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

If you are not fasting, you are missing out on a massive healing experience for your body and your brain. It is not optional in my book.

And that's good for me to see too, right? Yes.

If you want to solve a conflict with a woman, find out when she's ovulating.

So a woman could actually plan and schedule out certain activities over those 5 days.

Corporations should put all the ovulating women together in the boardroom and say, okay, let's dream up what next year is going to look like, because they're locked and loaded with all these neurochemicals that support awesome brain activity.

Yeah, it's not even optional, it's a must.

If you understood that, Everything would feel right for you. I absolutely promise you.

Welcome back, Kwik Brains. I am your host and your brain coach, Jim Kwik, and welcome to the Kwik Brain Podcast. Today we are going to speak about fasting and your brain health and performance. And this is a really hot topic, and we have the expert here, and we're actually in her studio. because we just was on her amazing podcast. Dr. Mindy is a keynote speaker. She is author of a number of books. This is the one we're going to talk about today. This is Fast Like a Girl. Welcome to the show.

Thank you. Thank you. I'm excited to have this conversation with you.

Congratulations. You are everywhere. I feel like I'm shadowing you on all these podcasts that are mutual acquaintances of ours.

We have had a little twinsy podcast.

That's true. Our team, it lights them up because they're fans of your work. And we're always sharing a lot of your videos and your podcast in our Slack. And also, it lights us up also when they say, if you like this, you'll like this. And then, you know, sometimes we're connected that way also as well. We have the same publisher also. So it's a small world. So this is a long time coming.

Yeah, thank you. I love that. It's an honor. I mean, again, I've been following your work for years. So to hear you say that, that I've been going along your path is quite an honor. So thank you.

Mindy has an incredible podcast that I was on, so make sure you subscribe and check it out, and your YouTube also.

Yeah.

Let's get into this. So fasting and the brain.

Yeah.

Where do we start?

Yeah, you know, I was thinking as you were starting the conversation about, hey, could we go down the path of fasting around the brain? And I was thinking, you know what my chronic statement is? Is that if people come to fasting to lose weight, Happy you're here, but I'm going to ask you to stay for the brain changes.

I love this. We had the same conversation on your show about movement, but going back to the brain.

Yes.

You know, because the brain controls everything. And this is the most important thing to keep in shape.

Exactly. So the first thing to realize, and I'm sure, I mean, I know I'm speaking to the master here, but your brain needs 50% glucose for fuel and 50% ketones. ketones.

Yeah.

It has this other fuel source. So the biggest thing that I think about fasting is that when you put yourself in a fasted state, you are producing low microdoses of ketones. And these ketones will go up into the brain and provide it the fuel that it needs. Now, I think we've been coming in through— for ketones, in the wrong door. We've been going in through like the ketogenic diet. I'm saying, let's just take everything you eat, compress it into a specific eating window, leaving longer space for fasting, you're going to create ketones in that fasting window, and now you're providing the fuel source that your brain needs, at least 50% of it. And then when you eat, you can go into all the brain foods, you can go into all the things that we know will nourish it from another angle. And now you've, you've brought the best of both worlds together.

I love that.

What are some of the misconceptions that you find the community has, or people in general and the public has about Here's the biggest one that's showing up lately, and people are really reacting strongly to it, is I believe that fasting is for everyone. I really believe that the misconception is that fasting is this optional state that we maybe decide to try if we wanna lose weight or we want more energy, or maybe we heard about the brainpower, like we were just saying, and that it's sort of like a diet. It's like, yeah, that sounded like a really cool thing I should do.

Hmm.

I think of it like sleep. You cannot go your whole life without sleep. And just like you expressed on my podcast, you need sleep for so many brain functions that will happen while you're sleeping. If you are not fasting, you are missing out on a massive healing experience for your body and your brain. It is not optional in my book.

Yeah, it's not even optional. It's a must. My business partner who's in the room, also our CEO, you know, she fasts, I fast, it's kind of part of our protocol. Where does somebody start?

Yeah, it's always the question.

Yeah.

