Fasting Space

Hi, everybody. Welcome.

So nice to have you with us.

I'm Doctor Z and I'm joined here with by Michelle Peto.

And we have been having some conversations

about metabolic health

and just thought that we would, continue that conversation,

share a bit of it with you.

So, Michelle, really nice to be able to talk with you today.

Great. Thanks so much for having me.

I'm looking forward to our conversation.

So it was, exciting when you reached out and find

we're in the same area and we share some interests.

In health.

Yeah.

And,

so as we think about, bringing health, to people

and all of our work, especially metabolic health,

I was very encouraged by that.

So, tell, the audience, your perspective.

Where are you coming,

to this, health discussion from.

Okay.

Well, originally I'm trained

as a licensed clinical social worker,

so I'm a psychotherapist.

And for years, that's what I practiced, is working

with talk therapy

and learning different approaches

to therapy and dealing with trauma

and helping folks get, emotionally healthy and well.

And I started feeling a little bit

like we were missing some pieces of that.

With regards to

I started learning

somatic approaches to, healing emotionally and,

and that includes

understanding how trauma is stored in the body.

And then that led me to a lot more reading

about the body mind connection.

And that led me to the work of doctors Christopher Palmer

and Georgia Eade, who are both Harvard trained psychiatrists

who have both written books about what

they call metabolic psychiatry.

And when I started learning about metabolic psychiatry,

it changed.

It was just a game changer for me in my work.

Awesome. Yeah. Really exciting.

What is that looked like you have brought that

into your relationships, with, patients.

And how has that been? Absolutely.

It started out for me working with, just addressing

the connection, what we're finding out about

if our brain is not fueled, well,

then we are going to struggle with our emotions.

And so really starting strictly

from an emotional standpoint, learning

how do we fuel our brain and if we're not giving it enough

good energy, doctor Palmer's book is called Good Energy.

If we're not giving it, it's called Brain energy.

Sorry, it's called brain energy.

So for not giving the brain energy that it needs,

we're going to struggle with our emotions because it's not.

The first thing the brain is working is to keep us alive.

And our emotions are going to be all over.

If we're not fueling the brain enough.

So I really started from that point of view,

and learning the nutritional connection

about how we really have

emphasized in the standard American diet,

carbohydrates, especially simple carbohydrates, have been to,

strongly emphasized as where we need to get our energy from,

when truly we need to be more protein and fat forward.

I think I imagine most people have the experience

of getting some,

you know, sugar rush, have a soda,

a lot of sugar, get really amped up.

Yeah.

And, you know, certainly

it can feed into, a space that is very similar to anxiety.

And then,

you know, I know I've experienced

and then you kind of crash as the blood sugars dropping

and the insulin is surging.

But it sounds like even apart from this short term thing,

there's like a deeper layer to,

this process that we've kind of been missing.

It isn't just a few hours around a sugary treat, necessarily.

Exactly.

And I thought I was learning new research.

This is what's exciting to me

is that

actually some of the original research is over 100 years old,

when, people were looking into epilepsy

and treating epilepsy with nutritional approaches

before we had drugs to treat epileptic seizures,

people were looking at nutritional approaches

and finding success with a ketogenic way of eating.

And a lot of that research was set aside

when the drugs came along to manage the seizures.

So it's really revisiting old research

about the brain and how it works.

And just like what you just said,

it's the short term piece of energy is one thing,

but it's more long term repetitive

when we're focusing on the sugar

and then the crash and the energy and then the crash, that's

what puts our brain

into a longer term deficit of being able to function well,

which can lead to a lot of anxiety and a lot of depression.

And it can stay in one or the other if we're not

taking care of the what the brain needs.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's very encouraging, to hear you talk through that

and just think about, you know,

one of the most frustrating things, for me.

So just to let viewers know if you're not familiar.

So I'm a classically trained internist,

internal medicine physician,

and I worked as a primary care doctor for quite a few years.

