Reducing the amount of food to give the digestive system a rest, Epsom salts to cleanse the gut, and daily manual stomach treatment are the building blocks of each Mayr Cure.

So, you can easily see that any kind of abstinence from food for a few hours can have a tremendously positive effect on your entire body and obviously on your overall health.

Isn’t it time to experience the benefits of intermittent fasting for yourself?

Start now and let me know how you get on. I’m sure you will be doing very well.

That’s it for now. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time. Bye for now

Episode 095 | Intermittent Fasting – BioHacking To Health