Dr. Mindy Pelz
On this episode of The resetter podcast, we’re gonna talk about hydration. And here’s a really mind blowing idea, just because you drink water doesn’t mean you’re hydrated. And on this episode, I’m gonna talk about why hydration is important, how it affects both your physical and mental state, why it’s important for fasting, and what is the proper way to hydrate. And then what’s really cool is I’m doing something new, where at the end of this episode, I’m answering five very common questions that we are getting sent into us so and one of them may be yours. So stay tuned all the way through while I answer these five questions. And if you have a question, send it in to us. Find me on YouTube, and we leave a comment, leave a question, and we’ll make sure that I answer it on future episodes. So here you go. Hydration, 101, hope it helps. Welcome to the resetter podcast. This podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again, if you have a passion for learning, if you’re looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you. You music.
Dr. Mindy Pelz
Okay, let’s dive in to drinking water and hydration, because here’s the shocking fact, drinking water and hydration don’t always match like it doesn’t. If you drink water, it doesn’t mean you’re hydrated. Okay, think about this for a hot moment. So in this video, what I want to do is I want to walk through what we know about a hydration, because it’s hydration isn’t just muscle and and physical performance, but it’s a lot of it is mental performance. So this is really important, and we’re going to talk about this as I go deeper into the video. And then the other piece of hydration is it plays out in your fasting lifestyle. So a lot of times in my community, what we do before we do big fasts is we make sure everybody’s hydrated. But that doesn’t mean that everybody drinks water. So let’s dive into what we know about hydration, muscle performance, cognition and what are the smart ways to hydrate. So here we go.
Dr. Mindy Pelz
Okay, so first we have to realize that 70 to 80%
Dr. Mindy Pelz
of your body is water, so keeping hydrated is critical. So if you’ve never heard that stat before, literally, if I took our your body, I my body, and I just laid it all out as a bunch of cells, 70 to 80% of us would be water, which is a large reason why we need to be able to stay hydrated. The second part of hydration that I really want you to understand is that a lot of times when you are hungry, you’re actually thirsty. And if you drink water or you stay hydrated in the way I’m going to teach you in this video, you might notice that your hunger goes away, and this is really important when we’re fasting, because what I have to say about hydration on this video is really important for that fasting window and making sure that your comfort level during that fasting window is at its peak. So here we go the first thing is that we know dehydration can impact physical performance. So let’s talk about that for a moment. There’s a couple studies that I want to bring to your attention, and a few of them, I think the two biggest ones I want to point out is that there was a 2014 study done by the Journal of Strength and Conditioning research. So this is a publication that focuses primarily on fitness, and they found that when athletes were dehydrated, they showed a 16% decrease in muscle strength. So let’s think about this for a moment in context of a lot of the conversations we’ve been having here on my channel or on my podcast, and it’s all been around building muscle and keeping that muscle strength, especially as we age. But a lot of the conversation we’ve been having has really been around eating more protein and lifting heavy weights, and I would like to add into the conversation now staying hydrated, because if you go to work out and you’re dehydrated, now your workouts, your actual ability to lift weights and build those must muscles, according to this study, go down by 16%
Dr. Mindy Pelz
the other interesting study that I found showed that when people were.
