Fragle Rok

Extended Fasting: Boost Autophagy, Stem Cells, and HGH with Liz Coetzee

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Join Fragle and his new friend Liz, a fasting retreat facilitator and colon hydrotherapist, as they discuss the proper methods to do long and short-term fasting. Some people, myself included, thought doing a 1-2 day fast was enough to get all of the benefits. Liz however brought to my attention that a minimum of 3-5 days is needed to receive the full spectrum of benefits. If you're interested in ways to boost Autophagy, HGH, Stem Cells, and Fat Burning, Liz has all the info you need. Thank you and enjoy!

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Fragle

All right, sweet Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Fragle Rok Podcast. All right, what's going on, Liz?

Liz

Hey Chris.

Fragle

How you doing it's great to be here, yeah, I'm great to have you. Can you state your full name for the record?

Liz

My full birth name.

Fragle

Do you not want to, you do not have to, it's just Liz, Liz Coetzee. Sweet, sweet. What's going on behind you? It's very interesting.

Liz

Oh, I have a picture of what a healthy colon should look like, and beside it is a picture of actually quite a few pictures of real enemas, barium enemas, and then, you know, photos were taken of these people's colons and they just all twisted and all in very bizarre shapes. So it's something you would never know if you don't ever get an x-ray taken of your colon. So that's just a little background.

Fragle

Is that how you say it? I always say colon. Is it colon?

Liz

You know, I have.

Fragle

You're from south africa, is that why? I have a accent right on the colon yeah, I don't want to get too sidetracked, because that's fascinating, but today we're here to talk about fasting, right? Yes and the first thing you want to do is correct some of my erroneous statements. I made on my podcast. Is that right?

Liz

Well, I love your enthusiasm about fasting. I think it's fantastic that you are such an enthusiastic advocate for fasting, because I also think it is an amazing tool that's just available to anyone. Yeah, so I listened to your previous podcast on fasting and yeah, so one of the things that jumped out was the autophagy. Now, when you were talking about autophagy, which is the magic word when it comes to fasting, so autophagy happens all the time.

Fragle

Before we even talk about it, we might want to talk about what it is.

Liz

Yes, yes. So autophagy is the process of our own way, our body's own way of cleaning up the cells, not killing the cells. That's a different process, called apoptosis, of old cells dying off, that are damaged or just old. They just have an expiry date. So that's called apoptosis. So autophagy is, you know, cleaning up the house, sweeping your floor. So the body is cleaning up the cells of old proteins, of bacteria, viruses, all kinds of garbage.

Fragle

So not cells. No it's not Autophagite, does not remove cells.

Liz

No, that's the process of apoptosis. Okay. So in a case of cancer growth, you know that mechanism of apoptosis is not working properly, like the cells are not dying when they should be dying off, they just keep on reproducing, reproducing and then you get growths and tumors and stuff like that. So that is a very important process for the cells dying. And then the other process that we are focusing on in fasting is autophagy, that's cleaning up the garbage.

Fragle

Old proteins, old bacteria like dead protein and dead bacteria, yes, like old, yes.

Liz

Old and dead and damaging. So in our own process, of all the processes that happen, all our metabolism, everything that happens in this machine called the body, we have garbage. We have things that are produced as you would if you drive a car. You have smoke burning, you have parts wearing off, so in our body we also get these byproducts yes, that's what I'm looking for like byproducts of all the you know thousands of processes that happen every day to help us move forward and stay alive. So in a normal, healthy body we have different detox pathways. We have about six detox pathways, so we are perfectly built for cleaning up our own bodies perfectly. It's an amazing system. So those are the lungs we breathe out toxins through the lungs. Our skin through sweating, we sweat out a lot of toxins. Of course, our liver that is the biggest filter in the body cleaning up the blood.

Fragle

And then the colon, um, and our kidneys and also the lymphatic system I've heard so I've heard also that crying like was that you told me that uh, no, I didn't tell you that, but that's true, yes.

Liz

That the tears from sadness are different from the tears of cutting an onion, or joy or joy. Yes, or joy or grief, yes, like tears from grief and sadness have different chemicals in them than tears of joy or cutting an onion. Yeah, yeah, wow. So our body is amazing. The problem is, when we start loading it up with toxins, willingly or unwillingly, that these detox pathways get clogged up. So you know, like I said, willing or unwillingly, like on a daily basis, modern man in a city is exposed to about 80,000 possibly harmful chemicals. Wow.

Liz

So just by walking in Taipei City you are exposed. Taipei is actually not that bad, like considering other cities in Taiwan. I think Taichung is much worse.

Fragle

Yeah, true, I think about like Taipei compared to Ohio.

Liz

They end up in Taipei. A lot we can subtract, yeah. Compared to Ohio, the end of Taipei, a lot we can subtract, yeah. So in that, you know, with that exposure of these toxins every single day, if we don't take care of these detox of junk food, a lot of processed food, and that process of natural detoxing, um, just just can't take place the way it's supposed to. So we don't even know what all, what, what the exposure to all these chemicals can do, like the alchemy of it, like it's not A plus B is C, or 1 plus 1 is 2. It could be 1 plus 1, can be 5. And we don't know the chemistry of exposure to different chemicals, what it does to our bodies, does to our bodies, and then you know our food source. I mean, that is just a whole other story of how we consume a lot of harmful stuff. So fasting, yeah. So fasting is just a way of kick-starting those detox pathways again and getting back to a healthy baseline, getting back to the baseline of how we are functioning in an optimal way. Yeah.

