Intermittent Fasting: Insights and Benefits from Recent Studies

Intermittent fasting can improve insulin sensitivity and reduce appetite, but dietary choices during fasting periods are crucial for health.

### Understanding Intermittent Fasting: Insights from Dr. Eric Westman
* 📊 Dr. Eric Westman discusses the recent fasting study that suggests **fasting and caloric restriction yield similar results**, while also exploring what **intermittent fasting entails**.
* 🧑 He introduces **Tom Lower**, a prominent influencer in the keto and fasting community, who reviews studies related to **intermittent fasting**.
* 💧 Sponsored by Element, Dr. Westman highlights the **importance of electrolytes**—sodium, potassium, and magnesium—especially for those on a **keto diet**, and offers a **free sample pack** for viewers.
* 📉 A new study published in Cell Metabolism investigates more aggressive fasting methods, contrasting them with short-term fasting periods, and reveals **improvements in insulin sensitivity and pancreatic function**.
* 📉 The study's findings indicate that **reducing the eating window** can decrease reactive oxygen species, which are linked to aging, suggesting that **less frequent eating may allow the body to repair itself**.
* 🍽 Dr. Westman emphasizes the significance of what individuals eat during their fasting periods, noting that many studies reference diets consisting of **50% carbohydrates**, which may not align with **nutritional ketosis principles**.
* 🔄 He concludes that while the study supports **more aggressive fasting**, flexibility in eating patterns is essential, advocating for **low-carb diets to maximize the benefits of fasting and fat burning**.
* 📅 Encouraging viewers to subscribe for more insights, Dr. Westman emphasizes the **importance of understanding individual dietary needs** and the **potential of fasting in promoting health**.

While the whole world and the whole internet have been talking about this fasting study that came out, which shows that fasting and caloric restriction are no different in terms of end result, what is intermittent fasting, and should you be doing it? Hi, I'm Dr. Eric Westman, and welcome to my channel, where I review and debunk nutritional information online. In this video, thanks for sending them, I'm going to be listening to Tom Lower. Tom is a massive internet influencer in the keto, low-carb, fasting space, carnivore at times, and he's going to be reviewing some studies about intermittent fasting. Be sure to wait till the end to get my final thoughts. I want to thank our friends at Element for sponsoring today's video. Element has a great mixture of sodium, potassium, and magnesium—everything you need on a keto diet, especially when you're starting the keto diet. I use Element almost every day in my own life and recommend it for my patients. Element is great because it has no fillers, no sugar, no artificial

colorings and flavoring it no gluten great for a keto diet but the most important thing is it tastes great. As you know, electrolytes are really important, especially if you're following a keto or carnivore diet. An element gives you the sodium, potassium, and magnesium that you need right now. Element is offering my listeners a free sample pack with any order. That's eight single-serving packages free with any order. That's a great way to try eight different flavors and to share element with a salty friend. Get yours at drinklm.com/EricWestman. This offer is only available at my link drinklm.com/EricWestman. You'll find that in the description below. Thank you, Element, for sponsoring this video. There's another paper that was published that nobody was really talking about that actually looks at real more aggressive fasting. What do I mean by that? Well, the previous study, and I've done some videos on this, that takes a look and says fasting is the same as caloric restriction. Although I agree with

everything it said, everything, nothing I disagree with. Well-crafted study. It was looking at very short-term, like fasting periods or very short fasting periods, rather. It was very, was like 14-hour fasts, which I don't know, but without even thinking about it, I fast for 14 hours, and a lot of people do so well. So, what is intermittent fasting, and what is fasting, and there's a lot of jargon that goes on here. You know, you don't have to do intermittent fasting, although I'm finding into the keto or even weight loss world. People enter through different doorways, if you will, and then, or like you're going into a vendor area at a meeting. If you come in, and the first booth you see is intermittent fasting, and you do it, you might think that's the only thing that is available. And certainly, promoters of different diets or different techniques only talk about their technique typically because they are most familiar with that, or they make money from that technique, or sell a book, that sort of thing. But there really