Well, okay, so interesting, you start with food. So if I'm gonna assume, if I'm talking to somebody on the Western American or standard diet, where highly processed oils, refined flours, toxic ingredients, all of that, as you know, is creating brain inflammation, but it's also making your sugar-burning metabolism really, really dysfunctional and sluggish. So let's just change that. Let's change it to 3 different foods that you are gonna focus on. You're gonna eat healthy oils. So good oils, not bad oils. These are like your olive oil, your MCT oil, coconut oil. All of those are the healthy oils. The bad ones are canola, cottonseed, corn oils. I list 'em all in the book. So let's switch your oils.

Okay.

Second thing, let's switch your carb source. So the whole world's gone like low carb, and I'm not saying go low carb, I'm saying go eat carbs, A carb that has fiber in it. So that is anything that's come out of the earth. So I call it nature's carbs. Just anything that doesn't have a label on it, an apple, greens, like a potato, anything that came from the earth is nature's carbs.

Okay.

And then the third one is just get rid of the toxins. We get rid of the Diet Cokes and the synthetic ingredients and the red dyes and all of that that's going into our food system. If we make those 3 changes, then fasting becomes so effortless. And your next step then becomes to start looking at your food every day as you have a fasting window and you have an eating window.

Hmm.

It's not like you're going to get up and just eat all day. You're going to make a conscious decision in the moment when that eating window opens. We'll use today as an example. I did exactly like we talked about on my podcast. I got up, I started writing this morning. I was in a highly creative space. I went and moved my body around 10:30, did exactly what you and I talked about. I went and made a bunch of calls while I was walking. All of that was in a fasted state. And then I came here at noon. Right before I came here, I broke my fast. And I broke it with protein, really high protein, so that I can keep my brain fueled. And that's all I've had today is— well, I guess, and then I had a salad, a salad with protein. So now my eating window's open.

Mm-hmm.

So now I would eat until I eat dinner and then I shut that window down again.

And have you found there's a certain amount of hours for that eating window and that fasting window in terms of the maximum return or the minimum though?

Yeah, so the most common research was done out of cell metabolism on what they call 16:8. So 16 hours of fasting, 8 hours of eating. So your eating window would be 8 hours. So that would be like you open your eating window up at noon, And it closes down at 8, and you can eat throughout that whole time. You get to decide how often you want to eat.

Got it.

But then once you shut that eating window down, now you're not even drinking, you're not doing any— water can go in, coffee the next morning, but you're not raising your glucose.

Okay, so coffee's okay?

Coffee's okay, yeah.

Is there a difference? I know the answer to this, 'cause we've chatted about this, for females and males?

Yeah, so this part's really interesting because When we look at fasting, it is creating a hormonal change to one of the major hormones in our body called insulin, and insulin is what actually will affect our sex hormones. So insulin affects estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. So the if you want to balance your sex hormones, doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman. The best thing you can do is get yourself insulin sensitive. Understand that first. But in order to balance these hormones by balancing insulin for a man, that is a 24-hour cycle. So you all are run off of testosterone. Testosterone comes in maybe 15, every 15, 20 minutes, you get a pulse of testosterone. Testosterone goes up into the brain and converts to estrogen. So you only have one hormone to think about, and you have to think about it in terms of it in 24 hours.

Got it.

We have 3. We have estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. That, those hormones are all produced from our ovaries. And when we go into menopause, the adrenals kick in and start producing some of that. And so there's no conversion in the brain. It's all happening in the body. Now, there's communication from the brain, and it's happening in a 28, 30-day period.

Okay.

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

So does that inform, that hormonal expression over those 4 weeks, What behaviors those like week 1, 2, 3, do you—

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. This, this, we haven't even talked about this. This is going to be great.

You're going to love this.

Okay. Ready?

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So estrogen, like if you look at a woman's cycle, Day 1 through day 10, estrogen is coming in. That estrogen stimulates dopamine, serotonin, like we talked about, acetylcholine, oxytocin, BDNF. So for women, when estrogen's coming in, we're gonna be much more outgoing. We're gonna be more— we're gonna be a lot happier. We're gonna be able to hold on to information.

It's so important for relationships, right?

Right.

Yeah, I hope just everyone's listening to this in general, but you know, you have, if you're living with a woman, right? And it would explain, You know, certain moods and behaviors and—

Yeah, and why she seems like one person at one part of the month, and then another part of the month, she's completely different.