Liz

And at the core of that is autophagy.

Fragle

And other things as well. Yeah, yeah, that is autophagy, and other things as well and real quick.

Fragle

I want to talk about why it was so fascinating to meet you, and that is because I've been studying fasting on my own for several years now through other podcasts or books or whatever, and I thought there was only really one way to do it, which is zero calories, and I throw some salt, some lemons, some sparkling water or do like a bone broth fast. And yeah, you showed me a whole nother way and I didn't realize how important it is to get to the four or five day mark and in my I don't know three or four years of fasting, I had never made it to three days, let alone five. So you educated me a lot and now I want you to educate the listeners.

Liz

Yeah, I love the slogan, you know education instead of medication, education instead of medication. Yeah, so in the retreats that I facilitate, you know, I really make a strong point to tell the participants like you have to educate yourself. Like you just said, you taught yourself about fasting and reading books and watching YouTube videos and sifting through all the information. Yeah, the five-day mark is kind of a magical point, because you are reaching that tip of, or the peak of, autophagy on about day three. And what's so interesting about that is the body has this incredible intelligence. It just knows that it cannot keep on cleaning off the cells, like keep on cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, cleaning the cells. For as long as you fast, it has to peak and it has to come down. So, for instance, if you keep on vacuuming your Persian rug over and over and over again, you're going to start damaging it, you will damage it. And that's the same kind of concept with autophagy. You cannot keep on cleaning up the cells. If there's nothing more to clean, there'll be damage on the cell. So on day three, you peak with autophagy and it starts going down. That's also when you start feeling this sense of almost like euphoria. Feeling this sense of almost like euphoria, you know.

Liz

So I would say you know, a three-day fast is definitely. For me it's like a complete process. Of course you can go longer, four or five days but especially if people are starting off fasting, I would not recommend them jumping into a five-day fast. You have to be in relative health to fast, and then there's also something like therapeutic fasting or specific illnesses that has to be medically supervised. So in Taiwan I don't facilitate more than three-day fast fasts, even though people are healthy and they always say oh, we want to do five days, we want to do seven days.

Liz

I'm like no, wow you know I'm not taking on that responsibility yeah so I would advise people to do a few three day fasts first.

Liz

Um, every four months, do a-day fast and just get to know yourself, like how your body's reacting to it. How do you feel? Because every time I fast it's different. I feel different on different days, but the outcome is the most important thing for me. It's not about how I really feel during the fast. It's what I'm accomplishing during a three or a five or a seven or a 10-day fast. It's what is the result of fasting. That I'm fascinated with and I'm sure you as well, right? You mentioned why you are fasting.

Fragle

You learn a lot about yourself, and I think dopamine plays a big role in that too. But once you remove that need desire and craving for food, you're able to be a lot more productive. Right, you start realizing like, wow, I spend so much time on food every day.

Liz

And thinking about it and obsessing about it.

Fragle

Buying it, prepping it, cooking it, eating it, cleaning up afterwards. So it definitely frees up a lot of time.

Liz

Yeah.

Fragle

To back up just a little bit. So autophagy is the removal of, like old bacteria proteins, other things as well, right? Heavy metals yeah and what's like the repercussions if you don't put your body through something like a fast that causes autophagy well, we are always in autophagy.

Liz

It's not just something that gets turned on during fasting Our body is. That is something that happens right.

Liz

But when we are fasting, we are maximizing it, as well as through exercise, through cold plunges, sauna and deep sleep. We also get that, but fasting is just this supercharged form of autophagy. But if you're not fasting, it depends so much on your diet and lifestyle. If you do regular exercise, you get proper sleep, you drink enough water, you eat a whole food, plant-based diet, of course, with good protein, all of those things, and then what do you add to your level of toxicity as well?

Liz

yeah um, so many things play a role. So if you're never ever gonna fast, it's not like you're gonna. It depends if you're gonna run into problems.

Fragle

If you're gonna run into problems depends on your diet and lifestyle totally but yeah when I went home and I have other friends that have gone home and you know a lot of things like parkinson's, dementia, um, alzheimer's cancer. There's just so many health problems all the time, very, very, very, very prevalent in america. I'm not sure about taiwan, but I wonder if that that's from not engaging in activities like fasting, where you boost your autophagy. Yeah.

Liz

I think it's more engaging in activities that are causing those lifestyle diseases that are avoidable. They are avoidable In Ayurveda. So I studied Ayurveda in India quite a few years ago, so I qualified as an Ayurvedic lifestyle coach and from that what I, you know what's the most outstanding, what I always remember from that is the theory of disease development. So there are six stages of disease development, and in Chinese medicine there is something similar as well. So there's either a deficiency or there's an excess of something that's causing you to go out of balance.

Liz

Excuse me, so the first phase is ingesting toxins. So your toxins can be mental, physical, emotional, emotional, and if you keep on ingesting these toxins, metaphorically speaking or physically speaking, you start off the six steps towards chronic illness. And the interesting thing is on stage five, during. Stage five is when the symptoms really show up. It's called the visible stage. That's when you are really affected by this buildup or this development, and that's usually when people go and see a doctor, when their life is really getting affected by something, and then you have the option of medication or surgery. Right, you don't go to see a doctor and really get better.