a lot of ways to go about being healthy, I believe, and intermittent fasting, and/or keto, or carnivore, or ultra-low-fat diets, they all can be healthy. What you want to do is match your metabolism to the level of carbohydrates in the diet from my perspective. So, what is intermittent fasting? Well, several internet influencers started talking about fasting, and in general, it means eating less and eating less often during the day. So, if you eat once a day, that's a 24-hour fast because you've gone 24 hours without eating anything because you've eaten just one meal a day. You might have heard that as omad, om mad d, one meal a day. But what intermittent fasting doesn't tell you, and one of the problems that we're going to see in this video, is what are you going to eat during that window of period of time, and that's going to be critical when you're looking at these studies. Hang on, so this study was the first clinically supervised controlled feeding trial in humans on fast to

compare if Tim restricted feeding in a more aggressive sense, like a six-hour eating window, if calories are equal, has any benefit. Very interesting findings. So, this study was published in Cell Metabolism, and what's cool is they gave subjects enough calories to maintain their weight. Okay, so it went on for 5 weeks. Okay, and it was a crossover design, so when one group finished, the other group went into the other arm. So, what's interesting about this study is they didn't put them on a caloric restriction. They didn't even like match calories. What they did is they said, Hey, here's exactly what this person needs to maintain their weight, exactly, and here's what this person needs to maintain their weight. And this person, it was so designed to a tee, clinically supervised, and absolutely like literal to the tee feeding to make them keep their weight, and it worked. Well, that's a great setup of the study, very controlled, and what is missing is what did they eat. So, looking at the study itself and actually all

the other intermittent fasting studies that are done by funded, funded meaning researchers who get grants to fund it. They all are studying a 50% carbohydrate diet when people eat. It's remarkable. It's 50% carbs, 30% fat, and 20% protein. So, I have to editorialize that the studies that they're being referenced here are all intermittent fasting studies, but they're 50% carbohydrate, 30% fat, 20% protein. So, at a basic level, what you want to do when you're looking at a study, just look at the macros, percent macros. As Jeff Volek has said many times, when you're eating a nutritional ketosis type of diet, carbohydrate isn't a macronutrient. It doesn't have to be. But I've learned that just as a summary measure, look at the percentage of the daily calories. Is 50% carbs, 30% fat, 20% protein in this paper? And whether you call it a Mediterranean diet or whatever, but you want to get that macronutrient.

break down and this one. It was 50% carbs, 18% protein, 30% fat for Tim restricted feeding study. In this one, 50% carbohydrate, 30% fat, 15% protein. You getting the point. These aren't really studies of nutritional ketosis. So, Tim restricted feeding or intermittent fasting doesn't really say anything about what you eat during that time. Although these are all junk fruit-free sorts of diets because it's a. These are research studies, but when you're looking at information about what to eat, I want you to eat protein. We're made of protein. Protein. It should be protein first in your thinking and then the macros. If you're doing a diet of nutritional ketosis type, you're usually 5% of your daily calories is carbohydrate or maybe 10%, and then that'll depend on how much you're eating for the day. But to look at these research papers, it's interesting. Some of them didn't even put that macronutrient breakdown in the abstract, so you have to go into the method.

section to see exactly. So basically, we're here now summarizing. We're talking about eating carbs once a day. Well, they did that. So one group ate in a six-hour aggressive fasting window. Okay, they couldn't eat past 3:00 p.m. The other group ate in a 12-hour block. But remember, it didn't matter with calories because it was all equal. Macros were equal. Spacing was obviously different, but as close to equal as they could get in terms of the sequencing. Okay, so the only thing that was different was the timing period. No calorie difference individually as a percentage or relatively speaking. Here's what they found. Insulin sensitivity improved. Who would have thought? You take a break from food, insulin sensitivity is going to improve. But insulin sensitivity didn't just improve in the short term. Beta cell function improved. Pancreatic function improved. So over a 5-week period, they had significant improvements in just the ability to process carbohydrates and manufacture insulin. Okay, well, guess what else happened? There was a decrease in reactive oxygen species. This is

