Thanks for tuning in to the Armor Men’s Health Hour Podcast today, where we bring you the latest and greatest in urology care and the best urology humor out there.
In this segment, Donna Lee is joined by NAU Urology Specialists' very own Shefaly Ravula, PA-C. Shefaly is a Physician Assistant who specializes in food as medicine, nutritional sciences, gut health, and total systems body health. During today's episode, Donna and Shefaly discuss the diet trend of intermittent fasting. Shefaly explains what intermittent fasting is and what the different fasting configurations can look like. While there are many proponents of such diets, they are not for everyone. You should never undertake a fasting regime of any kind without consulting your primary care doctor or similar provider. Shefaly strives to help patients take charge of their health by educating them about the many healthcare options available to them beyond pills and surgeries. If you or a loved one are interested in taking control of your health through functional nutrition and holistic medicine or are curious about intermittent fasting, please give us a call!
If you enjoyed today’s episode, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share us with a friend! As always, be well!
To learn more about healthy eating/lifestyle, visit Shefaly Ravula's website: www.shefskitchen.com.
Dr. Mistry is a board-certified urologist and has been treating patients in the Austin and Greater Williamson County area since he started his private practice in 2007.
We enjoy hearing from you! Email us at armormenshealth@gmail.com and we’ll answer your question in an upcoming episode!
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Speaker 1:
Welcome back to the Armor Men's Health Hour with Dr. Mistry and Donna Lee.
Donna Lee:
Welcome to the Armor Men's Health Hour. This is Donna Lee with Dr. Mistry, who's not here at the moment. So we have a special guest who came in to visit with us when our own, our special Shefaly Ravula. Thank you for coming, Shefaly.
Shefaly Ravula:
I'm glad to be here. It's so much fun. I love this podcast.
Donna Lee:
Well thank you. I know we were going to talk about how much you love this podcast after we tell people how to reach out to you directly. You can send Shefaly directly a message through armormenshealth@gmail.com. Shefaly is our integrative wellness provider. She's at one of our PAs and she's absolutely incredible. She has a background in gastro, so her knowledge base is incredible. She also has a website it's shefskitchen.com. Is that correct?
Shefaly Ravula:
That's right. Like chef like S-H-E-F.
Donna Lee:
Oh, that's right. Yeah. We need to specify that, like your name.
Shefaly Ravula:
Because it's my nickname.
Donna Lee:
"Shefaly" is S-H-E-F-A-L-Y. You can see her beautiful face on our website, armormenshealth.com. We have so much to talk about, but right before we started this segment, we were talking about Dr. Mistry and how he's so funny and engaging. And he said he's not like that, he wasn't like that in high school.
Shefaly Ravula:
Oh, are we talking about that? I love it. Oh yeah. I knew him in high school. He was just like, you know, a great fun guy, but I don't think anyone else saw it, except me.
Donna Lee:
It was so funny because his personality is so big and gregarious around the office. I can't imagine him quiet.
Shefaly Ravula:
No, he wasn't quiet, but it was big. Oh, okay. Okay. I just don't think other people tolerated it as much.
Donna Lee:
Because he's big daddy around the the office, we have to tolerate it and just let him be. Is that what you're saying?
Shefaly Ravula:
Yeah, probably.
Donna Lee:
We are very proud of him. He stopped drinking Diet Coke. So that was a win, because last time we had you on, we were giving him heck about that.
Shefaly Ravula:
And it worked.
Donna Lee:
And it did. I mean, it took a minute, but he has not had a Diet Coke in like two months.
Shefaly Ravula:
I don't expect overnight results.
Donna Lee:
Right. Very proud of him though. So anyway, our message to you all is to not have diet Coke. I do want to talk about the buzz words that are going around in the diet world or wellness world with integrative intermittent fasting. What people hear is the word fasting, and then they panic and they think I can't do that. We've had people in the past with our group kind of explained it. So why don't you explain it from your perspective, what it really means, how you can separate the fasting time periods and how people just don't pass out.
Shefaly Ravula:
Yeah. Okay. So fasting is an umbrella term. And so the umbrella term can be intermittent fasting. Underneath that, you can have time restricted feeding, which is like a scheduled period on period off. And that can vary from whatever ratio you say. So often you might hear the term 16:8,"I'm on a 16:8 fast." That means you're fasting for 16 hours and eating for eight hours. So that...
Donna Lee:
16:8. OK.
Shefaly Ravula:
16 colon 8, you'll see that. And then some people will go up to even 20:4, so 20 colon 4, but you don't start there. You start, I have my patients start at 12 because that's relatively doable for most people that are kind of intrigued or interested in beginning fasting. And so that means that's like ending your meal at 7:00 PM and then breaking your fast in the morning with breakfast, right at 7:00 AM.
Donna Lee:
OK, that's doable. So 7:00 PM, you're done eating by 7:00 PM and then you're okay to start eating again at 7 AM.
Shefaly Ravula:
Yeah. And surprisingly, a lot of people don't do that anyway, because as a culture, we do tend to eat late sometimes, we're busy.
Donna Lee:
I'm guilty of that.
Shefaly Ravula:
And then you go right to bed and your, your gut needs a rest, right? Your, your digestion needs a rest. So you just like, we don't want to work 24 hours a day and neither does our gut. So it needs, it needs that break. It needs that fast. It needs that rest. So, so that's time restricted feeding. And I will say that I have heard some of the fasting experts out there, like, um, Peter Attia, who we're, we were just talking about who's like an idol of mine and one day we'll get him here. But talk about the name TRF used interchangeably with intermittent fasting. So that can be a little confusing, I think. So I'm just using it as an umbrella term, intermittent fasting with the sub divider time restricted feeding is one which I touched talked about. Another one is a 5:2. It's five days of, 5:2 meaning you split that up into a very low calorie diet on those two days and five days of not a low calorie diet. And so typically that might be 500 calories. It's not very much at all.
