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

if you are not fasting you are missing out on a massive healing experience for your body and your brain it is not optional in my book and that's good for me to see too right if you want to solve a conflict with a woman find out when she's ovulating so a woman can actually plan and schedule certain activities over those 5 days corporations should put all the ovulating women together in the boardroom and say okay let's dream up what next year is going to look like cuz they're locked and loaded with all these neurochemicals that

support awesome brain activity yeah it's not even it's a must if you understood that everything would feel right for you I absolutely promise you welcome back quick brains I am your host and your brain coach Jim quick and welcome to the quick brain podcast today we are going to speak about fasting and your brain health and performance and this is a really hot topic and we have the expert here and and we're actually in her Studio cuz we just uh was on her amazing podcast yeah Dr Mindy is a keynote speaker uh she has author

of a number of books this is the one we're going to talk about today this is fast like a girl welcome to the show thank you thank you I'm excited to have this conversation with you congratulations you are everywhere I I feel like I'm I'm like shadowing you on all these podcasts that mutual acquaintances of our we have had a little twinsy podcast that's true our team lights them up because they're fans of your work and we're we're always sharing a lot of your videos and your podcast and our slack um and also it lights

us up also when they say if you like this you'll like this and then you know sometimes we're connected that way also as well with the same publisher also so it's a small world so this is a long time coming yeah thank you I love that it's an honor I mean again I've been following your work for years so to hear you say that that I've been going along your path is quite an honor so thank you yeah and Dr Mindy has an incredible podcast uh and that I was on so make sure you subscribe

and check it out and and and your YouTube also yeah yeah let's let's get into this so fasting and the Brain yeah yeah where do we start yeah you know I was thinking as you were starting the conversation about hey could we go down the path of fasting around the brain and I was thinking you know what my chronic statement is is that if people come to fasting to lose weight happy you're here but I'm going to ask you to stay for the brain changes I love this and we had the same conversation on your

show about movement and then but going back to the brain yes you know because the brain it controls everything yeah and this is the most important thing that to keep keep in shape exactly so the first thing to realize and I I'm sure I mean I know I'm I'm speaking to the master here but your brain needs 50% glucose for fuel and 50% ketones it has this other fuel source so the biggest thing that I think about fasting is that when you put yourself in a fasted State you are producing low micro does of ketones

and these ketones will go up into the brain and provide it the fuel that it needs now I think we've been coming in through for ketones in the wrong door we've been going in through like the ketogenic diet I'm saying let's just take everything you eat compress it into a specific eating window leave leaving longer space for fasting you're going to create ketones in that fasting window and now you're providing the fuel source that your brain needs at least 50% of it and then when you eat you can go into all the brain foods you

can go into all the things that we know will nourish it from another angle and now you've you've brought the Best of Both Worlds together I love that what what what are some of the misconceptions that you find the community has or people in general in the public has about fasting here's the biggest one that's showing up lately um and people are really reacting strongly to it is I believe that fasting is for everyone I really believe that the misconception is that fasting is this optional state that we maybe decide to try if we want

to lose weight or we want to more energy or maybe we heard about the brain power like we were just saying and that it's sort 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 cannot go your whole life without sleep and just like you expressed on my podcast you need sleep for so many brain functions that will happen while you're sleeping if you are not fasting you are missing out on a massive healing experience for your body and your brain it

is not optional in my book yeah it's not even optional it's it's it's a must my business partner who's in the room also our CEO you know she she fasts I I fast kind of part of our protocol where does somebody start yeah it's always the question well okay so interesting you start with food so if I'm going toe assume if I'm talking to somebody on the western American or standard diet we're highly processed oils refined flowers toxic ingredients all of that as you know is creating brain inflammation but it's also making your sugar burning

