#1 BEST Meal That Cleans Arteries

People are still watching, commenting and talking about what's that one best meal to clear your arteries. Now, does that meal even exist? Maybe.

But can one meal reduce your arterial plaque to zero? That's impossible. You just can't achieve that.

But how about stabilizing plaque? Yes, almost every one of us can practically expect to stabilize our plaque. And if we do, the risk is very little, just a tiny bit more than having no plaque at all.

And that's about as close as you can get. But that's enough because you're taking over 90% of the risk off the table. But back to the meal.

What is that meal? . .

Well, again, it is the lack of a meal. Fasting. Yep, you heard that right, fasting.

But how you fast carries some challenges. Like what is the best type of fasting? .

. Can you eat or drink something during your fast? Should you fast for a couple of.

Hours, couple of days, weeks? . .

Some people have done it for months. What about those diets that mimic fasting? Do those really work?

And what about the controversies? Oh, yes, I know there are prominent health influencers right now saying fasting is actually a bad idea. Have you heard the new buzzword for longevity, autophagy.

It's been around for years, at least a decade. But what exactly is autophagy and. .

. why is it important? Is it worth starving yourself to clean.

Out your arteries and to reach autophagy? If that's the case, is autophagy really the mechanism that cleans your arteries. .

. or is it just a calorie thing? We're going to be answering all those questions in this video and we're going to do it in a quick and simple way so that you have the information you need to decide for yourself whether fasting's right for you.

I'm Doctor Ford Brewer. I'm a preventive medicine physician. I used to run the prevention program.

The preventive medicine program at Johns Hopkins. Ive got over 40 years of experience in preventing heart attacks and strokes. And yes, ive done the other side of medicine, too.

I used to be an ER doc. Thats what got me into prevention. Why am I saying that fasting can clean your arteries?

It starts with one simple process called autophagy. Now autophagy, well, maybe its not that simple, but lets break it down and it becomes clearer. Autophagy literally means self eating.

You break it down. Auto means self and phage means to eat. It is a more complex process.

Cells are able to break down old. Proteins, molecules and what we call organelles. Portions or parts of the cell.

The classic one is mitochondria. Why mitochondria? Because mitochondria are so important in the cell.

They're like a furnace, the energy factory of the cell. And like any furnace that's 40, 50, 60, 70 years old, you can see some breakdown there. And in fact, with the chemical processes.

Going on in there, you could see. Some leakage and not good things coming out of it. Anyhow, more about that later.

Think about renovating your house. But instead of throwing away the broken bricks, glass, wood, you recycle them. You put them back together and use it to create a totally new house, a better house.

It's a renewal process. That's why autophagy's been linked to longevity. Cleaning out old cells and creating new, more efficient cells, or at least cleaning.

Out old cell organelles and creating new, more efficient ones, is what this is all about. And guess what causes the process to happen? .

. You guessed it. Fasting.

Now, when you fast, you're putting your. Body into, you can say a survival. Mode, you can say stress.

But it's the kind of stress, similar. To exercise for your muscles, that helps. You to grow stronger.

It helps your cells to grow stronger. Which makes your tissue grow stronger. Getting rid of old proteins, old cell organelles and molecules and creating new ones.

Is what this is all about. This happens in basically all the cells. Of your body, but more in the metabolically active cells, for example, the liver.

Autophagy in the liver triggers fat burning. Now, you might be asking, what does this process have to do with cleaning out your arteries? In order to answer that, we need to get this part straight.

Clogged arteries and arterial plaque are not just caused by cholesterol. There is cholesterol in there, but it is not the main problem. Yes, I'm going to say that again.

There is cholesterol in the plaque, but the cholesterol is not the main problem. There's an even deeper problem. It's called cardiovascular inflammation.

Cardiovascular inflammation is like having a fire. Inside the walls of your arteries. And it's actually friendly fire, meaning it's not coming from a foreign enemy, an outside threat.

It's actually coming from your own body. Your immune cells, the ones that are. Supposed to protect you, are trying to do exactly that.

But in the process, they're creating havoc and chaos within your artery walls. It's similar to pus or snot. It's filled with those immune cells, and we call it hot inflammatory clot.

And it can rupture if it ruptures and touches the blood, that causes clot. If the clot's big enough and it goes to the heart, it's a heart attack. If that clot is big enough and it goes to the brain, it's a stroke.

. . This is more of an event type of activity.

That's also why you really cannot predict the timing of a heart attack. If it were a waxy buildup, you could predict it, but you can. How does autophagy help with all of that?

Well, there are two main ways. First, the autophagy process happens in all. Cells, including immune cells.

So by triggering autophagy with fasting, those immune cells in your arteries start to. Calm down, because they're now in the. Process of autophagy themselves.