Liz

It's mostly management of what is already happening. And I'm not dissing western medicine at all, I'm like we are here because of western medicine and science, but stage there is so much more we can do for ourselves before we get to that stage of visible symptoms. And those are all prevention methods. So learning the red flags in yourself to know like, when are you going out of balance. And it can be something simple, as you know cold hands and feet, it can be irritability, it can be heartburn, it can be, you know, a rash somewhere, something very small, nothing that you're going to go and see a doctor for and say, hey, I'm feeling irritable.

Liz

So there's so much we can do for ourselves, and fasting is one of them. To just get back to that baseline of you know, in our they say you have to stay at the zero, the zero stage of health, which is that, that baseline where you are most in balance with, with your constitution, with how you, how you're made. So I just think it's very empowering to know that there are so many things that you can do for yourself to avoid lifestyle illnesses and not just wait for a pill or an injection to fix your discomfort. It's about taking the power back, taking the power into your own hands and not just trusting a guy in a white coat to tell you what to do with your life and your body.

Fragle

Yeah, I'm down, but I think most people are not.

Liz

They just wait until it's too late and take the pill. It's kind of an easy way out because it doesn't put you in the driver's seat. It's like, oh you know, somebody else is going to decide for me when I take what and do what. It's effort. It takes effort to do those things. It's an effort to fast. It's not fun. I feel miserable my first and second day when I'm fasting. That sucks, man.

Exploring Cold Plunge, Sauna, Fasting

Fragle

That's one of my biggest takeaways from David Goggins. I don't know if you're a fan, it doesn't matter, but he's like you've got to embrace the suck. And most of the most rewarding things I do in my life they suck. The cold plunge, the sauna, the fasting None of those are fun. And usually if I'm going to do an ice plunge I have anxiety for like four hours before I'm dreading that moment. But the second it's over, I feel like a god, Like I feel divine, you know.

Liz

Yeah, I've never done it.

Fragle

Really, you're welcome to come over anytime.

Liz

Yeah, I really want to do it. When I go to the hot springs near my house you know there's lovely hot springs 10 minutes drive from here and I do the hot cold thing. I love it. Nice, I absolutely love it. It feels so invigorating, but it's not an ice bath. It's not what you are doing.

Fragle

It's fun. It's very fun as long as you can focus on your breathing. I do 11 minutes, but I tell people just do two. Wow.

Fragle

You know, two is all you need, you know, and kind of like fasting, right. You're saying like three days is the peak, or yeah, three days is the peak. It's like if you hit two minutes you've kind of started getting the benefits and then if you hit three minutes from what I've heard you've kind of gotten the majority of the benefits. I just like 11, probably because the Wim Hof breathing video is 11 minutes. So I'm like I just do this video every time. But I've also noticed that if I do 15 minutes or more it's too much, because then it takes me like an hour or more to stop shivering.

Liz

Oh, wow.

Fragle

So, your core temperature drops too much, yeah, so 11 is about my max that I'm willing to do.

Liz

And any of these practices can work for us or against us. Right right and we also have to know. You know where the balance is and you know once I was pushing myself because I fast every three months. I fast for five days and in the past I did seven or ten days twice a year. I like the long ones, I like you know it's like you're 11 minutes in a cold, cold lunch when I'm doing intermittent fasting, like 16, 8 I yeah, it's just not doing it for me.

Fragle

Do you do that like every day? Intermittent fasting?

Liz

No.

Fragle

No.

Liz

No, I go. No, I like long. I do it sometimes, but my sweet spot is about five days. I like five-day fasts.

Fragle

You say once every four months.

Liz

Every three months.

Fragle

Every three months. Then you don't really do intermittent fasting. It's just that.

Liz

Not much, not much. No month, every three months. Then you don't really do intermittent fasting.

Liz

it's just just that, not much not much no, um, oh, what I want to say about, you know, pushing yourself too much or using a good tool in the wrong way. So this one year, I know you can't fast when it's cold, it's just too much pressure on your body. Yeah, it's, it's used too much energy, um, and it's it's not advisable. So I was pushing it. I was still working full-time as a teacher, kindergarten teacher. I'm like, oh, I'm going too fast, I'm gonna do it. Good, I put it on the schedule. I just I'm just gonna do it. So it's working full-time and I pushed it a little bit too late. It was really getting cold, like I'm doing my seven day fast. I'm, you know, I'm not backing off and I got sick. I got sick. Wow, yes, I got sick for about a week. Wow.

Liz

And that was about nine, nine, 10 years ago, and that was the last time I was sick, like, except for covid. I got covid, but you know, so I was. You know, that's when the ego also starts um driving you. It's like, oh yeah, I can do this. You know, I'm I, I I'm almost in competition with myself, but that's how we learn. We push the boundaries this way, we push it that way. You're like okay, I don't have to do that, I can do what is beneficial. Um, I know my body more and um, you know, there's nothing to prove, there's nothing to prove, it's just you know what you want to get out of it. Um, yes, it's, it's an amazing tool that you can just anywhere, anytime, do it that is and we are built for it.

Fragle

It's free, yeah it's free.

Liz

It's free. You just have to stop shoving stuff in the pie hole, you know yeah and uh, there are a few things you can do with fasting to make it even more pleasurable. Um, you don't have to just do pure water fasting. Water fasting is hard, pure water fasting is difficult. I would do yeah, water.

