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Dr. Mindy Pelz
Foreign.
Mayim Bialik
Hi, I'm Mayim Bialik.
Jonathan Cohen
And I'm Jonathan Cohen.
Mayim Bialik
And welcome to part two of our conversation with Dr. Mindy Pels, new York Times best selling author, educator, expert and trailblazer in the field of women's health and hormone science and metabolism. Her current upcoming book, age Like a Girl, is fantastic and a wonderful compliment. To fast like a girl and eat like a girl. In part two of our conversation with Dr. Mindy, we're going to talk about how there are some very clear, very easy ways for the government to be helping us be truly healthy again. And what are the forces behind why Maha is turning away from what is likely the number one detrimental factor in all of our lives and diets. We talk about what hormone replacement therapy is missing and why it's setting so many of us up for recurring failure. We're also going to talk about sugar addiction, how to curb cravings, and the three, three things you should add to your diet to turn your metabolism around. We can't wait for you to hear part two of our conversation with Dr. Mindy. So here it is, and enjoy. Break it down.
Jonathan Cohen
Fasting also impacts the body's ability to detox from chemicals that have built up. Is that accurate?
Dr. Mindy Pelz
Yeah. Yes.
Jonathan Cohen
In your practice, what are some of the most common buildup of toxins that people are holding onto and how is that impacting them?
Dr. Mindy Pelz
Yeah. Now you want to go into a really complicated topic. Okay. First, we have to acknowledge we live in the most toxic time in human history. So you have toxins everywhere. So you have them on your new clothes that come into your house, new furniture that comes into your house. You step outside, there's air pollution, it's laden in our beauty products, it's in our food. It's everywhere. So avoiding those toxins, I'm going to be really honest. My clinic was built off of detox, and I used to give people long lists. Here's what I want you to go home and throw this out. It's gotten so bad, it's near impossible to minimize your toxic load now. Which is another reason I love fasting. Because when you fast, especially if you go 17 hours, you stimulate something called autophagy. And autophagy is you spark the intelligence inside the cell. And it can register if that cell needs to be detoxed. And it will actually push out bacteria, viruses, pesticides, plastics, almost everything except heavy metals, because heavy metals are heavy, so they're a little harder to get rid of. So another reason I love regular fasting is if you can throw a 17 hour fast in on a once or twice a week schedule. Think of it like you're detoxing. You're getting rid of all the toxins that you're breathing in. Now I want to point out one thing because this has been a really powerful thing to, to, to bring forward at this time in our country. The most, the worst toxin, the worst toxin that we are exposed to is glyphosate. Glyphosate is sprayed on all of our foods. Here in California we have strict glyphosate laws that don't allow farmers to use glyphosate. So if you're in California, eat local. But recently, under the new administration, all of the glyphosate laws and the regulations around glyphosate have been reversed.
Mayim Bialik
There was an article in the New York Times saying Roundup is fine for you. Don't listen to the. And it's like it used to be the crazy hippies on the left. Now it's like, don't listen to the crazy Republicans on the right. Like it's a big circle of crazy. No, the article was, I sent it to Jonathan and I was like, okay, now I feel like this is gaslighting on a global scale. Eat food that you sprayed Roundup on. After everything and all the research we've done. I don't, I mean, I'll be honest though, I feel crazy because I don't know what's true anymore.
Dr. Mindy Pelz
Right, right.
Mayim Bialik
Yeah.
Dr. Mindy Pelz
Thank you for saying that. I, I've been thinking about doing actually a series on my YouTube channel of like. And I. And I don't, I don't want to get too political, but want to get political.
Mayim Bialik
No, it shouldn't be a partisan. It shouldn't be a partisan issue.
Dr. Mindy Pelz
The Maha movement has many things correct and they have many things wrong. And they have turned their face away from some of the biggest contributors to chronic disease. And I'm fucking tired of it. I'm just going to be really honest with you. I'm exhausted watching us go, red dyes are a problem for children. Fuck the red dyes. We need to think about Roundup being sprayed on our food and being parade and put in baby food. Where there's lead, there's glyphosate. I don't care about red dyes. I care about what is happening systemically to us all. And I think to your point, and I really am happy you brought this up because everybody's getting confused now. The name of the game, of the toxic game is to bring your toxic Load down. And the toxins you want to go after first are. The most dangerous ones are pesticides, specifically glyphosate. And the reason that glyphosate is so challenging is it drives the plastics into tissues, it drives the heavy metal into tissues. It deepens the severity of the toxic load you have already, and that should be what Maha is focused on. But they have turned their head away from this.
