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Bulletproof radio state of high performance you're listening to bulletproof radio with Dave asprey. Today's episode is going to be a lot of fun because it is with a guy who is a real expert on metabolism. And he's a Pioneer at testing intermittent fasting in clinical settings. We have all kinds of information about intermittent fasting that's been out there. It's, you know, a core part of the bulletproof diet, but
It's been around in spiritual traditions for a very long time. But the clinical studies of it were lacking. And Jason Fung is the guy who has done a lot of that work and he's worked on treating obesity and diabetes. He wrote the Obesity code the diabetes code and today he's talking about one of the four big Killers, you know, the things that you have to avoid. If you want to live a long time cancer is one of the big four things that takes a lot of us out. His book is called the cancer code it
I'm really excited for this interview. So Jason, thank you for taking the time
glad to be on thanks for having
me. I remember back when I was heavy and I was I'd tried the Zone diet. I tried the Atkins diet. I had tried all kinds of stuff and I knew though, like I said was gospel. This is your late 90s early 2000s. If you don't eat six times a day, I'll go into starvation mode and someone suggested, you know, eating fewer meals and I was like, oh God, I still remember it because it was a visceral response that the
Like oh my God, I'll die. But I wouldn't have died but I would probably have gotten low blood sugar because I was pre-diabetic and I certainly would have just been unable to think and so for me, it was really kind of a scary idea that you could even consider fasting them. I would have never predicted that years later. They had 24-hour fast. Oops, I guess I did that because I have time for lunch but it's okay. Yeah, what do you say to people who have that same visceral?
Response that I did.
I'll tell you I had the same visceral response. So I remember thinking about fasting for the first time and I thought wow that's such a bad idea. Right? That was my first reaction to this was probably 2012 right as like what a bad idea that then I actually thought well, wait a second, you know, I see this all the time. I tell people to do this all the time. It's what exactly is bad about it. And that's where you know, I was fortunate that I could go into and look at any of
Papers that had written the physiology and and been worked out of course years ago. I mean all the stuff out fast because it's not something that I made up. Obviously they talked about it thousands of years ago, but the there was a lot of myths that had been built up around fasting to really make everybody do you and me included I think it was just so bad for you. So it's something like your blood sugar's will go low for example, and in fact if you're on medications that might be true, but assuming if
Or if you're not on medications, then your body actually works fine. I mean, that's how we survived as cavemen and cavewomen who might or might not eat right your body is going to be able to store away sugar and if it and so this is called glycogen in the liver. It stores the the sugar and if you run out of that then your body is going to start using fat. So your that's that's how it survives and then produces ketones for the brain. So it doesn't need as much glucose and so on and that's sort of the
Basis of the ketogenic diet which is very popular and so on other things like, oh, I won't be able to concentrate again. It simply wasn't true because when you look at what happens to the body during fasting, in fact, the body doesn't shut down it actually wraps itself up. So it actually increases noradrenaline and increases growth hormone. So because you're increasing your sort of fight or flight response, which is your sympathetic tone, you're actually more focused. You're actually going to
be able to concentrate better. So people talk about, you know, some of the you know, you know, an animal's for example, if you have a big meal in like a lion who just needs you're not really sharp. If you eat a huge Thanksgiving meal. You're not like, you know, really looking to do some high-level, you know mental stuff. You just want to sit down and watch some football, right? But for animals, for example you what you don't want to do is you don't want to face that Hungry Wolf because that Hungry Wolf is not falling down on the job.
Only worth is dialed in zoned in and ready kill you. So the point is that when your body doesn't have energy. It doesn't eat. It's actually going to shift and start using the fuel that's carried on its own body, but it doesn't decrease it. So you're changing fuel sources, but then you're increasing the amount of fuel that your body is using so that you can go out and Hunt. So this is like a survival response is actually, you know, you have more energy and people sometimes have
you know, I remember one fellow he came into the office and his wife was like, you know before he goes so slow now, I can't even keep up with on because he's got so much energy. He's just raring to go and what you've done of course is you've liberated the energy that's carried in that body fat. So as you start to use that body fat your body is like, whoa, there's like five hundred thousand calories of food energy stored in this body fat. Let's go use it when you eat all the time. Of course, you lock all that body fat away.
