Introduction
Dr. Eric Westman: Today, we have Ben Azadi with Keto Kamp. We crossed paths at a Keto Salt Lake meetup, I can’t remember what year, it’s all a blur. I was just so impressed with your enthusiasm. You lit up the crowd, the audience. I’ve also been following your videos on YouTube and as an influencer and I like to learn from you. It’s a two way street. Please introduce yourself to a group that may not know your story of how you got where you are now.
Ben Azadi: Absolutely. I’ve loved your work and I’ve learned so much from you, it’s an honor to be here. I’m somebody who struggled with obesity – both physical obesity and mental obesity for twenty plus years growing up here in the US, following a standard American diet which, as we both know, is a heavily processed diet. I had addictions to sugar and drugs as a teenager and also video games. I had a video game addiction as well. My parents were divorced. As I was a kid, I was growing up and they were divorced. My mother actually raised me and my sister. She worked three jobs and two of those jobs were at Kentucky Fried Chicken. Trying to do the best she could do with her level of awareness and means, she would bring home Kentucky Fried Chicken, so I would eat that on an almost daily basis following the standard American diet. I was very unhealthy as a kid and nothing changed as an adult.
I was in my early twenties, twenty three years old, back in 2007 where I found myself in a really dark place like so many people who are watching and listening. I felt hopeless. I felt inflamed. My whole body was inflamed. I had neuroinflammation, brain fog. I had prediabetes and high blood pressure. I made my appointments with my doctor, I explained the symptoms to my doctor and there was never a conversation about, “Let’s discuss what you’re eating, Ben,” or “let’s discuss your lifestyle, let’s discuss a ketogenic diet or a low-carb diet,” or these amazing tools that we have available. The question that the doctor was asking was, “What medication can I prescribe for this twenty three year old man?” He suggested a few but I felt like I was too young to go on those medications so I denied them at that time. I knew I needed to figure things out at that point. Twenty three years old, two hundred and fifty pounds. I was actually ready, Dr. Westman, to give up on life. I won’t go any further but if you catch my drift, I was ready to just give up.
Dr. Eric Westman: I’m sorry to hear that and so I’m so glad that your story is gonna help so many other people who are in that situation.
Ben Azadi: Yeah. So many because I felt hopeless. I felt like there was no way out. I was just tired of being depressed and inflamed all day. The only reason I stopped pursuing that path of giving up on life is my mom. I just kept thinking about her. I kept thinking about the devastation it would cause her and I didn’t want to do that to her. For me, the first shift was actually not a nutrition or a fasting shift. It was more of a mindset shift. I started to read books from Dr. Wayne Dyer, Bob Proctor, and Tony Robbins, these incredible authors. The books, first of all, helped me take responsibility and ownership over my problems. I stopped blaming my slow metabolism or bad genetics or enabling family members. I took responsibility and then I started to move my body, eat real food and these changes started to happen day after day and week after week. By nine months after I made that decision to take ownership and responsibility, I lost eighty pounds of fat. I went from thirty four percent body fat at my highest to six percent at my lowest.
It’s cool to achieve a physical six pack but I achieved a mental six pack! The depression, the mental illness I was dealing with started to just fade and fade and fade. I’m happy to report that it was seventeen years ago. I’ve been in the health space since then and I haven’t returned to that state of mind and also the state of illness that I was in.
Dr. Eric Westman: I suppose, like me, you’re following the new research that’s going on with mental health and changing the food, the mind, and reversing severe mental illness including depression and bipolar. That’s the metabolic mind group. So many things get better when the nutrition gets right.
Getting the Message Across
Dr. Eric Westman: You’re helping people who are coming to you. If someone isn’t thinking about this, what would your approach be? You have a great way of saying things. How can you make nutrition just so obvious?
