Transcript
Sanjay Gupta (0:00)
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Sanjay Gupta (0:34)
Welcome to Paging Dr. Gupta. This is the show where I get to answer the health questions that you've been asking, and you've been sending in a lot of questions. And Kira, one of our amazing producers, is here to help us out again. What's the first question?
Kira (0:47)
All right. Hey, Sanjay. So today's first page is coming from a listener whose name's Stephanie, and she wants to know your thoughts on intermittent fasting. So what's your take?
Sanjay Gupta (0:57)
All right, Kira, thanks for bringing that one in. You know, intermittent fasting is something that I've thought a lot about, really my whole life, because my parents practiced this when I was a kid, and I've now been practicing intermittent fasting regularly as an adult for some close to 20 years. It's not just a health trend for me. It's become a part of my lifestyle. So let me start this way, Stephanie, with a little bit of the science behind behind intermittent fasting, as the name suggests. And as you might guess, the idea is to simply cycle between periods of eating and periods of fasting. That part makes sense. Typically, you may fast for 16 to 18 hours a day, for example, and then eat in a smaller window six to eight hours a day. Some people refer to this as restricted eating as well. That's a good name for it because essentially you have times of your day when. Or you're weak, when you're not eating at all. That's the key. Now, why is there so much excitement around this? I think it's because there's data around some of the compelling health benefits. Improvements in blood sugar, for example, improvements in weight management. That one makes sense. Also even reducing the risk of type 2 diabetes. Now, why this occurs is a little bit unclear, but it may be linked to a process known as metabolic switching. This is when your body essentially transitions from burning sugar or glucose for energy to instead burning fat. That shift can happen when you are fasting, and that's what has been linked to better cellular health. So again, remember that term metabolic switching, and essentially Think of your body as flipping a switch from storing energy to instead using the energy and doing it pretty efficiently. So if you think, well look, that sounds great, how do I do it? The way I did it was to find periods of my day when I typically eat. So I sort of really adopted what I referred to earlier, that 16, 8 approach 16 hours out of the day. And remember that includes night as well when you're not eating eight hours a day, when you're allowed to eat again, some people might use 18 hours not eating, six hours eating, but start off slow. That would be sort of the key. And people could basically do it as well based on when it is daylight outside. If you don't want to pay attention to the actual hours in the day, pay attention to the sunshine. Don't eat when it's dark outside. Simple as that. That's something I've done as well. And it's really in particular kept me from eating late at night. That was a big problem for me, got me out of the habit of late night snacks and things like that. Now another way to approach it is to do what's called a five, two approach. So five days out of the week, you eat two days, you really don't eat, or you eat a really, really low calorie diet on those two days. Whatever sort of floats your boat here. One thing I will say as you're starting this journey is that I cheated from time to time. I wasn't always eating just when the sun was out. I wasn't perfect right out of the gate. So don't beat yourself up too much if you're starting this process of intermittent fasting. But again, start slowly. And keep in mind an important caution that intermittent fasting is not a free pass to essentially binge on unhealthy foods during the times when you can eat. That'll quickly undo a lot of the benefits. The reason I say this is because there was a study published in the Journal of the American Heart association. This was back in 2023. They followed 500 people for six years. So long term study, some of whom were intermittent fasting, some who weren't. And what they found was no clear link between restricted eating windows and weight loss. What did matter in the study though overall was portion sizes and the total number of calories that a person ate throughout the day. So it's not necessarily just when you eat, it is what you're eating as well. That should be obvious if you're fasting but not paying attention to how much or what you're Eating it's probably not going to make that big a difference. It reminded me when I read that study of a conversation I had with this great professor, Christopher Gardner. He's out of Stanford. I talked to him for an episode of Chasing Life.