Donna Lee:
No. That's like an apple.
Shefaly Ravula:
And then the FMD, which is known as the fasting mimicking diet, I believe is meant to mimic a true like water fast, like in other cultures that have been doing this for centuries periodically. And there is a, some researchers in the longevity field, like Dr. Valter Longo that created a product called ProLon. We do, we do offer that here at our office, and I am such a big fan of it.
Donna Lee:
It's like a 101 kind of fasting diet. Like it's a box you get, and the foods and a little container for your liquids.
Shefaly Ravula:
Yeah. Now it's not easy to do. And it's not meant to do all the time. It's, it's a reset. It kicks in some cellular regeneration. It has metabolic effects that are promising--not promising, that are shown. And then, um, you know, waist circumference reduction and a little bit of weight loss you can see with doing ProLon, which is the fasting mimicking diet.
Donna Lee:
So it's P-R-O-L-O-N.
Shefaly Ravula:
Mhmm. Like I said, not easy. It may not be super tasty either is what I hear. I have not done it myself. It does have some contra-indications, so it's not for everybody. And then you have, let's see, did we cover most of the types of fasting? Probably. When you get to the point where you're doing more than a 16 hour, or sorry, 16:8, and you want to get past that, some of these you'd really need medical supervision because, and some of them you shouldn't be doing without medical supervision, if, for example, you're a diabetic and you're on medications that lower your blood sugar, you have to have...
Donna Lee:
Yeah, good point.
Shefaly Ravula:
So I really think you ought to, as a patient get approval from your primary care doctor before you, and you begin any sort of aggressive fasting.
Donna Lee:
So don't just pick a book and go read it and then do your own thing. You really need to reach out to your provider.
Shefaly Ravula:
Yeah, because the book doesn't know what meds you're on and what your metabolic state is. And so hopefully, you know, if you're pretty regular with your checkups, with your doctor and you've had your blood work done, you know, about your blood sugar imbalances, et cetera, you have to, you have to be aware of that. So you asked about how you feel on fasting. Yeah. Right? Okay. So I have had, well, I have two things to talk about. One is sort of that perhaps that impression that fasting is either a cultural thing or a religious concept. And perhaps yes, in other cultures and countries around the world, they were either done for cultural reasons or health reasons or religious reasons or combination of everything. So I don't want anyone to, I want to explain to people that fasting doesn't have to fit into any kind of parameters in that sense, think of it as a health benefit. Or I mean, if it's appropriate for you and if it's doable for you. And then regarding how you feel--so that varies. Most people tolerate the 12:12 really well. If you, some people even quickly are able to go to the 16:8 with no problem whatsoever--that those are people that are already sort of adapted metabolically and can handle it. If you are not feeling great, you know.. So, meaning you can have hunger pangs, like you might have hunger pangs at 8 in the morning because you haven't eaten. Right? But those should be short-lasting and you can kind of fight through them. And I have my patients use the app Zero to log their fast, and then there's some wonderful videos on there that help with various things that, you know, for example,"I, what should I, should I have coffee with cream or should I not?" et cetera. But the app is really, really helpful.
Donna Lee:
And that's called Zero, you said?
Shefaly Ravula:
Yeah, Z-E-R-O. Yeah. It's such a, you can do it. You can have the free version or go up to the premium.
Donna Lee:
One of our providers, husbands did the 12:12. It was kind of like a 12: like a 14 actually. For Casey, he would stop eating at 6 and then he started eating again the next morning at 8, or maybe it was 10? Anyway, he dropped like 45 pounds in a month. And she was like,"And he wasn't even trying, like, that was so easy for him." And so I was telling my husband about it, but we can't, we just can't. We tried.
Shefaly Ravula:
Well, and that's not going to be the case across the board. I do generally see weight loss. I prefer sustainable weight loss, and you know slower, sustainable weight loss, because then it's sustainable. But yeah, you will see some weight loss just by virtue of the way you probably are getting in more, or in less food. Now I do have, I really like to make sure people understand that when they're in their eating window, that they're still making good choices. So...
Donna Lee:
That's where I would fail. I'd be like pizza and pasta for 12 hours. Sweet.
Shefaly Ravula:
No, you know, and then you, and you want the high quality fats. You want high quality proteins, complex carbs, grain, you know, all of that. Healthy, good whole foods, clean foods during that eating window. And then you do want to work out. You can still work out and you should still be exercising. And make sure that you're, if you're going to be fasting for like, I'm talking a long time months, then you really should be working on preserving your muscle mass so that you don't have loss of lean muscle mass with that.
Donna Lee:
Gotcha. Well, that's fascinating. I know that there's so many questions out there. So I think you answered most of them for a lot of people who are listening, especially the guys here on KLBJ who hear us during the weekends, but for our podcast, you can catch our podcasts wherever you listen to podcasts. You can check us out on Facebook at Armor Men's Health. And again, you can check out Shefaly's website, it's shefskitchen.com and it's S-H-E-F because her name is Shefaly, S-H-E-F-A-L-Y. You can reach out to us during the week too, and ask for an appointment with Shefaly at(512) 238-0762. Our website is armormenshealth.com. And again, send your questions to Shefaly. We'll answer all of them anonymously, of course. And if you let us know that you listen, we will send you a free t-shirt--probably they say"nuts for urology," but you know, that's what we got.
Shefaly Ravula:
I have one of those.
Donna Lee:
Thank you, Shefaly!
Shefaly Ravula:
Thank you.
:
Dr. Mistry wants to hear from you email questions to armormenshealth@gmail.com. We'll be right back with the Armor Men's Health Hour.