And, you know,

as right on the front lines,

trying to help everybody,

both physical health, mental health and, it's no surprise,

to anybody

where we're here

in the middle of a very difficult, situation

with both of these things,

with rates of chronic diseases of all types, are,

of course, skyrocketing and costs associated with that.

And then, you know, the most important thing,

I think, you know, our just

our well-being is so much wrapped into these things.

And so to find anything that, can help

move the needle on any of these things,

of course, is great.

But then when you can tie

the two together in a way that helps us

to physically be healthier and helps our,

mental space to be better,

you know, like what you're saying, this mind body connection.

This is where I have really,

trying to dive deep is just that.

It's the same thing, really.

And we can have a conversation

where we try to separate these things for some purposes,

but really, we're trying to create a really a holistic way of

taking care of someone, taking care of ourselves

and just,

a way of being in the world that is,

you know, more thoughtful and aligned

with the way the body, is designed to operate.

Yeah, exactly.

And it is it is very exciting.

And in my work as a psychotherapist,

it's it's not one or the other.

Trauma is something that we need to process through.

We need to address it.

We need to look at what what we've gone through in our lives.

And we need to be able to talk that through

and piece it together and make sense of it

so that we can understand it better.

The frustrating thing for me is

if we're not dealing with the body

and if we're not making sure that we are

taking care of the nutritional needs that our whole body has,

so many of our hormones, which also influence our emotions,

they're thrown off

and so many is so serotonin, which the body needs.

It's a feel good.

It's one of our feel good hormones. Right?

Yeah. Is produced in the gut.

90% of the serotonin we have.

I'm sure you know, this is produced in the gut,

not in the brain.

So we're dealing with the brain. Sure.

But if we're not making sure that the gut is able to

take in nutrients, well,

then the the production of the serotonin is impacted.

So we can't separate out the two we have.

Yes.

We have to talk through our traumas and we need to make sure

we're nourishing our body

in a way that we can, handle the healing

and that we can make sure that we're able to heal really?

Yeah.

I love just kind of the both end of it, you know, it's,

it's hard,

for any of us to, you know, hold multiple things at once.

We want to find the one thing that is going to solve,

you know, everything.

And we kind of go with it.

And, you know, I think the the medical system these days,

as far as metabolic health,

you know, it's so focused just on a medication.

And I try not to, disparage

anything on medication has its place in good, purposes.

But, you know, so often

we will we have this medication first,

viewpoint or priority where it's like, well,

we have a pill now,

and it's like the fundamentals don't matter anymore, right?

And I think really,

the way we need to, try to approach these things is like

medication is something that you should add on top of this

entire other foundation that we are doing of health,

which is like probably and I've,

I've said this a lot like trauma is probably

at the very base of so many of these things in some fashion.

And so doing the deep work to get into that space,

is, is just so important.

And then layering everything else on top of it,

the healthy food choices,

especially on top of that,

because it all cycles and flows together.

Exactly.

You know

what's really interesting about the cycle

and the flow that you mentioned is that I have found

that when I'm working with people,

because now I work with people both for mental health reasons

and then also for health, just metabolic health.

Yeah. And I, I'm a health coach as well.

So what I have found is I can address it from

different perspectives.

And so sometimes when people are coming to see me

for health concerns, they're having low energy.

Their sleep is off their

they can't lose weight or they keep gaining weight.

All various health concerns.

They have brain fog.

All these different things when I work with them around

nutritional and other levers for metabolic health,

frequently as they start getting cleaner

with with making sure that they're getting the nutrients

they need, cleaner with their food

is how we talk about it, right?

How do you get clean

with your food as they're starting to do that, often

their old traumas will start to surface.

So then they have to do that that definitely need to do

the healing work

or they may go back to continuing to use the food. Yeah.

Because I mean let's face it food can take an edge off.

Yeah.

And so

yeah I have often described food as like a type of drug

or a type of medication.

You know, it has certain

pros and cons

to it effects and what we would call side effects.

But it can certainly be effective.

You know, especially in the short term.

And sometimes it's

even just the very short term, like even for five minutes.