Fragle

I would still have black coffee. I would still have black coffee. I would still have tea, sparkling water. I think that's about it. Salt, I put salt in my water.

Liz

Yeah, yeah, calculting salt. Yes, yes, I got from a friend.

Fragle

That was about the extent of it, until I met you and you said there's another way to do it.

Liz

Yeah, so that's. The second correction I want to get to is that we did not have a fruit juice, so I don't. I don't give my clients fruit juices on a fast. We do vegetable juices oh, really so. Oh, really so yeah.

Fragle

I was doing fruit juice fasting.

Different variations of Fasting

Liz

Well, there's fruit, there's juicing, that is a form of fasting. Actually, if you look at the most original concept of fasting, what people refer to as fasting is water fasting. Pure water fasting, nothing else, no add-ons, nothing. Fasting is water fasting. That's the original meaning of fasting. Pure water fasting, nothing else, no add-ons, nothing. Fasting is water fasting. That's the original meaning of fasting right.

Liz

As a therapy, all the add-ons, all the different kinds of stuff. We just add fasting to it, like juicing or juice fasting or cyber fasting or grape fasting. It just means you are choosing one thing. Those are also called monofasts. When you choose one thing to eat and I've done that, I've done the grapes that you just eat as much organic grapes as you want, wow, you get a huge amount of resveratrol from the grape skin, which is anti-aging and anti-stress.

Fragle

Purple, not green, right.

Liz

You can have green as well. You can have green as well.

Fragle

Do the green also have high amounts of resveratrol?

Liz

No, no, it's in the purple skins. Right. Of course, if you have blood sugar issues, you should not do this. You should not eat two kilograms of grapes a day. No, Don't just jump into something because someone said it on a podcast. You have to do your own research. Yeah yeah.

Liz

So mono fasting the concept of that is when you're going through a difficult especially, yeah, yeah. So it simplifies the digestive process. You are still eating and you can deal with the stress that you are going through. So a good suggestion is grapes. I did that once and I just ate it for five days. Just ate grapes for five days.

Fragle

What about steak?

Liz

Yeah, no, yeah, no. My fasting mentor in thailand. This is the true story she's, she's like an og with fasting now. She started in the mid 80s on kosa muy, on kosa muy, running fasting retreats. She is absolutely brilliant. Her name is hillary hun and she runs the dharma international fasting center in kosa muy. Super old school but super smart woman like unbelievable. She's in her 70s now and she swims like two hours a day in the ocean what amazing woman.

Liz

yeah, she's like genius, absolute genius she was. She was going through a divorce, true story. Okay, she was going through a divorce and she started to go on a mono fast, mono diet, mono diet, and she decided to just eat mangoes. Being in Thailand, of course, there are amazing fruits and stuff, so she could get mangoes freely. And she was eating mangoes for nine months. That's all she had Whoa Nine months months. That's all she whoa nine months. And, being the intuitive, introspective person that she is, she kind of sat with herself one day and asked herself you know, so why did my body kind of tell me to eat mangoes? And she made the correlation between man go while she was going on a divorce. Wow. Wow.

Liz

Yeah, it was just a coincidence. But you know, trusting her, she would find that correlation.

Fragle

That's insane.

Liz

Yeah, nine months.

Fragle

That can't be healthy, can, can it?

Liz

I would not suggest that. Tell anyone to eat mangoes for nine months. She's an extreme person. She's absolutely an extreme. You know, when she travels to the, the bali spirit festival, um, she takes her own cutting board, she takes her own knife. She goes to the, you know, buy organic food. She basically she doesn't get invited to Christmas parties anymore because she's kind of isolated herself a bit with the way she eats. I mean, it's just really like she's extreme when it comes to fasting.

Liz

I mean, it's just really like she's extreme when it comes to fasting, uh-huh, but yeah, wonderful person, very, very, very person that really influenced me on this journey a lot. Right on.

Fragle

Yeah, so you were telling me that fruit juices is not what you give your clients right. Yeah, fruit juices is not what you give your clients right.

Liz

No, so you want to. Of course, you don't want to activate the insulin release. So when you stop fasting, you have about 24 hours to 48 hours of sugar. Glycogen stored in the liver, glycogen stored in the liver. So we have two reserves right, where we get our energy, where we get our sugar. That feeds the brain. The brain is the biggest consumer of of glycogen.

Liz

So it gets stored in the liver for about 24 hours to 48 hours. So first hours to 48 hours. So first, when we start fasting, we start to dig into that source of energy and once that is depleted we switch over to the fat reserves. That's when we start getting more stable energy from our fat reserves and we start producing ketone bodies. So it's like a hybrid car, you know. You switch from fuel to electricity. So that's called the metabolic flexibility and that is what we achieve when we are fasting.

Liz

So you don't want to have anything that's going to spike that insulin. Then you are breaking the fast. So when insulin goes down, all these other processes, such as the autophagy, the release of youth growth hormone, human growth hormone, ketone bodies getting produced, growth hormone, ketone bodies getting produced, so all those things muscular skeletons, stem cells, immune reboot mechanisms all those things happen when insulin is going down. Insulin goes down when we stop eating, Okay. So we don't want to spike it. So by having a glass of vegetable juice, the calories are below 150. So you're not going to break the fast. But because there's no fiber in the juice, it's not like a smoothie, it's not something you make in your blender. You use a juicer, a slow ju. It's not something you make in your blender. You use a juicer, a slow juicer. So all the fiber has been extracted, so your body is basically absorbing all those nutrients almost immediately. So that's one of the little hacks that make fasting just a little.

