March 1, 2018
Dr. Hotze reveals the amazing benefits of the ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting.
Stacey: Welcome to Dr. Hotze’s Wellness Revolution. I’m Stacey Bandfield here with Dr. Steven Hotze and this is your place for learning more about how to do a 180 and take charge of your health. And another way you can learn is by downloading our podcast. So be sure to go to HotzePodcast.com, that’s H-O-T-Z-E podcast.com.
What a program we have for you today. This is one of those lifestyles that is definitely a game changer. I know it’s worked for me, it’s worked for Dr. Hotze, and so many other people. It’s called the ketogenic diet, you might have heard of it, maybe not. But Dr. Hotze is here to explain the benefits and why you should consider being on that ketogenic diet. Dr. Hotze.
Dr. Hotze: Thank you so much, and thank each one of you for joining us today on Wellness Revolution. I believe that each one of you needs a health coach, you need a doctor and a staff of professionals who can coach you onto a path of health and wellness naturally, so you can enjoy a better quality of life as you mature without the use of pharmaceutical drugs.
A major problem we have in America today is overweightness and obesity. You’ve heard me tell this before, but in America in the early 1960s the average percent of people that was overweight was just 16%.
Stacey: Oh my goodness!
Dr. Hotze: And only 8% were obese. It’s frightening to give you the current figures. Currently, 70% of Americans are overweight. Half of those that are overweight are obese. That means 35% of the population is obese. And you know, being obese leads to a host of health problems. First, it dramatically decreases your life span. Fat people just don’t life as long as skinny people, that’s just a cold hard statistical fact. It leads to heart disease, it leads to diabetes, it leads to heart attacks, congestive heart failure, strokes, kidney disorders, and degenerative arthritis – that means you carry around a lot of weight for a lot of years you wear out joints and you’re going to get a knee replacement or a hip replacement. How many people do you know that have had those? I can tell you scores of people. And it’s not because they’re thin and trim that they’re getting their knees and hips replaced, it’s because they are overweight or they are obese.
So one of the major underlying problems we have in America is hypothyroidism. And hypothyroidism within the cells means that your cells are not receiving enough active thyroid hormone in the power plants of the cells, which are called the mitochondria, to produce adequate amounts of energy to get your metabolism up so you can get your weight down. So, hypothyroidism is a problem and hypothyroidism exists in America because we have fluoride in our water. 70% of the people that live in America have fluoride added to the water which poisons the enzyme that converts the inactive thyroid T4 to the active thyroid hormone T3 which activates the mitochondria. So it’s a problem with hypothyroidism. So, first thing you can do to try eliminate that problem is eliminate fluoride from your drinking water, and you can do that with reverse osmosis or you can buy all kinds of filters online and you could filter your water that you drink.
Now, there’s still another problem that causes obesity, overweightness. And 70% of you that are listening to this are overweight and you’d like to do something about it. Who wouldn’t like to get down to a more ideal body weight and feel better? Well, one of the best ways to do this is a ketogenic eating program and eating lifestyle.
Now, let me explain. Most Americans are on a high simple carbohydrate diet. They eat a lot of sugar because they’re eating a lot of processed food and it is packed into salad dressings and all the packaged foods that we have that put sugar in everything. And sugar is very addictive. They’ve done studies with mice, for a period of time they give them cocaine and they run to the cocaine and they love the cocaine.
Stacey: They pick the sugar over the cocaine, that was what was crazy?
Dr. Hotze: Here’s what happens, let me tell the whole story. They give them cocaine and they love it. And then they give them sugar and they love sugar. And then they give them a choice and guess what the rats pick? They don’t pick the cocaine, they pick the sugar. Sugar is very addicting.
And so one of the problems we have is we have too much sugar in our eating. And somewhere in the neighborhood I’ve read anywhere from 50 to a 100 pounds of sugar are ingested every year by Americans.
Stacey: Yes, and Dr. Hotze, it’s so insidious too because it’s wrapped into all of our holidays, our festivities. It seems like we’ve got some kind of holiday every month, there’s always birthdays, anniversaries. I mean the list goes on and on. I mean it’s all wrapped up in all of those events which make it really hard for people to break away from that addiction.
Dr. Hotze: And when you do you can feel very poorly when you do that, your body craves that sugar. So sugar is also found in all those simple carbohydrates. All the grain products, pizzas, pastas, breads, noodles, all those sort of things are simple carbohydrates. All a simple carbohydrate is, it’s a starch. And what’s a starch? Sugar molecules hooked together. And when the sugar molecules break down in the stomach…it really starts breaking down when you eat it, amylase in your mouth starts breaking it down, and it breaks apart and then your sugar levels go up from eating the simple carbohydrates.
