- As a doctor you can't face that,
you can't face that you have no idea
what the hell you're doing.
So then therefore you
have to change the fact
that it's not reversible.
It's chronic and progressive
and I'm doing the best that I can.
It's like aging.
You might want to get young
but there's no way,
you always get older.
Type II diabetes it's the same thing
but it's not true.
And that's the problem is it's not true
and it's a reversible disease
and it comes down to this,
what we did was we took a disease
that's essentially a dietary disease
and we gave a lot of drugs.
And then we wonder, why isn't
your diabetes getting better?
Because we're giving you drugs
to treat the blood glucose
but here's the thing,
we're so focused on
treating the blood glucose
that we forgot to treat the diabetes.
(upbeat music)
- Hey listeners.
Welcome to this week's episode
of the Human Enhancement Podcast.
And I'm really excited to bring back
one of our most popular
guests ever on this program,
Dr. Jason Fung.
It's been about almost two years now
and for those that are new listeners
or want a reminder,
Dr. Jason Fung is a doctor obviously
but specializing in nephrology,
a section of internal medicine.
But I think what he's really become
a world leading expert on
is intermittent fasting,
low carb, high fat diets
especially in a clinical use case.
He's founder of intensive
dietary management
which has treated thousands of patients
in managing their metabolic symptoms
through fasting and low
carb, high fat diets,
and also coauthor of
two bestselling books,
Obesity Code and The
Complete Guide to Fasting.
Welcome back to the program.
- Oh, thanks for having me here.
Yeah, it's been great.
I was just saying, it hasn't
seemed like two years.
It's just flown right by.
Great to be here.
- And I think that just thinking
about the momentum,
I think two years ago,
we were just starting to get into fasting
as a community with WeFast.
I think we had maybe a couple
thousand people at most
and now we're over 20,000 people plus
in that group now.
And I think that was around the time
The Complete Guide to Fasting
and Obesity Code
I think were published around 2016,
I think we chatted in 2016.
So it was just when your
books just started coming out.
But even at that time,
you had a huge following
as these books were being released.
So what's it like from your experience?
I can share a little bit
what it's like over the last two years
from my experience
and what we've seen the community grow,
but I'm sure in the center
as one of the, I would say,
the key thought leader
around a lot of these topics,
what has it been like for you?
- Yeah, it's been very interesting
because we're seeing it sort of move
into areas that you
would never have thought.
So, for example,
I come at it from a very
medical sort of standpoint.
So I do kidney disease,
I deal with a lot of type II diabetes.
So that's been my focus.
I treat a lot of type II diabetics
and I'm all about weight loss,
getting people off their medications,
reversing their type II diabetes.
And that was my initial interest in it.
But there's so many different reasons
that fasting can be
beneficial for somebody
that we're seeing it in
elite athletes, for example,
we're seeing it in
people doing martial arts
and ultimate fighting sort of thing.
We see all these people
are talking about training
in the fasted state.
So it's really,
we talk about cancer,
we see about Alzheimer's disease,
so all these different
areas that can benefit
but are really people
starting to really think
about why they're so beneficial.
From a medical standpoint,
so when I started doing
this about five years ago
boy everybody thought I was crazy,
like 100% of people thought I was crazy
except for you maybe.
But from a medical
standpoint, it's changed
because now you're seeing it discussed,
on The Today Show,
it's been discussed on The Doctors,
you see it discussed on different shows.
So it's actually getting out.
Now there's still a lot
of skepticism about it
but at least people are talking about it.
For example, I'm coming down to San Diego
for the spring conference
which is the Obesity Medicine Association
which is the largest association
of obesity specialists
and I'm doing a key note.
So it's like, okay,
well we went from boy
this guy's a real quack
to hey, what can we
actually learn about fasting
that may give us an option?
And that's sort of the way
I had always positioned it
is like nobody has to do it
but it's an option for you.
Don't eliminate your options
because it may work very well for people.
In some people, it's a great option.
In some people, it's
not a very good option
but the bottom line is that
you need to keep your options open
so why not do it?
There's been a very large change.
So even amongst the medical community
which is one that I obviously
spend a lot of time in,
I speak at medical conferences
and I speak at local talks to doctors
and you see that there's
this real growing acceptance
that hey, we should
really think about this
because it makes a lot of sense.
And then from your standpoint,
you see this huge interest,
this huge wave of interest.
You see intermittent fasting
on all kinds of mass media, social media,
the interest is really
getting to fever pitch,
it's great.
- Yeah, I think part of it
is one, people are trying
it and seeing good results.
But two, I think that published data
is becoming more and more compelling.
Like Mark Mattson at the NIH
is publishing good work,
there's a bunch of researchers
in the broad fasting
ketogenic diet ketosis space
that are I think doing
good work on the RCT side
just publishing good, good work.
And it seems interesting,
I think there's other
I would say companies
or groups around ketogenic diets
like Virta Health publishing
interesting results
about the ketogenic diet,
reversing a lot of the end
points of type II diabetes.
So I think it's one,
a perfect storm of data out
of peer reviewed journals.
Two, clinicians like yourself
seeing good results with patients
and then I think the end
persons themselves are saying,
hey I actually am off my insulin meds,
I'm off my diabetes meds,
I feel way better.
I've never been this healthy.
Something's working.
- Yeah, absolutely.
I think the thing is that ketogenic diets
and intermittent fasting
are sort of related approaches
because in the end what
they're trying to do
is really lower insulin.
Sort of the acknowledgement
that too much insulin
is really the underlying cause of obesity
and type II diabetes.
They're both diseases of hyperinsulinemia,
which is a word that means
too much insulin in the blood.
So if hyperinsulinemia
is the cause of all this,
who needs to say
that these are diseases
of insulin resistance
but that doesn't help you
because then it's like,
okay but then what causes
insulin resistance?
You could say meat causes it.
Then you should eat less meat.
That didn't really work.
But if you understand that
the cause of these diseases
is hyperinsulinemia
then it leads you to say
okay well if you have too much insulin,
how are you gonna lower insulin?
Because a lot of drugs are
not gonna do that for you
and one way to do it
is cut the carbs to
sort of a very low level
which is a ketogenic diet.
Another way to do it
is intermittent fasting
because again, if you don't eat anything,
your insulin levels are going to drop.
And that's sort of what I talk about,
I have a book coming out actually,
another book called The Diabetes Code
which is sort of the follow
on to The Obesity Code
which explains sort of
what type II diabetes is
and how that lowering
insulin is really the key
to treating the diabetes
rather than taking a bunch of medications
that are just gonna make things worse.
And so the ketogenic diet and fasting
are sort of related in that way
and you see that where one does well,
the other also does well.