Ben Azadi: If somebody’s brand new, just to get them into the door of this world that we live in, I think it’s important for them to understand the differences between those processed foods, versus real food. It’s easy for people to understand that when we go to the grocery store or the supermarket and we look at whole foods like an avocado or eggs or beef, there’s not an ingredients list because you get what you see. It’s just the egg, it’s the avocado, it’s the beef. But when you go to the inner aisles and you start buying potato chips or things that are boxed and bagged, there’s a whole list of ingredients, things you can’t pronounce, artificial ingredients, high fructose, corn syrup, vegetable oils – that is not real food. Those are food-like substances. It’s a frankenfood.
The first step is I would say only eat single-ingredient foods. If you can’t pronounce it, if it has a list of ten plus ingredients, that’s a red flag that it’s probably not designed for human consumption. That’s a good starting point. Once the person makes that first little step right there they’ll notice a difference within days. You know this, Dr. Westman, they’ll notice more energy, less brain fog.
Then, of course, we start discussing macronutrients like carbohydrates and how that spikes glucose and insulin and why over time you want to start lowering that and increasing protein and fat. But if they’re brand new I think the first step is to just read the ingredients label and not fall for the front of the label which, as you know, these brilliant marketers make to look so sexy and healthy and they’re really not healthy for us at all.
Finding Low-Carb
Dr. Eric Westman: You could have chosen any one of a number of ways to lose weight. There’s a weight loss phase and a weight maintenance phase in obesity or diabetes treatment. What gravitated you toward low-carb, keto, and fasting?
Ben Azadi: I’m glad you brought that up because the story was not finished. It’s interesting because I lost the eighty pounds in those nine months and I was a lot healthier, I was fit. But I still didn’t feel optimally healthy. I still had some brain fog and some digestive issues. I had the appearance of somebody who was very healthy and fit. But on the inside I wasn’t really that healthy at a cellular level. I hadn’t done keto at this point. It was really exercising and eating real food, which works. It’s a good first step.
I thought the next step for me to feel better was a plant-based diet. I went full on with a vegan diet. I actually remember reading the book The China Study before I knew how to read studies back in 2011 or so. I was really duped by that, including some documentaries that are out about the dangers of meat and how you’re destroying the world and all the propaganda. It got me. I did a plant-based diet for a year and a half, about fifteen months. I was very dogmatic about being a plant-based person. I was like hashtag plant-powered and my health declined even more actually. I was starting to be more inflamed and my recovery in between workouts was taking even longer. My sleep was bad and I felt awful.
I got lab work and it verified the way I felt. My testosterone was low, blood triggers were going back up because it was a high-carbohydrate diet. In 2013 is when I started to look at other approaches. I started to get into ancient healing uh strategies, ancient healing nutrition and that’s actually when I discovered you, Dr. Westman, and your great work on low-carbohydrate diets and a ketogenic diet. It was really fascinating when I started to learn about keto because I discovered that, technically, it’s not even a diet. It’s more of a metabolic process and it’s not new. It’s just new to some people or unannounced but it’s been around forever and all our ancestors were in this metabolic state. Babies are born in this fat-burning state. I wanted to experience what it feels like to be back in this fat burning state.
I started to do keto back in 2013. That’s back when it was hard to test the ketones. It was like $8 a strip and if you messed up on that finger prick you lost $8. I remember being frustrated about that. I did a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet. I paired that with some intermittent fasting because I started to read about intermittent fasting and that was the point where now I felt optimally healthy. That’s when I got into keto and fasting and there’s been different iterations of it since but it started back in 2013 and you were a great inspiration for me to start that.
Dr. Eric Westman: That’s great. I’m glad that this was helpful. Just to set the record straight, all I did was study it, I didn’t come up with it. We’re all following something that’s been around a long time but we were one of two groups – Jeff Volek at Ohio State started studying and putting it into papers and now in a textbook.
What Does Inflammation Feel Like?
Dr. Eric Westman: When you say you feel inflamed and that now you feel less inflamed, what does that mean?
