Leverage Ketosis and Fasting to Reverse Disease, with Ben Azadi

I was spending probably 3 to $400 on supplements and they weren't doing a damn thing when I had these toxic sources. But now that I removed it, I started to notice better things with the supplements. They were actually becoming more effective because I of course, downregulated inflammation. So now they could do their job.

If you want to live like you matter, ditch the pills, look great and feel freaking amazing. You're in the right place. I'm Dr. Wendy Trubo.

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Hang on to your hats. Welcome to the Five Journeys podcast, Live like youe Matter. Today we have the privilege of speaking with Ben Azadi. Ben is the author of four best selling books, Keto Flex, the Perfect Health Booklet, Intermittent Fasting Cheat Sheet and the Fast, the Power of Sleep. Ben has been the go to source for intermittent fasting and the ketogenic diet. He's also known as the Health Detective because he investigates dysfunction and he educates, not medicates, to bring the body back to normal function. Ben is the founder of Keto Camp, a global brand bringing awareness to ancient healing strategies such as the Keto diet and fasting. Ben, welcome. It's pleasure to have you.

I'm grateful to be here with you, Wendy and Edward. Wendy, you came on my show, the Keto Camp podcast a little while ago and it was an amazing conversation. So I'm so honored to be here with you too.

Ben, how do you feel the ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting, how's that play in either your health or in detoxing? What's your kind of thoughts on that?

Yeah, I mean, the way that I teach ketosis and intermittent fasting is to make sure that we're not dogmatic about it. Those are both two tools. But they're not the only two tools in the shed. So I like to use ketosis and I call it more of a metabolic process than a diet. Keto. I like to use it to reset the metabolism, to teach the body to burn fat, which we know it's a cleaner source versus being stuck burning sugar because ketones are very unique in a few ways. Number one, beta hydroxybutyrate, which is one of the three ketones, has the ability to cross that blood brain barrier to give your brain an alternate fuel source along with the glucose. The second unique benefit of ketones is what it does with the mitochondria and as you both know, so important to support your mitochondria. And these toxins wipe out the mitochondria. And we know the mitochondria do two things, of course, it produces energy, and the more energy, the better you're gonna feel. But number two, there are also these sensors that are sensing what's going on in your body. And there's this cellular danger response where when there's too much stress, too much toxins, it starts to shut down energy production. So where ketones come into play. And what I love about ketosis, ketones actually communicate with the mitochondria to duplicate, make more of themselves. And that's really awesome because when we think about one gram or one molecule of glucose gets you about 32 to 36 ATP of energy, look at one molecule of ketones gets you about 132. And that's because of this mitogenesis that's occurring. And at the same time it starts to uncouple the mitochondria to get rid of any free radicals. So it increases energy production and lowers free radicals. So we combine that and intermittent fasting. And intermittent fasting, there's so many benefits to it, resets the gut autophagy and all these great things. And with the detox part of it, I have seen that when a cell is burning a cleaner source of energy, like ketones versus glucose, it'll detox much more efficiently. So when I take a group of people through a detox program, I'll get them fat adapted first. And it's made a big difference with what I've seen.

And when you say intermittent fasting, what's the range that you're looking at?

Yeah, you're right. There's so many different ways to do it. When I say intermittent fasting, I'm referring more to time restricted feeding. So like an 18 six, right? 18 hours fasted, six hour window. I think that's a great daily schedule for most people. I've personally experimented with block fast and five day water fast. And looking at my glucose and ketones, which has done great things for me, but that's more extreme, of course. But to answer your question, Edward, like an 186 daily fast.

And do you find a difference between men and women? Like do men do better, do women do better? What do you find, if anything?

Yeah, I've seen men could be more aggressive with it. Of course men have more.

No, they do better when it's more aggressive. Right, Is that what you meant?

