Why Your Blood Sugar Might Be Sabotaging Your Mental Health

Hello, hello and welcome back to yet another phenomenal conversation at the hormones and mental health overcoming anxiety, depression, and ADHD and women.

I am your co-host, Doctor Sharon Stills. It's always my honor. My pleasure to be here all with you, and share conversations that literally can change the course of your healing journey and how you're feeling.

So I'm excited for you to eavesdrop in on myself and Doctor William. He is an endocrinologist with over 20 years of clinical experience, and he is the Chief Medical officer at El Neutra.

And we're going to have a great talk today about metabolic health, about blood sugar regulation, about how these play to how you're feeling not just emotionally but biochemically.

And some solutions of what you can do about it. So I'm very excited for our talk today. So welcome to the summit. It's great to have you at distills. Thank you so much for inviting me.

Oh my pleasure, my pleasure. So let's just let's just dive in. I mean, I think anxiety, depression, especially as women, how our body looks and how our body feels can be, you know, I think it's a two way street.

It can cause anxiety and depression. Depression and anxiety can cause us not to want to eat healthy and take care of our bodies. And of course, we've talked a lot about in the summit about taking, the right hormone balance, optimizing your thyroid, your neurotransmitters, all these things that we know are important.

But it's really my goal for the audience to think broader, to really understand food is medicine, right? Hippocrates has said that, and we agree. So that's absolutely right.

Tell us what you guys are up to at Elle Nature and how this, yeah. So I think conventional medicine tends to separate the body from the mind that they say, okay, you have metabolic health issues and but, you know, that's separate than your mental health issues.

But I think a more holistic approach to this, to this understanding is that there is a bi directional relationship between metabolic health and mental health.

Think about people, as you mentioned earlier, that struggle with some of the mental health issues, anxiety, depression, they're at risk for not taking care of themselves.

And, from a metabolic health standpoint, it's difficult, more difficult to hear to a good diet when you're when you're not feeling well, when you're not mentally healthy.

So it's very clear that, that those conditions, and do contribute to it, and especially if somebody is taking medications, some of these medicines can cause people to gain weight and, and increase their appetite, which makes, makes, you know, puts them at risk for diabetes and other metabolic health issues.

But on the other hand, people who struggle with chronic illnesses like diabetes and, and, and prediabetes and, just, any chronic illnesses also struggle with, distress, struggle with pressure, struggle with disappointments.

And so, I think that it's time that the healthcare really needs to look at this as a bi directional relationship, our mental health and our physical health.

Absolutely. We can't can't separate any of it, and I that's a good point. You bring up that if you are taking pharmaceuticals, often the side effects are weight gain or, you know, further depression.

And so they compound the problem rather than, as we know, we all talk about here doctor talks you know, getting to the the root cause. And so what have you found.

What is your plan, your program. How does it work to help with metabolic health? What are how can this help with your mental health? You know, our overall, sort of, thesis around, disrupting health care and helping people to take care of themselves.

You know, is always, one that is based on pragmatism. What I mean by that is we understand people, people either have healthy mental health, even with struggling mental health.

Either way, everybody struggles with keeping up a life long commitment, to a perfect lifestyle. No one is perfect, you know, including the doctors, right?

So we as a profession, we struggle, but a lot, a lot of my colleagues are overweight and they're overstressed. And part of it is because that vicious cycle and, so we know that. Yes.

Well, we ought to take care of ourselves every day, exercise daily and eat well daily. The reality is less than perfect. So al-Nusra, which is the company that built on the idea that we can prolong longevity through nutrition.

That's why hence Al Nusra, the principle is that there's got to be innovation in lifestyle medicine. There's got to be ways whereby understanding the molecular pathways of nutrition, longevity, there's got to be ways where we can help people to, to take advantage of the science in driving better outcomes without a commitment to every day, perfect lifestyle.

And that's really the underlying thesis in the how how these came about was, was our founder, Professor Walter Longo, spent 25 years in the laboratory and really tried to figure out what are the intersection between nutrition, longevity and fasting.

So it turns out that in a lot of the animal studies, for example, that when you fast in animal, they live longer, far from being emaciated and sick, they actually live longer.

But fasting alone is a double edged sword, meaning that you cannot just fast and not read and not nourish, right? It's like exercising and then rest you when you eat.

When you fast long enough, you also need to nourish the body so the body actually recuperates, right? It's the alternating cycles of fasting and then nourishment.