Ben Azadi: To me, there’s two primary types of inflammation. We have acute inflammation which is not necessarily bad. If we work out and we’re sore there’s some acute inflammation and then we send the proper signals to heal. We get stronger and better. If we sprain an ankle, it’s the same thing, it’s acute inflammation and then we recover. It’s the chronic inflammation that’s the problem.
When our cells and cell membranes are chronically inflamed, the body will present symptoms to us to show us that we’re off track. Something we’re eating, even something we’re thinking or something in our environment is creating a blockage interference. Your body will show you a “check engine” light, a symptom in the form of brain fog, gaining weight, your blood pressure goes up, or you have afternoon fatigue. That starts to progress if you don’t pay attention to the body. It’s always communicating to you these symptoms which show up really subtly. Muscle pain, joint pain, those nasal drip digestive issues, it could be one or it could be many but they start subtly and then over time it’s a full blown diagnosis. It’s debilitating for individuals. Personally, I had joint pain – back pain and knee pain. My knees felt inflamed. Of course, I had the extra weight. I had digestive issues, brain fog, and I would feel bloated after eating meals. I was not paying attention to my body communicating to me and I think a lot of people ignore that. It’s like ignoring the “check engine” light in your vehicle. It’s there for a reason. There’s a mechanism in place to show you that there’s something off. Take your car to the mechanic or figure out what the cause is. I think those symptoms are gifts. I don’t look at them as something that’s evil and I’m actually grateful for the symptom because it’s your body’s way of communicating to you.
The Importance of Community
Dr. Eric Westman: Were you getting support from family and friends? There’s often a story about sabotage or people saying, “You’re killing yourself!”
Ben Azadi: In general they were supportive but they were not necessarily on board with me eating a ton of fat and meat and fasting. My mom still doesn’t like the idea of me doing a lot of fasting. She’s supportive, but friends not so much. They’re gonna make some comments because when you start to change I think you become a threat to people in your life who are not changing. It points a mirror to why they’re not changing. The old version of me was the Ben who would show up to the party and eat the chips and the pizza and drink the alcohol. The new version of me was not eating that or drinking the alcohol and that makes them feel uncomfortable. They’d say, “You’re no fun. Why don’t you live a little?” I’d think, “Actually, I want to live a lot. I want to live a long healthy life, not just a little bit.”
It’s important to have community – in person or online. If you don’t have that conviction or that community supporting you and your friends or family members start to make comments it could convince you to stop doing what you’re doing. It could sidetrack you. Community is very, very important.
The Road to Keto Kamp
Dr. Eric Westman: Doctors get no training in nutrition. Most doctors just prescribe the meds but many doctors who come to this space have fixed themselves and then talk about how the medical system wasn’t very helpful for them. We need non-doctors to get into this field and space and teach. It’s awesome to see what you’re doing. What was your background and how did that lead to Keto Kamp?
Ben Azadi: There’s kind of a benefit to not being a doctor. I don’t have to unlearn a whole bunch of stuff. In the beginning it was self learning, reading books, reading some of your research and other literature out there and then eventually I got certified with a functional diagnostic nutrition FDN. I’m an FDNP which stands for functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner. It’s a long way to say that I am a certified health coach.
In 2018 I started to get mentorship from Dr. Daniel Pompa. He had a program called the Platinum Program where he for many years trained hundreds of thousands of doctors on his protocol. He made an exception for me, a non-doctor, to join his group for the first time ever and we started to do case studies every Tuesday. We’d hop on a Tuesday call on Zoom and we were looking at lab work, looking at research, looking at case studies and we’ve been doing that every Tuesday since 2018. I’ve learned a lot from their patients, the clients I’ve worked with one-on-one, my programs, and my own personal experience. That, collectively, is my background and how I’ve learned and I’m continuously learning, unlearning, and relearning. I think that’s the name of the game to unlearn and continue to relearn.