So, people in America are putting stress on their bodies, particularly on their pancreas which has to secrete insulin in the face of glucose. It wants to get the glucose into the cell so the mitochondria can burn the glucose to produce energy. And what happens is that we have such a tremendous load of carbohydrates and sugar in our diet that our sugar levels stay up and we’re producing more and more insulin, driving the glucose into the cells. And then when the cells are filled up with glucose the insulin works on taking that sugar to the liver, where the liver manufactures a substance called glycogen to store the sugar molecule in case you ever need it, so we get a storage of glycogen in our liver.
And then when the liver is full of glycogen and you’ve got all these high sugar levels, two things happen. One, the cells become resistant to insulin. So, insulin has receptors on the cell membranes and they become resistant because there’s so much insulin they just become resistant to it, so sugar levels begin to increase. So what happens then, because liver is full of glycogen, it has no room to store the sugar there, guess what? The glucose drives the sugar into the adipose tissue to make fat. So it takes that sugar and that’s why you get big around the mid rift and you get all these love handles all over your body, because your high carbohydrate diet is causing you to have high insulin levels, and the high insulin levels in the face of a continued sugar load want to get that sugar out of the blood and so it drives it in and creates fat. That’s why people get fat, it’s because they have a high simple carbohydrate diet.
So, a ketogenic diet is completely opposite of a high simple carbohydrate diet. You completely eliminate sugar and you eliminate all the simple carbs from your eating plan. You don’t eat bread, pizza, pasta, you just don’t eat it. And on a ketogenic program, it’s broken then into three parts: One – oils and fats, two – vegetables, and three – meats. And in a ketogenic program the primary food source is oils and fats. So this would be eggs, butter, olive oil, fish oil, avocados, olives, almonds, most nuts have good…
Stacey: Macadamia nuts, one of my favorites.
Dr. Hotze: So, you make sure you get plenty of that in your eating program. As a matter of fact, in a ketogenic eating program, 70% of your intake should be in the form of good oils and good healthy fats. Fat is your friend. Don’t believe this deal, “If I eat fat I’m going to get fat handles!” That’s totally wrong. If you eat sugar you’re going to get fat, not if you eat fat. And let me explain to you why.
So, 70% of your eating program would consist of good, healthy oils and fats. Then the other 30% of your program will consist of green vegetables: broccoli, spinach, asparagus, kale, broccoli sprouts, and other good healthy vegetables that you can eat. And those have low carb factors. A cup of broccoli has seven grams of carbs. So you can have those and you can pour butter on top of them, steam and put butter. And I would lightly steam them so they’re still crisp. And then you can have a modicum of meat. Nobody really needs more than about four ounces of meat at the most. Anywhere from two to six. If you’re an athlete and you’re doing a lot of workouts, you may need a little more than that to keep your protein for your muscles at a good level. So that’s the three major ingredients of ketogenic eating program.
And what it does, because you’re not getting sugar in your body, your body’s mitochondria now convert from burning sugar to burning fat, and fat is broken down into ketones. So ketones circulate, they enter the cells, and there in the cells the mitochondria burn the ketones. Now, ketones are much slower-burning than sugar and ketones help your cells operate much more efficiently than you do when you’re on sugar, there are no more sugar highs and sugar lows.
Good oil and fat in your eating program satiates your brain. You lose your hunger altogether when you’re on a good ketogenic eating program, you’re just not hungry.
Stacey: That’s a great point Dr. Hotze because I know that in the past when I tried diets, a lot of that was just, “Okay, restrict your calories,” or “Be low-carb but also be low-fat.” And you just get into this state where you just could not maintain that. You had to have something to make your brain happy, and a high level of fat, when you’re consuming it, you do not crave the sugar or the bread. It’s really amazing and it’s why people can do it long term, quite frankly.
Dr. Hotze: So this is the ketogenic eating program, and you raise the level of your ketones so you get in ketosis. Now, we’re not talking about diabetics who get diabetic ketoacidosis. Their ketone levels go through the ceiling, and when that happens, of course, that can cause a host of problems. But your ketone levels are slightly raised so that your body begins to burn ketones within the cells to produce energy rather than burning sugar. And it’s remarkable, the benefits this has.
Now, there are easy ways to start this program. My suggestion is you start eating like this for several days and then to jump-start your ketogenic eating program, and I don’t call it a diet, I say it’s a way of life, is you begin to do some intermittent fasting. Yes, fasting.