metabolism really really dysfunctional and sluggish so let's just change that let's change it to three different foods that you are going to focus on you're going to eat healthy oils so good oils not bad oils these are like your all oil your MCT oil coconut oil all of those are the health healthy oils the bad ones are canola cotton seed corn oils I I list them all in the book so let's switch your oils second thing let's switch your carb source so the whole world's gone like low carb and I'm not a I'm not saying

go low carb I'm saying go eat carb that has fiber in it so that is anything that's come out of the Earth so I call it Nature's carbs just any anything that that doesn't have a label on it an apple greens like a potato anything that came from the earth as Nature's carbs okay so and then the third one is just get rid of the toxins I we get rid of the Diet Cokes and the synthetic ingredients and the red dyes and all of that that's going into our food system if we make those three

changes then fasting becomes so effortless and the your next step then becomes to start looking at your food every day as you have a fasting window and you have an eating window it's not like you're going to get up and just eat all day you're going to make a conscious decision in the moment when that eating window opens we'll use today as an example I did exactly like we talked about on my podcast I got up I started writing this morning I was in a highly creative space um I went and moved my body around

10:30 did exactly what you and I said talked about I went and made a bunch of calls while I was walking all of that was in a fasted State and then I came here at noon right before I came here I broke my fast and I broke it with protein a really high protein so that I can keep my brain fueled um and that's all I've had today is 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 I eat

dinner and then I shut that window down again and have you found there's a certain amount of hours for that eating window and that fasting window that in terms of the maximum return or yeah so the most the most yeah the most common research was done out of cell metabolism on what they call 168 so 16 hours of fasting eight hours of eating so your eating window would be eight hours so that would be like you open your eating window up at noon and it Clos closes down at 8 and you can eat throughout that

whole time you get to decide how often you want to eat got it but then once you shut that eating window down now you're not even drink drinking you're not doing any water can go in coffee the next morning but you're not at raising your glucose okay so coffee's okay coffee's okay yeah is there a difference I know the answer to this because we've chatted about this for females and and males yeah so this part's really interesting because when we look at fasting it is creating a hormonal change to one of the major hormones in

our body called insulin and insulin is what actually will affect our sex hormones so insulin affects estrogen progesterone and testosterone so the if you want to balance your sex hormones doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman the best thing you can do is get yourself insulin sensitive understand that first but in order to balance these hormones by balancing insulin for a man that is a 24hour cycle so you all are run off a testosterone testosterone comes in maybe 15 every 15 20 minutes you get a pulse of of testosterone testosterone goes up into

the brain and converts to estrogen so you only have one hormone to think about and you have to think about it in terms of it in 24 hours got it we have three we have estrogen progesterone and testosterone that those hormones are all produced from our ovaries and and when we go into menopause the adrenals kick in and start producing some of that and so there's no conversion in the brain it's all happening in the body now there communication from the brain and it's happening in a 28 30-day period Okay so we've got to honor

our hormonal Cycles as women and if we don't do that then now we start to tank our hormones in the fasting process and that was literally how the book was born is I saw so many women were just struggling they would get great results with fasting but then their period stopped or their hair fell out or their anxiety went up like they had all these adverse reactions that men weren't having and then when we started running we've run thousands of hormones tests on these women we just saw that one hormone in particular progesterone was completely

tanked which totally altered their cycle so does that inform that that hormonal expression over those four weeks does that inform what behaviors those like week one two three do you yeah oh yeah this we this we haven't even talked about this this is going to be great you're going to love this okay ready do you want to be able to remember confidently the information that you hear on this podcast do you want to improve your memory to easily and confidently be able to remember names and faces client information give a speech without notes learn another

language remember what you read and so much more there's a solution and I call it your quick recall in just 15 minutes a day for 30 days I've designed the ultimate course how to unlock your quick recall just go to quickbin dcom forward SL recall enter podcast 15 for your immediate discount as a thank you for listening to our show so estrogen like if you look at a woman's cycle day one through day 10 estrogen is coming in that estrogen stimulates dopamine serotonin like we talked about acetylcholine oxytocin bdnf so for women when estrogen's coming