Dr. Eric Westman: The nutrition credential is important if you’re going to be spreading messages in people’s lives that aren’t the same as yours. On my channel, I always recommend considering the source and if the person who is giving information has really just done their own thing and is only worried about their own experience.
I worry a little bit about having someone fasting for a long period of time without understanding how that can impact the medication treatment. Did you get the guardrails to be sure to caution someone if they’re on insulin or watch the blood sugars? Or was your training outside the clinical realm?
Ben Azadi: When it comes to the social media content on fasting, where I talk about a 72-hour fast or a 100-hour fast, at the end of those videos I always attach a Q & A. In that Q & A I address that. Should you be doing this if you’re on medication? And of course the answer is, well maybe, but talk to your doctor about that, especially if you’re on insulin. You don’t want to go hypoglycemic.
Unfortunately, not everybody watches the whole video to get to the Q & A. Some people get there, some people don’t. With my short form reels, it’s hard to address all of that. We’ll get comments and I’ll get direct messages asking me about that and my answer is always, “Talk to your doctor.” If you’re on any medication, talk to your doctor before making any changes, especially doing this really aggressive fast.
If they’re working with me in my programs, we work directly with that prescribing doctor. It’s a must because fasting for three days is a very powerful tool, it’s incredible. If you’re on medication, there’s gonna be some changes happening in those three days and you want to make sure you’re monitoring glucose, the ketones, and those meds to make sure you’re not hurting yourself. So if I’m working with a person that’s obvious and that’s clear but on social media it’s hard to get that message across to everybody.
Dr. Eric Westman: One of the realities is the doctor might say, “Oh yeah, go ahead and do that,” because they have no understanding that you might need to drop the insulin on the first day and a half! But that’s good to know.
The Scope of Influence
Dr. Eric Westman: We’re learning from social media and as a grassroots movement, you’ve learned from people you’ve coached and people you’ve helped. How many people have you taught and influenced with Keto Kamp?
Ben Azadi: It’s been fun. In 2018 is when I created Keto Kamp. I got into keto in 2013 and I loved it, but my company back then was called Shred Fat Incorporated. It was all about fat loss. I changed the name to Keto Kamp – Kamp with a K – in 2018. That’s where we changed the channels. We started the YouTube and the podcast, and we created some online courses like the Keto Kamp Academy. I’ve taken about 7,000 people now through different keto and fasting protocols. It’s been interesting to see their data. It’s been interesting to see who gets quick results, who struggles, and what some of the roadblocks for people are.
I’ve worked with a couple hundred people over the years one-on-one, ordering labs, looking at labs, seeing what’s for them and against them. It’s been cool to see that data. It’s been cool to get the data from Dr. Pompa’s group that I’m with because that’s like tens of thousands of patients that they have clinics all across the US and then just get the synthesis of that information and apply it to the next people, the next person that I’m working with. It’s cool to get that data. As you know, data is so important because we start to see trends. I’ll give you a couple of trends that I’ve personally seen and I’m curious to see some trends for you as well.
One of the trends I’ve started to notice is when somebody goes from burning sugar, like 93% of Americans who are sugar burners and we transition them to burning fat and getting fat adapted, the trends that we start to see is loose stools and diarrhea. Then we thought, okay, what can we do to fix that? When we start supporting the liver with either supplementation like ox bile supplementation or increasing bitter rich foods or doing other things to support the liver and allowing that liver to produce a healthy bile flow and breaking down those fats, we notice the loose stools and the diarrhea go away. So one of our recommendations right off the bat, even if we don’t know if they have a sluggish liver, is to support the liver that first week. Keep your electrolytes up that first week as you lower insulin. We want to keep those electrolytes up. Just those two things have made a huge difference during that initial transition from sugar burner to fat burner.
Dr. Eric Westman: That’s fascinating because that’s totally different from my experience.
Ben Azadi: Oh yeah, tell me. What’s your experience?