Fragle

Does fiber cause an insulin response?

Liz

Yes, yes, it's activating digestion. It has to be digested. So, soluble or insoluble fiber has to be digested. Okay.

Liz

Soluble fiber. So you are going to activate the digestive process and part of that is producing insulin from the pancreas. So when I give people like one glass of juice in the morning on top of special detoxing supplements with zero calories, we are just um the whole fasting process. So the supplements would include psyllium husk and um that I mix with certain herbs that also assist in gut lining repair, and then the bentonite clay that you are also familiar with right.

Fragle

Those are the two primary ones. Is that right?

Liz

Yes, yeah. And then vitamin C that is a wonderful antioxidant as well.

Fragle

Antinflamatory as well. Yeah, I learned.

Liz

Antinflamatory Vitamin C is amazing. It's such an underrated vitamin, you know. Yeah, I learned Anti-inflammatory Vitamin C is amazing. It's such an underrated vitamin, you know. Yeah.

Liz

So I give my clients that, as well as some chlorella or chlorophyll to keep the body alkaline. So we get a little bit more acidic when you are fasting, so it's good to keep the alkaline balance in check. So those are just. You can just, like I said, do absolutely nothing and drink water. That's original form of fasting, but then you can do all these other things. Just makes the process much smoother and easier and not so difficult. Water fasting is hard. It's difficult, yeah, but extremely therapeutic, especially in a medical setup when it is done alongside chemotherapy. You know there's been many trials showing that it actually helps, um, make chemotherapy work even better. But that's definitely in a very highly supervised medical setup. Right.

Liz

Yeah, so now, that was a long answer to a short question that I'll produce now. Okay.

Fragle

Gosh, I'm trying to remember I had a question now too. Yeah, so no fiber and no sugar, because they both would cause an insulin response. Oh, I was going to ask you what did you say? Chlorella or chlorophyll? Yeah, chlorophyll to keep the body more alkaline?

Liz

yes and would spirulina serve the same function. Yeah, chlorophyll To keep the body more alkaline.

Fragle

Yes, Would spirulina serve the same function?

Liz

Yes, Spirulina florella, those blue-green algae. Yeah.

Fragle

And then the chlorophyll is just straight up from plants, from organic sprouts.

Liz

It's like plant pigment, right? Yeah, it's called the blood of plants. So anything green, anything green, and they can help to repair inflammation in the digest of track as well, like where there's patches of inflammation, especially if somebody has a lot of um constipation, if they have a lot of inflammatory foods, that they eat a lot of fried foods, a lot of junk food, processed food. You know you're going to have some information for sure. So um, the the chlorophyll is just it. It's like you know, a walk in a forest. He's just surrounded by green. It's like japanese forest bathing but on the inside basically yeah, we have also in the afternoon.

Liz

Um, I give my clients a broth like a vegan bra. So nothing solid again, no solid foods, just the broth. Um, it's also called a mineral broth. So you just you boil a bunch of vegetables and I put in garlic and ginger and turmeric and nice little bit of celtic salt in.

Liz

It just warms the body, because you know your metabolism slows down when you're fasting. So you, you get a little bit colder, you just feel a little bit cold, even in summer. So a little bit of exercise is good, a little bit of movement and then the broth, that just it's like a nice hug for the body what you need, yeah yeah, yeah yeah, I get quite edgy and I get very lethargic and tired and cranky.

Fragle

Yeah, yeah, and I think that's why most people don't even try. Yeah, yeah.

Liz

And you know, when you get over that hump I feel the same Every time I fast, I feel deprived, you know. And the thing I think also why a lot of people don't want to fast it touches the nerve of our core sense of existence, because if you're not eating you're dying, right. And that threat, on a very, very deep level, is very intimidating for most people. Level um is very intimidating for most people because we know from, you know from get go if you're not eating, if you don't have enough food in your cave you're gonna die but that's why we are also built for fasting, because, you know, when caveman went out and he can't get any food for the first week, he doesn't just drop down and die.

Liz

That's when autophagy kicks in, the brain gets the ketone bodies, he's sharper, the eyesight's sharper, thinking is sharper to find that next hunt, next hunt. So we are all survivors of ancestors that made it so we all have that capacity to fast if you are in relative good health. I'm not saying every single person should fast. I'm saying every single person has the ability to fast, but not when, of course, under certain contraindications, you cannot fast. Right, but we are, we are built to fast. We can do it, but it's it's like this, we it's. It goes against every grain in us to think like, okay, I'm not going to eat because it threatens your human existence. But when you know what it can do for you, when you understand the why of fasting and how fantastic it is and how disease can be reversed by it you know, heart disease, insulin sensitivity, diabetes type 2.

Liz

Di diabetes type 2. Diabetes type 2, exactly yes. Autoimmune disease, um. So if you understand the why, then you know it makes the suffering less. What makes the suffering worth it?

Fragle

yeah, yeah, so when? So when you're, when you're fasting. How, how many calories can you consume a day?

Liz

um, some people say about 150 calories. More than 150 you are gonna get into, maybe releasing insulin. There's also a fast called the fasting mimicking diet. It was. It was um developed by Dr Walter Longo, italian doctor. He's also the head of longevity studies in the University of South Carolina, south Carolina. I can check.