Mayim Bialik
Okay.
Dr. Mindy Pelz
From. You know, it makes me irate. You can't say red dye needs to go out and turn away. As our president reverses all of the environmental laws around pesticides. You gotta buy the whole system. And if you don't buy the whole system, it all starts to break. And to your point, we all start feeling crazy.
Mayim Bialik
Yeah. I mean, I never thought that I. I mean, it literally feels like the emperor, you know, the emperor's new clothes. Because I said to Jonathan, I was like, now I'm supposed to believe that food sprayed with pesticide that is literally made to kill things, to kill living organisms of all varieties? That I'm supposed to be like, no big deal here, child. What?
Dr. Mindy Pelz
Right. Right. When we have so much research showing how detrimental glyphosate is to the human body.
Mayim Bialik
Well, it's. It's inconvenient. And I think this also speaks to sort of, you know, a bit of what we've been talking about. People don't, like when things are complicated, nuanced, or inconvenient, and that comes to their health. It comes to their information. And as we're seeing, it comes politics as well. I don't want nuance. I want, like, one. Like you said, I want one rule that, you know, fits every situation, and it's not that simple. And it takes effort to be able to try and parse through this so that you can figure out what actually works in your body and also for this planet.
Dr. Mindy Pelz
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you. And. And can I. Let me. Can I make it simple. Let's try to make it simple. Eat real food. Did it come out of the ground or was it highly processed? Just real food. So fruits and vegetables, meats, cheeses, legumes, even some things like fermented bread, like sourdough bread. You know, it can be really, really healthy. So eat real food. If you have the funds to eat organic, eat it organic. And if you don't have the funds, follow Clean15 Dirty Dozen. Go look it up on EWG and start tacking on 15 hours of fasting every day. If all we did was that we would improve the metabolic health of Our country. It's literally that simple.
Mayim Bialik
Why are you not in RFK Juniors position?
Dr. Mindy Pelz
I'd like to keep myself separate from those from, you know, if we're going to, you know. You want to talk about him? I used to, I've heard him speak a thousand times, like years ago. And he was the environmental guy. I don't think people realize I, you know, this is. You're going to get me going. But I, I've been studying politics since I was a little kid. It was the dinner conversation at our dinner table all the time. When I was 18, my mom literally joyfully walked me to the neighbor's house where I could actually vote. And it was like the biggest deal in my family. I think one of the problems right now is people haven't seen how politics work works in a broader sense. They're choosing their one thing. So Robert Kennedy Jr. Was an environmental lawyer and what he discovered is that mercury was in our rivers, was in our environment, and it was causing brain damage to young children. And then he extrapolated that out into where else is mercury. He was an environmental protector and now he's not. He is not an environmental protector. He is allowing, he's turning himself away from what our president is doing, which is ruining our environment, which is making us the most sick out of everything we're doing. It's worse than ultra processed foods. Air pollution kills more children every day than vaccines do. So the conversation to your point has gotten upside down. But if you look at history, if you look at where somebody like Robert Kennedy's roots came from, he was an environmental lawyer until now. And I don't know if it was power, I don't know what it was.
Mayim Bialik
Remember when he posed with the McDonald's? That made me sad, like a part of me died inside. When he posed with that McDonald's, it made me really sad.
Jonathan Cohen
There's also a lot of conversation right now about lead in our soil and the degration of our topsoil to not have nutrient rich foods as well as other chemicals that are just in the soil itself. So it sounds like really, yes, you want to reduce load, but the only other option is to increase our detox pathways.