fascinating to me because reactive oxygen species is a driver of aging. Okay, so from a longevity perspective, for a long time, for like the longest time, up until probably 15 years ago, 10 years ago, we thought that reactive oxygen species, ROS, oxidative stress was the primary driver of aging. It could still be a primary driver, but we've since found a lot of other things that are driving it. Okay, mitochondrial stuff that's beyond that, but ROS is still a big one, oxidative stress. The fact that just compressing eating window in an aggressive time reduced ROS is very interesting. Oxidative stress went down, but who would have thought if you stop eating for a little bit, maybe you give yourself a chance for endogenous antioxidants to actually do the job. And that's, I think, a good sort of paradigm shift that's occurring, that you don't have to eat three, four, five meals a day. Breakfast is not necessarily the most important meal of the day, which the cereal manufacturers would love you to believe. So eating less often allows your body to

heal itself to repair itself. I think you know fasting has been part of every major religion as a therapeutic or healing process, even kind of spiritually, to be aesthetic or to get rid of worldly sorts of connections. You don't have to think of it in that way, but it's more just letting your body heal itself. Autophagy is the repair of your own body, so you don't have the inputs coming in that you have to deal with. Eating is a stress, and you don't have that stress when you're not eating. Even in the context of eating carbs once a day, as these studies are showing, I love this study because it's just, it's really hard to poke holes in it. The other thing that's interesting is that appetite went down, even though they had to eat the same amount. Appetite went down, right? So they were maintaining weight, but they had less desire to eat. But they ate anyway because they had to, because they were eating to maintain weight, but they actually didn't even

want to eat that much, so it's like some would say, well, the benefits of intermittent fasting, as far as the consumption is concerned, and the lack of appetite comes because you're restricting your stomach shrinking, and that could be true, but in this particular case, they were feeding them just enough to maintain weight, and they still had a reduction of appetite. So, you know, I've seen that clinically as well, where, or heard that, where people will tell me that if they have breakfast, it makes them more hungry during the day, and they eat more. Now, that's not true for everyone. Let me know your response down below. Does breakfast make you want to eat more or eat less? So, the classic teaching is that our system is like a gas tank on a car, and that you fill up until you're full, and so eating shouldn't make you want to eat more, although some people tell me that, which kind of makes sense, sort of from a standpoint of if you came upon an animal or you killed an animal, a dead animal.

you had to eat it because it would spoil. It was only relatively recently that we as humans learned how to preserve the food. So eating might make you want to eat more in that context. There shouldn't be a break on how much you eat if you couldn't have it, you know, an hour later. So for example, so I wonder what your response is. Does breakfast make you want to eat more, of course, in the context of a low carb diet, please. So there's a good chance that even after the study, maybe they would continue to lose weight. But it gets better in the fact that they crossed over and those that did the 12-hour went to the 6-hour, and they had the same effects. So it was like double proven in this metabolic supervised situation. The thing that makes me happy about this study is this one actually looked at real fasting compared to some of these other studies that are looking at 12 hours or 14 hours or sometimes even 16 hours. That's just not enough time and

I've preached this for so long, and yes, I'm tooting my horn here, but I have like, if you want the benefits of fasting, you need to go more aggressive. The caveat with this is I don't think everyone should just model this. This was a controlled situation for 5 weeks, which is about as far as I would probably push it in this case before it might be too much fasting. However, calories were set to keep the metabolism somewhat high, so maybe it would be okay if you were doing it this way. But the short term, like three times a week, more aggressive fasting is probably the way to go. And I think this kind of study demonstrates that compared to the other study that was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine just a couple of weeks ago that says like, Hey, 14-hour fasts every day don't do that much. However, let me make a note, and I talked about this in that other video that broke that study down. A 14-hour fast still showed improvements in insulin resistance in their home IR.