Fragle

I started reading his book, but I never finished it.

Liz

Yeah, so the longevity diet. It goes with the fasting mimicking diet. So fasting mimicking diet is for people who just cannot fast. They are either too, they are malnutrition, they are sick, they cannot go through the whole fasting process. So that is a limit of 800 calories. It's a five-day protocol, the fasting mimicking diet. So they start off with 800 calories a day and they go up to 1,000, I think 1,100, maybe 1,200 a day, but it's also a very specific protocol. But people with a compromised immune system or other illnesses can do this and still get benefits from this restricted caloric intake. But if you want to go pure, zero calorie, I think that's where the gold is yeah yeah that's where you're gonna get autophagy.

Liz

And you said muscle skeletal stem cells earlier yeah, so we have stem cells, you know, being produced in our spinal fluid, right, so they can go to places where we need repair. Our stem cells, you know, can take on whatever expression it needs to take on. So when we are in our mother's womb, our stem cells, you know, you become a nose, you become an eye, you become whatever the stem cells will be expressed as. So we still have stem cells in our bodies. When you are fasting and you have areas in your body that needs repair the muscular skeleton system, the digestive system, the intestinal lining those all get the stem cells to areas that need repair. So that's where you know, you are literally getting these new cells that express themselves in areas that need to be recovered and renewed and rebuilt. They come in and rebuild wherever there is degeneration.

Fragle

Do you mean, for example, if I had a shoulder injury and I did a three to five day fast fast, then my body would start to send stem cells to help repair that?

Liz

yes, yes, you know how you can get stem cell therapy right stem cell therapy is one of the. You know, it's an old, it's one of the cancer treatments as well. Um, so you can see things disappear, like some scars sometimes just disappear, or people with heartburn because that intestinal lining is getting repaired during fasting. So when you are breaking your fast, there are three steps in breaking your fast, whether extended fast so extended, I mean three or more days is considered extended fasting.

Liz

Under three days is not that long. It's not considered extended fasting really.

Fragle

And under three days, you're really, uh, maximizing your human growth hormone, your stem cells or your you are.

Benefits of Fasting and Muscle Repair

Liz

You are maximizing at day three and they also. They also plateau around day three. Those things plateau. They don't keep on going up. The only thing that keeps on going up is weight loss and ketones. So one of the ways to know that you should stop fasting is when your ketone bodies hit seven. You can get those little devices where you prick your finger and you know, like a blood sugar test, so you can test your ketone bodies. They will keep on going up. So the other things, like the growth hormone and the intestinal stem cell repair, that plateaus around day three. So you're kind of cruising from day three, four, five. It's a very nice phase. You're also not really that hungry anymore. Very nice phase. You're also not really that hungry anymore. Um, and then you get the sense of euphoria as well because you're flushing your brain with all these ketone bodies and you're detoxing your brain as well, takes longer to detox the brain.

Liz

Yeah, so that's when you also get the reversal of possible diseases, possible reversal of the disease, lifestyle diseases, like brain related diseases. You know, little babies, that you're going to wrap in the softest little blanket. So you want to drink something like bone broth that is very good for stem cells, for intestinal cells it's intestinal lining, it protects the intestinal lining or aloe vera juice, or something that's very easy to digest, like papaya that is full of enzymes and you don't want to break your fast with a piece of steak. It might not go over very well, it's hard to digest. And then step two is adding fermented foods. So you can start with a little bit of yogurt, or some kimchi, or some kombucha, if it's not too sugary, not a very sweet one. And then the third step is some cooked vegetables, so something cruciferous like um brussels sprouts or cauliflower and um broccoli broccoli yeah and green beans as well.

Liz

So I make a mix of that, steam them, have a little bit of olive oil, a little bit of lemon juice over it, and those are the three steps of breaking a fast. You can do that within an afternoon, you can do it over three days, you can stretch it out if you want, but usually that's the safest way of breaking a fast, and then you can have some protein to know to to rebuild the, the muscle as well. Yeah, so how often do you fast? What? What's your what's your?

Fragle

I was doing good before I went to america I think I was doing. I was trying to do a 24 to 36 once a week, which was turning it once every two weeks, and then, after meeting you, I think I did like two to two and a half days but I was making like a juice in the morning but it was like beetroot powder, ginger powder, spirulina, psyllium, husk, bentonite clay, a little packet of pomegranate juice, some creatine, some bone broth and some collagen powder I think that's wow I was like I think I got everything.

Fragle

I got it all you were covering all your bases well, I feel like the I mean, is that something you've ever worried about? Is your body eating its muscle? I felt like I feel like collagen is like something always good to take, even during a fast, but this is no. This is an assumption, not something I know I am.

Liz

I am never worried about that, like I, even on the long fasts, on the long, long, long fast, like seven days, 10 days, 12 days, I could see like I'm losing. I'm losing muscle. Yeah.

Liz

The thing is, when we are switching from basically glucose or glycogen source, that's usually our main form of energy and a little bit of fat. Sometimes we don't even get to mostly fat and ketones when we are fasting and our body still needs a little bit of the the glucose. Let me just get my little paper here sure um, so you're still going to produce. Your brain is still going to need a little bit of the glucose. Okay, now I'm getting it.