Dr. Mindy Pelz
You got it, you got it. Increase. So let's talk about detox pathways. So when you go into these fasted states. And by the way, the other thing I want to point out is everybody can afford money and time to go 15 hours without food once they train and they understand. So one of the things that I have been deeply trying to understand is how do we help the single mom in the south who is working two jobs and she has. The only thing that she can do is drive through McDonald's because it's cheap, it's timely, and that's what she's doing. So what can we give her? Let's teach her how to fast 15 hours. She can do that. And so that she's not. She's starting to get rid of these toxins at a cellular level. Then you bring up detox pathways. We need to make sure she's moving every day. Is she increasing her circulation? If we can get her sweating every day, maybe she just does like a 20 minute jog around the track at lunch break so that she's sweating. If we can get her sleeping. Because when we sleep, our brain actually shrinks and our cerebral spinal fluid goes up and washes toxins out. If we can get her having daily bowel movements, which is harder than you would think, especially when you're eating those toxic foods. Now her natural detox pathways are getting rid of the accumulation of the toxins that she's getting from her food. The example I use is during the pandemic, I was reached out to by a beautiful high school principal who was watching my YouTube channel. And this was September 2020. So we were deep started into the pandemic. And so she wanted to bring me on to talk about, to help her teachers understand how they could keep their immune system up. I was so beyond excited because I come from a family of teachers and I was like, oh my gosh, I can give back to these teachers. So I give this really fancy presentation on like, here's the food you should eat, here's the supplements you should take. And at the end of the whole lecture, I'm like, wow, I felt really good about it. And this brave man raises his hand and he says, I really appreciate what you just said, but if I'm looking at a jar of peanut butter and you're telling me I need to eat the jar of peanut butter with the better oil than the one that has the toxic oil, that is an $8 difference, and that is $8 I do not have another woman said to me. I get to my classroom at 4:30 in the morning. I work straight through. I don't take a lunch break so that I can sit with my students and be of help to them. I leave at 4:30 in the afternoon. I'm exhausted. So I drive through McDonald's. And I realized in that moment that it's become so complicated that a tool like fasting is such a. A beautiful answer that everybody can take the calling on.
Mayim Bialik
I want to turn a little bit more to. To age like a girl. You know, I think for. For many. For many women, you know, menopause does not feel like a glorious time. You know, if you talk to sort of like holistic people, you know, you'll get the like, oh, you're coming into your age of wisdom. And I'm like, I don't know. And, you know, this not. We can have more confidence, more energy, more clarity. Like, it's in the title of the book. What are people getting wrong about? How to approach aging in terms of what is waiting for us.
Dr. Mindy Pelz
Well, so the first question to ask yourself, and this is one that was sparked the whole age like a girl, is why do women live 42.5% of their life without a reproductive system if they're lucky?
Mayim Bialik
Because we're supposed to be dead?
Dr. Mindy Pelz
No, the opposite. So if. Why would the body stay alive as a system completely shuts down? Men don't have that. We're the only species on the planet that stays alive after a reproductive system shuts down. When estrogen and progesterone start to decline, it signals to the brain to rewire itself. And the neurons in the brain that kept you stuck to people pleasing, to being everybody's hero, to fixing everybody's problem, to doing the Rosie the Riveter, sort of I can do it all mentality. Those neurons move away. They are sloughed off. This is Lisa Moscone, the top female brain researcher in the world. This is her work. There are neurons that move away so that new neurons can grow so that you are prepared for the next job in your life.
Mayim Bialik
What is that job, Mindy?
Dr. Mindy Pelz
Right. That's a great question. So let's back up one step. There are three times in a woman's life that this brain will rewire itself. The first is at puberty when hormones come in. When hormones come in, you need to prepare to be independent, because if you get pregnant, you're going to have to care for a baby. So your neurons that kept you dependent upon mom and dad are sloughed away and new neurons are formed for independence so you can lead yourself second time postpartum after a baby. When those hormones drop, what ends up happening is the neurons that told you where your keys were.
Mayim Bialik
They also told me where my hair was, but go ahead.
Dr. Mindy Pelz
Yeah, that told you where the to do list that you kept in your brain. Those neurons get sloughed aside and you need new neurons to be able to be more intuitive with your baby because your baby doesn't talk. So you need to know how to read your baby's clues, right? Think about that. Most animals, when they come out into the world, they aren't as reliant on their parent. They can like, you know, go watch the, watch National Geographic channel. Those babies pop out and they're, they're independent. But human babies are not that way. So the mom's brain has to rewire itself so that it can read the clues of the baby. Third time perimenopause hormones drop and the brain rewires itself for leadership. We as women were meant to move into a leadership role. This is, goes back to the hunter and gatherer days. It's under a philosophy called the grandmother hypothesis. Doesn't mean you have to be a grandmother. But the theory was that back in the hunter gatherer days, when a woman stopped her cycle, they moved her into a different place in the tribe. And in that place in the tribe, her job was to lead the women and the children that were left back at the cave while the men went out for big animal kills.