Dr. Mindy Pelz
Were dehydrated that they had a 23%
Dr. Mindy Pelz
fatigability. They fasted or they they fatigued 23%
Dr. Mindy Pelz
faster than people who were dehydrated. So let’s put that in the context of your everyday life. If we are going down this path of wanting to keep do all the wonderful things in our life that we love doing and we’re fatigued. Do we ever stop and think, am I fatigued or am I dehydrated? So we have two different studies showing a lower percentage of muscle power, and we have another study showing that you fatigue faster when you are dehydrated. Well, I went on to look at, well, how does this play out in mental performance? And this was really interesting, because this study, this one, was done out the Journal of American College of nutrisense. I will put the links, by the way, here for those of you that are science hounds. And what they found was that even a 2% dehydration produce significant decrease in concentration, memory and physical coordination. Okay, well, think about this, because one of the things we know about cognition, especially in menopausal women, is that as estradiol goes down, remember her girl gang, she takes all of those neurotransmitters with her, dopamine and serotonin and acetylcholine and glutamate and BDNF. These are many of these neurotransmitters are, are neuro chemicals of D, of of cognition. So if you’re 4550 65
Dr. Mindy Pelz
and you are starting to lose estrogen in a girl gang, and you’re losing these neurotransmitters of cognition. A 2%
Dr. Mindy Pelz
decrease in your hydration can produce an added decrease in concentration and memory. It’s such a simple thing, it’s such a little thing, that if we are conscious of it, we can add it back in, and things like cognition can absolutely go up. So let’s talk about how we go about rehydrating. Because again, it’s not just about drinking water. And here’s the study I want you to really dial in on. This was a 2021 study from the Chinese Academy of Medicine and Science, and what they found, listen to this is that mineral enhanced drinks were 22% better at rehydrating people after exercise well compared to those That drank plain water. So what is a mineral enhanced drink? Well, ironically, I am recording this video after I just did a ruck in my neighborhood on a very hot day. Rucking is where you put a weighted vest on, and I went out and climbed the hills and just got back. And now I’m recording this video for you. So when I came back in, knowing that it was hot, knowing that I worked hard, and knowing that I needed to rehydrate, I brought in elementize. This is literally my favorite rehydration drink right now. It is the black cherry lime stay salty. Element teas, new can of soda water. It is just minerals and water. It has no sweeteners or sweeteners that will raise your blood sugar at least in it, it’s the black cherry lime is my favorite. And what I have now been doing is adding in a can of this every single time I work out whether it’s rucking or it’s strength training with my trainer, I am focused on not just hydrating, but adding these minerals back in. Now, another way you can do this is we also know that minerals are really, really important for cognition. We also know minerals are really important for making hormones. So a general routine that I do on a regular basis is when I get up in the morning, I always have my my beam minerals, huge fan of bean minerals. We’ll put links in here. It’s fulvic and humic acid minerals. I literally just put them in a little shot glass while I’m waiting for my coffee to be made, I do, you know, a big shot of that, and and then I go about my day, and then I use element T after my workouts. The problem that we have with, by the way, some of these electrolyte drinks, is that they’re full of chemicals, or they’re full of sugar. So let’s use Gatorade as an example. For starters, Gatorade doesn’t have enough electrolytes, especially when you’re comparing it to something like lmnt and it has sugar. I mean, you look at it, why is it bright orange? Why is it bright pink? It’s.
Dr. Mindy Pelz
It’s these bright colors because they had to put artificial dyes in it. So if you are somebody who does a lot of sports drinks and you’re listening to this, you’re like, Oh yeah, I’m already rehydrating with minerals. What I want to say to you is go read the ingredients and also look at the color of your drink. If it is this bright pink or this bright blue, or this bright orange, there is a synthetic artificial dye they put in there to make it that bright color. You mix that with the fact that many of those sports drinks have sugar in them and or nutrisweet, which is another chemical laden product that can destroy your brain function and overall health, and it has a weak amount of electrolytes. It’s not worth it. So we want to make sure when we’re in order to get hydrated, that we are being very, very smart, and especially as fasters. So most of you come to my channel because you want to learn some part of fasting, and a big part of fasting is knowing how to hydrate properly. So when we look at the decrease in muscle strength, when we look at the decrease in cognition, that can happen with the depletion when you’re dehydrated, I want to make sure that you’re hydrating smartly. So beam minerals or or a packet of minerals in the morning, and then lmnt, or a packet of minerals after you work out, the third place that I would put this in would be actually in your fasting window. So really interesting. Once I started to drink minerals in my fasting window, fasting became effortless. So a lot of times when we go into these fasted states, what ends up happening is that we go we’re already going in mineral depleted, we’re already going in dehydrated, and then we don’t eat, so we’re not bringing more minerals in. Sometimes we don’t even drink when we’re fasting, and so we put ourselves in even more of a stress state. Now this is really important, because the critics of fasting really talk about like the the cortisol surge, and how fasting over time can be hard for you because of the cortisol spike, and what there are so many ways to get around that quarter, but cortisol spike, one of which is making sure that you cycle your fast which is what I taught you all in fast like a girl. But the other way is to make sure that you’re not putting your body in an even more depleted state, especially a mineral depleted state when you go in to these fasts, especially the longer fasts. So again, to recap, I like to have my bean minerals in the morning, and I like to have my lmnt post workout. And then when I’m in the fasted state, I usually alternate between both of those to make sure that I keep my mineral content up. Now what I will tell you is, if you’re interested in either those products, again, I’m not here to promote them. I’m just here to share with you what I enjoy. I will leave links and discounts codes in the in the notes here below, whether you’re listening to this on a podcast or you’re listening on YouTube, if you want those discounts, but please don’t fall prey to thinking that these ultra processed sports drinks are hydrating you, they are not hydrating you, and so many of them are full of chemicals, and they’re actually creating more of a stress on your body.