Because you're not able to access it because you're eating you're using the food not your body fat. So that's what I mean by switching fuel sources your body when you're not eating simply switches over to using your body's own stores of calories.
It seems like if you're exposed to a lot of chemicals, you're exposed to toxic Metals, you're exposed to xenoestrogens including mold toxins. All of those are also independent risk factors for obesity and cancer. How do you sort out toxins versus diet if the toxins make you fat it's hard for you to know it. But every time you listen to bulletproof radio, I'm grateful and one of the ways I would like to share this gratitude is by inviting you to come.
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Yeah that there there is a bit of a it's sometimes hard to tease it out. But you know, there's there's a statistical ways that you can try to do that. It's not perfect of course, but if you look at the overall sort of contribution of toxins, they tend to be relatively small because you're not going to get them. So it's hard to get these toxins that are sort of worldwide sort of thing. Right? Whereas obesity you can track it it sort of started.
Start but who is the most biggest problem in America and now you see it in Asia and so on so you can track these things as opposed to certain say toxins. So aflatoxin for example is a is something that causes and wood dust and other things he's all cause cancer, but you're not going to see sort of in all parts of the world as opposed to obesity so you can try and distinguish between those two, but for sure those are problems.
As for sure, we know it and there's a list of carcinogens that the World Health Organization maintains, but when you look at in a population how much it contributes to cancer overall it tends to be sort of like 1% 2% 3% which together can be important but obesity and diet and so on tend to be the biggest
part unquestionably. Do you know why coffee only causes cancer in California?
Is a is a is a tough one. I mean the problem of course with these studies is that they typically take coffee drinkers versus non-toxic Drinkers and then they say, okay. Well, what's the difference between the two and and then try and make some conclusion but this sort of stuff is very hard to because there's a difference between coffee Drinkers and non-coffee drinkers other than the fact that the one drinks coffee some, you know might be there under very high stress for example, you know real go-getters.
And other people might be much more laid-back and you know, there's there's so many differences between the two that it's often hard to distinguish whether it's just the coffee. I mean it is the same problem exists in all of them all of nutrition to try and tease out these things is very difficult. So we actually went through a number of these hypotheses for died at least bought maybe fiber was the problem that doesn't turn out to be the case you thought it was fat we thought is various vitamin.
It's he's so we tried I'll tell you that they've tried and these are million dollars studies. So they tried vitamin A B C D E and they've tried selenium and they've tried omega-3 fatty acids all you know, tested the supplements and randomized controlled trials. And of course, none of them really had any effect on cancer. It was some of them did the Vitamin B and C actually vitamin B ones actually tended to increase the rates of cancer. So
that wasn't good.
Some of the more advanced bio hacking techniques. In fact, the guy who talked about this most was probably James Clemens when he came on the show, he wrote a book called The Switch which was was brilliant and he's like well go on a protein restricted diet for a month and eat less calories and the next month going into our month. So you're sort of going in this break things down clean them up and then build them back clean them up build them back as part of an anti-aging.
German because if you get sarcopenia your muscle loss as you age which just normally happens with every decade that also tends to well you don't get cancer necessarily but you know, you're walking hunched over and you can see through your skin and that's not the type of Aging that anyone wants either you think that there's validity to that kind of feeds famine Feast famine strategy.
