Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCPPresident at Five Journeys, Functional Medicine & Wellness Provider, Best Selling Author, Passionate Champion for Health

Start With These for Better Metabolic Health @DrNashaInc

10 Jul 2026 · 1 min

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1:21

In this segment, the speaker outlines three high‑impact actions to enhance metabolic flexibility. First, they emphasize sleep optimization and alignment with the circadian rhythm, noting that even a few nights of poor sleep can dramatically raise insulin levels and that sleep quality should be a primary diagnostic question when glucose remains elevated despite a good diet. Second, they highlight the role of stress, pain, and hormonal status—including cortisol, sex hormones, and thyroid function—in driving glucose and insulin spikes, recommending assessment of these factors as part of metabolic health evaluation. Third, they propose a simple dietary lever: adjusting meal timing through time‑restricted eating, specifically a daily 13‑hour fasting window, which research suggests can benefit most people worldwide. The speaker frames these as actionable, low‑barrier steps that collectively address multiple metabolic pathways.

Chapters

So when we're in the metabolic conversation, do you have like a top 3 tips to get better flexibility metabolically? Here are 3 things that you either do want to do or don't want to do. I love it. Well, even mentioning what I would do to help stabilize or optimize the metabolic drop in the bucket, one of those is going to be sleep optimization, right? So circadian rhythm, uh, sleep makes a difference. So just even a few nights bad sleep can spike your insulin. Unbelievably. So we wanna really optimize that. So a lot of people, they're eating perfectly and their glucose is still elevated. I'll start asking questions about sleep. The other question I'll ask them about is stress, because cortisol will spike glucose and spike insulin. I'll ask about pain. That will also, which might land in the inflammatory bucket. And then, um, I'll ask about even just like sex hormones in general, like thyroid dysfunction, where are they in their cycle? So those play a role, but one of one of the simplest places we can start to chip away, which can kind of hit all of those targets, is around food, like the timing of our, of our meals, meal timing. And so time-restricted eating. So really, there's so many studies coming out that just simply fasting a 13-hour window every day is probably what most of us across the globe would benefit from.