Dr. Mindy Pelz
Okay? With that behind us, I also want to dive into some questions that I’m getting from a lot of you. So first off, let me just say thank you for everybody who’s leaving questions, whether it’s on the our podcast channel. By the way, hopefully, you know, we have the resetter podcast has a YouTube channel, so if you have questions about an episode, just go to the YouTube channel and you can put it there. And then we take a lot of our inquiries from my YouTube channel, where we get 1000s of questions every week, and so I want to go through five that really are important, and many of them actually relate to hydration and to fasting. So I want to make sure, and if you have more questions as please go ahead and put it in the comments of this video or this podcast, and I’ll make sure that I answer them on other videos. So here’s the first question, why do I get bloated when I fast? So again, good fasting hygiene is making sure that you are hydrated going into a fast, which we just talked about. So when we, when we when we’re looking at just good principles of fasting, make sure you follow that. Okay. Second thing, when you fast, I really want you to hear this. When you fast, you are changing your microbiome. You are changing the terrain in your gut. Now, in fast like a girl.
Dr. Mindy Pelz
I talked specifically about the 24 hour fast, and the research that was done out of MIT showing that when you fast 24 hours, it reboots your whole gut bacteria. It’s a beautiful thing, but it doesn’t only happen at 24 hours. You have to remember that as you go in to this fasted state, deeper and deeper into this fasted state, your microbiome is going to repair itself more and more because it has to get itself ready for food. This is how brilliant you were designed. Think about this for a moment. Your intelligent body goes into this fasted state, and it’s like, hey, no food’s coming in. We better get so efficient at pulling nutrisense out of food so that when food comes we can remineralize, we can get the right nutrisense back into the system, so this body can work at its best. So there is a massive gut change. In that gut change, it is very common for the intelligence inside the gut to get rid of the bad bacteria, and it does this by getting rid of the bad bacteria, spreading out the good bacteria, upregulating intestinal stem cells so it can start to create a better inner mucosal lining so it is ready for food and ready to absorb nutrisense from your food. But the bloating is the die off of the bad in your gut. So it’s actually as difficult as it is, it’s actually a really positive sign that gut changes are happening. Now let me give you two ways to handle the bloat. First really common thing I used to do with my patients all the time, which is give people enzymes. So you can do like I’ll leave some of my favorite in here. One of my favorite is put out by bio optimizers, and it’s called maszyme. It is just a good all around enzyme that when you’re in a fasted state and bloating, you take an enzyme and it helps break down the debris that’s being shed from the your mucosa lining. The second thing you can do is you can take activated charcoal again, I’ll put my favorite in here. And activated charcoal is will bind to any of the toxins in the gut that are being shed, causing the bloating, and get it out of your system so you can absolutely lean in to more things that will help with the help the body do what it’s trying to do, which is get rid of the bat. The second thing, if you have bloating, when you fast, I really want to bring to your attention how powerful it is to make sure when you take that first meal, that very first meal, and eat like a girl. I have a whole chapter on why the first meal matters when you go back out of your fasting window into your eating window, and the first meal matters because of the microbiome changes. So make sure that those that first meal has four major components to it. The first is you want it to have glycine. So glycine is found in bone broth. So if I was fasting and I was bloated, I would do the enzymes, and the activated charcoal in my fasting window help support that. And then the very first thing I would have would be a cup of bone broth. Bone broth has glycine in it, and glycine repairs the inner lining, mucosal lining of the gut, and it stops leaky gut syndrome. So let’s start with lies with glycine, making sure that we’re adding something healing in if you are not a omnivore, in eat like a girl. I asked my plant based chef specifically to make a functional mushroom broth. For those of you that are plant based, I would recommend you break your fast with this functional bone broth. So those are all in, eat like a girl, depending on when you’re watching this. It is out on october 22 it is ready for pre order. I am so proud of this book. It’s going to make everything in your fasting lifestyle so much easier. But when we get bloated, we got to think about how that first meal can support hell a healthy gut. So the first thing is glycine, rich foods, okay? Second thing is polyphenol foods. So polyphenol foods. Some of the best ones are olives, olive oil, nuts and seeds are rich in polyphenol foods. Chia seeds, hemp seeds, cloves are really rich in polyphenol chocolate berries, again, in both fast like a girl and eat like a girl. I have a whole list for you of the poly.