Dr. Eric Westman: I let people eat an unlimited amount of meat, poultry, fish and shellfish, and eggs. And then they can have sugar-free things, even diet sodas. I’m still not super clean. I’m not convinced that you have to do that. I ask people to have two cups of leafy greens and one cup of a non-starchy vegetable every day. That’s really the main food intake and what most people tell me is they get constipation! Most people tell me they have less frequent bowel movements. I recommend electrolytes if someone has constipation or muscle cramps but only after the fact.
It finally dawned on me that I didn’t create the system. I studied it. Dr. Atkins used this system that I’m using and studied. I think it corrected a few things that you may see out there with internet keto and even carnivore. It’s interesting because I rarely see diarrhea. If it’s diarrhea, it’s medium chain triglyceride oil (MCT oil) or coconut oil or butter in the coffee, or metformin that lingers on with nausea. That’s an interesting difference. So are you recommending MCT oil or other fat supplementations?
Ben Azadi: I like the idea of adding some fats for some people. For me, to your point, we go low and slow with that because that could cause some loose stools and diarrhea right away. I like the idea of eating whole foods, though. That’s the main thing. The green leafy vegetables are also something I recommend, especially the ones that are more bitter and rich, like arugula and artichokes. I’m a big fan of apple cider vinegar as well for keto, even if you don’t do keto.
Dr. Eric Westman: That’s not something I grew up teaching. It wasn’t the thing 20 years ago. If someone has side effects I’ll ask them if they’re having apple cider vinegar and tell them to stop that. Everyone comes with their own preconceived notion of what keto is today because there are so many different versions and a lot of them can work and are healthy. I never really had the liver detox, that’s not part of my lexicon which is just fascinating.
Ben Azadi: It is fascinating. There are so many different ways to get into ketosis. I think number one, we just have to lower insulin. How you get there could be different, but as long as you lower insulin, you’re going to get there. That is the overall goal.
Understanding Fasting
Dr. Eric Westman: I don’t typically introduce fasting. When would I, in my patient population, get benefit by telling someone to do a couple days of total fasting or maybe even longer? Have you seen people who were stuck or had a particular problem and that helped?
Ben Azadi: I love fasting – responsible fasting, of course. It’s a very powerful tool. I always say a chainsaw is also a very powerful tool, but it could also hurt you if you haven’t read the user manual. Same thing with fasting. You’ve got to read the user manual. I like to get them fat adapted first. I like to get them in ketosis – verified by looking at blood ketones, beta-hydroxybutyrate – and then we start eliminating the snacks. They have three meals a day, breakfast, lunch and dinner. Then, if they feel good doing that, we start pushing either their breakfast up or their dinner down. However they want to do that, but we just do it for about a couple hours. Let’s say we go from 12 hours of daily fasting, which is not much, to 14 hours. Then we go from 14 to 16. A lot of people in my group find that a sweet spot at 18 hours fasting, 6 hours eating, two to three keto meals is a good general sustainable protocol.
If they feel stuck, if they still have severe insulin resistance and in some cases, diabetes, we could pull the lever even more and start to implement a 24-hour fast or a 36-hour fast. We always look at glucose and ketones during the fast, making sure that if they’re on medication, we’re working with their doctor on that. We start to pull these levers and it’s a great way to get more healing, to force insulin down, lower inflammation, reset the gut, and look at rest instead of digesting food. I do like those levers but I don’t use those levers in the beginning; I want them to build up the fasting muscle first.
Dr. Eric Westman: Are there particular situations where this might be beneficial or do you do it with everyone?
Ben Azadi: Not everybody. For those who are really overweight and obese this is beneficial to lower insulin and start tapping into stored fat, producing more ketones. I’ve seen it work really well for autoimmune conditions as well as a way to help with autoimmune symptoms. Those who want to be preventative and are afraid of certain diagnoses in the future, you could do some autophagy, some cellular clean up and be proactive. Not everybody wants to do it. Some people are afraid to go a day or two without food and I would never pressure them to do that. For those who are insulin resistant and diabetic, we pull those levers a lot. It works really well for those metabolic syndrome clients.
