How Fasting Changes Your Brain Permanently | Dr. Mindy Pelz & Jim Kwik

If you're not

fasting

, you're missing out on a massive healing experience for

your

body and

brain

. In my book, it's not optional and that's a good thing for me, if you want to resolve a conflict with a woman, find out when she will do it. ovulating so that a woman can actually plan and schedule certain activities during those 5 days. Corporations should gather all the ovulating women in the boardroom and say, "Okay, let's imagine what next year will be like because you're cooped up and burdened with all this stuff." neurochemicals that support incredible

brain

activity, yes, it's not even essential if you understand that everything would feel good to you.

I absolutely promise you that you are welcome back to Quick Brains. I'm

your

host and your brain coach, Jim Quick, and welcome to today's Quick Brain podcast. We're going to talk about

fasting

and your brain health and performance and this is a really hot topic and we have the expert here and we're actually in her study because we were on her amazing podcast, yeah, Dr. Mindy is a main speaker. uh she's the author of several books, this is the one we're going to talk about today, she's quick as a girl, welcome to the show, thank you, thank you, I'm excited to have this conversation with you, congratulations, you're everywhere.

I feel like I'm following you on all these podcasts where mutual acquaintances we've had a little Twinsy podcast, that's true, our team lights them up because they're fans of your work and we always are. share a lot of your videos and your podcast and our slack um and it also lights us up when they say if you like this you'll like it and then you know sometimes we're connected that way too with the same editor. Also, it's a small world so this is going to be a long time coming, yes, thank you, I love it, it's an honor, I mean, I've been following your work for years, so to hear you say that I've followed your path.

Quite an honor, so thank you, yeah, and Dr. Mindy has an amazing podcast, uh, and one that I was on, so make sure you subscribe and check it out, and your YouTube too, yeah, yeah, let's get into this fasting thing. and the brain, yes, yes, where? Shall we start? Yeah, you know, I was thinking as you started the conversation about: could we go down the fasting route around the brain? And I was thinking, you know, what my chronic claim is: If people come to fasting to lose weight, they're happy. You're here, but I'm going to ask you to stay to see the brain

changes

.

I love this and we had the same conversation on your show about movement and then, but back to the brain, yeah, you know, because the brain controls everything, yeah. And this is the most important thing to stay fit exactly, so the first thing we need to realize and I'm sure, I mean, I know. I'm talking to the teacher, but your brain needs 50% glucose for fuel. and 50% ketones has this other fuel source, so the most important thing I think about fasting is that when you fast yourself you are producing low microdoses of ketones and these ketones will go up to the brain and provide it with the fuel it needs now I think that we've been going in for ketones through the wrong door that we've been coming in through, like the ketogenic diet.

What I'm saying is take everything you eat, squeeze it into a specific eating window, leave it and go. If you have more space for fasting, you will create ketones in that fasting window and now you are providing the fuel source that your brain needs at least 50% and then when you eat, you will be able to consume all the brain foods that you can. in all the things that we know will nourish it from another angle and now you have brought together the best of both worlds. I love it, what are some of the misconceptions you find that the community or people in general have? the public has about fasting, this is the biggest one that's popping up lately and people are really reacting strongly to it.

I believe fasting is for everyone. I really think the misconception is that fasting is this optional state that maybe we decide to try if we want to lose weight or we want to have more energy or maybe we hear about brain power like we were saying and that it's kind of like a diet, it's Like yeah, that sounded like a really cool thing I should do. I think of it like Sleep, you can't go your entire life without sleep and as you expressed in my podcast, you need sleep for a lot of brain functions that will happen while you sleep, if you're not fasting you're missing out on a massive healing experience for your body. and your brain is not optional in my book, yes, it's not even optional, it's essential. my business partner who is in the room and also our CEO, you know, she fasts.