Okay, so those first 10 days after her cycle—

So day 1 is the day her period starts, and then estrogen will build. And you'll notice as she gets closer to that day 10, she's much more outgoing because she's neurochemically locked and loaded. You can fast during that time, that's as much as you want. If you want to go on a 3-day water fast, women can do a lot during that time, 'cause estrogen is very forgiving of cortisol.

Okay.

So estrogen, if cortisol comes in, like you work out really hard, you fast a lot, estrogen's going to be okay.

Got it.

Now, during your ovulation period, day 11 through day 15, when an egg is actually released, this part is just crazy to me. Estrogen is at her peak. She's not going to get any higher because she has to peak for that egg to release.

Right.

But then testosterone comes in. So check this out. We only get testosterone for this 5-day period during ovulation. We don't really get it the rest of the month.

Hmm. Where guys are getting a hit every X minutes.

Right. So now we're looking at libido differences. If you're in a heterosexual relationship, like she's only getting it 5 days out of the month and you're getting it every 15 minutes.

Right.

So there's gonna be a mismatch perhaps there. But for women listening, this is gonna be the height of our motivation because testosterone is motivation and drive. And then we have estrogen during this time, so we're very creative. We can use both— estrogen helps us use both hemispheres of our brain. We can multitask really well, even though I just learned we shouldn't be multitasking from you. But we are mentally our best. We have all these neurochemicals, and then we get a little bit of progesterone during that time, so we're calm.

So a woman can actually plan and schedule certain activities over those 5 days.

This is what I want you to do. I want you to take this information and put your stuff to it, because if a woman was trying to become limitless with her brain, ovulation's the time to do it. I even think corporations should put all the ovulating women together in the boardroom and say, okay, let's dream up what next year is going to look like, because they're locked and loaded with all these neurochemicals that support awesome brain activity.

I love that. What happens after day 15?

Okay, then after 15, then you get a— the hormones crash. So a lot of women coming out of ovulation don't feel super great. They just kind of go down. And then about day 20, progesterone builds, and progesterone calms us. It also makes us very inner, so we may not be as gregarious. The major neurotransmitter that progesterone stimulates is GABA. So when progesterone comes in, you've got GABA, you're calm. Progesterone does not like cortisol. So the statement I always make is when cortisol goes high, progesterone goes shy. So if you, like, I'm sounding like you now.

Yeah, yeah, this is speaking our language.

I'm onto you after hanging with you for a few hours here. But yeah, I mean, that is the week we need to relax and recover. We need to bring our output down, like, to a 75% of what we normally do. This is one of the things I've been really emphasizing on podcasts lately, and it's come with very mixed reviews from people because it's hard to do.

Yeah.

And that's that, that week before our period, we should say no more. We should recover more. Because if we don't, if cortisol's up, progesterone is gonna have a really hard time of making her appearance. And then progesterone's what sheds that uterine lining. So one of my big ahas from Fast Like a Girl that I'm just shocked at is how many 20 and 30-year-olds don't have a cycle. And I think they don't have a cycle because the physical, emotional, chemical stressors are bigger than ever. And so they're not— that uterine lining, they don't get enough progesterone for the uterine lining to shed.

And what would your recommendation be for somebody in that situation?

Well, first, mine that week before. So the week before a woman's cycle is, It's really important to do differently. So you gotta bring stress down. So that's the first thing. Second thing, you gotta bring glucose up, which is really different, right?

Right.

'Cause estrogen wants you to bring glucose down. Progesterone wants you to bring glucose up. And she needs more glucose to be able to fully come into her glory that week before. So this is why the keto diet fasting did not do well for women the week before their cycles, because there wasn't enough glucose there for progesterone to appear. But check this out. You talk to any woman, what does she crave the week before her period?

What does she crave before her period?

What is the week— what do you crave the week before your period? Chocolate. You crave chocolate and you crave carbohydrates. And you don't crave fruit. You crave breads and pastas and things like that because your body's saying, give me more glucose, bring the glucose up. You need chocolate because it has magnesium in it and magnesium will help to support progesterone. So this is the most fascinating thing to me is every time I teach this to a woman, the response I get is, that intuitively makes sense. That's how I feel. But we've been doing the same diet, the same exercise, the same behaviors all month long, not adapting to the changes of these hormones.