Dr. Eric Westman: I can imagine. One reason we’re chatting is I’ve had my own experience with patients. Usually, it takes me 5 to 10 patients because either I’m very conservative and don’t want to change much like most doctors or I just want to make sure it doesn’t apply to one or two people. The more I hear people doing their own fasts – and I’ve seen it break really tough stalls – I can see how in certain clinical situations this could be helpful.
Limits of Fasting
Dr. Eric Westman: Is there anything that you’ve learned, a boundary you don’t want to cross where you might not want to do fasting?
Ben Azadi: Yeah, for sure. If somebody is overly stressed, they have a lot of stress in their life, adding in a long fast, like a 36-hour fast or more is too much stress for the body to adapt to. Fasting is a stressor. It’s a positive hormetic stress, but if you are already so stressed out, you’re not getting quality sleep, maybe you’re stressed out at work, I wouldn’t recommend it. I make sure they’re getting good sleep and they’re managing their stress well so we can start applying more stressors.
If they have an eating disorder, whether it’s active or history, that’s something that could open up Pandora’s box and you don’t want to start to do too much fasting with them. They would work with a specialist on that. If they’re really underweight and malnourished, we definitely don’t want to add more fasting and autophagy which is catabolic. If they’re under the age of 18, we don’t want to do much fasting as well. But outside of that, I think there’s a role for it if it’s done properly.
Dr. Eric Westman: I’m not even sure the 18 thing applies. Yeah. But that goes into pediatrics and pediatricians have their own mental blocks on using diet as a tool. In my area, it was some years ago, but the pediatricians were worried about a low-carb diet. It was called Atkins at the time but then they were getting involved in a study of weight loss surgery for their pediatric patients!
Autophagy
Dr. Eric Westman: Most of my patients don’t know about that term, “autophagy”. There’s even a journal of autophagy now; it’s been around for a long time and it’s in the research world and in the ketoverse we talk about it. What is autophagy and how can you get access to it?
Ben Azadi: Autophagy is a cellular clean up process. Our body starts looking for damaged cells and proteins, even toxins that have accumulated and it starts cleaning it up, to put it bluntly. The analogy I give for autophagy is the refrigerator. If we open up the refrigerator and we look at all the groceries, we see that every grocery has an expiration date. If we let all the groceries expire in the fridge and we buy new groceries and put them in front of the expired groceries and close that door, come back the next day, open up that door, it’s going to be a really toxic environment. Diseases will manifest and grow in that environment. The human body is kind of like that refrigerator. We have cells that have expiration dates.
Autophagy is the process of cleaning out the expired groceries, cleaning out the cells that are dysfunctional, the mitochondria, this mitophagy where we’re fixing up mitochondria that are not producing energy well. Autophagy is happening, to a certain degree, probably all the time, but when you eliminate food by doing fasting, you really start to enhance autophagy. When you exercise and strength train, you also enhance autophagy. There’s some things in the scientific literature I’ve seen called senolytics – different foods and ingredients like extra virgin olive oil, turmeric and different mushroom extracts that also could enhance autophagy. I like getting it through fasting and strength training and it’s a great way to just clean out the junk. It’s like Pac-Man cleaning out the junk within your cells.
The human body is so sophisticated because if the cell has no function, it’s a senescent cell, also called the zombie cells. Then the innate intelligence, that inner physician in the body, will activate or send a signal for apoptosis, which is programmed cell death – it will get rid of that cell which has no function and then it’ll produce a new cell, a stem cell. That stem cell could be used for healing in the liver, the brain, and the kidney. It’s really cool and a lot of this is happening during longer stages of fasting.