Yeah, yeah, you could do better with it because you could get faster results, right? I mean, of course men and women have different amounts of hormones. A cycling woman has about a 28 day pattern and a man has about a 24 hour pattern. So men, I've noticed could be more aggressive. They could do 24 hour fast. Block fasting. Women, especially women who have a menstrual cycle need to be more strategic. And then women who are postmenopausal have to do it differently. So men and women should do keto and intermittent fasting differently. I have a whole chapter, chapter 12 in my book, all about that.

Cool.

What's block fasting?

Oh yeah, block fasting is just doing a water fast. So just water only for three or more days. So I did it for five days and my classification is three or more days in a fast is considered a block fast.

God, it's the crazy stuff I do.

He has. Yeah, he does it a lot. And I won't share the bed with him because he stinks like ketones. I'm like, your breath smells so bad.

That fruity alcohol kind of scent.

Yeah, I feel it's good. I don't know what you're talking about.

It is good for you, it's just not good for your environment. So we did not a block fast, but it was ancient something. It was the five day. We did it with fiber and peppermint, I think. And you drink it like six times a day. And what was really interesting, because people will have this response to me, like, I don't know if I can go more than 24 hours without eating. And I'm like, here's what I'll tell you. When I did it, it was so interesting. I got hungry and I got very hungry. But that was the first time in my life I had gone more than 24 hours. I'm Jewish, so I would go 24 hours on Yom Kippur, I would fast and then I would break my fast, but I never went longer than that. And what I found was so amazing is that I never got hungrier than very hungry and then it would go away. So it wasn't like I was always very hungry and I never got worse. So I just thought was really striking. I don't know if you experienced that too. Like your hunger hits a certain point and then it resolves.

Yeah, it's like feelings. If you're doing meditations, it's like you get stuff come up, come back, it's a wave. Things come up, things come back. Yeah.

What do you feel when you do those, the block fasts?

I've seen the same thing as you, Wende. Day two is usually when most people, including myself, have that hunger hormone ghrelin, like, really going strong. And then after that, it tapers down and tapers down. And to your point, Edward, I mean, it's a hormone, ghrelin, the hunger hormone, like all hormones, they go up and down, up and down. So you're right. And I think, Wendy, it's more psychological than physiological. For, for most people who do a block a longer fast, it's more of like, oh, my gosh, 30 hours into this, am I going to die? Aren't I supposed to eat every two to three hours to get the metabolism revved up? But the truth of the matter is that we have this amazing innate intelligence in the body. And when you remove the interference, because it takes a lot of energy and resources to digest food, now you have all this energy being diverted to areas that need to be healed. So, Edward, I'm curious to hear a little bit more about your block fast. How long have you gone and how often do you do it?

Do it once a quarter, about three to five days.

Makes his mom nuts, though. Yes, makes his mom nuts.

I've gone as much as 10 days. But I know a lot of people talk about fasting, and they go through it easily and there's no problems. I never like fasting. I never enjoy it. I do it for health reasons. I like the result, but I never really like the process. There's few minutes, like an hour or two a day. That's really nice. And then the rest is I'm not enjoying. But it's a process. And in the 10 days, it was a very different process.

Did it change for you based on having mercury in mold versus getting rid of them? Did your block fasts change?

Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't do a block fast longer than three days when I had the toxicity. My body was dumping toxins, as you know. I mean, these toxins are in fat cells. When you start using fat cells during a fast, I'm starting to dump all these toxins, and I felt awful. So once I went through the detox and got out of the exposures, it made the fast so much more bearable.

How hard was it to make the changes?