Mayim Bialik
But I want to say that those women were moving into a leadership role with this plunge of hormones that I'd like. I do take issue with this because what we're being told now is you should never have that drop in hormones. You should never, you know, lose your hair. Your vagina needs to be as fresh and moist as if you're 20. Like, and here are the drugs that will make that happen. And you know, I, I feel like I'm 90 years old. I don't know if we're, you know, in a similar bracket, but from all the women that I know who are in perimenopause, it doesn't feel like leadership. It feels like I can't sleep. I'm up all night randomly replaying every mistake I've ever made, regretting everything I ever did. I don't like him anymore, whoever he is. I definitely don't want to have sex with him. And I don't even have the lubrication to have sex. What am I leading besides a gang of other unhappy, exhausted, shriveled vagina women? That's what I'm leading everybody. Follow me.
Dr. Mindy Pelz
The key word in this and the shriveled part of it all.
Mayim Bialik
Yes.
Dr. Mindy Pelz
Is perimenopause is a 10 year process.
Mayim Bialik
That's what my midlife told me. And I said I would never have lived past 15 if you had told me that.
Dr. Mindy Pelz
Okay, so let's go look at the 60 and 70 and 80 year olds. Let's look at Jane Fonda.
Mayim Bialik
So do I need hormones or I don't need hormones to be a leader?
Dr. Mindy Pelz
So let's go back to the hormone question. Um, it is a personal choice. It's a personal choice. Right.
Mayim Bialik
But you understand what I'm saying. There's something about. Something about societies that does not exist now that allowed me to be on a throne of lilacs and lavender as everyone came to me for my wisdom. Right now it feels like we're being told, you shouldn't have that drop. There's estrogen receptors everywhere. Your heart's gonna give out, your bones are gonna break, jump up and down 20 times on concrete every day, and take all the hormones, smear this on your vulva, put this on the back of your elbows, put this behind your knees, and stick this suppository in there. And now you're a leader.
Dr. Mindy Pelz
Exactly. Exactly. The level of shoulds that have now been placed upon women in perimenopause is egregious. And it's just like the food conversation. It's gotten so complicated. So let's make it simple.
Mayim Bialik
Yeah.
Dr. Mindy Pelz
When you go into your 40s, there's lifestyle changes that need to be made, and we talked about one of them here. And hopefully, just look at that hemoglobin A1C. Get your metabolic health in order, and then just tell me if that hemoglobin A1C gets down closer to 5 and you can start doing these low levels of fast. What happens to the brain fog? What happens to the insomnia? What happens to the hot flashes? What happens to all of that? My experience with hundreds of thousands of women is that one change dramatically changes those menopausal symptoms. Now, along with that, again, you're in a conversation with your doctor, and if your doctor recommends hormone replacement therapy, I think you should consider it. I think you should think if it is a good option for you. But hormone replacement therapy without lifestyle changes sets you up for failure over and over and over again. The two need to be in combination nation. And the problem with the menopausal conversation right now is we're putting all eyes on hormone replacement, and we're not talking about lifestyle. They need to be done together. And then, I don't know about you, but every woman I've talked to was like, well, I went. I went on my estrogen patch and then it was too much, so I had to get it down. Then I went. I started taking progesterone, but it was the wrong kind I was taking the oral, so now I'm doing it vaginally. And now my motivation is gone. And so now they're sticking pellets in my butt so that I can up my testosterone. It is crazy making. And we don't have a one size fits all with hormone replacement, which is why you need a good doctor with a good relationship. I'm 56 years old. I am on hormone replacement therapy. I do blood work every 90 days with my OB, and we watch my numbers to see if that hormone replacement is working. We just, we've been doing that for a year and we just got it clicked. Now, not all the single mom in the south is not going to be able to do that. So we've got to find a good balance between lifestyle and hormone replacement. We can't say one over the other. They have to go together.