Dr. Eric Westman: When you come to a diet like keto or very low-carb or other sorts of diets that keep the insulin low, these are called “fasting mimicking diets”. That was told to me 20 years ago by the researchers from the last century; they call the keto diet “fed fasting”. You’re actually getting the ketosis, the fat burning of fasting and yet you’re eating. I’m very curious as more light gets shone on the low-carb keto metabolism and how much autophagy happens just when you’re doing keto and you’re eating. Do you really need to be fasting that long to get autophagy? I bet something’s going on even as we are eating a “fed fasting” sort of diet. Have you run across any science in that regard?
Ben Azadi: It’s a great question and I would be inclined to agree with you because you’re keeping insulin low. When insulin is high, autophagy is in decline. It’s this inverted relationship. You can look at glucose for that. That glucose could be a good gauge during your ketogenic window, your eating windows. I like the idea of this fed fast because it makes sense to me.
Dr. Eric Westman: I would really love to see someone examine that difference of allowing yourself to eat while you’re in nutritional ketosis versus totally not eating. I asked if you’ve come across any science because I have patients bringing in research; I can’t keep up anymore. 25 years ago, we were the only ones who published a paper. It was easy to keep up on the literature!
How do you measure autophagy in real life?
Ben Azadi: Some of the studies I looked at, they measure autophagy in the lab looking at the LC38 protein, but how are we doing that at home? I like Dr. Thomas Seyfried’s gauge for that with the glucose ketones – when we see glucose drop, blood glucose and blood ketones go up. That’s a good gauge. I know we have continuous glucose monitors, which are great, but I wish we had a continuous insulin monitor because I would love to look at blood glucose, blood ketones, and then blood insulin. I think looking at those three metrics would give us a good idea if we’re getting autophagy or enhancing autophagy or not.
Dr. Eric Westman: Yeah, that’s a great idea. For folks who’ve never changed their diet, their glucose may be normal but their insulin high to keep the glucose down.
Ben Azadi: I think what you said was so important with the insulin piece that’s spot on. I have a new book that just came out last week – Metabolic Freedom. Dr. Fung endorsed it as did Dr. Eric Berg, who I know you’re friends with. I make the case that a fasting insulin blood test is one of the most important tests that you need to get done because to your point, I have the Whitehall study in here, too, that showed you could have insulin resistance for six to fourteen years without your fasting glucose changing at all. We’re missing it by only looking at fasting glucose and even A1C which are good markers to get but it’s the insulin that will rise first. It’s not an expensive test. If you have to pay out of pocket, it’s a very inexpensive test, but it shows you how sensitive or insensitive you are to insulin. Personally, I want to see my fasting insulin between 3 and 6. It’s always 3.3, 3.5. If it’s higher than that, that’s a problem. That reference range that comes back from the lab is between 3 and 28. If it’s 17 or 22 or 14, it’s not being flagged as being a problem, but to me that is a problem. I love that you brought that up; it is very important to test your fasting insulin. I recommend that to all of my clients and I personally do it every six months as well.
Dr. Eric Westman: That normal range that doesn’t flag high insulin is of course the normal range of carb eaters. So you’ve got to be careful when you look at lipids. Even A1C is sometimes a little high compared to carb eaters which is hard to explain. We’ll figure that out one day!
Evidence for Fasting
Dr. Eric Westman: Where are the studies regarding fasting? What’s the clinical research to support fasting for longer than a day or two?
Ben Azadi: There are some studies. I know the New England Journal of Medicine in 2019 came out with a really comprehensive study on the benefits of fasting saying it should be the first line of defense for metabolic disease and I loved that. It showed that it enhances autophagy, lowers mTOR, and lowers insulin. That was a really good study. We need more like that. I’ve had personal experience with thousands of people, looking at their blood glucose, looking at labs, and I used that as a valuable metric. It’s not a study, but it is valuable to me. There are studies showing how a 24-hour fast in men could enhance human growth hormone secretion by 2000% in men over 40 and for women around 1300% secretion in human growth hormone. There are also some studies showing how a 24-hour fast could enhance a brain derived neurotrophic factor in the brain which is great for creativity and productivity.