You say this is helping.

And even if afterwards it wasn't,

you say it didn't feel better.

I mean, I know I've personally been through cycles of that,

you know, eight, three things in a row

that I really didn't want.

But it felt great.

And then I spent three hours,

you know, just feeling terrible afterward.

But it's it's that moment that's giving us this dopamine

and this reward that is like getting into these deep centers,

you know, of our emotion, you know, and so when we start

getting into a space with food like this,

you know,

we get into a really deeply

personal, emotional sort of space.

And, and that's why I was so interested

to hear this term of, like,

metabolic psychiatry and metabolic psychology,

you know, because I've find it like

this is kind of

where I am

coming from, like from like

just like the total physical health.

And then looking at physical health

practices in the body to realize,

oh, like, there's great healing can come when we actually

dive down here and into these emotional spaces,

because of this mind body connection, we do

emotional work can have real physiologic effects in the body.

Yeah, I was curious about that. With your work.

Like how did you come to like just learning the term

metabolic psychology is that did that help

things fall into place for you

with what you were already seeing?

Did that add a new perspective of how you work with folks?

Yeah, I think I think I just appreciated it.

Just there's

a certain resonance to the words, you know, where I haven't

personally, I haven't used that exact terminology before,

but it definitely resonates with what I want, to be helping

people with.

You know,

what you are seeing as like,

sometimes you shift in the type of eating you clean.

Things up, and it's like creating space

where, like, you know, emotions can emerge.

And I, I've seen that so many times for people.

I think that is really true.

In a lot of different ways.

You know,

I do a lot of dietary counseling like this,

how people get processed foods out using,

the most nutritious, foods that come from the Earth

in a natural way. Very important.

I've had a lot of people benefit

from a keto sort of approach like that.

I, I will talk with anybody about any range.

There's a hundred diets that could go all the way toward,

you know, more of a plant based diet.

If someone feels called to that, like,

I have you ever seen any of these kind of flamers

on social media where, like,

vegans and carnivores are just, like, just at each other?

Yeah.

And I've,

I've honestly

I've seen people have,

positive health benefits from each of these perspectives.

Yeah.

The thing that you couldn't get each of them to agree with,

but the thing they have in common

is that they're stripping out at least

all of the highly processed stuff.

Like, everybody can agree that these are the worst things.

Yeah.

And when we get away from that, like good things can happen

in any regard. Right. Exactly.

And I think that,

who was it that calls it Franken foods.

You know,

we have to get away from the Franken foods

because when you look at a food label,

I kind of joke with folks about

if you're reading a food label,

you know, yeah,

you're already the brand doesn't have a food label.

You know, real food.

There's no food label. It's just broccoli, right?

Yeah.

But, I believe conceptually in what's called

biohacking that each of us has to hack our own biology,

because the way that works for me to eat

is not going to be the way that it works for you to eat

and the way that it works for me today

might not have been what was working for me a year ago.

That's one of the things that has been interesting for me,

is that in my own health journey, I've had to learn to adjust

as my body changes, whether it's due to age

or hormones or my energy and how how much I'm working out.

Movement is a huge piece.

Yeah, so it's not a one size fits

all for any like group of people.

A one size fits all is never going to work.

But even within an individual in the long term,

we have to learn how to pay attention to our bodies signals.

What is my body telling me when I behave in this way?

When I when I'm doing this habit?

Yeah. As compared to that one.

Right. Yeah.

This this type of thing is

one of the things

that gets me really excited about the future of medicine

and the future of health care is is moving from this kind

of monolithic area

of we're all just clones and like,

we can just send out an RDA

like every woman needs 1800 calories

and every man needs like 2000 calories.

Yeah. And then and then and then that's just it.

Yeah.

And it's like,

okay, we can be a lot more thoughtful, in this space, right?

And,

and we can open up, some space because I think

a lot of health has, has hardly even given

any mind to, like, paying attention to our body.