Mayim Bialik
I worry a lot. And we've talked to, you know, Dr. Haver, we've talked to all the, you know, doctors about this. And I mean, I've had two really, really good solid OBs retire in the last two years because no one knows how to handle this system that is being also, like, run by robots. These were not old doctors. These were not doctors past their prime. These were people who were like, I don't know how to help people, which is why I became an OB in the first place. So for me, like, a lot of this is, like, the system is broken. The system does not benefit people who don't easily have access to this kind of care. And, you know, even, I mean, I'm grateful to you for the work that you do because at least we're trying to get it out there that there are lifestyle things, like the fact that there are, like, foods that you should know about. Like, if you are a hormonal, like, if you're having a hormone hormonal shift, here are the foods that you need. Like, no one ever told us that. No, I'm even thinking about. I mean, I'm a lactation person. Like, no one. I don't even think that's the only thing that I was taught is what are the allergens that might cause your baby to have blood in their stool or be fussy, Right? And these are very important things to know. I know the common allergens, but I just read an article today, there's like a 43% decrease in peanut allergies because people were so freaked out about peanuts that they stopped giving everybody peanuts and everyone was allergic. But I'm like, thinking of these things in terms of food. Like, these are just not part of the conversations that we have at all.
Dr. Mindy Pelz
Thank you. Yep. Which is. Which is why I'm. You can tell I'm. I'm highly agitated about that because again, I'm going to go back to women. When women try something because an expert gets up and says, do this and it. They fail at it, they don't think that it was the expert's fault. They don't think it's the doctor's fault. They think it's their fault because women have been conditioned to always turn on themselves. So the menopause conversation started with an altruistic lens, and Mary Claire was a big part of that, and she's an incredible advocate for women's health. But now the whole conversation has gone to HRT and nobody is talking lifestyle, which is why I'm. I'm like, this is why I sit and do five new videos for my YouTube and why I write books. It's like. And do podcasts like this. We have you. You don't get a free lifestyle pass because you do a drug of any kind. You don't. Ozempic's the same thing. You don't get a free lifestyle pass. The minute you are off that drug, you're gonna gain the weight back. If you get off the HRT and you didn't fix your lifestyle, all those symptoms are gonna come back. They have to be done together. And that is where we see the greatest benefit.
Mayim Bialik
No one has ever said this on our podcast. No one has ever been that clear and explicit. Like, no one has said that.
Jonathan Cohen
I mean, I. I mean, it's exceptionally moving, and there's so much here that we're just so grateful that you shared with us. I'm wondering, as we get a little bit close to the end here, the.
Mayim Bialik
End of our existence or the end of the episode.
Dr. Mindy Pelz
Wait, we're ending? We're just having fun. We just. The fun just started. What do you mean we're ending?
Jonathan Cohen
For people who may be struggling, and it's like, it almost feels out of reach sometimes. Right. Like, you hear these advice, you hear people saying how easy it is, how fast the body changes when we start to implement these things. But for someone who is at the beginning, right, where you're like, oh, I gotta train myself now, and I have to learn this new system and I have to start watching the clock and I'm going to feel nauseous at first, and then I have. Tell us some of the amazing changes that you've seen to help motivate People to get started to believe that it's possible for them.
Dr. Mindy Pelz
Okay, great. I love this question. So let's start with something we've talked a lot about, which is fasting. Fasting is the only weight loss tool that I know that gets easier with time. Diets, we burn out on them. Exercise, we bore of them. But fasting, because your body knows how to innately do it, it gets easier with time. Okay, second concept. Your cravings are your cravings because you trained your brain and the microbes. We'll talk about microbes in a moment. You trained your microbes and your br to crave those things. A great example of this is Candida, something that I spent a lot of my life doing when I was in college. What do we do in college?
Mayim Bialik
We get yeast infections, right?
Dr. Mindy Pelz
Why do we get yeast infections?
Mayim Bialik
Some people have sex.
Dr. Mindy Pelz
No. Well, some people have too much sex, for sure. With random people.
Mayim Bialik
I totally thought I had the right answer.
Jonathan Cohen
You eat a ton of sugar.
Dr. Mindy Pelz
Sugar, beer, pizza makes for sex and lots of sex with random humans. And so what you do is you feed a fungus in your gut called Candida. And that fungus, as it grows, sends a signal up to your brain and says, give me more beer, pizza and sugar. And so I can tell you, I've sat with so many sugar addicts and we just slowly work on fasting and we slowly move them and away from the really refined sugar. Then we go to fruit. We're like, okay, let's just put you over here in fruit. I'm not anti fruit. But we slowly train. And you know what happens is the microbes in the gut that were telling your brain what to crave actually start to die off and you don't crave it anymore. Easier, easier when you eat in the beginning, when you switch from a western ultra processed diet over to natural foods that the earth will provided us. That first switch is it's a little hard. You miss the cokes, you miss the desserts, you miss whatever, the little candies.