There’s an interesting study on dopamine. Dopamine resistance is a big deal these days. Dopamine is a chemical that the body produces that helps you feel happy and grateful and satisfied and in this day and age we have so many dopamine hits from processed foods, sugar, drugs, social media and video games. We want more dopamine and more dopamine and that leads to more addictions, more food cravings, and bad behaviors. We want to resensitize those D2 receptor sites in the brain. I found a study showing a 48-hour water fast which means just water for 48 hours starts to resensitize those D2 receptor sites in the brain.
There are some studies coming out. I hope it continues to come out but I know there’s not a lot of money to be made with fasting. You can’t put it into a pill so it might be difficult to get all the great studies but there are a few out there.
Dr. Eric Westman: Fasting is a strong medical treatment as are the things that we’re talking about, which is awesome and scary at the same time because doctors don’t typically understand that. The power really is in the food, isn’t it?
Ben Azadi: It is. You just have to remove the interference and the body will heal itself. It’s amazing.
Dr. Eric Westman: That’s quite a holistic statement there.
Ben Azadi: Yeah, that’s my premise. I believe it!
Dr. Eric Westman: It took 25 years of me in this field talking to people about ketones and ketosis and watching the horror of other doctors! After a day or two everyone goes into nutritional ketosis and burns fat because that’s what we store on our bodies, and the idea that this is not natural or even safe is the wrong way to look at it.
Ben Azadi: That’s the paradigm these days. We have been led to believe that we need food for energy. That we need carbohydrates for energy but we have body fat for a reason.
Dr. Eric Westman: If all the work that we did has now just brought you to be able to use this without worry, then we’ve done our job.
Ben Azadi: You’ve done your job, doctor!
Watch the full video here.
Speaker Bio
Eric Westman, MD, MHS, is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Duke University, the Medical Director of Adapt Your Life Academy and the founder of the Duke Keto Medicine Clinic in Durham, North Carolina. He is board-certified in Internal Medicine and Obesity Medicine and has a master’s degree in clinical research. As a past President of the Obesity Medicine Association and a Fellow of the Obesity Society, Dr. Westman was named “Bariatrician of the Year” for his work in advancing the field of obesity medicine. He is a best-selling author of several books relating to ketogenic diets as well as co-author on over 100 peer-reviewed publications related to ketogenic diets, type 2 diabetes, obesity, smoking cessation, and more. He is an internationally recognized expert on the therapeutic use of dietary carbohydrate restriction and has helped thousands of people in his clinic and far beyond, by way of his famous “Page 4” food list.
Ben Azadi Bio
In 2008, Ben Azadi was an obese man who went through a personal health transformation of releasing 80 pounds of extra weight, and getting metabolically healthy. Ever since, Ben Azadi, FDN-P, has been on a mission to help 1 billion people live a healthier lifestyle. Ben has over 15 years of experience in the health industry, and he’s the author of four best-selling books, including his latest Keto Flex. Ben has been the go-to source for intermittent fasting and the ketogenic diet since 2013.
He is 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 Kamp; a global brand bringing awareness to ancient healing strategies such as the keto diet and fasting. Ben is the host of a top 15 podcast, The Metabolic Freedom Podcast which won Keto Podcast of The Year (2022) by The Metabolic Health Summit. Ben has the fast growing Ben Azadi YouTube channel with over 200,000 subscribers, and TikTok channel with over 330,000 subscribers and over 50 million video views. Ben is a keynote speaker who delivered a keynote lecture for Ketocon 2022, 2023, and 2024; and he’s been featured in Forbes, LA Weekly, Disrupt Magazine, NY Times Mag, LA Entertainment Weekly and other publications.
Website: www.benazadi.com
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