Intermittent fasting would be an 18-hour fast. So what does that mean? You have dinner at six o’clock in the evening, you eat ketogenically, go to bed, get up in the morning and drink water all morning long, and then get to lunch at noon and then have a ketogenic eating program with good healthy oils and fats, you may have salad covered with olive oil, a little bit of balsamic vinegar if you like it – it’s what I like in my salads – and some good vegetables and a little bit of meat. And then you do the same thing at dinner. After dinner, then you stop and you may want to do another fast. These are intermittent fasts. You can do this several days a week as long as you feel good doing it. The more you do it the more you’ll appreciate it. Then you can transition to a 24-hour fast. So you eat dinner at six one evening and then you don’t eat all next day, you drink a lot of water and you eat dinner the next night. And you’ll find that you feel really well. And then you can push that to a 36-hour fast and a 48-hour fast and even more.
I started eating strictly ketogenically on January 1st of 2018, and now I’m about six weeks into the program. I started off weighing somewhere around 179 pounds at six foot tall, and I looked pretty good, people said I looked good. I seemed to be pleased with my weight but I was 12 pounds over my high school playing weight. So I went on the ketogenic eating program and over time I did intermittent fasting, and my wife was doing 48-hour fast. And I thought, “Well, I’ll try a 24-hour.” And then I did a 48-hour, and then I did a 56-hour, broke it, fasted 24 more hours and at the end of the next night felt like a million dollars. It seemed like the longer I was on the fast the better I felt.
So you’re going to find that one of the benefits of it is that you can have significant weight loss. I’ve lost 12 pounds, I’m down just right above 167 and 167.6 this morning. So I’ve taken off about 12 pounds very easily. I feel like a million dollars, my mind is sharp, and I’m able to work. You can workout doing this. I workout and feel great. So it’s rapid weight loss. And then, once you get down to your ideal body weight, then you don’t have to do as much of the prolonged fasting.
There are benefits in fasting. I think every month you ought to have a significant fast of at least two days or 48 hours. Fasting is very important. One, it lowers your blood sugar. For all of those of you that are taking metformin and are on insulin and you’ve got prediabetic syndrome and your doctor says, “We’ve got to put you on these drugs,” Avandia and all these drugs. All that does is treat the symptom, it doesn’t treat your problem. Your problem is you have insulin resistance, you have high sugar levels and you’re on a simple carb diet. And the ADA, the American Diabetes Association, tells you to eat grains. Well, what are they doing? They’re padding their pocketbook. You can’t get rid of diabetes by eating simple carbohydrates because your sugar levels go up.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist, this is just common sense, which there tends to be a tremendous lack of it in our society. I mean there’s never been an epidemic of common sense, not in the medical profession. And among these medical organizations they tend to simply mask your symptoms with drugs rather than telling you how to get rid of the problem. So the way to get rid of diabetes, if you have adult-onset diabetes, is go on a ketogenic eating program and do intermittent fasting, and that will break the cycle. You can get off your insulin. You have to watch your sugar levels, by the way, because they’re going to fall, and if you’re taking insulin, you have to decrease the dose and you can just wean off. This is what we tell our patients to do, we just say, “Begin to wean off as you follow your blood sugar.” And pretty soon, within a few weeks, maybe a month, a little bit longer depending on how bad their situation is, they’re off all this medication, their sugar levels are fine, their blood pressure is fine. So it helps with that.
The other thing it does when you go on a fast, it allows your cells to detoxify, to clean out all the rubbish. They can go to work, they’re not doing anything else. They’re not having to digest any foods, and they’re not filled up with sugar. They begin to act, to clean out the interior of their cells which is called autophagy, and that’s the internal cleaning of the cells and the detoxification. So, that’s the way to get rid of heavy metals and get rid of the petrochemicals that have invaded your system and are making you toxic. It can also be used for people with arthritis and with digestive problems, people with mood problems, you put them on a fast…it can be that the very foods they’re eating and the high insulin levels they have in their body and the high sugar levels they have in their body are causing their health problems.
One reason people do well on a fast and feel really well is because a lot of people have food allergies, and by eliminating foods altogether, they feel good. We’ve had great success as we’ve introduced this into our practice over the last month with several key leaders on our teams and in our vitamin store and in the pharmacy and here in the Health & Wellness Center. A great example of it is Dr. Ellsworth. He’s always been a clean eater.
Stacey: Yes.