I fast, as part of our protocol. Where does someone start? Yeah, it's always the question well, okay, it's very interesting, you start with the food, so if I'm going to assume that if I'm talking to someone who follows the American or standard Western diet, we're highly processed oils, refined flowers, ingredients toxic, all that, as you know, is creating. inflammation of the brain, but it also makes your sugar burning metabolism really dysfunctional and slow, so let's change that to three different foods that you're going to focus on, you're going to eat healthy oils, so good oils, not bad oils, these are like your whole oil. , your MCT oil, coconut oil, those are all healthy oils, the bad ones are corn, cottonseed and canola oils.

I list them all in the book, so let's change your oils. Second thing, let's change your carbohydrate source so the whole world disappears. I eat low carb and I'm not saying it's low carb. What I'm saying is eat carbohydrates that contain fiber, that is, anything that came from the Earth, so I call them nature's carbohydrates, anything that doesn't have a label, a green apple like a potato, anything that comes from the earth as carbohydrates from nature, okay, and then the third is just getting rid of the toxins. We get rid of the Diet Cokes and the synthetic ingredients and the red dyes and all that stuff that goes into our food system, if we make those three

changes

, then fasting becomes so easy and the next step is to start looking at your food all days, since you have a fasting window and have a diet. window it's not like you're going to get up and just eat all day, you're going to make a conscious decision the moment that window opens to eat.

We will use today as an example. I did exactly what we talked about on my podcast I got up I started writing this morning I was in a highly creative space I went and moved my body around 10:30 I did exactly what you and I said we talked about I went and made a bunch of calls while I was walking that was all on an empty stomach and then I came here at noon just before I came here I broke my fast and I broke it with protein, a very high protein so I could keep my brain fed, and that's all I've eaten today.

Well, I guess and then I had a salad, a salad with protein, so now my eating window is open, so now I would eat until dinner and then I close that window again and have you discovered that there are a certain number of hours to eat? window and that fasting window that in terms of peak performance or yes, most, most, yes, the most common research was done outside of cellular metabolism at what they call 168, meaning 16 hours of fasting, eight hours of feeding, so your feeding window would be eight hours, so it would be like if you open your eating window at noon and Clos closes at 8 and you can eat during that entire time, you can decide how often you want to eat, but then , once you close that window to eat.

Now you're not even drinking, you're not drinking, you're not drinking any water. You can go to coffee the next morning, but you are not increasing your glucose. Well, then, the coffee is fine. The coffee is good. Yes, is there a difference? I know the answer to this because We've talked about this for women and men, yes, so this part is really interesting because when we look at fasting, it creates a hormonal change in one of the main hormones in our body called insulin, and insulin is what will really affect our sex hormones. so insulin affects estrogen, progesterone and testosterone, so if you want to balance your sex hormones, it doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman, the best thing you can do is become insulin sensitive, understand that first, but to balance them. hormones by balancing insulin for a man, which is a 24 hour cycle, so everyone runs out of testosterone.

Testosterone comes in maybe 15 every 15 20 minutes. You get a pulse of testosterone. Testosterone goes up to the brain and turns into estrogen, so you just have. a hormone to think about and you have to think in terms of that in 24 hours, we have three, we have estrogen, progesterone and testosterone, all of those hormones are produced in our ovaries and when we enter menopause, the adrenal glands activate. and start producing some of that and then there is no conversion in the brain, everything happens in the body, now there is communication from the brain and it happens over a period of 28 to 30 days.

Okay, so we have to honor our hormonal cycles as women and If we don't do that, then we will start building up our hormones in the process of fasting and that's literally how the book was born. I saw that a lot of women were struggling because they would get great results from fasting, but then their period stopped or their hair fell out or their anxiety increased like they had all these adverse reactions that men didn't have and then when we started running, we did thousands of hormonal tests on these women and we saw that one hormone in particular, progesterone, was completely crashing, which totally disrupted their cycle, that informs that hormonal expression during those four weeks informs what behaviors, like week one, two, three, yes, oh yes, this, we, this, we haven't even talked about this, this is it going to be?