They're their mitochondria that are not working well. They're using them for energy. They become less and less active in terms of inflammation.

The second way is depriving your body. From a major cause of cardiovascular inflammation. Carbs.

Carbohydrates. Yep. They are a major cause of cardiovascular inflammation.

When you eat a lot of carbs, or even moderate amounts of processed carbs. You get increased blood glucose and increased insulin. Both.

Either one can trigger inflammation within your. Vessels, causing more of that hot liquid. In your artery walls.

. . But by fasting, you keep your body from absorbing carbs and you keep your pancreas from producing excess insulin.

You stop putting wood on the fire. But here's the question. How long should I fast?

What kind of fast should I do? Well, let's first talk about how long you should fast. And even at five hour, fast does have positive impact.

But the right balance is probably somewhere between 14 hours and two to four weeks. So, as you can see, even fasting is not that simple. Even just the simple question of how long you should fast.

We'll talk more about that, about how. And when to fast. If you're still skeptical, you might be.

Thinking, mmm, if autophagy is such a great thing for living longer and fasting is great for that, why don't we just fast all day, every day? Well, that's just like a lot of things in life. You gotta have balance.

And like the old rally commercial, you gotta eat. Excess autophagy can lead to significant cell. Destruction without enough recycling.

. . So it's not a magic strategy to just do all the time.

Autophagy is more like a tool and tools. One of the most important things to. Learn about tools, we talked about that.

Back in the aspirin video. One of the most important things to learn about a tool is when not to use it. So let's talk about types of fasting and what are the best types to reach autophagy?

To clean arteries. . .

with ADF or alternate. Day fasting, you can eat unrestrictedly one. Day and fast the next.

MADF modified alternate day fasting allows for different variations. For example, eating unrestricted one day and on this the other day have some sort of fasting where you just eat less calories. .

. Here's another version of MADF modified alternate day fasting. On this one you say okay, water fast today, one meal a day on the second day or OMad.

. . That is a very powerful type of pattern.

I've got tons of patients that have. Come to me that are in the process or have already lost 30, 50, 80 and over 100 pounds using this method. .

. One meal a day every other day with alternate days on fasting. Now there's a lot of people like me.

For example, I don't need to lose 100 pounds. Like we said, fasting is not so simple. You need to think through what you.

Need and what the timing is that makes sense for you. Let's go back to the other end. Of the scale, time restricted eating.

It involves fasting from twelve, usually 23 22 hours. . .

each day. Here's another option, prolonged fasting. It can be done with water, only a water fasten.

You can do it with other things like a sardine fast, like Doctor Baaz likes to do, or Valter Longo has a fasting mimicking diet. But in order to be considered a. Prolonged fast, let's make sure we define that.

First. . .

you have to go for at least 24 hours. . .

What does the literature say? There is an umbrella review on fasting. It showed that any type of intermittent.

Fasting will have clear benefits in multiple bioindicators. Intermittent fasting has been shown in the. Umbrella review and therefore plenty of studies, that it decreases waist circumference, body fat, ldl cholesterol.

If you have concern about that, it decreases triglycerides, fasting, insulin, blood pressure and it increases hdl cholesterol. . .

and fat free mass. All of these are significant positive markers. They'll lead to arterial plaque reversal or.

At least stabilization, which is what you need. Because of ethical considerations, research in prolonged fasting is hard to find. But I have a couple of examples for you.

Here's the first one. A recent paper reports a 64 year old male with significant heart disease, heart. Failure, diabetes and obesity.

He underwent a 50 day water fasten. He lost 50 pounds and his hemoglobin. A one c, went from 10.

3 to 8. 3. I have to tell you, that was.

Really my biggest surprise. When we looked at this study, I would have expected it to go far, far lower. Unfortunately, we don't have more information about changes in his arterial plaque.

In this case, we have a big. Warning to anyone who starts considering prolonged fasting. Clearly that the type of prolonged fasting.

That he did, if you don't recover. Electrolytes, if you don't keep electrolytes, if you don't supply your body with electrolytes. You have a lot of risk with fasting.

You know, there's some recent information coming out about dry fasting. You see a couple of YouTube content creators talking about how much more effective dry fasting is. That's really where other YouTube creators and myself included, would say, be very careful doing dry fasting.

Be very careful replacing your electrolytes. Low potassium can increase. .

. heart rhythm problems and they can be fatal. Additional dehydration, even kidney failure, comes with loss of sodium.

And you just feel terrible if you lose too much magnesium. Sodium, potassium, magnesium, these are all very important and they are the electrolytes that you need to keep an eye on if you're doing fasting, especially prolonged fasting. If you want to review this with.