Well, I was committed to getting better. I believe when you're committed, instead of being interested, it makes things much more efficient. I got clear on my why. And when the why is strong, that how becomes much easier. So it was a challenge for sure. Number one, I wanted to make sure that the dentist that Was going to remove my feelings, knew what he or she was doing. So I seeked out different biological dentists and I found a really good one here in South Miami who did it the right way, the way that it was done. And I know that this is the way that you want it to be done was like a hazmat scene, right? I was covered up. My biological dentist covered me up. I had the oxygen going through my nose. He had the suction machine with ozone. You know, don't swallow, don't swallow as they're extracting it. So took four out, came back a month later, took the other four out. And now I removed the source in my mouth and it's the vaporization gone right now I know. Okay, now detox could begin because you cannot detox if you keep auto intoxicating yourself. So I had to remember real detox, at least the mercury in my brain. So I had to remove that first. And then as soon as I removed it, to your point, Wende, I saw my scores improved. I also noticed with my CrossFit workouts, I was recovering much faster, had better energy. Brain fog was getting a little bit better, you know. And something I also forgot to mention was that I was spending probably 3 to $400 on supplements, and they weren't doing a damn thing when I had these toxic sources. But now that I removed it, I started to notice better things with the supplements. They were actually becoming more effective because I, of course, downregulated inflammation. So now they could do their job. That was the first part. And then the second part was actually the mold which was in my house that was discovered black mold. So I remediated the mold. But I also decided I'm just going to get out of the house completely. So I sold the house and moved into a new apartment. And now I have like these air purifications going on. So that was the beginning of my journey. And I did start to do real detox ever since then. And those, you know, getting out of the molds and getting the silver fillings out of my mouth and doing real detox. Move that needle more than anything else I've ever done in my past.

Before you got to, hey, I have eight mercury fillings. Before you got to the person who really opened your eyes, what other paths did you go down that really got you nowhere?

I've done like an H. Pylori protocol. I've done things trying to fix the gut. And of course, when you got mercury dumping in your gut all the time, you could do all the things you want to do for the gut, but you got to stop that dumping that's occurring. So I did an H. Pylori protocol. I did things to kind of fix the gut. I took a ton of supplements for the gut, explored different diets. I was a vegan for a year and a half, like plant based, 100% vegan. For a year and a half I did excessive keto, excessive intermittent fasting, excessive workouts at my CrossFit gym. I tried to fine tune my sleep, which I couldn't figure out how to get that sweet spot. And I took all the supplements that you could think of and I did all the Dr. Google searching. So I did a lot and I exhausted a lot of money, bandwidth, energy and resources on that.

This is the plug for a functional medicine consult. If you eat right and you exercise and you sleep and you still don't feel amazing, that's when you get a functional medicine consult. Because your conventional doctor is going to say, well, you're not anemic, your iron looks good and your B12, you're not dying, so you're good, you're fine. I'll see you in a year.

You're fine.

Fine. You know what fine stands for?

What should people know about ketogenic diet or intermittent fasting that is not common. Or what are the.

I'm thinking pitfalls.

Yeah, maybe the pitfalls of like when should people not intermittent fast or not go on the ketogenic diet? Like, what are the contraindications of that?