I think it makes a lot of sense because what you want to do and fasting of course does this naturally because when you fast one you're going to break down stuff because your body doesn't want
want extra cells, right? So you're going to go into the top and you're going to break down silos. You're going to get rid of extra cells, but then growth hormone goes up. So then when you do eat you rebuild those cells that you need so that's that's essentially what you're doing is you're trying to cycle between sort of breaking down and then rebuilding breaking down and then we building which is the way that you sort of rejuvenate the body, right? That's the whole word itself. He got to get rid of the old stuff bringing the new stuff. If you keep pushing, you know, it's like if you renovate your back,
Through the first thing you gotta do is take out the little tubs and old bath all toilets because then you can put a new ones. You can't just put in a tub if you have an old tub there, right? So that's the problem. You really have to cycle between the two and that's what this sort of natural even on a daily basis, right you seed and then you fast you feed and then you fast that's why you have a term called breakfast. It's breaks your fast right? So that's the point you're going to store some calories. You're going to build during those eight or ten hours.
At your eating then for the 12 or 14 hours that you're not eating. That's when you're going to use those calories and also break down. Whatever you don't need right your grandmother might have said, you know, that's the time you need to digest your food and so on but really I think they're onto something in that this is a natural cycle. We of course, you know getting back to this idea of eating 10 times a day completely destroyed that because you know, instead of respecting the sort of feed and fasts.
For which, you know, we've always had right built right into the English language. We said feed all the time, right? And you know, you heard this I'm sure 10 years ago like as soon as you get up eat breakfast breakfast the most important meal of the day, like do not even step out your bedroom door before you get a granola bar and you know, why but what possible reason would I have to do that and keep eating until you go to bed. It's like well, that's not the way way I grew up.
Upright you had damn that's it. Right so you have to have that fasting period so it's the same thing on a mini scale. Right? And I think what he's talking about is on a monthly scale and I think that makes a lot of sense to
I feel like we could talk for eight hours and and really kind of cover the basics of your book. It's a very Complete Book includes the immunotherapy and it is now the book that I'm going to be recommending for friends and people who reach out and say, you know, I just got cancer or cancer runs in my family and I'm worried and like okay you have a book to read now and and that's a high bar. But I think you really you are very logical and it's very readable.
So I have kind of two questions that I want to follow up to end the interview with and the first one someone finds out and unfortunately can't tell you which kind but someone finds out that they have a common kind of cancer. They just hung up the phone with their doctor.
Without knowing much more top three recommendations for people who don't who are going to have to deal with their cancer. What are the three most important things they can do if they're playing the odds?
Yeah. I mean it's so if you're talking about one of the obesity-related a cancer cell looks like both of the cause. Yeah. So because if you're a lung cancer, of course, then you have to stop smoking like clearly. There's nothing
else. Okay, what we'll see in obesity-related.
Yeah, like breast cancer colorectal cancer liver cancer pancreatic cancer. Those are obesity-related.
Cancer so the the the most important thing is to understand that you you know, there's there's if you're overweight then you need to sort of get back to a normal weight because again that's a disease of too much insulin both are disease and then you have to get that down you lose weight lose weight is probably the most important thing to is probably Sugar Sugar, you know, I don't think there's a lot of people that would disagree sugar plays a huge role in all of these diseases.
And it doesn't do it in there in a direct fashion, but it does it sort of in this indirect fashion. It causes a lot of liver fat accumulation and insulin resistance and therefore hyperinsulinemia. So it does this and it's very Insidious and it's also it's hard for your body to handle that much of the front those and that's the problem with the sugar. So cutting sugar is probably one of the you know, big things. We're trying to lose weight trying to get down.
If you have type 2 diabetes, then there are certain drugs that might make things better and certain drugs that make me things were so insulin, of course with not be something that would recommend but trying to control your sugars through your diet and there's also certain medications that you can those would be the main things. I mean, they're not there, you know their Common Sense their logical. I mean in terms of treatment, you know, you still got to follow whatever the oncologist recommends us the best.