Liz

Oh yeah, okay. So when we are fasting, the glucose will be formed in the kidneys and it will extract glycerol. So it will take some sugar that is also stored in our muscle. We store sugar also in our muscles Glycogen, right? Yes, mostly in the liver. When it is depleted after 24 hours to 48 hours, there is still some in our lean mass and in our muscle. So we still need some of this glucose for the brain when you are fasting.

Liz

Even though most of the energy is coming from the ketones, from the ketone bodies, we also get this glucose from amino acids, this glucose from amino acids. So the glucose that is getting formed during fasting comes from the glycerol in the muscles as well as some amino acids. So this is when we start losing some of our lean mass from our muscle. The point is of fasting is to clean up the whole system, right. Clean up the fat reservoirs, clean up, you know, all the fat-soluble toxins that is getting stored in the fat, but also in the lean muscle, in the lean mass. So you are going to lose a little bit of muscle mass, but I would not be worried on a sweetie day, or even even five days. Um, I don't. I don't have a lot of muscle.

Fragle

I have little muscle and I am maybe that's why you're not worried about losing it yeah, maybe I don't have it anyway on the long fast.

Liz

I could see like, okay, I'm getting depleted. I'm like, oh, okay, it's time to stop yeah so, but you also bring back that muscle, rebuild your muscles getting rebuilt through your youth growth hormone right, right it is also going to strengthen the muscular skeleton system.

Fragle

Let's talk about that a little bit, because that also can be taken as a steroid, like an injectable steroid. That's something that a lot of people want, but this is a natural way to get it circulating in the body, right.

Liz

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean at about age 26, we start basically aging. It's downhill from then, right, really done form. We don't grow anymore. There's no growing happening after 26. So our youth growth hormone starts to slow down. No, we don't. We don't need to grow new, new bits anymore. So when you're fasting, this youth growth hormone starts increasing by 300 to 2,000%. Wow.

Liz

Okay, that's insane. So our fasting should actually call some people call it youthing. So while we have this high production of youth growth hormone, we are producing new cells faster than the cells are dying off. We are aging because our cells are dying faster than what we are producing new cells, right, that's why we are aging. Okay. That's the aging process.

Fragle

But during fasting your body starts producing new cells.

Liz

Yes, faster than when the cells are dying. You're actually becoming younger while you are fasting, the moment you win. This youth growth hormone is at this high level. When we stop fasting, it goes back to its normal production depending on how old you are. So I mean, you know, it's like the best anti-aging thing you could do for yourself. Yeah.

Liz

Now the point is not to look 40 when you are 80 years old. That's not my goal. My goal is to have a long life, because I like being on the planet and having different experiences, but I also want to have the consciousness of experiencing life to its fullest. And if there is diseases that I can prevent, prevent that's fine, but then I'm gonna do that. You know we are all going to get old, get sick and die. That is the unavoidable. Unavoidable suffering of life. We, we are, we are only. The only way to get out of this life is by dying. That's what's going to happen. But what we do have control over and a lot of influence is how are we going to spend our last few years and not just the last few years, but now. I feel now more energized and better than I felt in my 30s or even in my 20s, you know wow um, because I was just abusing my body so much because you get away with it when you're young, you don't?

Liz

you don't really, you know you bounce back the next day. You're like okay.

Fragle

I don't, here we go. I don't anymore.

Liz

I don't. No, yeah, no.

Fragle

Yeah, I would like to avoid disease as well. It's scary. I have a lot of relatives, friends and family back home and it's terrifying. It's terrifying.

Liz

It's terrifying.

Fragle

And once you let it get to the point like you brought up earlier, like what did you say? Level five or whatever? Yes, once it gets that far, all you can do is sort of put a Band-Aid on it until you die right.

Liz

Exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah. So things like you know to bring it back to that zero level of health, the simple things that we overlook. We don't have to go and book into a detox spa in Bali once a year. That's not the only thing you can do for your health. It's all the little things we do on a daily basis. All the good things add up, all the bad things add up. It's sleep, it's the basic things.

Liz

Drink enough water, breathe deeply exercise eat proper food, you know, and we don't have to eat, live like monks and nuns, you know. But I would say, once you reach that, that baseline of health, you can follow the rules of 80-20. So, 80%, try your best, you know, do good. The 20% yes, I go have my cheesecake, have my glass of wine, you know I enjoy that.

Fragle

I thought you were going to say go have a night out on the town.

Liz

I want to vibe, I thought you were going to say go have a night out on the town. I won't survive. I go to sleep now, the time where we used to go out. I hang out with friends who have kids that meet lunchtime. Yeah. But I like it. It's just a different phase of my life.

Fragle

I'm enjoying this phase as well, the 80s but do these simple things it's really good too, and I usually tell people like I just try to be a good day, a good boy, five days a week, you know, and then on the weekend you can kind of indulge yourself a bit, but it's it's what you do most of the time that really shapes your body and your lifestyle and your future yeah, and you know, I think for most people and this this was me when I was younger it was the 80 percent really just bad stuff, you know.

Liz

Um, not not eating well, not sleeping, not even drinking water properly enough water and maybe 20% sometimes I'll go have a salad or something and do a little bit of you know, go run around the block. So when we run into problems again with those six detox pathways, when 80% is just you know, when 80% is just highly processed foods and doing all those things that are harmful and 20% good, that's when we start like those detox pathways can't keep up. We start accumulating toxins, it starts circulating in the body, it starts building up and then we get to this stage five of disease development. Yeah, and you know it's fun too. I mean, you know, go to the hot springs, go swim in the river, yeah.