And then this self-awareness that you're giving people is, it would be liberating, you know, for them, because it takes any kind of embarrassment or judgment, self-judgment they have around like something's, Could be wrong. They're not trusting to be able to get into their body.

One thing I've learned about women, and it's like the dark side of us, is that when we can't succeed at something, especially when it comes to dieting, we don't think of it like the diet was the fault. We don't think of it as like the trainer didn't train us right. We think of it as our problem. And so we turn within and we turn on ourselves and we start saying things to ourselves like, yeah, I've never been able to succeed at losing weight. I must have bad genetics. You know, I must have done something wrong. I'm watching everybody else lose weight. And we are— and then we're back at the negative self-talk.

Hmm.

And that is why it's so important to get just something as simple as you crave different things at different times of the month. You should fast differently. You should exercise differently. You should socialize differently at different times of the month. And if you understood that, everything would feel right for you. I absolutely promise you.

So do you recommend, like for my wife, for her to have like a calendar?

Yes.

And that's good for me to see too, right?

Yes.

Because that would prepare me to give her, you know, to be able to be supportive also for the family.

Yes. One of the stories I love to point out is I had a father come to me and ask me about his daughter's hormones and how her teenage daughter's attitudes were off. And I said to him, do you know your daughter's cycle? And he's like, no. He looked at me like, why would I— why would you ask me that? I said, does your wife? And he goes, no. I'm like, you need to know her menstrual cycle, because if you did, you would know when to talk to her about conflict. And the worst time to talk to a woman about something that's gonna upset her is the week before her period.

Right.

And we all culturally know this because people are like, oh, she's PMSing. Really what she's telling you is she needs to turn within, nurture herself, slow down. And if you are giving her something that's going to force her opposite of that, you are going to get a worse part of her. If you want to solve a conflict with a woman, find out when she's ovulating because she has estrogen high. She's motivated to solve that conflict because testosterone's high and she's got a little bit of progesterone to calm her. So really, conflicts and troubling challenges for women should be handled between day 10 and day 15.

And you outline all of this in the book.

Yeah.

It's detailed with calendar, all of this.

Yeah, yeah.

Who did you write the book for?

I wrote it for the woman who's not feeling heard, that's out of health answers. It's the women who have PCOS, infertility, the perimenopausal women that are struggling, every woman that has a health, that's either physical or mental challenge and is not getting answers for, because we just get put on antidepressants as our solution. That's who I wrote this for, is here's your answer. Live a life in accordance with your hormones, and all these mental and physical challenges go away. I see it over and over again.

I know our viewers and our listeners are going to want more from you. So where would you recommend? You have so much, your podcast, your books, your YouTube. There's just so much available.

Well, you can go to drmindypearls.com. That's the best place to find everything. But my YouTube channel is like my passion project. I really put a lot of thought into that. You can grab the book wherever books are sold. And like you said, yeah, I'm kind of everywhere having this conversation. My goal really is I want to open the conversation up. So, and I think we're doing that. If we've opened this conversation up, now let's all just continue it. We're going to learn more and more about ourselves if we do that.

That's absolutely amazing. Everyone, get your copy of the book. We will put all the links in, as we always do, at jimkwik.com/notes. to Dr. Mindy's books, to your podcast, to your YouTube, and so much more. I encourage people actually to take an action, right? Because knowledge is not power. It has the potential to be power, but you have to start somewhere. And I would recommend a good place to start is to follow Dr. Mindy, take a screenshot of wherever you're consuming this right now and tag us both. And maybe they could— you want to ask them a question to put in the post so that way we could see?

Oh yeah, because so in the book, in Fast Like a Girl, I have 6 different length fasts. I want to know which one's your favorite as you practice it. And the men listening, a lot of men are like, well, is the book for me? Absolutely. The whole first section is all the history of fasting. So, it is absolutely perfect for you and it'll help you understand the women in your life as well. But yeah, tell me what your favorite length fast is.

Outstanding. Dr. Mindy, thank you so much for being on the show.

Thank you.