Yeah, I'll start with keto. Great question. Then I'll get to fasting after that. Well, we know that there was a study that came out in 2018 from the university of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. You might have seen the study. It was about 8,000 people. In this study, they wanted to determine how healthy is the American population, the adult American population. So they looked at different metrics, like blood pressure, A1C, triglycerides. Are they on medication, off medication? So several different metrics to assess their health or lack of. And they determined in that study that only 12% of American adults are metabolically healthy. And that was in 2018. And then we know what happened in the last two years that probably got a lot worse. So in that scenario, I believe 88% of Americans could really use the ketogenic lifestyle and reset their metabolism and burn fat instead of sugar. But the pitfall is that we start to fall in love with the tool and then we think it's the only tool, we gotta use it for the rest of our Lives. And I love keto. I think ketosis is great, great, I feel great in it. But I don't think we should be in any diet, including ketosis long term. So the pitfalls is becoming dogmatic about it and being in ketosis long term, that has a lot of negative side effects, which I outline a few of them in my book. One of them is the thyroid. When we think about the thyroid, the thyroid, which is much more than the thyroid, it communicates with the hypothalamus pituitary, which whereas mercury is stored right, and we know mercury has an affinity for the thyroid. But side note, the thyroid produces T4, which is that inactive hormone. It needs to be converted and activated to T3 and that's a very important hormone. Every cell has a receptor site for T3. What helps make that conversion is actually insulin. So chronically low levels of insulin like long term ketosis could create a dysfunction in that conversion which can lead to some thyroid, a slow thyroid. That's why we see that with long term ketosis same could happen with with fasting. So one pitfall with keto is staying in ketosis for too long. I like an 8 to 12 week approach to get fat adapted, keto adapted. And then my book is called Keto Flex. Now we flex in and out of ketosis. The name of the game, I believe should be metabolic flexibility, not dogma. With intermittent fasting, it's very similar. People fall in love with it myself and they think since it's good autophagy, for example, cellular repair and cleanup, let's get all the autophagy we can get. Well, too much of a good thing ends up being a bad thing. It could weaken your immune system, you could eat away hard earned muscle. So we want to make sure that we are feasting and fasting because fasting is great, but we want to pair that with the feasting. And a lot of people forget the feasting part. Eating healthy and eating until full. So that is another thing I've seen with fasting. And it's so unique to the individual. Everybody has their hermetic ceiling, the hermetic curve, meaning you got to find what your Goldilocks effect is. But in general, staying in ketosis for too long is an issue. Eating the wrong fats is an issue. And then too much fasting and not enough feasting, I've seen be an issue with fasting.

Cool. So when you did the keto and the intermittent fasting, how long did it take you to start feeling better? So when you sort of timeline, it out you go.

Okay.

You did the keto and the paleo, and that made a little bit of a difference, but not really. Then you were like, whoa, major. Mycotoxins and mercury got that out. And then sort of when you got.

Rid of the exposure.

Exactly. Remove the tweaks. So when you stopped harming, you know, stopped filling the pump up with toxins, from that point, how long until you started to feel better?

So every year, I started to feel better and better. Even to this day, I still feel like I'm getting better and better. Something that I didn't mention, that it just reminded me, as you brought this question up, is that I have an autoimmune condition called Raynaud's. And my Raynaud's was really bad when I had my fillings in and my mold in my house to the point where I would get a Raynaud's flare up every single day. And for those who don't know what Raynaud's is, it's where I don't get enough blood flow to my extremities. And if I wash my hands with cold water or touch a cold beverage, I mean, it would turn white, purple, and go numb, like, all the way into my hand here. And it was so bad that I was hiking. I was taking a vacation in Washington State, hiking in Snow Lake Mountain, and I polar plunged in this cold body of water, getting the amazing benefits of a polar plunge. And I was only in there for, like, two minutes, and I hopped out of that body of water. I look at my hands, and they're completely white to the point where it's going to my wrist right here. I couldn't even close them. I thought I was going to lose my fingers. I didn't realize my Raynaud's would get that bad. And I look around. It was just me and my two best friends and nobody else in sight. We were in the middle of nowhere. So I'm, like, looking for people, looking for hikers. And thank God there were some hikers that came five minutes later with some lighters, and I was putting the lighters underneath my hands. Took, like, 30 minutes to go back to the blood flow. This was when I had the fillings in my mouth, by the way, and I still lived in the moldy home. So I have done the detox. I've done different strategies, like the carnivore diet, keto diet, intermittent fasting, and I'm happy to report that I probably get a Raynaud's flare up maybe once every two months. It's very uncommon And I'm determined to never get a flare up and shut that gene down. So it's just the amazing human body. When you start removing the interference, the body starts rewarding you and your genes start. Epigenetics takes place. So I'm still getting better year by year, and I still have work to do. To answer your question, don't we all?