And just like a broader process of awareness in general

is such a bedrock of finding an emotional space

of, you know, peace and contentment and understanding,

is so important and we're just like,

why would I pay attention to my self

when I can just, you know, go to the doctor?

We just kind of outsource responsibility

for our own health to somebody else.

And,

and I think we're heading toward an era as knowledge, tools

and other things kind of exploding

where people feeling empowered, hopefully.

Maybe that's the good side of everything that's happening.

I feel empowered to like, really take action,

you know, and dive in, to their, unique situation.

Yeah, for sure.

I think for better or for worse, people in feeling empowered.

Sometimes we go to the wrong sources to find out information.

But yet if you have PubMed available to you,

which we all do now,

if we can do some research into the research that's going on

and learn ourselves, we can ask our doctors more questions.

Yeah, and I'm a very strong

I love it

when people ask me a lot of sometimes

people come into the office for me

and they're just apologize and be like, I'm so sorry, I was.

I did some internet searching.

I'm like, never apologize for learning things.

You know, like, this is the whole thing let's talk about.

Yeah, for sure.

And then you can at least talk

and consider the source of where

they're getting their information from.

There's influencers and then there's research.

Yeah.

And there's research there's paid for by the sugar industry.

And there's research says

so even with a peer reviewed research, we have to consider

all of the influences.

And so, so much financial interest in medicine and food

and everything these days.

So, you know, the information landscape,

even though obviously even as a health care providers like,

you know, it's just it's very difficult.

And that's why, I think it's so important

just to try to also develop our ability of reasoning

from first principles and just observing, things.

And,

this is what I tell people, you're trying

to cultivate awareness in your life.

Like, listen, let's let's just try some things here, right?

And we can run a personal experiment

and see if you feel better.

Yeah.

And it's just amazing

when you just say, take the pressure off.

We don't have to, like,

you know, read all kinds of RCTs about every single thing.

We can just say, hey, like, we got a spectrum of diets,

but out of this whole spectrum of unprocessed things,

are there some things that stand out to you

that look like you might enjoy eating some of it?

Let's just like, build

something around that for a little bit

and see if you don't end up feeling better.

Yeah.

And, that's been a pretty good approach.

Yeah.

And becoming your own

and of one, I tell people you have to be your own.

And of one, you are the subject.

And we have to figure out what works for you.

And then the space to me where I take things like,

you know, step one, try to dial out,

you know,

all the processed foods, dial in on, healthy nutrition,

where you're at along that line.

And then I spend time talking to people a lot

about opening up some fasting space.

And that to me is like like, okay, we can fast from carbs.

It's kind of like the first level,

and we can actually open up some fasting space

more broadly

from food in general,

if we feel called and open to it in a very gentle way.

And so I've seen a lot of,

tremendous health benefits come from people.

And to me, a fasting space and a healthy eating space

is two sides of the same coin, is just trying

to bring everything

into balance,

the amount of food and nutrition

that is bringing wellness to the body, and then some space.

If we needed to open up that space

to just let the body digestive system rest and take a break

and then actually have some space

to mobilize

that stored energy,

that's where I try to get people,

especially if they're trying to lose weight

or burn through blood sugar.

So let's just take some space.

There's a lot of energy here, and we can open up space.

The body knows that it's there.

Yeah.

Body is saving energy for us for periods.

If the food runs out and then we can run, off that space.

So it's a it's a very fascinating paradox to me.

Health can come from eating and from not eating.

As long as we're bringing it into, a balance.

Right? Yeah.

I really appreciate that. Bringing up.

I talk about food windows with people.

Yeah, probably very similar.

And it's not something.

It's not where we start usually with folks I work with.

Sometimes a lot of the people I work with have a history

of depriving themselves.

Yeah.

And deprivation can trigger a binge.

And so I'm pretty careful about where I start with that.

And yet I know the benefits of fasting.

And so when a person is able

to get to a point

where they're a little bit more food neutral,

which is super exciting when someone comes in and they say,

I forgot to eat lunch today, it's a big deal

because food noise can be very loud for a lot of us,

a lot of folks.