That's really the key to longevity and health. And but the the best news as it relates to this, this educational session is that by midday, any king of fast just five days per month, you could do the body a lot of good.

So think about this concept of five days per month. It's instead of of be committing to a life long every single day being a saint. Well exercise, you could actually just use five days to fasts.

But it's not true fasting in the sense of just not only fast, but we actually provide nutrition for you. Nutrition that kind of fall underneath the the threshold of detection by the cells.

So you can sneak in some nutrition into the body. Through that five day, you're able to generate the kind of health outcomes that's equal to an everyday good nutrition.

And that is based on, a deep understanding of the molecular signs of fasting. And I'll give you a little bit of a background, this, this technology is called the fasting mimicking diet.

It was invented in the laboratory of the University of Southern California by Professor Valter Longo, who was, who is continues to be the, the director of the longevity Institute over there.

It's funded through $36 million of National Institutes of Health funding, partner with 18 university around the globe. This is the result. It's a five day kit that simulates the benefits of fasting for five straight days while providing nutrition.

And so the old the the overall idea is to give you the benefit of a five day water only fast without the burden of not eating food. And so just think about five days alone you, you know, per month for the rest of 25 days, you go back to eating, living your normal life, and you repeat it again.

And another month for consecutive few cycles to drive health benefits. I think that reduces the lot of the anxiety, a lot of the burdens, and a lot of the sort of, sort of the disappointments that people have when it comes to taking care of their, metabolic health.

Well, yeah. And I think when you, when you do that, it's there's a few things like on an emotional level, you're, you're you're winning. Right. Because you can complete if I can do it, anyone can do it, right?

You can do I have days. And then there's also the stabilization of your blood glucose and your insulin and the decrease in blood pressure and inflammatory markers.

And I don't think we think about it. We kind of have been trained, like you were saying, we're separated. And so we're trained if we're depressed. Oh, I must need something out there.

And like, patients come to me, and they don't want pharmaceuticals, but they still want me to give them something, right? Yeah. What's the magic? What's the magic potion or elixir?

And. Yeah. Don't think about. Oh, could my mood be off because my blood sugar is off. And so can you talk about a little bit about how the diabetes program.

And I don't think you have to have diabetes. You could be pre-diabetic. You can have instability high. Yeah. Oh hypoglycemia metabolic syndrome. So can you talk about how that's a little different.

Yeah. There was a paper that was published a couple of years ago, 2 or 3 years ago, that says 94% of all Americans are cardiovascular or cardio metabolically unhealthy, 94%.

That means only 6% of us are truly healthy. And they use the criteria of way cholesterol, blood pressure will close, and also no history of cardiovascular diseases can be imagined up.

So only 6% of all Americans are cardio metabolically healthy. So that means all of us need some tuna. Okay. And if the solution is simply go eat better and exercise better, we've already solved the problem.

No, you know, it is a true statement. If we eat well and exercise well, we definitely will be healthier. The problem is, it's hard to do. We're too busy.

We're too sometimes, you know, too many things get in the way. And that's why with our El Neutra Health program, essentially, we're the program to center around the fasting mimicking diet as the as the core element.

But that's not only it, you know, there's actually we're supporting we're packaging this program together with with registered dietitian who are trained in the longevity and metabolic health science.

And so they will become a long functioning as a coach to help you walk through the five days, but also in the rest of the 25 days, helping you to really figure out how to personalize the approach for the rest 25 days. So.

So yes, there is something that can, can, can kind of drive the results, but there's also a caring, a person that's going to support you through the rest of the 25 days and building around that program.

I think the goal is to drive metabolic health. That's achievable, that, that, you know, that doesn't require a everyday commitment to a lifestyle change, although we do encourage that, and we'll be very excited people do that.

But in spite of you, in spite of our, our, our, imperfection, the five day, fast moving die can still drive health outcomes. And I think that's a more pragmatic way.

You know, it is a five day that is a focus effort, right? And most people can give five days per month to drive better health of themselves. So are you saying that you can do the five days and then and I'll be like on the extreme and then go eat McDonald's and still have better health outcomes or what exactly are you saying here?

Well, it's very interesting because I'm going to start with two studies to to to illustrate the point here. You know, one is an animal study was the human human trial.

So the animal study, that was published show, for example, a, you know, in the laboratory they usually use, mice. Okay. So a little mice that are fed with high fat diet, you can imagine what they're going to look like.