Mayim Bialik
You're eating food that tastes good, but.
Dr. Mindy Pelz
If you stick with it, it gets easier with time. So that's the only way we're going to change this. If we give people tools that get easier with time. People don't need motivation with their health. They need momentum. And fasting gives them so much momentum, getting them off the processed foods onto just natural foods. And then they start feeling better. And then I don't have to tell them anything. They want to naturally do it because they see their own result.
Jonathan Cohen
Amazing.
Mayim Bialik
I want to know what's the number one thing that I'm eating that's probably messing up my hormones more than anything else.
Dr. Mindy Pelz
Well, I don't know what you're eating, but anything with artificial colors, artificial flavorings, those synthetic food dyes. I hate to bring the food dyes back up, but we'll put those. Anything that's made in a lab is an estrogen mimicker. And when you put it into your body, your body doesn't know what to do with this synthetic version of estrogen. So, same thing as for a man, it will store it as fat. But for a woman, the reason it's even more detrimental is because it appears to be estrogen. So your natural estrogen production starts to go down because your body thinks it has enough estrogen. So we've got to get you off chemicals.
Mayim Bialik
I know so many women diagnosed with endometriosis. I used to know no one with endometriosis. I didn't even know what the word was. And now so many women have endometriosis. Are you seeing a rise in this? What is going on with endometriosis?
Dr. Mindy Pelz
Yeah, I mean, endometriosis, pcos, infertility there. So we have to remember that the body is always doing the right thing at the right time. So if there's inflammation, then why is the body inflaming? It's trying to get these toxins out of us. And so it just happens to be inflaming in certain parts of the body. Why is PCOS the most common hormonal problem for women? Well, that's because all of these chemicals have our sex hormones completely mixed up. So now we have synthetic estrogen high, we're insulin resistant, we have testosterone high, and it's sparking pcos.
Mayim Bialik
What are the three things I should add to my diet if I'm in perimenopause or in this stage of life?
Dr. Mindy Pelz
Well, first, this is a fun one. I'm going to start with the. The one I love the best. Tubers. Tubers are sweet potatoes. Potatoes, jicama, sunchokes. Tubers have a tremendous amount of magnesium and they are low glycemic, so they don't spike your glucose a lot. And you need magnesium to be able to make sex hormones. And they're yummy. I don't know if you all like sweet potatoes, but I have one almost every day.
Mayim Bialik
Okay, that's one.
Dr. Mindy Pelz
Okay. Second one is really a food group. Fiber. So lots of salad. Because when you eat fiber, you feed a set of bacteria in your gut called the ostrobalome these bacteria break estrogen down and what they want is fiber. You don't go a day without a salad. Make sure every day you put a salad in there. Okay, third thing we'll go to. The favorite topic of this conversation is protein. And I personally, I appreciate people who are vegan and plant based. You're going to need to eat a lot of legumes so that you can start to bring up your protein amounts. But personally, I think grass fed beef, you know, wild caught salmon, these kind of protein sources are dense in amino acids and amino acids are also a precursor for making hormones. So again, let's tie it all together. I go into my 40s, I'm not eating right, and so therefore I'm not giving my body the nutrients it needs to make the hormones that it should naturally be making. And now I go on a patch and I'm now telling my body, don't worry, I'm gonna just bring it to you. And we throw the whole system off. Which is why lifestyle and hormone replacement need to always go together.
Mayim Bialik
Where can people find out about you? I know you have a YouTube channel, obviously age Like a Girl is your newest book. Tell people where to find you so they can continue learning from all of the incredible wisdom you have.
Dr. Mindy Pelz
Thank you. I mean, you can go anywhere the books are sold to find the book. I'm going to keep giving a shout out to the indies, the independent bookstores, because those are family run and we should support them. You can go to bookshop.org and order them or go into your independent bookstore. Otherwise it's on. If you want to give money to Jeff Bezos, you can go to Amazon and get the book there. You can go to age like a girlbook.com and we have a bunch of bonuses. And I always say that my passion project is my YouTube channel. So if you want more information after listening to this, just dive into my YouTube channel and there's more conversations like this there.