Virta Health is very interesting
because they came out with
that data in type II diabetes
showing that a ketogenic diet
could do very well for type II diabetes.
But interestingly, they
don't endorse fasting at all.
They actually hate the stuff.
- Yeah, let's tease into that.
I think that is the,
I think what you said
aligns with my understanding
of the space and research in the space,
that there are different forms
of lowering or approaching
the hyperinsulinemia problem.
Can you talk about the pros and cons
and also your clinical experience
with IF and a low carb or ketogenic diet?
How do you actually see this in practice
versus being more on the dogmatic side
of one versus the other?
I think what you just said,
it sounds like they're more hand in hand,
both tools to be utilized.
Do you think there's a conflict there?
Do you use them together?
What have you seen in your practice?
- I use them together
and this is the way we approach it
is that it's a toolbox.
So that if one person
really hates fasting,
then it's like okay well then don't do it
because you hate it and
you're never gonna do it.
So therefore use more on the diet side
but then you gotta be a little
bit stricter on the diet,
maybe go more ketogenic
which is less than 20 grams of carbs
as opposed to just low carb
which is maybe 50 even 100
grams of carbohydrates.
Because if you combine a low
carb approach with fasting,
then you sort of get the same idea.
If you don't like the fasting,
then you go to ketogenic diets.
And that's sort of the clinical approach.
Because everybody's different.
So we work with people individually.
We have a program
called the Intensive
Dietary Management Program.
So you can get counseling
or you can just join the membership
and you get updates regularly.
And the point is that there
isn't the one size fits all.
It's not like everybody
should be doing the same thing
because we're all individuals.
So maybe you need this
and maybe you need that
but there's always gonna be workarounds
that we could get you
to the place that you want to go.
And if you can't do the fasting,
maybe it's because you don't
have the proper support,
maybe you don't have something
that helps you through
with the hunger and all that sort of stuff
and that's what we're working
on developing as well,
getting something to help people with it
because in medicine the
thing is that it's strange
because we know that
weight loss is difficult
and if you don't eat,
you're gonna lose weight.
Well there's not much brain power
involved in understanding that.
So if you don't eat, you'll lose weight.
Then well that's great,
that's one way of losing weight.
That's not particularly unhealthy for you.
The push back that we always get
is that well nobody's ever
gonna be able to do it.
It's like, one that's
not true because we've
done it with thousands of people.
And you have in your group,
you said 20,000 people.
So there you go, 20,000 people
but you also know that
billions and billions
of people around the world
do it as part of their religion.
So if you do Ramadan,
if you do fasting during lent,
if you do--
- Yom Kippur.
- Exactly, there's so many
different fasting regimens,
Buddhism, Hinduism, all this stuff.
So literally billions of
people around the world do it.
But yet the push back is always,
well you'll never do it.
But in medicine,
if we say something's really hard
but you need to do it,
you don't say, ah well, forget about it.
Like for
chemotherapy for cancer.
- Chemotherapy sucks.
- Exactly, it's like, yeah it sucks
so you're just gonna die, okay,
that's no way to be a doctor.
It's like okay here's something hard
but you need to do it
so we're gonna help you.
We're gonna create these medicines
that are gonna help with the pain.
We're gonna create these
nausea medications.
We're gonna put you in a hospital
if you need to to get
through the chemotherapy,
that's what we do.
We say, how can we help?
Yet with fasting, we say,
well, yeah fasting will take
away your type II diabetes
but you'll never do it
so forget it, just take your insulin.
What are you talking about?
That's no way to be a doctor.
It's hard so let me help you.
How can we help you?
Can we create support groups
like what you've done
with your WeFast group?
Can we create tea and stuff
that may help with the fasting?
Can we do other things
like give people
information, give them books
so that they understand
what they're getting into,
what to expect when
fasting, sort of thing?
We have this book that's
been on the bestseller list
for like 50 years,
What to Expect When Expecting
because again, we know pregnancy is hard
so let's tell you what's coming up
so that you can prepare for it.
We don't have a what
to expect when fasting
which is the reason I
had to write that book
The Complete Guide to Fasting.
- Yeah, no let's talk
about those three aspects.
Let's talk about The
Complete Guide to Fasting
and then the new book.
I'm actually curious to hear,
I think to me The Obesity Code,
one of the core arguments
was that the calories
in, calories out argument
in terms of weight management was outdated
and we should think about
obesity as a hormone
or insulin problem.
So curious to see how Diabetes
Code expands upon that.
Too, you mentioned teas
or other interventions
to assist with fasting.
I know you recently announced
a partnership with Pique Tea
so let's talk about that second.
And then third,
I'm actually curious
to just zoom out
and folks that are just
getting into fasting
or just learning about it,
we talked about individual
personalized programs
but if you could just sort of summarize,
again, this is to say
that basically you said
everyone's individualized
but I'm gonna just say,
if you were to say, hey,
what is a protocol typically look like?
Can we first start with a typical protocol
and then go into the
book and other topics?
- Yeah.
So the protocols,
we use a couple of
different core protocols.
So for older people obviously,
we're gonna go more
towards a shorter fast.
So you might do something
like time restricted eating,
so a 16:8 sort of a protocol.
- [Geoff] Daily 16:8, yeah.
- Yeah this is for,
we're talking like 75, 80 year olds.
We're not talking a little
older like 45 like me.
You just got to be a bit more careful.
These people are a bit more frail.
We treat very serious disease
and we treat a lot of older people
'cause that's my core sort of
population group that I see.
So for older people,
yeah, 70 years old, above,
we're gonna be a lot
more cautious for you.
If you're on a lot of medications,
again, we're gonna be a
lot more cautious for you
and then we're gonna make sure
that you have a physician
that is gonna adjust your
medications ahead of time
so that you're not getting into problems.
If you're not on medications,
then you don't have to be
quite as careful about that.
As you get up,
the next step would be a 24 hour protocol
which is also sometimes
called one meal a day.
So if you go from breakfast to breakfast
or lunch to lunch or dinner to dinner,
that's about 24 hours
where you're not eating.
And that's a pretty good regimen.
Again, not particularly severe,
but enough to get people into it
and also create some good weight loss
which can be sustained fairly easily.
So it's especially good,
and this is what I do a lot
with myself is a 24 hour fast
because honestly, it slides
right into your working day.
So I'm 44 turning 45, I have kids.
So it's really easy for me
to skip breakfast and lunch
because nobody knows
if you miss breakfast,
a lot of people just drink coffee anyway
and half of the time
nobody knows if you've missed lunch either
and I work right through.
So that gives me a lot of extra time.
And I'll say that I
typically do more fasting
when I'm really busy
because then I gain time.