We're a whip. I always say to people, when you think about all these diseases, name them. Every autoimmune disease, cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, anything cardiometabolic, pcos, women's issues, degenerative diseases. Every single one of them comes from some inflammatory source. And what is the inflammation coming from? And that's food, which can be a toxin. And toxins, I mean, it's kind of like food, lifestyle, toxins, stress. But it comes down to something that your body's interpreting as a toxin. And here you are, you have disease, but you really highlighted you can reverse autoimmune disease. It's amazing.

Yeah, it's amazing. And it's not the conventional message. Right. You were born with these genes and it's just a matter of time before you get diagnosed with whatever disease. But we have a lot of control. And to your point, Wende, it's our environment, it's the food we eat, it's the thoughts that we think that also has an impact on our health. And it's just a whole host of things. But the most important thing to understand is that we're in control. I remember my mentor, Bob Proctor, who said, you are the only problem you will ever have and you're the only solution. Right. I love that because it helps you take responsibility and ownership.

My favorite one was recently. Your mess becomes your message. I was like, that's so me. My mess became my message. Don't be a dirty girl.

That's right. Your test becomes your testimony.

Yeah, totally. Now, this led you, this whole process led you to make your own detox program, right?

Yeah. I wouldn't call it my own detox program. I Learned it from Dr. Pompa. True cellular detox is what he called it. So he taught it to me and now I do it in a group setting.

Yeah. So what are the components of that?

So it depends on the person. Right. If somebody has some toxicity, but they're not really neurotoxic. Right. This is inside the box. So it's general detox. Somebody's really sick, they can't do this. They need more of a custom one on one approach, which is outside of the box. Detox and that's something else. But in the box, detox. 90 days. And it's very straightforward. For the first 30 days, we're opening up detox pathways. We're supporting the lymph system, the gut, the kidney, the colon, the liver, we're opening up those pathways and of course we're also getting them into ketosis and doing a little bit of some intermittent fasting. I also am really huge on gratitude and mindset and affirmations. So I have a lot of people work on that. I believe we become what we think about. So I have them do different affirmations and things of that sort. After 30 days, then we move into what's called the body phase, where now we're doing detox, we're using chelators, we're using a product, I don't know if you want me to name it or not, but we're using a product to. It's called cyto detox, which has large particles, small particles, which go in the membrane and stay outside the membrane with a binder to catch that as well. And we're still working on downstream detox pathways, but now we're clearing out some toxins from the body. The ultimate goal is to get to the brain phase, which is now we've created this concentration gradients and we've cleared out some toxins downstream. Now we want to get to the mercury in the brain. So we use ALA and different chelators, cytodetoxin and other binders as well to start pulling out those toxins from the brain. Gets in the bile, the liver starts stumping the bile, and then we have that binder to catch it in the gut. So it's a 90 day protocol. Most people need to do that brain phase or the body phase several times. But again, this is for the general protocol for those who are kind of toxic, but not severely toxic. If you're severely toxic, you need more of a custom one on one approach that's outside the box, detox. Because as you know, detox, there's no cookie cutter approach to it.

So let's define toxic. How are you defining toxic? I mean, we all are toxic in this world, right? We get exposed all the time. But I just want to make sure. What's your definition? Just so that it's clear.

I have everybody fill out something called an NTQ form. So neurotoxic questionnaire. There's about 75 questions and we tally up a score based off of their symptoms. And I also get their health history as well. So based on that score, I will determine whether or not they need more outside the box detox or something that's more general. So it'll be assessed on their symptoms that they're dealing with and their health history. So some of the questions I asked on this forum is, do you have silver fillings? Have you ever had silver fillings? Do you know if your mom had fillings when she gave birth to you? Did you ever, ever live in a house before 1978? Did you ever wear contact lenses in the 80s and 90s?

Tamerosal? I have to stop you because long before I knew I had mercury, I knew I was allergic to tamarosal in contact lens solution. It's a preservative and it's a nice name for mercury and it used to be in vaccines too.

Is it great that we just put it into our eyes? Mercury into our eyes? I think that's great.