Dr. Hotze: He eats clean. And let me tell you what, he eats ketogenically now, and he looks like a million dollars. He’s thin and trim and he’s full of energy, and frankly, his mood has improved, I think. Not that he ever had a bad mood, but it just seems to be much more affable and enjoys life more, more amiable. So, it does help you feel well and it increases your energy level, it helps you get rid of your fat, get rid of your sugar levels, get thinned down, get that under control, and lower your blood pressure. It’s good for heart health. It also decreases inflammation, and inflammation is what causes disease in the coronary arteries. So, there are numerous benefits from adopting a ketogenic lifestyle of eating and of intermittent fasting.
Stacey: And let me add to that, too. I know I’m not the only who really hated that three o’clock slump, that absolute crash where you really felt like you needed something to keep you going. You don’t have that anymore on the ketogenic diet because you don’t have the highs and lows of the carbs. When your body is running on the fat, you’re more even keeled with your energy level. And that alone is huge, you just don’t have that every day.
With all of these benefits though, Dr. Hotze, you may want to tell the audience there are maybe a few side effects. In the beginning when you convert from running on carbs for fuel to fat, you do have a little bit of an adjustment period, correct?
Dr. Hotze: There is an adjustment period, particularly if you had a high simple carbohydrate diet. So you’re going to first have withdrawal on sugar and you’re going to crave…
Stacey: Headaches.
Dr. Hotze: It can be headaches. The ketogenic diet causes diuresis, it causes you to eliminate urine and water. As soon as you start burning fat cells the water that was retained in the fat cells is eliminated and you may have increased urination. So you need to make sure you drink plenty of fluids, plenty of water when you do that. Remember, running water through the pipes is the way you keep the pipes clean. And you’ve got a lot of pipes in your body, you want to keep them clean and drink a lot of water.
Other things that can happen, you waste magnesium and potassium so you may want to be sure…I recommend you ought to be on magnesium supplements all the time. So if you get any cramping, that means you need to bump up your magnesium, that can cause that. Also, low potassium, wasting potassium, so you may want to take a potassium supplement on top of that.
Often times when people start on a ketogenic eating program, they don’t really feel well. What could it be? It could be from the withdrawal from sugar. It could be the body trying to crank up and starting to use ketones as its energy source rather than glucose. And some people call it the ketogenic flu.
Stacey: Oh, the keto flu.
Dr. Hotze: Yes, you may not feel good for a couple of days. I didn’t experience that but, I’ve eaten really healthy most of my life, so I never had a problem with that. But some of you that are really on high carbohydrate diets may go into this gradually before you try any intermittent fasting. Start on your ketogenic eating program three meals a day and just eat healthy. And then you can, at some point, begin to start the intermittent 18-hour fast and then work up to a 24, 36, or even 48-hour fasting with a lot of water. The most I’ve done is 56 hours. I broke the fast and then I fasted for 24 more hours and I just felt like a million dollars doing it. And so we’ve had other people tell us the same thing, and I know this can be a benefit to you and I encourage you to google the internet on ketogenic eating.
Stacey: There are a lot of resources out there.
Dr. Hotze: A lot of resources are out there. There’s a book called The Ketogenic Bible and that’s the second most important book you ought to be reading right now. The first is the Bible. This is the ketogenic bible. It’s a wealth of information. It’s full of recipes that you can have. You can eat healthy and eat wonderful and feel like a million dollars.
So this goes back to a cardinal principle: you need to learn to eat to live rather than live to eat. If you do that you’ll find that you need a whole lot less food than you’re currently consuming and when you do that, guess what, you’re going to have more time, more energy, and more freedom to enjoy your life.
So don’t hesitate to call us. Come in and we’ll be glad to help you and coach you onto this path of health and wellness through your eating program. Thank you for being with us.
Stacey: Absolutely. And if you want to learn more about the ketogenic diet, our team at Hotze Vitamins is more than happy to have that conversation with you, and also let you know about the important vitamins and minerals you need to be taking like magnesium, like Dr. Hotze talked about. So, all you have to do is go to HotzeVitamins.com, that’s H-O-T-Z-E vitamins.com or our 800 number 579-6545. That’s 1-800-579-6545.
Well, Dr. Hotze, thank you for enlightening on this amazing ketogenic, not a diet, a lifestyle. I hope all of you out there were just as inspired as I was. I always learn something new about it. It is an amazing program, we hope you’ll join us, and thank you for joining us today on Dr. Hotze’s Wellness Revolution.
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Since 1989, Hotze Health & Wellness Center has helped over 33,000 patients get their lives back using bioidentical hormones that restore hormones to optimal levels, strengthen immune systems, and increase energy levels. Our treatment regimen addresses the root cause of hypothyroidism, adrenal fatigue, menopause, perimenopause, low testosterone, allergies, and candida.
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