Great, you're going to love this. Okay, ready. Do you want to be able to confidently remember the information you hear in this podcast? Do you want to improve your memory so you can remember names and faces with ease and confidence? Customer information. Give a speech. without notes learn another language remember what you read and much more there is a solution and I call it your quick recovery in just 15 minutes a day for 30 days I have designed the ultimate course on how to unlock your quick recovery just go to Quickbin dcom ahead SL remember to log in to podcast 15 for your immediate discount as a thank you for listening to our show, so estrogen is like if you look at a woman's cycle from day one to day 10, estrogen is coming in and estrogen stimulates dopamine, serotonin, as we talk about acetylcholine, oxytocin, bdnf.

So for women, when estrogen hits, we'll be a lot more outgoing, we'll be more, we'll be a lot happier, we'll be able to hold on to things that are important to relationships, yeah, I hope. Everyone is hearing this in general, but you know that you have, if you live with a woman, yes, of course, and that would explain that you know certain moods and behaviors, and yes, and why she seems like one person in one part of the month. and then another part of the month she's completely different, well those first 10 days after her cycle, day one is the day her period starts and then the estrogen will build up and you'll notice that as she gets closer to that day 10, is much more extroverted. because she is Ally neurochemical locked and loaded, you can fast for that time, that's all you want if you want to do a three day water fast, women can do a lot during that time because estrogen is very tolerant of cortisol, okay, so estrogen. if the cortisol comes in like you work out really hard, you fast a lot, the estrogen will be fine, you have it now during the ovulation period, day 11 to day 15, when an egg is released, this part is crazy to me, the estrogen is there.

She's not going to go any higher because she has to peak for the egg to be released properly, but then the testosterone comes in, so check this out, we only get testosterone during this five day period during ovulation, we don't really get it the rest of us. weather. month in which guys get it every Well, maybe there will be a mismatch there, but for women listening, this will be the height of our motivation because testosterone is motivation and drive and then we have estrogen during this time, so we are very creative and we can use both estrogens.

We use both hemispheres of our brain, we can multitask very well, although I just found out we shouldn't, but we are mentally at our best, we have all these neurochemicals and then we get a little bit of progesterone during that time, so you're calm so that a woman can plan and schedule certain activities during those five days. This is what I want you to do. You want you to take this information and put your stuff into it because if a woman wastrying to become unlimited with your brain. ovulation is the time to do it, yeah, I even think corporations should get all the ovulating women in the boardroom and say, okay, let's imagine what next year is going to be like because they're locked in and loaded with all these neurochemicals that support Impressive brain activity.

I love what happens after day 15. Well, after day 15, there's a hormonal crash, so a lot of women coming out of ovulation OV don't feel super good, they just go down and then around day 20. Progesterone It accumulates and progesterone calms us down. It also makes us very internal, so we may not be as gregarious. The main neurotransmitter that progesterone stimulates is Gaba so when progesterone comes in you have Gaba you are calm uh progesterone doesn't like cortisol so the statement I always make is when cortisol goes up progesterone becomes timid so yeah Do you like it, I speak like you Yes, yes, it is speaking our language.

I, I, I'm with you after being with you for a few hours here, but yes, I'm serious, that's the week we need to relax and recover, we need to slow down. 75% of what we normally do, this is one of the things that I have been emphasizing a lot on the podcast lately and it has received very mixed reviews from people because it is difficult to do, yes, and that is that week before our period We should say no. the more we should recover more um because if we don't if cortisol goes up the progesterone will have a hard time making an appearance and then the progesterones that shed the uterine lining so one of my big ahas for fasting a girl that I Lo What surprises me is how many women in their 20s and 30s don't have a cycle and I think they don't have a cycle because the physical, emotional and chemical stressors are greater than ever and therefore they are not that uterine lining. they don't get enough progesterone for the lining of the uterus to shed and what would be your recommendation for someone in that situation, first M that week before so the week before a woman's cycle it's very important to do it differently so must generate stress. go down, so that's the first thing, the second thing you have to do is raise glucose, which is really different, because estrogen wants you to lower glucose, progesterone wants you to raise glucose and she needs more glucose to be able to reach his glory that week. before, this is why fasting on the ketogenic diet didn't work well for women the week before their cycles because there wasn't enough glucose for progesterone to show up, but check this out, talk to any woman, what are they craving?