So today I'm fasting
because I had to take some
time and do this podcast.
And it's great
because now I can fit it in,
it's no big deal for me,
it doesn't really matter to me
because I know that my body
will provide the energy that it needs.
But then I get an extra hour
and I can fit in all this extra stuff.
You multiply that by weeks and years
and it's like, oh you get
all this extra stuff done.
It's like, yeah because
I'm not spending all day
figuring out where to eat.
So the 24 hour schedule
fits in very nicely into the working day.
And then that leaves you your evening
to have dinner with your family
and to go out to dinner with your friends.
It doesn't disrupt you in any big way
and your not doing it every single day,
I'm not doing it every single day
but three times a week, maybe twice a week
depending on what your goals are
and that's one of our core
messages in the IDM program
is that you gotta realize
that the fasting is not particularly fun,
some people like it,
but if your goal is to lose weight,
then change your regimen to do that.
If it's type II diabetes,
which is a more severe condition
that can have health consequences,
then you gotta be a bit more severe.
I remember I was doing it
fairly religiously for a little while
and then I realized
I'm doing it not for any
particularly good reason,
as in my weight was around
where I've always been,
my waist size was fairly ideal,
I don't have type II diabetes and stuff.
So I was doing it just
for the heck of doing it
because I was talking about it.
So then I was like,
I don't really need to do it that often.
And now it's more of a
time management tool for me
than anything else.
But that's my goal now.
So if my goal is to be
able to write my books
and to do the podcasts and
do the blogs and stuff,
that's as good a reason as any.
Then I'm gonna do more of that.
But I know where my goal is,
it's not simply just a matter of this.
And some people have
these different goals.
So autophagy,
which I don't know if
we talked about before,
but their goal is autophagy.
So yeah, you're gonna do it different.
You're gonna get more into
the slightly longer fast
and you're gonna do a water only fast.
That bone broth is,
you're not gonna do it.
You gotta stick to the water only.
So if your goal is for autophagy
and the benefits could be huge
but they're mostly theoretical right now,
then keep that in mind
when you're choosing your regimen.
And then as we go into type II diabetes,
we typically go into the longer ones
and the more medically supervised ones.
So 36 hours is sort of a standard regimen
three times a week.
If they're on medications,
particularly insulin,
we have to adjust that before they go on.
And then for severe diabetes,
and this is where you
have to be very careful,
is we start going into
extended fasts where,
and the reason we do this
is that we see a lot of people
with severe diabetes
and are on the verge of
developing end organ damage,
that is eye damage, kidney damage,
nerve damage and so on.
If you don't get that
controlled right away,
once they develop it,
you can't reverse it.
It's like the oil in your car.
If you never change the oil in your car
and then it breaks down,
then you say, okay, now I'm
gonna change the oil in my car.
- Too late.
- It doesn't work.
Same thing, if you've
shot your kidneys out,
it's too late.
I can get your diabetes reversed,
but I can't get--
- Your kidney's gone.
Your leg is chopped off.
- Exactly.
So for those people we'll
go into longer fasts.
But again, we know why we're doing it,
we've got a goal in mind
to reverse our diabetes very quickly
so that they will have
the best chance possible
of reversing their disease.
And type II diabetes is really the sort of
one of the areas that
I'm really focused on
because it causes so much disease.
That is that it's not
simply a weight thing.
It's dialysis, it's blindness,
it's amputations, it's heart attacks,
it's strokes, it's cancer.
It's a lot of human suffering
all related to diabetes
and as a physician,
that's sort of my goal area.
But I acknowledge that
there's tons of other areas.
So people come to me
for cancer, for example,
I'll switch the regimen.
There are people who want to do training
like elite athletes,
and I'll adjust the regimen based on that.
- Yeah and are there end points
beyond just the time?
Are you measuring glucose, ketones?
Are you doing blood panels for
lipids, inflammation markers?
- We often check the baseline
blood test for everybody
and that's more of a cover
your ass sort of move
because you don't want
to get blamed afterwards.
So I will check a fairly
detailed panel on everybody
although I rarely find any problems.
The one problem I do find
sometimes in type II diabetes
is a low vitamin B12 level
because Metformin
which is a very common medication,
can actually cause B12 deficiency.
So the last thing I want to do
is find out after they've been fasting
that their B12 is low
and somebody say, hey, that's
because they're not eating.
I'm like, no, I pick 'em up all the time.
So I pick 'em up way before
and I always check the iron, for example,
because I don't want somebody
to come back to me and say,
oh, they've been fasting
and now they're iron deficient
because I've picked that iron
deficiency up at the beginning
and then everything kind of--
- How often are you
doing these checkpoints?
Before and after program
or are you doing weekly or daily checks?
- Again, it depends on the situation.
- So I guess if you're
more serious, then more--
- Yeah, exactly.
- [Geoff] Makes sense.
- So for type II diabetes, for example,
there's a fairly standard
marker called the A1C
which is a three month average.
So I'll often do blood
work every three months
to check up on that.
If it's just weight loss and not diabetes,
there's no reason to do it
more than one or twice a year
assuming that everything is going well.
If it's not going well,
of course then you have to adjust
and kind of go from there.
- And I think that's an interesting segway
into just adjustments, right.
So I think, a lot of people in our groups,
always ask, oh should I drink,
one of the recommendations
is bone broth, MCT oils,
coconut oils, green tea, coffee?
What are your thoughts?
I think your point around bone broth
perhaps not being ideal
for triggering autophagy
because there's amino acids
and amino acid triggers mTOR
which is what is hypothesized
to control or mediates autophagy,
you probably don't want bone broth
for an autophagy crutch.
- Yeah, exactly.
But for diabetes, it'd
be perfectly acceptable
because that little bit of amino acid
is not gonna do anything to you.
It's gonna have so little effect.
And same for, a lot of people
ask about Bulletproof Coffee
and MCT oils.
So you've got calories
but you've got very little insulin effect.
So again, if your point is to
try and loser insulin effect
for weight loss, for diabetes,
hey that's great,
then you are going to be able
to take the Bulletproof Coffee or MCT oil
and still get the lowering
of insulin that you want.
So keeping your goals in mind,
you'd say, okay, well
that'd be perfectly fine
for type II diabetes, bone broth,
and typically we'll use bone broth
for more longer fasts, 36 hours plus.
Something like the Bulletproof coffee
is sort of acceptable
from an insulin standpoint
but again, it's sort of understanding
what your goal is.
Green tea is a very interesting substance
and I've been talking
more about that lately.
So just to get into that topic,
it's one of the things
that has traditionally,
if you look at traditional
Chinese medicine,
it's actually one of the substances
that has been always purported
helpful for weight loss
and if you look at the studies,
what's interesting is a couple of things.