And so

when that starts to quiet down, it's

one of the big draws for GLP ones.

People say, my food noise is gone.

Well, yes.

And yeah,

I have also found that to be true

with people when they get the processed food out,

when they really reduce

their carbohydrates, that the food noise goes away as well,

and then they're able to play more with their food windows,

which allows the body to do more healing work.

Right? Yeah.

And I was I was just the most interested in the thing

you said a little while ago,

you know,

when you're getting,

the processed food out, cleaning up that diet,

and then we're seeing,

okay, opening up that space

where these emotional things come into.

And I was just going to add that

that fasting space is really like the biggest area

where I see that with people because we're like,

we're totally eliminating all of the other food distractions.

And so like,

we're getting into like a really core space in the body,

both with our physiology and with our emotional state

where it's like, yeah,

like a lot of stuff is going to come up in that space.

Like the most obvious one is to say,

well, hunger is in that space,

but then that's very closely connected

with all these other emotions.

And maybe

are we using food to, you know, to cover over some other,

you know, emotional process,

the trauma that's hiding in there.

And we start really removing that.

Then I tell people,

and of course, that's why

you want to be very thoughtful and gentle with it.

But if you're looking to open up a space

where you can really see

this, I'd be happy to hear your perspective.

You say, how?

Like, how do you let go of a trauma,

you know, how do you start to process that?

Like you've got to give it some space.

And to me,

even as a metaphor, as much as physically, just to open up

a space

is a place where you can really start

to let that bubble up a little bit. Yeah.

I think part of it is, creating safety.

There's physical safety within the body.

And I'll talk about that with folks. Is that our body

will heal

when we create safety, when the when the brain's

not wondering

if I'm going to have enough fuel for energy,

when the body knows I'm getting consistently fueled,

that creates physical safety within the body.

And I believe the same thing happens emotionally

when you create

an emotionally safe place where you can explore

some of those memories,

some of those hurt, some of those traumas, and doing

the physical healing while you're doing the mental healing.

It really is about creating safety to be able

to recognize that that's not today.

Yeah, this is absolutely it lives within me.

There's a wonderful book, The Body Keeps the Score right?

Yes. Bessel van der Kolk.

And literally you don't even have to read the book to know

title to the title tells you everything, right?

Literally, we store trauma.

And so when we find safety within ourselves

and self-trust

with which really can come about

when we're fueling our body appropriately,

then we build that safety,

then we know we can deal with it, and we can let it go

and we can learn it.

To attend to it is how I talk about it.

Yeah, I feel like,

you know, who knows exactly how these things work.

Where is it?

You know, is it in here, is it in here?

But in, in some manner I think

we are expending

some amount of our energy to keep the trauma there.

And, and then it is like sending also a message

because it's still there, however that works.

We're like recreating it.

And as we're holding it

it's like sending the message in there.

Like things are not safe right now.

And I think you know I did a talk a couple months ago on

chronic inflammation at the root of chronic disease

and that, you know,

a lot of what's happening in chronic inflammation in the body

is, that, like, we are always in this fight or flight mode.

And so many things in society

are pushing us in that direction.

Chronic stress and always things are coming

and then we end up shallow breathing.

We never take a big deep breath,

which is basically the physiologic signal

in the body like that.

Everything is actually okay, you know.

Right.

I take a deep breath and it's like the breath

is giving us an example.

There's like a space like we're opening up space,

sending the message that things are okay.

All these things are different avenues.

We're trying to get to the same place, which is like,

how do we get distractions out of the way?

How do we tell the body that things are okay,

open up space

so that we can finally stop running these processes?

You say, how do you get chronic inflammation down?

How do you get these things out

so that the body can get to this grounded sort of, place?

And so we're kind of talking through

all the processes

that I know, you know,

which is like choosing the healthiest foods, right?

Kind of develop the healthiest mindset and mental space,

open up even some fasting space if you're calm through it,

just burn through every sort of dysfunctional thing

and get down to the core issues.