in we're going to be much more outgoing we're going to be more we're going to be a lot happier we're going to be able to hold on to important for relationships yeah I hope just everyone's listening to this in general but you know you you have you have if you're living with with a woman yeah right and it would explain you know certain moods and behaviors and yeah and why she seems like one person at one part of the month and then another part of the month she's completely different okay so those first 10 days

after her cyle so day one is the day her period starts and then estrogen will build and you'll notice as she gets closer to that day 10 she's much more outgoing because she's neurochemical Ally locked and loaded you can fast during that time that's a as much as you want if you want to go on a three-day water fast women can do a lot during that time because estrogen is very forgiving of cortisol okay so estrogen if cortisol comes in like you work out really hard you fast a lot estrogen's going to be okay got

it now during the your ovulation period day 11 through day 15 when an egg is actually released this part is just crazy to me estrogen is at it her Peak she's not going to get any higher because she has to Peak for that egg to release right but then testosterone comes in so check this out we only get testosterone for this five day period during ovulation we don't really get it the rest of the month where guys are getting it hit every x amount minute right so now we're looking at libido differences if you're in

a heterosexual relationship like she's only getting it 5 days out of the month and and you're getting it every 15 minutes right so there's going to be a mismatch perhaps there but for women listening this is going to be the height of our motivation because testosterone is motivation and drive and then we have estrogen during this time so we're very creative we can use both estrogen helps us use both hemispheres of our brain we can multitask really well even though I just learned we shouldn't be multitasking from you but we are mentally our best we

have all these neurochemicals and then we get a little bit of progesterone during that time so we're calm so a woman can actually plan and schedule certain activities over those five days this is what I want you to do you want you to take this information and put your stuff to it because if a woman was trying to become Limitless with her brain ovulation is the time to do it yeah I even think like corporations should put all the ovulating women together in the boardroom and say okay let's dream up what next year is going

to look like cuz they're locked and loaded with all these neurochemicals that support awesome brain activity I love that what happens after day 15 okay then after 15 then you get a a the hormones crash so a lot of women coming out of OV ovulation can don't feel super great they just kind of go down and then about day 20 progesterone builds and progesterone calms us um it also makes us very inner so we may not be as gregarious uh the major neurotransmitter that Pro progesterone stimulates is Gaba so when progesterone comes in you've got

Gaba you're calm uh progesterone does not like cortisol so the statement I always make is when cortisol goes High progesterone goes shy so if you like I'm I'm sounding like you yeah yeah is speaking speaking our language I I I'm I'm on to you after hanging with you for a few hours here but yeah I mean it that is the week we need to relax and recover we need to bring our output down like to a 75% of what we normally do this is one of the things I've been really emphasizing on podcast lately and

it's come with very mixed reviews from people because it's hard to do yeah and that's that that week before our period we should say no more we should recover more um because if we don't if cortisol's up progesterone is going to have a really hard time of of making her appearance and then progesterones which sheds that uterine lining so one of my big ahas from fasts a girl that I'm just shocked at is how many 20 and 30-year-olds don't have a cycle and they I think they don't have a cycle because the physical emotional chemical

stressors are bigger than ever and so they're not that uterine lining they don't get enough progesterone for the uterine lining to shed and what what would your recommendation be for somebody in that situation well first M that week before so the week before a woman's cycle is really important to do differently so you got to bring stress down so that's the first thing second thing you got to bring glucose up which is really different right because estrogen wants you to bring glucose down progesterone wants you to bring glucose up and she needs more glucose to

be able to fully come into her glory that week before so this is why the keto diet fasting did not do well for women the week before their Cycles because there wasn't enough glucose there for progesterone to appear so but check this out you talk to any woman what does she crave the week before her period what does she craving 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 carbohydrates and you don't crave fruit you create Breads and pastas and