Treatment regimen Because by the time you get to that stage of cancer and we spent like millions and millions of dollars trying to figure out the right regimen and I'm not going to say, you know, they're all wrong right? It's the regimens that they recommend have been tested. So you do need to take that advice but there are ways to improve your odds, so getting to a normal weight cutting down sugar potentially can considering metformin and intermittent fasting has other roles. So one of the roles
This is in chemotherapy it actually they've used it sort of before chemotherapy and makes it more tolerable and perhaps also makes it more effective and that's you know, so they fast 24 hours before and the idea here. Is that what you do is by fasting you're putting your cells into this sort of regenerative mode so that when you get the chemotherapy, you don't sustain as much of the toxic damage that accumulates whereas the
Sir, the cancer can never really go into this regenerative static mode. It's always sort of growing and therefore gets the full brunt of that chemotherapy. So the views it in small studies where they've used fasting sort of before and after chemotherapy and they found that a lot of people can tolerate a better. So these are sort of you know metformin fasting these are ways to sort of optimize around the treatments that are available.
Do you have enough time to talk briefly about metformin some new studies that I wanted to chat about
You're good for another couple
minutes. Yeah, absolutely. So let Farm is really interesting because again, it plays on a hormone called ampk which is again one of these nutrients sensors and the nutrient sensors it sort of fools your body into thinking that there's no Ricans available and therefore, you know cutting growth down so in diabetics and that foreman seems to reduce the risk of certain types of cancer breast cancer, particularly.
Early and therefore some people have started to use it sort of outside of the diabetic realm and you see that in a lot of longevity people will consider using Metformin or some of the related compounds to MIT Foreman in an effort. The the proof is still to come. I think I mean, I don't think there's any good studies but you know on the other hand it's a relatively non-toxic prog relatively because all drugs do not side effect, but we've been using it for 50 60 years.
You know, it's been well tolerated we know a lot about this drug.
All right, I went on Metformin when the first anti-aging studies came out early 2000 dish for about three years, but I ended up going off of it because of some early studies about a reduction in mitochondrial function and just like four days or maybe six days before recording this a new study came out that showed that it was
Sir, beating age Associated mitochondrial dysfunction and caused a failure of cellular respiration because of what it does to complex one in the mitochondria. And so I've that plus the vitamin B12 the reduction in sensitivity. I've been reluctant to recommend it as much as I used to not be for healthy people but the idea of reducing your type 2 diabetes is so much more overwhelmingly important than that side effect, but if we're looking at a healthy population
Ian that maybe one to hold off on for a little while based on that. I think yeah II agree.
I agree. I've never I've never recommended it to healthy people. Although I know certain other doctors who have done that. So I think that the benefits again, it's one of these risk-benefit things. If you have type 2 diabetes in your option as metformin and Insulin then clearly you no matter what
If you're healthy then what are your benefits while they're fairly murky and so therefore any side effects are going to start to balance because risk is just so much lower in a healthy population. And the other thing is that it's these drugs, you know, they might be good for a certain period of time and not be good. If you do it continuously, you know, there's there's lots of drugs that have been like that right if you take it it's good you take it's good then you when you
Study. Oh you've been taking it for 10 years and it's really bad for you. Right? So some of the osteoporosis drugs were like that. They were good. They're good. They're good. And then but if you took it for a long time, you've got more fractures actually, so there's sort of a time limit to those because they're interfering with sort of the natural thing. So if you're you know, so if you're chronically stimulating their simulating this sort of State the semi-starvation it might be good for a while, but you're not getting the normal growth that you should be betting right? So therefore yeah, maybe in maybe you do have to say
Of this maybe you do have to say take it for this and then go off of it and then there's different ways. But you know without the studies that would be hard to know how to recommend it. So I've never really recommend it for healthy people.