One is that green tea
when you give it in a study
typically has much higher
levels of the catechins.
The catechins are the
antioxidants and the flavonols,
the compound that's
thought to be responsible
for the benefits.
But there are much higher doses.
There are like 10 cups a day sort of level
which most people don't get to.
But that's where the studies are at.
And it shows that you can lose
about an extra kilogram
of weight with that.
What the catechins do
is they block an enzyme called COMT.
And COMT is responsible
for breaking down noradrenaline.
So if you block the COMT,
noradrenaline goes up.
So what happens is that
you get this activation
of the sympathetic nervous system
and your energy expenditure
can go up by about four percent.
So not a huge increase but significant.
So essentially when you're losing weight,
a lot of the problems come
when your metabolic rate is going down.
So if you can take the green tea catechins
and increase your
metabolic rate that's huge.
The other thing that
they showed in this study
from just 2016, a
randomized controlled trial
is that when you compare it to placebo,
you get a reduction in ghrelin.
So ghrelin is the hunger hormone.
And if you lower ghrelin,
you have less hunger
which is exactly what people tell us.
The green tea catechins, yeah absolutely
and it's very interesting.
So it's like that's great
because that's the main
problem with weight loss
is that you have too much hunger
and your metabolic rate is slowing.
That's why people fail with weight loss.
Now you have an all natural substance
that people have been using
for thousands of years
that increases your metabolic rate
and lowers your hunger.
And that's what people
tell us all the time,
they drink green tea
and then their hunger goes away.
And it's like, that's fantastic.
But you have to get,
to be up on the studies,
oh the other interesting thing
is that Asians have different--
- I was gonna ask, caffeine's also known
to be an appetite suppressant.
So were they controlling for that
or is was it an additive effect?
- Yeah, it's an additive effect.
In fact, when you compare catechins
and caffeine or caffeine alone
you get better effect with
the catechins plus caffeine.
So it seems like that they
actually have a better effect.
So what caffeine does,
it blocks this other enzyme
called phosphodiesterase
which also raises the noradrenaline.
So they actually work
through different pathways.
And of course, normal green tea
has both catechins and caffeine.
You can decaffeinate
but I don't recommend it
because if you want the benefit,
you gotta have both of them
to get twice the benefit.
So that's just saying, it's interesting
because in some of the studies
they show that Asians actually
get a better weight loss
effect than Caucasians because,
so you get an average weight
loss of 1.5 kilos for Asians
versus .8 kilos for Caucasians.
And the reason is that Asians
have a higher incidence of
this high activity COMT.
So that's the enzyme that's
being blocked by green tea.
So if you're Asian
and you have a lot of
activity of the COMT,
blocking it is gonna
give you a better effect.
So it's like, that's really fascinating.
But nevertheless, .8 kilos
is still a pretty good effect
even for Caucasians.
But it may even be better
for Asians which is huge
because you look at the obesity
epidemic in China and stuff,
it's massive because the
numbers are huge over there.
But in any case,
it's like, wow that's fascinating.
But the problem was,
so I recommend this for people
but then the problem is
that the dose of catechins
you have to have is very high.
You have to have up to 10 cups a day
which isn't feasible for most people
and that's where we worked with Pique Tea.
So what's interesting about Pique Tea,
first their tea is really
great, I love the stuff.
What they do is different.
It's an organic green tea
and they get it from a single plantation
but they do this cold brew crystallization
where they actually steep it.
You could probably do it yourself,
you take green tea and you put water.
So like cold brew coffee,
you could make it yourself,
you put it overnight in the fridge
and you let it sit for eight hours
and then because you're
extracting the catechins
at low temperature
you get more of it out.
So you get two, three times the amount
of these catechins.
- But the steeping process
breaks down some of these molecules.
But if you're cold brewing it--
- Yeah exactly.
The hot brew will not get as much
because you don't have the
time and contact with it.
So just like cold brew coffee,
you go to Starbucks,
you pay twice the price for this cold brew
because it's actually hard to make.
This is the same thing
but what they've done is they cold brew it
and then they dehydrate it
so it's basically crystals
of concentrated tea.
That's all it is, it's a whole food.
It's not like what they do in the studies
which is kind of industrially
extract the catechins
and then add it to the green tea.
This is sort of a
concentrated cold brew tea,
that's all it is.
But it's in a single serve packet
and then you mix it up and you drink it.
It's terrific.
It's a little bit more, obviously
than cold brew coffee,
it's a little bit more
but if you want to get that benefit.
So then what we did
is we've created a blend
for fasting specifically.
So we've made two flavors,
one is with matcha
which gives it a bit more body
and helps with the appetite
suppressant, the hunger
and then we did this ginger citrus
because some people have
this gurgling stomach
and issues with that
and we found that ginger and also citrus
is helpful for that.
And personally I drink green tea plain
so I don't like the flavor myself
but those are supposed to help,
that's what a lot of our patients tell us.
So that's what we've done
and created a line specifically for tea
which is not something that's
really been readily available
because we have people to
help with all kinds of stuff
but then when you're fasting it's like,
oh yeah, you're out of luck,
just do it, man, just man up.
It's like, okay, you don't
do that for anybody else.
We create stuff to help them.
So because nothing was available,
we created this.
Bulletproof Coffee is a similar
idea but it's different.
That people use as a fasting aid as well.
They don't always say that
but that's essentially what they're doing.
- It's basically what they're doing
but I think the thing
I think kind of funny
with Bulletproof Coffee
is that you're eating
like 500 calories of fat.
So it's just like you're
getting a lot of calories.
I think the thing is
you see some people on a ketogenic diet
at a certain point, it's still,
you're eating a lot of calories
and it's hard to lose weight
if you're eating 3,000 calories of butter.
So I like the tea
'cause again it's very acaloric
if there's any calories,
probably close to nominal
and it sounds like there's
a 3, 4X amount of catechins.
So instead of having to drink 10 cups,
you can drink two cups.
- Yeah, two, three cups and you're good
and it's still a whole food,
it's really just cold brewed tea.
It may help you with the fasting,
then you get all the benefits
and it makes it a little
bit easier for you.
And that's the whole point
is to really try to make something
that will help people.
Obviously if it doesn't help you,
then don't take it,
right, there's no point.
But if it helps you,
then hey, you're gonna
get a lot of benefit
from the fasting.
And if the tea helps you fasting,
hey great, that's terrific.
- So p-i-q-u-e, p-i-q-u-e tea.
So folks that are interested.
I've had it before.
I remember seeing some of their product
I think out of San Francisco.
So yeah, it's good tea.
Give it a spin for our
listeners out there.