The last week? period, what does she crave before her period?, what is the week?, what do you crave the week before your period? chocolate, chocolate, okay, you crave chocolate and you crave carbs and you don't crave fruit, you create breads and pastas and things like that because your body saying: give me more glucose, glucose goes up, you need chocolate because it has magnesium and magnesium will help maintain progesterone, so this is the most fascinating thing to me, every time I teach this to a woman, the response I get is that intuitively it makes sense, that's how I feel, but we've been doing the same diet, the same exercise, the same behaviors throughout the month, without adapting to the changes of these hormones, and then this self-awareness that you are giving people would be liberating.

You know, because it takes the fish any kind of shame or judgment, self-judgment that they have around them, like something could be wrong, they can't be trusted, to be able to get into their body, but one thing I've learned about women is It's like the dark side of us is that when we can't succeed at something, especially when it comes to dieting, we don't think of it as if the diet is to blame, we don't think of it as something like The trainer doesn't tell us. trained well, we think of it as our problem and then we turn inward and turn against ourselves and start telling ourselves things like yeah, I've never been able to lose weight.

I must have bad genetics. You know, I must have done something wrong. I'm watching everyone else lose weight and we do it and then we go back to the negative self-talk and that's why it's so important to get something as simple as you crave different things at different times of the month you should fast differently you should exercise different way you have to socialize differently at different times of the month and if you understood that everything would feel good for you, I absolutely promise you, so you would recommend it like for my wife, she would do it for you. that she has like a calendar, yes, of course, and that's good for me to see it well too because that would prepare me to give her, you know, also be able to support the family, yes, I, one of the stories that I love to point out is that I.

A father came to me and asked me about his daughter's hormones and how he knew his teenage daughter's attitudes were wrong and I said, do you know your daughter's cycle? and he said no, he looked at me like, why would he ask? I said: your wife? and he says no. I think you need to know her menstrual cycle because if you did, you would know when to talk to her about conflicts and what is the worst time to talk to a woman about something that is going to happen. The annoying one is the week before her period and we all know that culturally because people say, "Oh, she has PMS." If you want to resolve a conflict with a woman, find out when she is ovulating because she has high estrogen.

She is motivated to resolve that conflict because her testosterone is high and she has a little bit of progesterone to calm her down, so really the conflicts and the troubling challenges for women must be handled between the 10th and the 15th you and you detail all this in the book, it is detailed with understanding all this and yes, who did you write the book for. It's for the woman who doesn't feel heard and who doesn't have health answers, you know, women who have PCOS, infertility, permenopausal women who are struggling, every woman who has a health challenge and that's physical. or mental and you don't get answers for because we are just prescribed antidepressants as our solution, that's why I wrote this, here is your answer, live a life according to your hormones and all these physical and mental challenges disappear.

I see it again and again. I know our viewers. and our listeners will want more from you, so where would you recommend having both your podcast, your books, your YouTube, there's so, so much available? Well you can go to Dr minds.com which is the best place to find everything except my YouTube channel it's like my passion project it's like I really put a lot of thought into it um you can get the book wherever they are sold , um and like you said, yeah, I'm everywhere having this conversation, my goal is to really want to open up the conversation and I think we will.

If we open this conversation now, let's all continue. We will learn more and more about ourselves if we do that. That's absolutely amazing for everyone. get your copy of the book, we'll put all the links like we always do on jim.com, notes, uh, to Dr. Mindy's books, to her podcast, to her YouTube and so much more. I encourage people to take the right steps because knowledge is not power, it has the potential to be power, but you have to start somewhere and I would recommend that a good place to start is to follow Dr. Mindy, take a snapshot of screen of where you can use this right now and tag us both and maybe you want to ask. them a question to put in the post so that we can, oh yes, because in the book, fast as a girl, I have six fasts of different lengths.

I want to know which one is your favorite, um, as you practice it and The men listening, a lot of men say, well, it's the book for me, absolutely the entire first section is the whole history of fasting, so it's absolutely perfect for you. and it will help you understand the women in your life too, but yeah. Tell me what your favorite fasting duration is. Excellent Dr. Min. Thank you very much for being on the program. Thank you.