things like because your body is saying give me more glucose bring the glucose up you need chocolate because it has magnesium in it and magnesium will help to to support progesterone so this is the most fascinating thing to me is every time I teach this to a woman the response I get is that intuitively makes sense that's how I feel but we've been doing the same diet the same exercise the same behaviors all month long not adapting to the changes of these hormones and then this self-awareness that you're giving people is it would be liberating

you know for them because it takes the the sh any kind of embarrassment or judgment self- judgment they have around like something could be wrong they're not trust be able to get into their body but one thing I've learned about women and it it's like the 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 like the diet was the fault we don't think of it as like an e like the trainer didn't train us right we think of it as our

problem and so we turn within and we turn on ourselves and we start saying things to ourselves like yeah I've never been able to succeed at losing weight I must have bad genetics um you know I must have done something wrong I'm watching everybody else lose weight and we we are and then we're back at the negative selft talk and that is why it's so important to get just something as simple as you crave different things at different times of the month you should fast differently you should exercise differently you should socialize differently at different

times of the month and if you understood that everything would feel right for you I absolutely promise you so do you recommend like for my wife she would you for her to have like a calendar yes right and that's good for me to see too right because that would prepare me to give her you know to be able to be supportive also for the family yes I I one of the stories I love to point out is I had a father come to me and ask me about his daughter's hormones and how her teenage daughter's

you know attitudes were off and I said to him do you know your daughter's cycle and he's like no he looked at me like why would I why would you ask me that I said do your wife and he goes no I'm like you need to know her menstrual cycle because if you did you would know when to talk to her about conflict and the worst time to talk to a woman about something that's going to upset her is the week before her period right and we all culturally know this because people are like oh

she's PMSing really what she's telling you is she needs to turn within nurture herself slow down and if you are giving her something that's going to force her opposite of that you are going to get a worse part of her if you want to solve a conflict with a woman find out when she's ovulating because she has estrogen High she's motivated to solve that conflict because testosterone's high and she's got Pro a little bit of progesterone to calm her so really conflicts and troubling challenges for women should be handled between day 10 and day 15

you and you outline all of this in the book it's detailed with with calar all of this y yeah who who did you write the book for I wrote it for the woman that's not who's not feeling heard that's out of Health answers it's you know the women who have PCOS infertility the per menopausal women that are struggling every woman that has a health and that's either physical or mental Challenge and is not getting answers for because we just get put on anti-depressants as our Solution that's who I wrote this for is here's your answer

live a life in accordance with your hormones and all these mental and physical challenges go away I see it over and over again I know our viewers and our listeners going to want more from you so where where would you recommend you have so much your podcast your books your YouTube there's just so much so much available uh well you can go to Dr minds.com that's the best place to find everything but my YouTube channel is like my passion project it's like I I really put a lot of thought into that um you can grab

the book wherever books are sold um and like you said yeah I'm I'm kind of everywhere having this conversation my goal really is I want to open the conversation up so and I think we're doing that if we've opened this conversation up now let's all just continue it we're going to learn more and more about ourselves if we do that that's absolutely amazing everyone get your copy of the book we will put all the links in as we always do at jim.com notes uh to Dr Mindy's books to your podcast to your YouTube and so

much more I encourage people actually to take an action right because knowledge is not power it has the potential be power but you have to start somewhere and I would recommend a good place to start is to follow Dr Mindy take a screenshot of wherever you can uming this right now and tag us both and maybe they could you want to ask them a question to put in the post so that way we could oh yeah cuz so in the so in the book in fast like a girl I have six different length fasts I

want to know which one's your favorite um as you as you practice it and the men listening a lot of men are like well is the book for me absolutely the whole first section is all the history of of fasting so it is absolutely perfect for you and it'll help you understand the women in your life as well but yeah tell me what your favorite length fast is outstanding Dr Min thank you so much for being on the show thank [Music] you