A medical provider that understands fasting and you don't have one, again, it probably is a good idea at least the first few times that you fast. If your provider doesn't understand it, you can call our group 859-72-1414 now the second example, remember that was just one example of prolonged fasting. The second example is biosphere two.

You remember that? That was way back over 20 years ago. It was headed up by Roy Walford.

You know, you may or may not remember who he is and you may or may not connect the dots. He was the faculty advisor for Valter Longo, the guy doing the fasting mimicking diet. Prolon Roy Walford, the biosphere two.

It was a big terrarium built way. Out in the desert in Arizona. He and a group, Tabor McCallum, Dennis Mach, Roy Verdery, they published an article.

That described what happened with severe caloric. Restriction, about two years of it, or significant caloric restriction. This included four females, four males.

Walford and McCallum were included in the group. During seven eighths of that time, they consumed 1750 to 2100 calories per day. That sounds like a lot, right?

Well, they did eat what most would. Consider nutrient dense foods. They were all plant based because they were in that terrarium without animals.

It included 77% complex carbohydrates. So even though. .

. there was a 77% component of complex carbohydrates they lost in. The first month, 17% of their weight on average.

That's a lot. They had a decrease in blood pressure. A decrease in blood cell count, a decrease in insulin, a decrease in thyroid hormones, and decrease in lipids, cholesterols.

I even have a third example, me. I reversed 20 years of arterial plaque in about a year and I've kept that progress up until present day. A part of that journey did involve fasting.

About six months ago, I did another fast. It was a five day water fasten. I lost ten pounds in five days.

I didn't do a lot of exercise. Because I'm not that seasoned. At prolonged fasting.

You really need to be very, very experienced at prolonged fasting if you do any more than just walking. Yes, I did plenty of walking, but that's about it. .

. Doing exercise in the midst of a prolonged fast can really amp up the stress. So let's go back to mine.

I lost ten pounds five day water. Fast, and then I started refeeding. Now, my goal was not to lose weight.

I had a weight of about 160, circumference of my belly of 33 at my belly button. I just wanted to improve my metabolism. I lost ten pounds.

Obviously, most of that's going to come from water weight. Glycogen in the liver and. And glycogen in the muscles.

What happened after I refed? Within two weeks of refeeding, I had. Started my exercises again.

And these are aggressive exercises for a 67 year old, a 60 pound rigorous sled pull, a four mile run with hit on it. And the hit is about eight different hill sprints, a lot of resistance training. .

. And so again, within two weeks, I was back up to the 160 and then 162. But my belly circumference, it was still at the lower amount of 32, not 33.

. . So the point being is I gained.

My muscle back and then some after. That five day water fast. So as a personal experience, yes, I lost immediate muscle, but again, water in the muscle.

Within two weeks, I had more of it than I had prior to the fast. So you remember I talked about Valter Longo and the fasting mimicking diet. Let's go back to that for a minute.

The fasting mimicking diet that Valter Longo. Talks about is low calories. So the first of the five days.

You'Re like 1200 calories. Then days two through five, you're seven to 800 calories. This is moderate to low protein, low fat, very low fat and high carb complex, plant based carbs.

This is a plant based diet. It's supposed to mimic the effects of prolonged fasting. When you look at it and you're somebody like me.

I monitored my blood sugar. When I did those, I did what, about a half dozen of these? And then I started monitoring my blood sugar and found that when I would do those soups, like the tomato, my blood sugar would go up to like 100 and 7180.

. . I don't think that was necessarily that.

Caused that much injury. I'd just go out and take a walk. But let's go back and talk about the studies.

Studies in adult males and females, humans. That concluded a fasting mimicking diet was at least as good as the mediterranean diethyde to decrease insulin resistance and slightly. Better to keep or even gain muscle.

So again, more examples of decreasing calories. During a fasting episode and maintaining or even gaining muscle. I mentioned my blood sugars going up.

That's when I heard Doctor baas talking about a sardine fast. So I started doing kipper fasts as opposed to prolonged. So kippers gave me more oil and.

More protein and they didn't spike my blood sugars. Now, let's go back, let's talk about something else. Fasting and cardiovascular health.

In an abstract presented at an American. Heart association summit this year, it states that intermittent fasting increases the risk of. Cardiovascular death by 91%.

Wait a minute, didn't you hear? Sort of like the scratched record kind of thing? Let me repeat this.

In an abstract presented at the American. Heart association summit this year, it stated. That intermittent fasting can increase the risk.

Of cardiovascular death by 91%. . .

Well, you see my eyes rolling and. You see the nonverbals here. The reality is that these types of publications are often full of flaws.

You remember we've discussed multiple times. Doctor John Ioannidis at Stanford, he published. One of the articles, that's the.

The most downloaded article in plasse, the. Public Library of Science. It's titled most studies are wrong.