Inject it. So I have, I'm sorry for interrupting Ben, but I was like, I knew this in my 20s that I was allergic to Timerosal because every time I'd like react and then every time I got a vaccine that was in a multi dose vial that's preserved with Timerosal, the nice name for mercury, I reacted. And 20 years later, here I am, a hot, toxic mess. So sorry, keep going. I didn't mean to, just couldn't resist.

I love that you pointed that out because so many people, this is going to be a light bulb moment for them who are listening to your show right now. It's like, oh my gosh, I wore contact lenses in the 80s and 90s and they start to kind of connect the dots. So yeah, I asked all these questions. So I get their health history first and foremost. And there's different questions based off of like mold toxicity, lead toxicity and mercury toxicity. And then I have them 0 to 4 based off like 4 would be the most extreme symptoms to 0. And then we tally up their scores and by that I would say most people will score at least 30. But I've seen people in the hundreds. Then I would determine whether or not they need outside the box detox or they could do the night and day protocol.

Yeah, that's really great.

What should we ask you that we haven't asked you that you want to make sure people know about?

Yeah, I would say this. A lot of people underestimate the thoughts that we have as a way of healing the body or hurting the body. I used to be depressed. I used to be suicidal. Of course part of that was the mercury in my brain, which can cause depression. But also part of that was just not working on myself and not being aware of the thoughts that we have. So the last thing that I would love to share with your audience is that the average person has about 60,000 thoughts per day. And through Dr. Bruce Lipton's work, he's proven that thoughts are a frequency that actually have the ability to penetrate the membrane and communicate with the DNA nucleus in your cells. And if your thoughts are hateful thoughts, resentful thoughts, thoughts that are negative, what I call stinking thinking, like I learned from Zig Ziglar, then the protein that's going to be created from your DNA would be inflammatory proteins. Your thoughts create proteins, but the opposite is true. If your thoughts are abundant, loving, grateful thoughts, the proteins created are anti inflammatory proteins. So if you think about the average person having 60,000 thoughts per day, they also estimate that 90% of those thoughts are the same thoughts from yesterday and 85% of those thoughts are negative thoughts. So I always say if you're thinking is thinking, your dreams are shrinking. And if you have 60,000 thoughts per day, that means you could put your body in a healing anti inflammatory state. 60,000 thoughts per day, per day. How do you do that? Well, I believe it starts with gratitude. Dr. Joe Dispenza has looked at brain scans of thousands of people when he gave them vitamin G, which is gratitude, and he saw 1200 different chemical processes go on instantaneously that down regulate inflammation from gratitude. And it's true what you appreciate, appreciate. So I love gratitude. I'm gratitude journaling every single day, randomly texting people, gratitude. And I really believe it's easy to do and easy not to do. But once you start adopting gratitude with the detox and all that, it goes such a long way towards your healing journey.

Train the brain.

It's so overlooked and such a simple tool, and yet very few people do it. And the people that do it consistently really see a difference.

We start all of our staff meetings with gratitude. Every person goes around and says the one thing that they're grateful for. It might get a little unwieldy when we get to 20 employees, but you know, for the next few months, it works.

We'll get there. Maybe we'll have break it up to some breakout rooms.

Breakout gratitude rooms. I love that.

So this has been fantastic. Ben, where can people find out more about you? I know you have a podcast because I was on it. So tell us all about where people can reach you and we'll put everything in the show notes.

Yeah, the Keto Camp podcast Camp is spelled with the K. Keto Camp with the K. Wendy was on there and was an amazing conversation. So that would be a great episode to get started with my podcast. It's available on all podcast platforms and the YouTube channel is also called Keto Camp. If you go to benazadi.com which is my full name, it has all of those references and links and links to my books and all that.

Great, awesome, awesome. It's been truly amazing. I know I've learned a lot. So thank you for coming. It's been a pleasure.

Yeah, thanks for listening to another episode of the Five Journeys podcast Live like youe Matter.

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