JJ Virgin answers whether intermittent fasting helps or hurts someone with hypothyroidism. If you have adrenal stress, stick to a 12-hour overnight fast and skip the longer 16-hour windows until your body recovers. The benefits include better insulin sensitivity and stem cell production, but only if fasting doesn't stress you out.
Questions this episode answers
A 12-hour overnight fast; avoid 16-hour fasts until adrenals have recovered.
She generally does a 12-hour overnight fast, often 14 hours, and 16 hours a couple times a week.
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Wondering if intermittent Fasting Would Benefit Me or Cause More Stress? This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times bestselling author, celebrity nutrition expert and fitness Hollywood of famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert. Ann Elizabeth Ainsworth from Facebook asks. I used to have hypothyroid. Wondering if intermittent fasting would benefit me or cause more stress. I'm trying to lose belly some belly waist fat. All right, that is an interesting one. I will be right back to explore it. Stay with me.
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Okay, let's, let's just deconstruct this question because first off it was, I used to have hypothyroidism. So does this mean that you completely reversed it, healed it and you're super cool and totally fine, in which case that is awesome. And I don't know if you're still on any kind of thyroid medications or anything like that, but let's just assume that your thyroid is absolutely working fabulously and go you for doing that. Now you are concerned about intermittent fasting and stress. And here's what I would tell you. Yes, intermittent fasting is going to be a source of stress on your body. Generally your body handles stress, recovers and gets stronger because of it. Unless you're already short circuiting, you're already under a lot of stress. I will give you an example, a personal example from me. So I like to do intermittent fasting a couple days a week. And if you're not sure what intermittent fasting is, here it is, it's time restricted eating. Now you can see all different variations on this, but generally it's time restricted eating where you have an eight hour feeding window during the day and then you don't eat nothing, zippo, zilch. You know, water, right, is fine. Water, tea, coffee, but nothing in it the rest of the day. But there's some variations that say it could be a 10 hour window, it could be a 12 hour window. I try on, on like 95% of my time. I do a 12 hour overnight fast and a lot of times 14 hours, couple times a week, especially on the weekends I try to go 16 hours. Now when the pandemic first hit, all of a sudden I used to be someone who traveled, I don't know, 80% of the time and now I'm home and I thought, well this is great. First off, I like completely stop setting alarm. But I found that I stopped eating by usually 7 o' clock at night. I'd wake up in the morning and I'd have coffee, I'd go work out and I wasn't eating until like 10 or 11. Well, awesome. I all of a sudden got super easily into intermittent fasting pretty much every day. Didn't think about it. Then I went through a big, big betrayal, was yikes. And it trashed my adrenals. And then I started gaining weight and it was just, it was like, it was just too much for my system. So I'm really glad you asked this question because if you are under stress then a 12 hour overnight fast would be a good place to be, but I wouldn't put your body under the additional stress of a 16 hour fast. And so it's really important to always consider, you know, when you're using a diet. I think diets are something that we use for therapeutic results. I love intermittent fasting, for stem cell production, for blood sugar sensitivity, for insulin sensitivity. I mean there's a lot of great things with it, but it does go well with adrenal problems. So if you are under stress then I would stick with a 12 hour overnight fast, which I think everybody should be on, but I don't. I wouldn't go straight to the big one that 16 until you've gotten your adrenals in better shape. There you go.
This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert.
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