Mayim Bialik
Amazing. Really, really so grateful for your wisdom and for how straightforward you are, how honest you are. And sometimes the truth hurts, you know, sometimes it's hard to hear that there are things that are in our control that we can do and that we should do. But I really, really love, you know, it's a very firm hand that you use when you teach, when you're talking about these things. And yeah, just really appreciate your time. So thank you so much.
Dr. Mindy Pelz
Yeah, thanks. Thank both of you. I love this conversation and I just, I really, I just want people to, especially women, just don't give up on yourself. You like, you gotta bet on yourself. And unfortunately the way that the health messaging is going right now is that like you said, everybody's pointing fingers at everybody else. Start just to discover what works for you and block the rest out.
Mayim Bialik
Jonathan as I said in the intro, I was wrong. I did not know what to expect with Dr. Mindy and I was very, very, I was impressed, a little bit shook. She's very, very, she's very, very smart about a lot of things that I don't know anything about, like ketones.
Jonathan Cohen
You need that firm hand. You can't have someone be like mime. What would you like to do? That is not the way to get results with you.
Mayim Bialik
That's what Dr. Mindy is.
Jonathan Cohen
You need someone who's going to be like, you can change. You need a bet on yourself.
Mayim Bialik
The only person that needs to be a leader coming out of perimenopause is this lady. Because she's the leader. She's all the things. I mean, look, I think, think it's very important to, you know, keep in mind she also is not saying there's a one size fits all solution. What she's saying is that there, there is a component of this phase of life for women in particular that cannot exclusively rely on access to hormone replacement therapy as the only, quote, solution to many of the things that, that ail women.
Jonathan Cohen
Yes, absolutely. I think that's an extremely powerful message. And just like think for a second about the one thing she said about eating.
Mayim Bialik
Eat when it's light out, eat with the sun.
Jonathan Cohen
I'm not a scientist, but that makes total sense to me that if I, my body, my genetics was formed before there was electricity. Electricity is fairly new in this age of our lives in this, in, in modern history that my body's going to be shutting down and doing other things. It's not looking for food at that time. I want to encourage everyone to follow my fasting journey. At our substack page. Mayim Bialix Breakdown on substack we release content there not released anywhere else. And I'm going to tell you how crabby I am. Mime is going to give updates. How many days did it take me to get to 15 hours? Because I do have a little experience with it. This I can do 12.
Mayim Bialik
So wait, what are, what are the hours that you tend to do?
Jonathan Cohen
I start to eat dinner early, depends on when I eat dinner. But like I'll, I'll eat dinner early. I'll try to be done dinner by seven, maybe eight o'. Clock.
Mayim Bialik
So we're talking like you feel like eight to eight you can handle, no problem.
Jonathan Cohen
But then when I get eight to nine, I start to get crab, get.
Mayim Bialik
Out of bed, It's a problem.
Jonathan Cohen
Eight to 10, I'm starting to really not be pleased. Eight to 11, I'm like, headaches upset. My, my creativity is like, I don't know where my ideas are coming from.
Mayim Bialik
That is you being eliminated from the gene pool. That's like Darwin is like, let's see.
Jonathan Cohen
That's like, no, no bad news. But I want to get to that 15 hours and feel comfortable, feel excited. I want those ketones to spark.
Mayim Bialik
You know what? Tell everyone what happened when we started to walk to have breakfast. Breakfast on Sunday.
Jonathan Cohen
I needed a pre breakfast.
Mayim Bialik
I'll be honest, what was that pre breakfast?
Jonathan Cohen
That pre breakfast was a little bit of leftover dinner that I heated up.
Mayim Bialik
What was the dinner? I want everyone to picture what was happening at 8:30 in the morning.
Jonathan Cohen
First of all, I was on a 12 and a half hour fast because I had stopped eating at least by 8 o'.
Mayim Bialik
Clock. So when Jonathan says I heated up a little bit, some people would say like, oh, you're hungry. Like have an apple, have a carrot. We're gonna walk to breakfast. No, Jonathan wanted turkey bolognese. Did he use the microwave? No, he doesn't use a microwave. So now we're talking saucepan, heating, stirring. It's a whole thing. Turkey bolognese.
Jonathan Cohen
And what did you say?
Mayim Bialik
I'm leaving. Goodbye. And then we didn't speak for. We did a fast. We didn't speak for 8, 18 hours.