I think your conservatism was probably warranted there and I've considered I probably will experiment with taking a metformin on a day when I'm due to 24-hour fast. So I'll turn up the effect of the fast with the rest of the time I would take it stuff like that. There's all kinds of stuff and we may never do studies on that. But if we know enough about how
how it works and you see outsized results, you can probably say okay. This is a healthy practice for me, but it may never be provable. But if you look half each of your friends, okay, you know,
yeah, I think these things are relatively low risk to when you start when you cycle these things, of course, you're going to be a lot less prone to getting into problems. Like if you cycle say veganism you're going to be less prone to getting yes trouble. Like if you eat eggs every so often or fish every so often you're going to be a lot less per
One to getting into trouble then if you are hardcore hundred percent of zero eggs and fish and meat and everything, right you could get into a lot of trouble with that same for everything right hardcore keto people worry about that hardcore carnivore people worry about that and and and some of these diets haven't been around long enough to to really know what the long-term side effects are. But, you know, it seems like you do had like there's reasons that you'd have to
think twice about doing them hardcore all the time. Whereas if you're just sort of cycling in and out crying and get the results targeting them to what you want. Like if you have a specific problem. I want to lose weight, right? Let's target that let's get to their right and then and then getting there and then trying your maintenance those sort of things. It seems like you're going to run into a lot less trouble in the long term.
Well, I I love your reason and rational thought process about cancer about fasting. You know, you're you don't jump on the bandwagon too soon, but you're way ahead of the curve and and you're so willing to say we don't know but you're also the rare Doctor Who's willing to say, we don't know but the most rational thing that makes sense given what we do know is probably this and we'll see.
More studies that's a very rare thing for anyone with a license. So thank you.
Thank you and thanks for the you know about the cancer code because that really was I was I was trying to do is write a book for somebody who's sort of all of a sudden finds out. I have cancer like what am I going to read? Like, how do I know more about this? Like what's happening in my body like his sometimes you get out there and you read and it's like there's nothing nobody's talking about it. Like what is it as a disease? Like that's
That was such an interesting question to me is what this disease actually is and how our thinking about it has completely changed in the last 10 years and then people will hey this is an interesting sort of thing. It doesn't change perhaps what the treatment is because you're still going to do mostly what the doctor tells you to do. But at least you have an inkling of what's going on in your body so that you're not just sort of, you know, do dealing with a complete unknown.
So yeah, thanks for that. I really appreciate that.
You're welcome. You've done an act of service and I like to tell listeners this no one who knows what they're doing writes books for money takes so many thousands of hours in like you pour your soul into a book and yes, you should get paid for the book. You do not get paid as much as you do practicing medicine or being an entrepreneur like I write my books is acts of service in Acts of learning and I could tell
From reading your book that you were putting the pieces in order for yourself as you are doing it so that you could be better at teaching it. So it is a book that I mean that is on my shelf and it's like you need to read that if cancer is your for Killers, you know, there's for diabetes is the first one because it gives me the other three more likely but cancer is the biggest one right up there with cardiovascular disease the kind of race depending on
things like number one and two.
Yeah, so you wrote The Walk that's a here.
What you do?
Yeah. Yeah, I hear you about the writing because it's like you're right not because he wants you right because you have to but just ain't worth it up for what's right, because sometimes you get these people and say way you wrote it for the money and like if I was doing it for the money and telling you I could have a lot of other things I would have done a lot better than that you're right is because and I you know, I totally hear you on that because it's like I remember I finished the book I finished the time.
These code and then I started reading up on cancer because I found it like audit like honestly thought the whole scientific Journey was just a fascinating story and it's like, oh I have to write this as I see it. You have it on your chest have to get it off your chest. You can then it's like, okay. I said what I have to say, right you don't write it because I know I need to write a book ain't make nobody like you do something else for that, right?
Yeah. Absolutely you do something else for that, but
It's well done. And and for people listening like if you decide you're going to read the cancer code if you have cancer in your genes and in your family and you know, your mother and father got it and your your siblings. Did you might want to read this book? And if you have cancer or you've had cancer which means you have a greater chance of going back. You might want to read this book and one thing you absolutely have to do and this is funny, but it's actually proven to reduce cancer and it's leave a positive review.
When you read a book that's worthy of a positive review and the reason that reduces cancer and I'm not joking about that is that gratitude in multiple studies reduces inflammation in the body and it's the least you can do if you tip your Barista, you also should leave a review for your authors. It doesn't take very long that thanks Jason for being a continued voice of curiosity and reason in the bizarre world of health and medicine you're doing a fantastic job.
Thanks so much. Thanks for having me on this
great.
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