I think with the interest
of adjuncts to fasting,
I think one thing that
we saw that's interesting
from a ketone ester
perspective, one of our products
was a paper published
actually near your backyard,
UBC, University of British Colombia
showing that acute use of ketone ester
actually reduces glycemic response.
So what that means is that a
ketone ester versus placebo
before a sugar test, an
oral glucose tolerance test
which is a standard test
that tests for insulin
resistance or sensitivity
reduced the glycemic response.
I'm curious to get your thoughts on that
if you've had a chance
to review the paper.
- Yeah, absolutely.
- And your thoughts
on exogenous ketones broadly?
- I think exogenous
ketones have a role to play
and this kind of goes along
with the fasting aides and sort of thing
because it's not quite
a whole food obviously
but again, it's something
that may help along the way.
So there's a couple of things.
One is that the properties of ketones
have not been well
appreciated for a long time.
I don't think anybody
really looks at that ever.
But lately with this interest
in the ketogenic diet,
you're getting these
really, really interesting
things popping up
like oh hey, you can
treat seizures with it,
oh hey, you can enhance
athletic performance with it.
Oh hey, if you get fat adapted,
hey, endurance athletics may
be particularly beneficial
if you're running your
body off of ketones.
And the point is that if
you take a ketone supplement
you can get your ketone levels
much higher much faster.
So the fastest natural
way to do it is fasting
but if you take a ketone ester,
you're gonna get way
higher right away almost.
So is there some benefit to that?
And increasingly a lot
of evidence says yes,
there could be some
potential benefits to it
because some cells
perhaps run a lot better.
And of course the brain
is one of these areas
that has been studied a lot
and I think a lot of doctors are sort of,
they stick to the prescribed
script sort of thing
and it's very interesting
because the ketogenic diet
was originally described
a hundred years ago
as a treatment for seizures.
And then it got lost
with the development of medications.
And it took, not a doctor
but a film producer,
this is the story of
the Charlie Foundation.
So the son of a famous Hollywood producer
had intractable seizures,
nothing worked, none of the meds worked,
he had all the best doctors
and it took him researching the archives
to find that this ketogenic
diet would reduce seizures.
So he tried it on his son and boom,
all his seizures went away.
And it's like okay, that's a great story.
Why were the doctors
not the ones to do this?
Because they knew about it 100 years ago
and then they totally forgot about it.
And it's like, it takes
a Hollywood producer
to tell you how to do your job?
Are you kidding me?
And I always think that
it's very instructive
because a lot of these things
get met with skepticism
by the mainstream medicine professionals
but when it works, it works.
Then your job is to
understand why it works.
And ketones falls into that range
where maybe there's some
benefits to doing it
but if it works,
don't just say, oh that's quackery
because that's what everybody says, oh,
I mean I got my fair share of that,
oh fasting, that's just quackery.
Now it's like, oh, yeah,
of course it works.
Of course it works,
you're not eating so your
blood sugars will go down.
It's like that's not what
you said four years ago
or five years ago.
You said, that'll never
work, you're a quack.
I'm like, but if you don't
eat, you'll lose weight.
They're like, no you won't.
I'm like, how are you
not gonna lose weight?
But this is the same thing with ketones.
So in that study what you see
is that there's a benefit to the ketones
in terms of reducing the blood glucose
and of course, this is one of the areas
that I'm very passionate about
which is type II diabetes
and hey, is there a benefit there?
So it's very preliminary obviously
but maybe you can use it
as an adjunct in some way.
Maybe you can use it in
conjunction with a ketogenic diet
or conjunction with fasting
or some of these dietary mechanisms
or even with your regular medications
and maybe you can lower the blood glucose
and is there a benefit?
So maybe the answer is yes.
We don't know.
All we can say is that
it's worthwhile studying.
The other thing that I
think is very interesting
about exogenous ketones in
type II diabetics anyway
is that you can measure this
ketone to glucose index.
So as your blood glucose
falls, your ketones should rise
because your body is
essentially switching over
from burning glucose to burning
ketones and burning fat.
Well, this doesn't always
happen in type II diabetics.
So if your glucose falls,
your ketones don't rise.
- Then you feel like shit.
- Yeah exactly.
So you got no glucose, you got no ketones,
you're just feeling like crap.
Now if you stick it out long enough,
your body will eventually produce ketones
because it's not gonna die.
But in the meantime,
it's not as easy as it could be.
And we've studied this.
We know that this glucose
ketone index exists
and that there are different
slopes for different people.
So normal people glucose down, ketones up.
type II diabetics, a lot of them,
glucose down, ketones not up
so what do you do?
Well that's where exogenous
ketones could have a benefit.
Maybe if you define the
proper place to use it
you could say, okay well
we'll give 'em ketones
until they get into that
ketonic state themselves
and then they're gonna
derive all the benefits.
- Endogenously produce it.
- Exactly 'cause they can't
endogenously produce it.
It's great if you do endogenous ketones,
that's the whole point,
but what if you can't?
Then exogenous ketones
is a great solution.
So maybe, and again, more
research is gonna have to be done
to sort of define the best
solution to this thing
but here's something that
would be very, very interesting
to look at and potentially consider.
And you could definitely mix it up.
So if you're trying to get
into that ketonic state
but you're falling into
this low energy state
where you have no glucose, no ketones,
you can bridge it with exogenous ketones
until that fasting kind of kicks in
and you produce endogenous ketones.
It's like, hey that'd be a great solution.
Then you can start getting better
from the diabetes and stuff.
So yeah, so many possibilities here
and I think that that paper
was a great first step
saying hey--
- No I agree, I agree.
We gotta send you a couple cases
so you can start experimenting
and if there's a way to
publish some of the results,
I think that's how progress is done.
No, I appreciate your perspective there
as someone who's looked at it clinically
across all types of interventions.
So the last topic I want to
talk about was Diabetes Code.
So Obesity Code, awesome book.
It was one of the key books
that I had read to get really
ramped up into this space.
What are the new grounds
that you're planning to cover?
So that book comes out in April, right,
so in about a month?
- In April yes, in about a month.
So the Diabetes Code
is very specific towards type II diabetes
and it's important for a lot of people
because if you look at the
population of the United States,
the adult population,
it's about 14 to 15% type II diabetes
and about 38% prediabetic.
So almost actually a little bit over 50%
prediabetic or diabetic.
So it actually affects
a huge number of people.
- A hundred million plus people.
It's one of these numbers
that people don't understand.
- It's crazy.
And one of the things,
the main thing that we talk about
is that this is a reversible disease.
So everybody tries to convince you
that it's a chronic and
progressive disease,
that you've got it,
you're gonna have it for
the rest of your life.
But it's actually not true.