Jonathan Cohen
It's true. The reason being is that I said, let's go to breakfast. Mime said, okay. And then without any communication, without any communication, I went and started heating up a little turkey Bolognese. I thought, you know what, this is going to take five minutes at the most. I'll wolf this down. And then I'm going to be much more pleasant on the walk because. Because it's going to be at least 45 minutes before breakfast happens. And I'm at the edge of my fasting capacity. I don't have those muscles yet.
Mayim Bialik
And we are all at the edge of our seat to see what a man on the way to breakfast making turkey bolognese is going to look like.
Jonathan Cohen
Seven hours later, I'm going to be proof that anyone can do it.
Mayim Bialik
And especially if you are walking and interacting with this person, you're going to need estrogen, progesterone and a vulva cream.
Jonathan Cohen
Vulva cream. For everyone. Not something I thought I'd say.
Mayim Bialik
I really enjoyed talking to Dr. Mindy. I think I need to go visit her. I want to know more about her. She knows a lot of things. Also, I know everyone out there is wondering. Ketones, like we learned about in organic chemistry. That's right. The only reason I know what a ketone is, it's a carbon double bonded to an oxygen with two diddy boos on either side.
Jonathan Cohen
It's also a delicious drink.
Mayim Bialik
I learned about ketones, literally, in organic chemistry. I know what things can do. Connect to them. Oh, that's stable. The oxygen has four electrons. I never knew that we'd be talking about the very same ketones as this other system. I've heard about ketosis. Right? I've heard, like, oh, and you're fasting ketosis now. I understand, and I want to learn more.
Jonathan Cohen
It was aptly timed for both of our lives. So grateful that we get to meet these really amazing guests that we would not get to meet anywhere else. So, mime, thank you for being on this journey with me, and thanks, everyone for being along with us.
Mayim Bialik
And I think you. You absolutely need to head over to substack because we're gonna be following Jonathan's journey into becoming an expert faster without harming people around him. From our breakdown to the one we hope you never have. We'll see you next time.
Jonathan Cohen
It's Maya Bialik's breakdown.
Dr. Mindy Pelz
She's gonna break it down for you.
Jonathan Cohen
She's got a neuroscience PhD or two, and now she's gonna break down, so break down. She's gonna break it down.
Podcast: Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown
Episode: Part Two: Functional Health Expert Dr. Mindy Pelz on How Fasting Heals Hormones, Burns Belly Fat & Increases Sex Drive
Air Date: November 19, 2025
Host: Mayim Bialik (with Jonathan Cohen)
Guest: Dr. Mindy Pelz
In this engaging and candid episode, Mayim Bialik and co-host Jonathan Cohen conclude their two-part conversation with Dr. Mindy Pelz, a functional health expert and author specializing in women’s metabolic and hormonal health. The discussion dives into practical strategies for detoxing the body (especially via fasting), current policy issues affecting public health, the realities of hormone replacement therapy (HRT), and vital lifestyle changes for women—especially around menopause. Dr. Pelz's no-nonsense approach and insider knowledge provide clarity on complex topics, empowering listeners to take charge of their health without being overwhelmed.
“The worst toxin that we are exposed to is glyphosate. Glyphosate is sprayed on all of our foods... Where there's lead, there's glyphosate. I don't care about red dyes. I care about what is happening systemically to us all.” — Dr. Mindy Pelz [05:19]
“I realized in that moment that it’s become so complicated that a tool like fasting is such a beautiful answer that everybody can take the calling on.” — Dr. Mindy Pelz [14:42]
“Hormone replacement therapy without lifestyle changes sets you up for failure over and over and over again. The two need to be in combination.” — Dr. Mindy Pelz [23:51]
“Fasting is the only weight loss tool that... gets easier with time... People don’t need motivation with their health. They need momentum.” — Dr. Mindy Pelz [28:41], [31:10]
“Just don’t give up on yourself… Start to discover what works for you and block the rest out.” — Dr. Mindy Pelz [36:53]
On Bucking the System:
On Medical Confusion:
Mayim’s Humor on Menopause:
On Understanding Cravings:
Jonathan's Honest Fasting Struggles: [39:35]–[41:20]
Ketones and Science Fun: [42:15]–[43:00]
Dr. Mindy Pelz’s appearance on Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown offers hope, clarity, and actionable guidance amid the dietary and hormonal “noise” of modern life:
“You gotta bet on yourself.” — Dr. Mindy Pelz [36:53]