Liz

Now, the other day at the previous retreat I had, somebody was saying to me oh, you know, healthy food is just not delicious. My goodness, goodness, where have you been? It is so much fun. I find it very, very, very stimulating to cook a nice meal. It's just, it's investment in your health. And I say to people you know, invest in your health while you are still healthy. Invest in it. You know, go for a massage, go for whatever you can do. It's investment like you would invest in I don't know property or anything for your old age or for your retirement. Invest in your health. That's the best thing you can invest in, because most people in the states go bankrupt because of medical expenses. They work their whole life, they save money, they retire, they get sick and they spend the money that they work for all their lives. It just does not make sense to me, like I'm not signing up for that model, you know. Yeah.

Liz

It just doesn't make sense to me. So invest in the blender or the juicer or the whatever you want to get, you know, the maca powder.

Fragle

Yes, maca powder for sure powder.

Liz

Yeah, invest in those things yeah it's not. It's not indulgement, it's, it's just really good management, health management yeah, it's a lifestyle that's easy to fall in love with if you do it right yes, yeah yes, you do it proper yeah, yeah, it's invigorating and it's um, it just makes you feel alive, you know, like you're not half dead or half asleep totally, totally yeah sweet yeah well, I tie it up there.

Fragle

I think you answered most of my questions. But, like under, if you're trying to fast but you're scared, you could start with the vegetable juice in the morning with no fiber and no fruit, because you don't want sugar and you don't want fiber yes, I would say start with a healthy diet before you even attempt to fast.

Liz

Start with a good diet get you even attempt to fast. Start with a good diet, get rid of the highly processed stuff, start with a good whole food diet and then when you go into a fast you don't have this shock. It's not a shock to the system. There's also a little bit of preparation you should do before you fast, like go into, you know, do a light diet, don't drink too much coffee. You know you'll have a coffee headache, coffee withdrawal if you're fasting. You usually drink coffee.

Fragle

So a little bit of preparation Are you saying you shouldn't drink coffee when you're fasting?

Liz

I know, I know some of the experts recommend that they're like you can have some black coffee, only black coffee, but I don't. I get jittery. Oh, because of the alcoholics.

Liz

Coffee goes through your adrenal glands right, so it stimulates the adrenals. So when you are fasting, your cortisol is already rising. You're putting your body under stress, so the cortisol is rising. That can lead to a bit of insomnia when you're fasting. So by drinking coffee you are also putting stress on the adrenals, so you're already producing cortisol through the adrenals when you're fasting and you're drinking coffee and you're putting stress on the adrenals. So personally I would not recommend that and I don't personally do it myself. It just makes me feel too hyped up.

Fragle

You're starting to sound like our mutual friend who is completely anti-coffee Unless it goes up his butt. He's okay with that.

Liz

Yeah, that works a different way. I'm not anti-coffee, I'm not. I love coffee. I love the smell of it. I have a cup of coffee every day. Sometimes, the smell is all you need Exactly. Yes. I do. I do love the smell and the ritual. But yeah, coffee the other way is more beneficial than drinking for sure.

Fragle

And that's a whole other conversation. That's kind of a good way to end this, because that that can be next time we meet. We can talk about that.

Liz

Sure sure. We can have coffee on the side and talk about coffee the other way in.

Fragle

Yes definitely, definitely Cool. Yeah, do you have anything else you want to add? Hello.

Liz

No, yeah, no sorry.

Fragle

Actually, I do want to ask you one thing. You said apoptosis is the process of removing dead cells.

Liz

Yes, damaged or old cells.

Fragle

How do you cause apoptosis?

Liz

You don't cause apoptosis. It's just a process that happens in the body every day, naturally, naturally, naturally. And that needs to happen, because if it doesn't happen, that's how cancer develops.

Fragle

So you need to have there's no way to make it happen more no no, okay it also increases during fasting it also activates.

Liz

It also activates apoptosis during fasting okay um, yes, let me just see. Yeah, I mean, we, I have this fasting book I put together. So basically everything we just talked about is in this book I put together for my fasting retreat. Oh cool, yeah, so there's a lot of recipes and history of fasting and different methods of fasting and all that stuff that we talk about during the three days of fasting.

Fragle

Do you have any ways for people to follow you Anything on social media or anything like that?

Retreat on Taiwan's North Coast

Liz

Yeah, I'm on Instagram Rangoli Health and also on Facebook, rangoli Health, and my website is also Rangoli Health and my website is also Rangoli Health, so there's a lot of information about fasting and the retreats. So we run about 4 to 7 fasting retreats a year, 3 day retreats and we screen people. We screen people, we're quite strict with who we allow to come and who not. And, um, yeah, it was, it's. It's a wonderful, it's on the north coast of taiwan, so everybody stays in a beautiful house with a view over the ocean. We do yoga, meditation and lots of talks, documentaries. I teach them how to make sauerkraut, nice, and they have juice and broth every day and, yes, fantastic, I love it. I feel very blessed to be able to do that. So Rangoli Health on those kind of platforms.

Fragle

And Rangoli is R-A-N-G-o-l-i, is that right? Yes, yes, all right, all right yes sweet okay, thank you, and I'll see you again soon. All right, see you again soon, all right, okay bye-bye you.