You can actually reverse it
and we see that with studies
of say bariatric surgery
where they do weight loss surgery.
When you lose the weight,
the diabetes just goes away
and what I do in the book
is really present a paradigm of diabetes,
of thinking about type II diabetes.
And the easy way to think
about type II diabetes
is think of your body as a sugar bowl.
Your body just has too much sugar,
that's the whole disease.
If you have too much
sugar, your bowl is full
and then when you eat,
all that sugar spills out into the blood.
So insulin
which is sort of a standard
medication for type II diabetes
does not get rid of that sugar.
What it does is it takes the
sugar that's in the blood
and rams it back into your body.
It's like, oh okay,
well your body takes it
because it's forced too
but then it just keeps
getting more and more stuffed with sugar.
So then eventually that
insulin that you're using
is not enough to cram the sugar
into the body anymore.
- And you need more and more
insulin.
- That's what you do.
So what we've done
is give more and more insulin.
And then because the medical
treatment doesn't work
because you never treated
the underlying cause,
we say it's chronic and progressive.
And why do doctors say it's
chronic and progressive?
It's actually because doctors
simply cannot admit to themselves
that their treatment is
so spectacularly wrong.
Because think about it this way,
you're an endocrinologist,
you've spent 20 years in the field
treating type II diabetes
and under your watch,
98% of type II diabetics
have gotten worse.
You know they're getting worse
because you're increasing the medication.
So you can either say one,
this is a reversible disease,
therefore, so if you
put two facts together,
one it's a reversible disease,
we know it for a fact
'cause when people lose
weight, the diabetes goes away.
Two, almost all my
patients are getting worse.
The only conclusion you
can draw from that fact
is that you're a bad doctor.
You don't know what the hell you're doing.
Because it's reversible
but your patients are getting worse.
You're not doing a good job.
As a doctor, you can't face that.
You can't face that you have no idea
what the hell you're doing.
So then therefore you have to change
the fact that it's not reversible.
It's chronic and progressive
and I'm doing the best that I can.
It's like aging,
you might want to get young
but there's no way, you always get older.
Type II diabetes, you
say it's the same thing
but it's not true
and that's the problem is it's not true
and it's a reversible disease
and it comes down to this.
What we did was we took a disease
that's essentially a dietary disease
and we gave a lot of drugs
and then we wonder why isn't
your diabetes getting better?
Because we're giving you drugs
to treat the blood glucose
but here's the thing,
we're giving all these,
we're so focused on
treating the blood glucose
that we forgot to treat the diabetes.
You give insulin, are
they gonna lose weight?
No, the answer is they're
gonna gain weight.
So how is that gonna make
their diabetes better?
It's not, it's gonna make it worse.
- It's a band-aid.
- It's a band-aid
because you've put a
band-aid over a bullet hole.
Then you can't see it
and you pretend that you're better.
So these drugs are essentially
placebos for doctors.
They make the doctor
feel good about himself
but they don't do
anything for the patients
and that's the problem.
But it's such a simple thing.
If it's a dietary problem,
you gotta use your diet to fix it.
And here we have a solution,
intermittent fasting or extended fasting,
where it's completely free,
it's available to everybody like tomorrow
and anybody in the world
can do it at any time.
And you're gonna save money,
you're gonna make your diabetes better
and think about it,
if you don't eat, your
blood sugars will drop.
Well hey, if your blood sugars drop
you don't need that insulin anymore.
But what you're doing, of course,
if you think about that sugar bowl
is you're letting your body
burn down all that
sugar in the sugar bowl.
Now when the sugar comes in,
it just doesn't spill out anymore.
But it's 100% natural solution.
Is it fun?
No it's not fun.
We beg people to do it,
we club them over the head,
we threaten them, we yell at them.
We do what it needs to do.
But in the end what we're doing
is we're trying to take advantage
of the body's own ability to heal itself
instead of giving pills.
And that's where it's really powerful
and that's where we created this Intensive
Dietary Management program,
the website is idmprogram.com
where you can get somebody to
help you with your fasting.
We put them in group situations
where you can get support.
We do have this membership site
which you can join for a lower monthly fee
which is not personalized
but you can get things like group fast
which is just like what
you do with the WeFast
which is where you have somebody
and we'll say, okay, everybody
we're gonna fast these days,
who's in?
And we'll have tips on fasting
and recipes for when your not fasting
and all this kind of stuff.
But at the same time,
it's all dietary stuff.
We're not trying to
give people medications.
We're trying to take
that medications away.
So here we're like
we can save people all this money.
Even if you don't care about your health,
if you don't have to buy that insulin,
you're gonna save a lot of money.
And to insurance companies,
hey, your patients are gonna get better
and you're not gonna have to
spend all that money on health.
Everybody wins.
- Except for the insulin producers.
- Yeah, we won't worry about them.
- No, I agree 100% with you.
I think just seeing the stories in WeFast,
people literally getting off of insulin
through fasting and diet,
Dr. Manny Lamb that we work closely with
and I know works with you as well,
he's taking people through
fasting and diet protocols
and taking people off there
Metformin and insulin.
It's just like okay,
something is working here
and the way I think about it
is like you talk about it being hard.
Well, exercise is hard too.
If you've never worked
out in your life, it sucks
but we all know it's helpful
for us to do some workouts.
I think the same thing
will change with culture and with fasting.
The first time you fast is gonna suck
'cause it's like working
out your liver and whatever,
it's working out your body
to go into a fasted state.
But you get used to it
and it's healthy long term.
- It's what you need to do to get better
and that's what I always say.
I get this push back a lot
from people that are like,
yeah, we understand why it's good
but people will never do it.
I'm like, I'm a doctor,
my job is not to tell you
what you can and cannot do.
My job is to tell you what
you need to do to get healthy
and if fasting is what
you need to get healthy
then I will do whatever I
can to support you through it
and we'll create the fasting tea
and we'll create the
IDM Program to help you
and we'll create these
support groups like WeFast,
we'll create these ketones
that maybe help you get
through the tough areas.
But that's the point
is like we're helping you.
We're on the same team here.
We're not at cross purposes.
We'll help you do what we can.
We'll do what we can
and you do what you can
and maybe together we can get you healthy.
I'm' not gonna tell you you can't fast
because I don't think
you have the willpower.
That's such a defeatist
attitude, it's terrible
and you see it all the time.
And again, it's just like your group.
It's like when you tell
people that it's great,
hey, all of a sudden you get 20,000 people
when you start showing it online,
I was talking to Samaya yesterday
and it's like all of a sudden
you're on the Today Show
and people are like, wow,
this is really interesting.
It's like, well these are not new ideas.
These are ideas that have come
sort of from the mist of time.