wasn't highlighted in a lot of people's reviews of that study because it was statistically insignificant. But when you actually look at the literal graph, it's pretty darn significant. And if you know scientific journals at all, you know that statistically significant and absolute significance in like what it actually is in real life is a little bit different because it's more about the parameters that are set on the study versus the actual outcome. So, it means that it was not statistically significant beyond what was pretty much expected, but it was still significant enough to say, Hey, it's significant. Bottom line, it works. See you tomorrow. So, these studies and the NIH researchers, I recall doing intermittent fasting studies, are using carbs during that one meal a day. When I teach a low-carb keto diet, I teach flexibility. If you want to eat more frequently, you can. If you want to eat three meals a day, you can. But you have to stay away from carbs. What happens there is your body goes into nutritional ketosis, just changes metabolism to fat.

burning. It's just the same way to say it, and that can have healing effects in and of itself. It would be great to see a study of intermittent fasting, one meal a day, in the context of a low-carb diet versus those who eat multiple times a day in the context of a low-carb diet. I haven't seen that study done yet, so I'm still teaching now to let your body tell you when to eat, use flexibility in the timing, but stay away from the carbs as the general rule, and you're going to get the benefits of fasting, of not eating, because that is really fat burning. So, fat burning is what happens when you're fasting, and so when you're not eating so much, you're going into fat burning, and that's what happens all the time when you're eating a low-carb keto diet. I hope that's helpful. If you like, please like, subscribe, ring the notification bell, but I'm putting out new videos on Wednesdays and Fridays. [Music] If you enjoyed this video, be sure to

like, subscribe, and hit the notification bell, and check out adaptyourlifeacademy.com.

Shocking Results! 1st Ever Human Controlled Trial on Intermittent Fasting - Doctor Reacts

Dr. Eric Westman - Adapt Your Life

Intermittent Fasting: What You Need to Know

Intermittent fasting and caloric restriction have been shown to have similar end results.

Eric Westman reviews Tom Lower's studies on intermittent fasting and its impact on weight loss.

Element, a sponsor of the video, offers a free sample pack of electrolytes, which are important for those on a keto or carnivore diet.

Intermittent fasting can be healthy and involves eating less often, with variations like one meal a day.

A key study on fasting showed that maintaining weight was possible without caloric restriction, but the macronutrient composition of the diet was consistently 50% carbohydrates, 30% fat, and 20% protein.

Understanding the percentage of daily calories from macronutrients is crucial when evaluating the effectiveness of different diets.

Tim's restricted feeding study showed varying macronutrient ratios, but none focused on nutritional ketosis.

The study found that aggressive fasting and different eating windows improved insulin sensitivity and beta cell function, leading to better carbohydrate processing and insulin production.

Additionally, compressing the eating window reduced reactive oxygen species, potentially offering a new perspective on aging and the necessity of frequent meals.

The Benefits of Fasting and Intermittent Eating

Fasting has been a common practice in major religions for healing and spiritual purposes, allowing the body to repair itself through autophagy.

Studies show that eating once a day can lead to a reduced appetite, with some individuals feeling less desire to eat even while maintaining their weight.

The research also suggests that real fasting, rather than shorter eating windows, may have a more significant impact on weight loss and metabolic benefits.

Aggressive fasting, done three times a week, may provide better benefits compared to longer, less intense fasting.

A recent study showed that 14-hour daily fasts had some impact on insulin resistance, despite being statistically insignificant.

The speaker emphasizes the importance of flexibility in meal timing and reducing carbs for effective metabolic change.

The Benefits of Intermittent Fasting and Low-Carb Diets

Intermittent fasting and a low-carb diet can promote fat burning by reducing meal frequency.

The speaker advocates for flexibility in eating timing while emphasizing the importance of avoiding carbs.

They hope for future studies comparing different eating patterns within a low-carb context.