They're going to look like obese, mice. Right. So these obese mice with high fat, when they're exposed to the fasting, they the diet meaning that we just, you know, use the fasting day and feed them every three weeks.

And for the rest of the time, they go back to eating the high fat, high fat food. You know what happens? Their body size shrink just like the healthy, mice.

Right. So think about it. And all their inflammatory markers decrease, their visceral fat decreases, their muscle gets maintained. And that is the inspiration, you know, in a food free society like ours, what is the intervention there?

Can we provide a nutrition intervention just five days per month and help to solve or at least tackle, right. This metabolic, health issues in our society?

There's one way to do it is to say, well, everybody, you know, get on a good diet or else that's one way of doing that. Or we can offer a nutrition solution that that just requires five days per month to drive outcomes.

Right? Or obviously this is why, you know, drugs are so prevalent these days as people just go and get the doctors to give them a GLP one and, and help them lose weight.

The problem with that approach is think about what happens. You take the medicine, your weight drops, but you only know, and you not only lose the fat in the body, but he also does muscle.

In fact, studies have shown now with GLP ones like the pig and others, you lose 35% of your 35% of the weight loss you you experience is due to muscle loss.

Now, once you stop that medicine, what happens when it comes back? But when the weight comes back or what do you gain? Do you gain the muscle back? No, you gain a setback.

So every time you go through this cycle of weight loss and then regain weight loss and regain your body composition gets worse because each time you lose more muscle, each time you regain the way you gain more fat, and so your fat to muscle ratio gets worse every with every cycle.

I just feel that that's not really the fundamental way to address, you know, health outcomes to address metabolic. And every time when you regain their weight, what happens to the mental health of the individual?

You feel even more distressed. Right. So let's go to another human trials. So I remember I went through the animals that I promised it. So, so about a year ago, Professor Walter Longo and and colleagues published another paper in humans that they took a group of individuals who are who are given the fasting the they can die of five days per month for four months, compared to the control group that went on a mediterranean diet every single day for 120 days.

So it's a 20 days of intervention versus every 20 days at every day commitment to a good lifestyle. Right. So the hypothesis is just like any animal can do, five days of FMD, reverse right, or be as good, you know, in terms of outcomes as 120 days.

And so it turns out the results show that, the vasculature on the health of the blood vessel we call endothelial function is the same. That's great news, right?

20 days of effort versus 30, 20 days of effort. We see the same outcomes. But but comes the big part. The Mediterranean diet was one of the best diets in the world.

Showed about 9 pounds of weight loss. About a third of them was due to the. The weight loss was due to muscle loss. A third. But in the fasting to be in diet because it's a fast it's a stress out of the body which causes growth hormone to secrete that and that that in turn maintain some muscle mass.

There's actually no muscle loss in the FMD group. So think about 20 days of fasting mimicking diet equal to the effect of Mediterranean diet. You maintain muscle rather than losing muscle.

And it's less effort because there's only 20 days instead 120 days. And by the way, you don't have to buy grocery for those five days. And so you save money on your grocery that are.

So think about that right. And I believe it's one of the most innovative ways to give people this sense of accomplishment by people were struggling with mental health to in five days you see results.

Not sure you got to go through the cycles. You got to repeat the cycles to have more sustainable effect. But almost everybody could do a five day effort.

So as you were talking, I was thinking, because I've always told patients do the five days for three months, as in like we run blood work. So we run the no insulin and the hemoglobin A1 say C, and we take the blood pressure and we do all these parameters do it for three months and then we recheck.

I've never seen anyone who didn't have improvement CRP going down insulin the whole thing. And they always feel better. But as you're talking and you're talking about this study, which is quite fascinating, the 20 days compared to the 120 days is their benefit, because usually after that I just tell them, do it once a quarter or maybe just twice a year.

But is there or do you have people doing it like every month? Yeah. So it really it really depends. Right. So so we this is why we, we we want to personalize this to our, to people in need.

We have a product called proline on the marketplace by Prof. And that is for health, wellness and longevity. And we have just published a paper earlier this year.

This shows three cycles of Prolog reduces biological age by two and a half years. So you're absolutely right. Three cycle is what you need right for health and wellness.

And then you do that just every year three cycles three cycles, three cycles. However, if someone is struggling with metabolic health issues, pre-diabetes they need to have they need to do is a meaningful amount of weight, right.

They have insulin resistance. Then it is much better to come to the old neutral side of, of our offering, prolonged side for health and wellness and longevity.