People have been doing this
for thousands of years.
The three most influential people
in the history of the world,
the prophet Muhammad,
Jesus Christ and Buddha
all told their parishioners to fast.
Not because they wanted to kill them
because they knew
that there was something
intrinsically healthy
about once in awhile letting your body
clean itself out of all this extra junk
that's accumulating.
And that goes for not just the glucose
but also the excess
protein that's accumulating
and that's what autophagy is.
You're breaking down these
subcellular components,
this old junky protein
and trying to replace it with
something newer and better.
Can it prevent cancer?
Potentially.
You know that the World
Health Organization
now labels 40% of cancers
as obesity related.
It's like here we pretend that
cancer is a genetic disease.
And it's like, it can't be genetic
because obesity accounts
for 40% of the cancers.
So breast cancer, for example,
is very highly related to obesity.
So therefore it's not genetic,
it's related to the obesity.
- Like the Warburg Theory of cancer.
- Yeah, the Warburg Theory.
There's so much interesting
things about this whole thing
and we think about cancer in this way
but say you turn down
and this gets into the nutrient sensors,
which is another sort of
fascinating topic because--
- mTOR, all these pathways.
- mTOR, AMPK and insulin.
So your body actually is very,
very interesting in knowing
if you have access to food.
Because if you don't have access to food,
your body does not want to grow.
So nutrient sensors and growth pathways
are very, very tightly linked.
And you see this in the ovary as well
for polycystic ovary
syndrome, for example,
you can treat it very
easily by lowering insulin.
But the ovary has insulin receptors.
Why?
Because the ovary wants to know
that there is lots of nutrients available
before it ovulates,
produces an egg that can potentially
become a fetus and a baby.
You do not want to be in
the middle of a famine
and producing eggs that can become a baby.
You're gonna kill the mother
which is gonna kill the baby
because you have to divert resources
into growing this fetus.
So the ovary is very interested
in knowing if there's available nutrients.
So one of the things that the body has
is several nutrient sensors.
So there's insulin,
so when you eat, insulin goes up,
so that's a nutrient sensor.
mTOR is the one for protein
and there's one called AMPK
which is sort of this
fuel gauge of the body.
So it's a reverse fuel gauge.
So when it's high, it
means your energy stores,
cellular energy stores are low.
So it's a fuel gauge but it's reversed.
If your AMPK is low, it means
your energy stores are high
and this is why a lot
of people take Metformin
because it activates AMPK.
And so it tells your body
that it's in a low energy state
which is actually helpful for you
which actually may help prevent cancer.
So there's a few studies that say
well Metformin can help
protect against cancer.
And it's like, why?
Because it lowers AMPK.
And it's a very interesting sort of idea
because again, if you turn down,
if the body is not sensing any nutrients,
it is going to turn
down the growth pathways
and the things that is growing the fastest
are those cancer cells
but also for things like
polycystic kidney disease.
I had this lady once who has,
very interesting had hemangioma
and what those are,
hemangiomas are these little
benign tumors of the kidney.
Anywhere, they're blood vessels
and they bleed a lot.
So she actually had to
get one whole kidney
sort of resected because
it was bleeding so much
she would've bled out.
And they had to embolize
two other hemangiomas
which just means they clot it off
and actually kill it off.
- Like burning it.
- Yeah, it's like burning it.
So anyway, a few years ago,
she decided
that she's gonna do
intermittent fasting instead.
So what's fascinating
is that if you do this fasting,
she's had her ultrasound
measured a few times
and on each one they say,
well it looks like the
hemangiomas getting smaller
but we know that never happens
so it might just be a fluke.
Yet she's had four that have shown
that it's shrinking in size.
Fantastic.
Because we understand what's happening.
You're eating zero
so you're turning down
all your nutrient sensors,
you're turning down you're insulin,
you're turning down your mTOR
and you're raising your AMPK.
Ketogenic diets are not gonna do that.
They're only gonna turn down your insulin
but they're not gonna affect AMPK
and they're not gonna affect mTOR.
Therefore, fasting is a
much more powerful way
to turn down your nutrient sensors.
The body senses there's no nutrients,
turns down the growth pathways
which affects the hemangioma
much more than it affects other cells.
So then all of a sudden you
get this shrinking of this,
it's a benign tumor but this hemangioma,
this benign tumor,
and all of a sudden she hasn't bled
for the last year and a half.
It's fantastic.
And it's like wow, the power of that
is simply amazing
because it's free and it's available
and hey, you might lose some pounds
and you might reverse your
diabetes on the same breath
and you may prevent the
Alzheimer's disease.
So again Alzheimer's disease
is this clogging up of your brain
with all this excess protein--
- Amyloid, tau.
- Amyloid protein exactly.
So what if you could activate your body
to break down all those protein?
Intermittent fasting.
It's like whoa, this is amazing.
mTOR goes down,
all of a sudden you stimulate autophagy
and you're breaking down protein.
- One of the interesting
theories around that as well
is something that we're looking at
is that perhaps Alzheimer's has a nickname
of type III diabetes.
It's a glucose uptake
dysfunction in neurons.
If you can feed it through ketones,
can you rescue cell function
and help clear out some
of the tau and amyloid?
Which is related to some
of the similar pathways
you're talking about.
But I think mTOR, AMPK, insulin
are some of the most targeted targets
for drug and food.
So I think it is very cool
that we can activate
them in the right ways
in the right levers with fasting.
In Silicon Valley, people are looking
at Metformin, Rapamycin
which is a target for mTOR
as potentially longevity hacks.
Those might have additive
or adjunct effects
on top of fasting
but it's all within
that related ecosystem.
- Yeah, it's all in that space.
Yeah, exactly.
How are we gonna increase longevity?
I think actually AMPK
plays a big role in that.
But what's interesting of course
is that you can target it with Metformin,
you can target it
but you're not gonna
turn down your insulin.
If you eat Metformin,
you're gonna target the AMPK.
If you eat Rapamycin,
you're gonna target mTOR.
You're not gonna affect
the other pathways.
So fasting actually simultaneously
affects all three pathways.
It's like wow, that's way more powerful
and it's natural
and then you go back and say,
hey, let's look at
these wellness practices
for the last two, three thousand years.
What do people say?
Oh hey, you should fast once in awhile.
You go back to Hippocrates,
you go back to Benjamin
Franklin, Mark Twain,
they're like, oh, "The
best of all medicine
"is resting and fasting,"
that was his quote.
It's like, whoa people understood this
thousands of years ago
that yes, if you want to be well,
you should fast once in awhile.
And it's like, oh, they
were totally right.