This is what I really want

our health system to be focused on, right?

Yeah, powerful core health and healing.

And,

you know, over the last decade or so since

I've really been trying to dial in with it,

I've seen a lot of that,

you know, people who are having diseases

like type

two diabetes and autoimmune diseases like bowel disorders,

ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease and so many things

who are not suffering from these things anymore.

And, you know,

someone in the medical system say,

you know,

a medical system,

very hesitant ever to use the word

healing is like too big or powerful.

But we say, oh, they're in remission.

And I say, if you want to say they're in remission

and you want to say

they still have the disease,

but they're diet controlled or whatever, yeah,

you know, whatever.

You know, I just want people to be experiencing wellness.

Yeah. However they can do it.

Yeah.

That in the world of mental health, the idea of a cure

is very like a heated discussion, like literally right now,

because some words have been thrown out there

about curing schizophrenia.

And the research has shown

with, a ketogenic approach way of eating

that schizophrenia can be put into remission like psychosis.

There's case studies, quite a few

now they're starting to build up.

It's not just about dealing with basic anxiety

and depression,

which for someone

suffering with anxiety or depression,

there's nothing basic about it.

It's it's serious and impacts your whole world.

But, serious mental illness can be, mitigated.

I don't know about the word cure.

I kind of sometimes I sort of feel like, well,

if someone, is able to go off medications

and do well, is that a cure?

Yeah.

Do we need to argue about that?

I talk about quality of life if your quality of life,

because I've worked with people I am not anti medication.

Medication saves lives every day.

Yeah. And I don't I don't fool myself about that.

I am pro-choice really when it comes to understanding

what are my options.

What if the side effects are intolerable to me?

I like to look at it. They're effects.

They're not side effects.

They're one of the effects. Right.

And so if they're working for me, then yay.

And what if they're not?

Then what are my options?

What are the choices that I have.

Because there are choices.

We need to remember that.

Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah.

Try to get as many of the fundamentals in place as possible.

So we're all doing all these things

that are pretty much free.

We're going to be eating something.

Why not put that money into the healthiest foods.

Like it can only help, right?

Like you know, I'm I'm a big believer in first do no harm.

And, you know, nobody's going to be harmed by switching

their diet into some unprocessed, foods, you know?

Right.

And so, like I say,

why not give it a try

and then we see where we go from there, and then we can,

you know, layer everything else.

Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.

So, what,

what is on your, radar in the days to come?

What are you working on these days?

Well, I'm really excited about an upcoming documentary

that I'm sponsoring here at, in Fitchburg,

coming up in April, and it's called the Cholesterol Code.

And that is about metabolic health.

And we're very excited about that.

I'm doing a lot of work one on one with folks

about just trying

to get the word out about

really getting metabolically healthy

and all of the different things that you can address.

A lot of it is that the things that will do for a long time,

if you're eating in a certain way, that's not ideal.

You can get away with that for a long time.

But round about midlife, all of those things,

it builds up

and it builds up and the body starts pushing back.

And so I really work with folks who are around

midlife, usually.

Not always.

I have a fair number of young folks that I work with

that are trying to be proactive with their health.

But yes, I know it's so exciting

and, so working with people in midlife who are recognizing,

what I was doing all these years is not working any longer.

So that's really what I'm focusing on right now.

Awesome. Yeah.

Yeah, I know you told me a little about this documentary.

It looks so good.

Really excited about it.

I'm going to

put links in the description to learn more about this movie.

And, if it's all right, I'll put a link to your website

if people that want to connect with you, on it,

really appreciate this discussion.

Really nice to connect and chat about health and wellness.

Thank you all for joining us here.

Throw questions.

For Michelle and myself in the comments.

We'll be happy

to, have an ongoing discussion about any of these topics.

And are there, if there are questions,

maybe we can do this again in the future.

I would love then to write

any questions, perspectives

that you have look forward to carrying on the conversation.

All right. Thanks so much. All right. Thanks everybody.