I'll neutralize the company. We add the health in there because it's the medical arm of the company. Now, we take the FDA the same technology, but now layer on top of that registered dietitian to help counseling and personalize the approach so it is safe and is also more motivating to somebody to coach you through the cycle.

Now that often with metabolic health issues, we will drive more than three cycles. Oftentimes four cycles sometimes is six cycles. This is where the the dietitian will work with you to see what is right for you.

Now we also have a program for people with with diabetes, although that's not kind of the focus of our talk today. But al-Nusra also has a diabetes remission regression program now, in addition to to having the FMT as the centerpiece.

Now, you layer on top of that, registered dietitian like in the metabolic Health program. But for people with diabetes, we layer even on top of that, a medical physician, a doctor who can prescribe medicine because it works.

People are actually come off their medicine with multiple cycles FMD. So hence the idea of diabetes resolution or diabetes remission, the industry term, they call it diabetes reversal.

But the medical term, they call it diabetes remission. And so you think about how this technology is applied now in health, wellness, health and wellness in, you know, with the offer to prolong all the way to people with metabolic health issue, we have now started a new program, supervised program called El Neutra Health.

And you can go to the website there, El Tri health.com for metabolic health. So what is metabolic health is people who who need to or want to have supervised weight loss.

People with prediabetes, people who have other other metabolic issues that they want to have a dietician to, to work with them. But once they have diagnosed type two diabetes, that's when we will welcome them to into the diabetes program, aiming for remission or regression.

That. And are there certain markers that you do check in the metabolic program that. Absolutely, absolutely. So in addition to A1C there is lipids, there's inflammatory markers.

There's also biological age that we track with that. So there's laboratory there's dietitians. There is the five days. There's the 25 days of counseling.

There's a smart scale and there's there is portal. So it is a full fledged program. And so you're always supported. You will never feel alone. I love that. Yeah.

Coaching and having support and someone who can answer your questions or cheer you on or pick you up if you're having a rough moment is so crucial just in everything in the human experience.

No, absolutely. I think you're absolutely right. So I think you to come back to the spirit of this summit, you know, people would depression people who the anxiety it's already overwhelming to deal with the mental health, you know, and they still have this physical health that they have to, to, to, to take care of.

It's very important that we don't overburden them with demands and, and unrealistic expectations. Right. And so this is where we need innovations in lifestyle medicine.

We need we need, you know, innovations in functional medicine. And we believe that fasting, mimicking diet as the scientific basis and the clinical trial results to help people to deal with their metabolic health issues.

And I was just thinking, especially when you're depressed the last thing you probably want to do is think about shopping and think about cooking. And think, oh, that's so true. Yeah. And one of the things I adore about, I mean, I adore a lot of things about your product and your programs, but it's just all so easy.

It's like a box with little boxes in the big box for each day. There's no brain power, so if you don't have the umph, you don't have the motivation. You don't need a lot of motivation to open up a soup packet.

And, and you can get it done. And yeah, it's some of that overwhelming burden. Yes. No shopping list. You know, no driving out to get food. You know, there's no weighing.

There's no counting calories. I mean, this is this is just easy. You open the box, you add water, you cook, you microwave, you know? So, I think it's a pragmatic solution.

And I think after the five days I love, there's no pressure. But my experience of patients is that after the five days, some of the anxiety or the depression or the scattered illness has lifted, and all of a sudden it's not as much as a burden.

They're not feeling so bad, and they have a little more motivation to move their body. Yeah. Have a nice big salad rather than eating something processed.

And so there's there's all these benefits from your biomarkers. And yes, the biological age. Can you just because to me that I kind of before you guys even did that testing, when I started doing proline, I said this is adding ten years to my life.

I'm up in my age span to 130, and now you now you've kind of, you know, you've done the studies and you've proven it, but can you just talk about the difference between your chronological age and what that means?

Yeah. Well, I mean, we all have met people who, appear younger than our age or, appear older than their age. And so we know that calendar age is the terrible marker, to true health.

Right? So, so now, the science now has come up with other ways of assessing your true health. And, they use the, the biological age or physiological age, right.

As a term to describe that. And, and in our study, you know, we, we took folks, who, went through three cycles, FMD and look at their results, and they superimpose on a national, database and see what happens to actual sort of health outcomes.

You if you were given this specific markers and it turns out that we saw, people while their part of the object age, you know, advances their, biological age decreases by two and half.