We think, oh yeah, if you want to be well
I'm gonna take some
Rapamycin and Metformin
and it's like okay well I think
you're gonna be better off
with the other guy with Benjamin Franklin
who was fasting
because you're gonna
affect all of the pathways
at the same time
and do it naturally
rather than in this artificial way
because you can turn
down sensors and stuff
but it's hard to inhibit them long term
and it's hard to inhibit them completely
and this sort of thing.
- I agree, I don't think
it's a magic compound
'cause human biology is a complex system.
You can't just push one pathway
and expect everything else
to just work magically.
I think it's like these
are interesting levers
and I think intermittent fasting
is one of these things
that just happens to touch a
lot of them in the right way,
in a way that's natural,
it's part of evolution.
We are designed to go through
fasting and famine cycle
or feasting and fasting cycles
and it's been conserved throughout,
C. elegans, rat, mouse.
The data's just good.
- The data is good
because if you look at AMPK and mTOR,
so insulin is actually
the most recent of the nutrient sensors.
mTOR goes way back
and AMPK goes way back.
They're conserved from these nematodes,
the C. elegans and the drosophila,
the fruit flies and stuff.
You can find them in every form of life.
It's like wow, these things
are essential for life
and thousands of years ago
humans figured out a way
that would actually
help extend their life.
So it's like wow,
this is super fascinating
as a topic from an
evolutionary standpoint,
how are we gonna do it,
how are we gonna use it
to kind of hack our life?
We all talk about biohacks and stuff
and it's sort of like
the ultimate biohack.
It's natural, it's free, it's available.
We just need the knowledge
and the acceptance
and people can tap into
all these superpowers
in terms of health and wellness.
- Absolutely.
Yeah, let's build up the culture here.
So a lot on your plate.
So you got the fasting tea in June,
you got the book Diabetes Code in April.
Anything else in the pipeline?
What's the future?
I mean I'm sure we'll have a conversation
and have you again on the podcast,
hopefully not another two years.
- Yeah, for sure.
- What's next as you're looking forward?
- Well, I'm working on a couple of things.
Obviously, we've done the books
and we've also built up the IDM Program
to actually be a solution
for people to actually get some help.
So it's an online program
but then people can get
help with their fasting,
get help with their diet and so on.
So that's something that
we're working on building up
and trying to roll out
so that people can benefit.
Excuse me, so that's idmprogram.com.
Then I'm working on a book on PCOS
which is polycystic ovary syndrome
and the reason I'm doing that
is one of our IDM partners
is Dr. Nadia Pateguana
who is very passionate about this.
And the reason she is is because PCOS
is also a disease of hyperinsulinemia.
Therefore, as a disease
of hyperinsulinemia,
fasting and low carb diets work very well.
But what we have is PCOS
which affects somewhere around 10%
of the target adult women.
And one of the big problems
with PCOS is infertility.
People are spending tens
of thousands of dollars,
a lot of money,
because they're infertile
because of this PCOS
and yet it's so easy to treat.
It's crazy that we could save them.
And I have two kids and I know,
it's incredible to have kids.
Then they become a pain in the ass
but before that it's incredible.
I'm just kidding.
But it's incredible to
be able to give somebody
that sort of gift
because it's sort of
so intrinsically human
to want to have a family,
to want to have a big family.
If you can't have that,
it's like an amputation,
it's like having your leg cut off.
People want to have family,
people want to have kids
and to have to spend $10,000 a shot
for in vitro fertilization is ridiculous
because PCOS is treatable, so easy.
So that's one of the things I'm working on
in the longer term.
So I get asked to write a lot of stuff
but what I really want to write
is about stuff that can
make a difference to people
and where I can bring something new to it.
So something like PCOS,
there's just not any information.
So the Obesity Cody,
there's just not a lot of information.
Type II diabetes reversal,
not a lot of information.
Guide to Fasting, there's
not a lot of information
and then PCOS
and then in the longer term,
maybe some cookbooks that will help people
and then eventually a book on cancer
which is, again, really,
really fascinating from a--
- Cancer Code?
- Perhaps, I don't know.
There's a lot that'll go into it.
But right now the PCOS is a lot easier
because cancer's not simply about obesity.
It's actually a lot more than that.
It's about a lot of these--
- And there's so many etiologies too.
It's like a bunch of microdiseases
in one umbrella term essentially
is the way I kind of think about it.
- Yeah, I think cancer comes down to
I think it's about the
mitochondrial disease,
it's about all those nutrient
sensors we talked about,
but it's also about
apotosis and autophagy.
So there's a lot of
topics that get in there
and it needs to be worked
out a little bit better.
But there's some super
interesting theories.
So we had this sort of
genetic theory of obesity
that was crap, it was terrible
and that's how cancer medicine
is like the worst of the worst,
you look at the progress.
So Nixon declared war on cancer in 1971.
If you look at the rates of cancer now,
they're about the same as 1971.
- And how many billions of
dollars have been spent?
- I know, how many walks for cancer,
how many pink ribbons?
There is so much money going to this
that has done absolutely nothing.
It's like as if you,
with your iPhone in 2018
was still using those giant
vacuum tube room size computers.
That's the equivalent.
How can you make so
little progress in cancer
despite the billions of dollars,
probably trillions
of dollars?
- And good efforts
like good people want to do good work.
It's not like people
are just wasting money.
I think people are earnestly
trying to solve this problem.
- Oh, absolutely.
But I think it started
off on the wrong foot
which is that this is a genetic disease.
And when you start off,
it's like if you're trying to go south
but you start off by going north,
it doesn't matter how fast you run,
you're never gonna get
to where you're going.
And that's the thing,
we started off looking at
it as a genetic problem
and we kept going and it was a disaster,
this whole cancer genome atlas
totally tells us that we
went in the wrong direction
for 50 years.
And people still want
to go in that direction
because they've built their careers on it.
And if you don't recognize your mistake
and start going in the right direction,
then you're never gonna get there.
And that's the real problem with cancer.
But it's a much more complicated topic
than simply obesity, type II
diabetes, PCOS sort of thing
and it's not simply fasting.
Fasting is gonna play a role
but there's all this other
stuff that goes into it.
So that's maybe the long, long term
but it's a real interest of mine
getting to the bottom of what
causes cancer, what cancer is
and trying to change
the paradigm of thinking
of what cancer is
which is not a genetic disease.
- 100%.
Appreciate, I like that
you're still staying ambitious
and pushing forward.
In the last couple years,
I think we've just seen the community
and interest and the science just grow.
So I'm just excited to see what yourself,
our communities, can continue to do
to I think really help people
live better, healthier lives.
So thank you for taking the time, Dr. Fung
and we'll talk soon.
- Okay, thanks Geoff.
- And before I sign off here,
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We'll read every single
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