And he goes into a whole lot. Of really good analysis, pointing out that. You really should be careful what you read in terms of science.

The peer review process, to publish a. Paper like the one we just mentioned, stating that intermittent fasting increases the risk of cardiovascular death. It was a paper at a summit.

The peer review process is just not very strict. Speaking of peer review, it's better for publications, but, you know, from multiple videos. That we've done, you've got to be careful of publications as well.

The peer review process is better to get into published. . .

journals and it's better. For some journals than others. .

. But, you know, we've talked about even. Some of the top journals in medicine.

Like the New England Journal, have let some stuff go through that they should regret. So again, think through anything that you. Read in terms of, quote, science.

. . And let's go back to an item that I brought up earlier, muscle loss.

Peter, Attia, Rhonda, Patrick, they said recently they don't skip breakfast anymore. You know, I agree with that. And I agree with most of what both of them say.

Not all. . .

breakfast is important. If you're going to do intermittent fasting. You'Re better to skip dinner, not breakfast.

. . I could go down that bunny hole of talking about breakfast and the social components of it and the social components of dinner, the value of the two.

Let's move on. . .

. We've only got so much time on this video. Let's go to one of the most important items in terms of this process.

And in terms of the title, the meal to. . .

clean your arteries or to stabilize your plaque. How does prolonged fasting fit with metabolic reset? What is a metabolic reset anyway?

It's pushing your metabolism into autophagy, giving you a boost, getting you adapted to fat burning and then keeping you in a healthy low carb lifestyle. Is the benefit from autophagy or is. It from caloric restriction?

In a recent claim, Doctor Brad Stanfield. On one of his videos states, the evidence supports the idea that benefits from. Fasting come from caloric restriction, not autophagy.

Again, I'm not going there yet. I think the evidence is not strong enough to say that the only reason. Even if you think fasting is only about caloric restriction, that the only reason is calorie restriction, that autophagy is not making an impact.

Again, we've had Nobel prizes won over the deep science associated with understanding time restricted eating and autophagy. I do believe this. When you're not fasting, it's important to.

Get the most micronutrients that your body needs, or maybe not the most, the. Correct balance, the correct amount of micronutrients. And with the, some of the restrictive diets that you see out there, they can be good for helping you manage.

Carbs, which can be poisonous to some people. If you have insulin resistance, be careful. With restrictive diets to make sure you're.

Getting the right micronutrients. You can track this information and avoid making vital mistakes. Now, additionally, if you're very thin like.

A BMI 20 or less, considered strongly. How you do fasting, especially prolonged fasting. Things that will often result in significant weight loss, not getting enough micronutrients can actually be harmful.

So again, and as we mentioned before, loss and failure to replace. . .

electrolytes is. A very, very big deal. So regardless of the type of diet.

You follow, how many calories you're eating, I recommend using tools like coronometer. It's an app. And no, they didn't sponsor this video.

They don't sponsor us at all. It's a way to track your macronutrients. There are others out there as well.

And they're getting better and better each year. Back in the old days, I had. To use to do it with a piece of, with a paper.

. . pocket book.

You know, a little book about this size that you kept in your back pocket. Now you've got software that's better and better. .

. Now this way you can know the. Type of foods you need to include and what supplements to consider.

So Jesus and I just reviewed the final cut of this video. . .

We noticed something was missing. What's my clear recommendation? So, here we go.

I believe intermittent fasting and especially prolonged fasting, they have to be individualized decisions. . .

In general, I believe most people benefit from a fasting period of it, about 16 hours to trigger autophagy. You don't have to do that every day. I don't.

I also recommend prolonged fasting 24 hours a day or more. Other types of fasts, like sardine fasting are helpful. I use a kipper fast because I just don't like sardines.

Now, it does help to have a few weeks or even months of low carb or ketogenic diet, plus some form of intermittent fasting. It helps to have your body fat adapted because when you go fasting, here's what you're doing. It's like you're switching fuel tanks yet again.

. . So our body does know how to switch fuel tanks from carbs to fat, and fat in our diet to fat in our body, we just need to exercise it a little bit, and that's a little bit of stress, just like any other type of exercise.

Here's the thing that I feel most strongly about in all of this. . .

Never try prolonged fasting without preparation. . .

Watch out for things like electrolytes. To find out more info, check the description of this video. We have over 20 references for you.

Check those regarding fasting and cardiovascular health. Now you know a lot more about. Fasting, the evidence that backs it up.

And how it can actually help you stabilize or clean your arteries, at least stabilize your plaque, and therefore accomplish what so many of us want to do. Take the risk of heart attack and. Stroke off the table.

. . if you'd like.

More information about how to prepare for a fast. Again, as I said, we've got several resources for you. One of the big ones here is.

This video. . .

with Doctor Botzen.