Here's what's even more interesting is in the same paper now, we did not follow people for 25 years. There would have been a study impossible to do. But in a computer modeling and simulation, we were able to show that if you start with FMD, the fast moving diet just three cycles per year, that's 15 days per year from age 50 to age 70.

It's estimated that that the the amount of reduction in biological age. And that's about 11 a half years reduction. And and that is amazing. Right. But okay, give or take a minute since, as I said, it's not the actual study that actually follow people.

Right. And extend people by 11 years. Let's think about the effort. Is 15 days per year, right. By driving this cellular changes by driving is the stress onto the cells of the cells, rejuvenate.

And it has a mechanism that is actually different than weight loss. Everybody says yeah we got to lose weight. Yes. Again that weight loss is very important for an obese society.

But now all of a sudden we have a new mechanism of action. By driving cellular rejuvenation, we actually could drive we can actually improve biological age.

That's news. And and it takes only as little as 15 days per year. And, and there's just so much upside I don't see any downside. I mean, is there any side I mean I.

I well this is where yeah. I mean since I'm a physician and and you know do no harm is really key here. I think if you're healthy and you don't have any health conditions during the fasting, they can diet.

I mean, overall, actually over a million people have used this product, okay. In the eight years that the product is is on the market on the prolonged side, but I do this is also why, you know, because we are we are ethical, conscientious company.

If you have health conditions, we would ask you not to go to prolonged and use prolonged. We would ask you to come to the old Mutual Health site. You know, where there is supervision by a clinician.

Now, a lot of our, our, our clinical partners, also offer, FMD to their clients through their patients. And I think that's very appropriate because now you're under supervision of a health care provider.

But but this is where ensure that, you know, we, we have l neutral health that can help to drive, the personalization and make sure that that you could do, you could go through this FMD cycle safely and effectively.

Yeah. So where can where can the listeners learn more? Yeah. So, again, I'm going to try to offer to two different groups of individuals. For those of you for a healthy we're looking for just healthy longevity and weight loss.

And you want to do it on your own. You can go to prolong life pro lo and life.com. However, if you're someone who just say, you know, I need a little bit of encouragement from the coach, I need a little bit of high touch, any personalization and you have metabolic health issues, to the program side.

And we call the L neutral health. Let's you can see that on my screen here. I'll neutral health.com for metabolic health issues or for your Typekit. Diabetes is very simple.

So I'm just thinking led food maybe medicine and my medicine be thy food. And this is a great way. If you're not feeling great emotionally to get your food in order.

It's such a good springboard. And also, if you don't know, do I go to L neutral? I do, I go to proline. Make sure your physician is not just checking a lipid panel, but they're checking your homocysteine.

They're checking your C-reactive protein. They're checking your insulin. They're checking your hemoglobin A1, C they're checking your ferritin. They're checking your fibrinogen.

And they're really doing a full profile to see what's really going on. Just looking at a basic lipid profile, you know, make sure they're doing an advanced cardio IQ profile.

Make sure they're really looking. So, you know, if you do or don't have an issue that needs to be addressed. And this can be often an overlooked piece of mental health of anxiety depression.

So I really appreciate you coming and sharing your wisdom and shedding light. And you know, I'm you know, I love your company. I love your program. I've been using it with patients and I just see so much benefit in my patients.

I do it, you know, I'll run cleanses and guide patients and do it myself because physician practice what I preach. And you know, we have to take care of ourselves too.

So again, you can go to proline Live.com or L Nature health.com and check it out. It will be a good experience. And I remember the first time I did it, it was a long time ago and I was struggling on the last day.

I know for some people the last day is a good day. I always seem to struggle in the afternoon on the fifth day I just, I just get tired and hit a wall.

I was so tempted to, like, eat a piece of salmon and, And I just thought, you know what? When I wake up tomorrow, I want to wake up saying it. Did it a big part of yourself. Yes.

And not beating myself up. And I did it. And so now that I did it once, I know if I did it once, I can do it again. And I've done it again and again and again.

And so you just we have to give ourselves that feel good, that pat on the back, the I can accomplish this. And it's not 30 days. It's five days. It's five days. You can. Do it.

That's exactly right. And it's almost like going to the gym, you know, like, oh, I got to go to the gym, but you always feel good after you come out. So.

Exactly. Yeah. Well thank you everyone for being here. Thank you for coming and sharing your wisdom. And we'll see you back for another talk.