Perspective on Intermittent Fasting

So in today's blog, we're gonna talk about the ever-constant fad of Intermittent Fasting that is spinning around like crazy on all of the podcasts, YouTube, and TikTok. And I just want to share a little bit of a different perspective about intermittent fasting.

So, I will start by saying, yes, in the right people, at the right times, intermittent fasting can be a fantastic tool.

And I say it's a tool because a tool is different from a lifestyle. A tool can be used for specific things. However, it is not an excellent tool for everybody. So, you will hear me at our clinic at ANMC; I will almost never recommend intermittent fasting. People will suggest it a lot, and people will bring it up, and I don't want to have conversations about it.

But I'm gonna share the details of why I don't necessarily utilize intermittent fasting.

So typically the type of people that come to me, they are chronic, unresolved symptoms, chronic unresolved illness, they've been everywhere done everything, they don't typically have a lot of answers. They do typically have a lot of anxiety and stress, as you can imagine, when the body is under a great burden internally, and they have external stressors as well.

Typically, what we'll see is that the nervous system has some dysfunction. It may be sympathetic dominance, stuck in the fight-or-flight or freeze states. You'll know if you're this type of person because you tend towards anxiety or stress, and you tend towards symptoms that haven't resolved. People in this situation are usually a lot more sensitive with their nervous systems; their nervous systems are constantly hyper-vigilant, watching for dangers and risks. So, something like intermittent fasting is not a fantastic idea because you're going longer without food. This is going to disrupt a number of things.

One, it tells your nervous system, 'We are in starvation mode.' Perhaps it tells the nervous system that she or he isn't eating, so there must be some danger here. It disrupts the blood sugar cycle. So, if we're going long-term, and we're already a person who has disrupted cortisol levels, and you're not balanced in your blood sugar, your cortisol levels are going to rise. And cortisol levels are going to increase other types of catecholamines in the body. So, it's not a fantastic thing for people who are already in a sympathetic dominant state, for people who are experiencing long COVID, for people who are experiencing dysautonomia that is unnamed, other than calling it dysautonomia. These are not the type of people for whom intermittent fasting is good. And I know that intermittent fasting is kind of touted for people who have unresolved issues, and I would just step out on a limb and disagree with that a little bit.

When you're already in a sympathetic dominant state and you're already running from a tiger, you're already in a stressed nervous system, state intermittent fasting is not a good idea. That's my opinion, and my belief after 18 years of working as a nutritionist and as a naturopathic practitioner.

So what can these people do? I usually don't suggest going longer than three hours without a meal, except before bedtime. In fact, I will have people have a macro snack before bed, maybe even a little orange juice as a trick, and then eat something within half an hour of waking up. Now, once the body has regulated itself, and you can see a change in the nervous system, we do that by assessing HRV. We will train heart rate variability, and we will assess that number. If that number is improving, it's a good indicator that you're shifting from a sympathetic dominant to a parasympathetic state.

Once that is indicated, and we can see that your blood sugar is balanced, and your cortisol levels have balanced out to optimal function, then we can assess the need and the reason behind why we would want to do intermittent fasting. If that reason exists, then we would go ahead and come up with a plan. I think some of the issues with doing intermittent fasting are that it's not necessarily done well

There are things to do when you start your fast, and there are things to do when you end your fast, when you break your fast. So, we would have a plan for that. Generally, by that point, there's not a lot of reason why I would be recommending intermittent fasting for someone. We tend to look more towards the functional approach. So, if you have questions about intermittent fasting, or if you're considering it, I definitely would not do it on your own. Make sure that you've educated yourself and perhaps even consider working with a practitioner to decide if it's the right course of action for you or not.