Dr. Mindy Pelz
Phenol rich foods, I will tell you, share with you a classic meal I put together and have used to not only repair my gut, but repair the guts of many of my patients. I’ll share with that in a moment, but let me go through the other three principles of that first meal that will help with things like bloating. So we got we’ve got glycine, we’ve got polyphenol foods, we’ve got probiotic foods. Probiotic foods are your fermented foods. So think about it. You go into a fasted state. You’re getting rid of the bad. Now we add, we add in the good. So the good is things like sauerkraut, kimchi, tempeh. We have a ton of tempeh. It’s a fermented soybean. Recipes in eat like a girl. You can do a kombucha, it’s a little bit light. You can do kefir, coconut kefir, water kefir, and you can do, you know, just kefir yogurt, as long as it’s not pasteurized, because those all have good probiotic foods in them. Again, tons of lists. And eat like a girl. And then the third one is your prebiotic foods. And prebiotic foods are like nuts and seeds. Hemp seeds are a big one that I sprinkle on everything. So when we look at bloating, it’s an indication that some there’s a change in the microbiome. When we go back into food, we want to facilitate that healing by doing the bone broth or function functional mushroom broth, and then putting the three polyphenol, probiotic and prebiotic foods together. A typical meal that I’ve done is a avocado, and then I’ll put sauerkraut on top. Then I will sprinkle hemp seeds and chia seeds, and then I’ll drizzle it with a high quality olive oil, that is like a classic break fast meal that I have. So there hopefully whoever asked about getting why she that she gets bloated with fasting. I hope I just gave you the good explanation, and then also some race, some tools you can use, okay? Second question that I got asked is, are herbal teas, okay, or not. Now this is, this is a good question, because, I mean, let’s just face it, it’s like fasting is a little boring, right? Get like, like, you got a lot of time to kill in there, which is why I love, I’m so excited about lmntees, new soda. I get it all chilled. And especially, it’s summer as I’m as I’m recording this. And so drinking in your fasting window is really powerful. We by the way, I just did a whole set of videos on some really cool drinks that that will upregulate GLP one. What is GLP one? GLP one is the hormone that kills hunger. It’s what the weight loss drugs do. But there are certain herbal teas that you can drink in your fasting window that will upregulate GLP, one hormone, hormones, and one of them is yerba Mata without any sweetener. So I highly recommend your bamata tea in your fasting window it does not break a fast. To answer your question is, does this break a fast? It does not break it fast, as long as you don’t put sweetener in it. Other ones that we’ve looked at is bergmont. Bergmont, which is like an herbal tea that, like is an earl gray is a really good prebiotic for your gut. So leaning into some of the Earl grays, peak teas. Peak tea has some green tea that’s really yummy that you can put in hot water and drink in your fasting window. They have a whole bunch of teas. They come in little, little packets. Those of you who listen to my resetter podcast with Dr William Lee, it’s both on my resetter podcast audio, and you can watch it on video. He talked about how important green tea is for stopping tumor growth, specifically within breast tissue. So when you ask me if herbal tea is good, it’s an absolute Yes. And let’s be even more intentional than just picking up your favorite orange Mandarin tea, let’s actually use some teas that can either kill hunger or can facilitate a healthier body like the ones that I that I recommend. Now I will tell you, if you put sweetener in it, it may be different. I also, as always, please know that my general stance on anything that would break so fast is that there are some tried and true ways that we can look at this of teas, and I can generally say they’re not going to break your fast, but you’ll always want to check it on yourself, so get a continuous glucose monitor, get a little handheld monitor and make sure you’re checking it on yourself and that it’s not spiking your blood sugar. But for the most part, I love tea in the fasting window. Okay,
Dr. Mindy Pelz
third question, why do I wake up to pee two to three at two to 3am while fasting? Oh, this is a good question. So in fast, like a girl, I had a really fun section that I wrote, and I forget what chapter it was in, but I remember going deep into the research.
Dr. Mindy Pelz
About how our organs repair themselves as we sleep. So remember that once you go into that deep sleep, your body goes through a whole scan of every single organ system, and it starts to repair those systems. This is how brilliant we are designed, and so when you’re in this deep sleep, and in a deeper sleep, this is why sleep is so important. At two and three in the morning, there are two organ systems that are repairing. One is the liver and one is your adrenal glands. These are two major organs that are useful when we’re fasting. So let’s start with the adrenals. If you go you’re fat. I don’t know how deep this person is fasting. They didn’t give me a fasting lathe, but let’s say it’s been you’re in a 20 like, you’ve gone 24 hours without food, and then you go to sleep, and now you’re like, maybe, you know, 30 hours in, and it’s two to three in the morning, and your adrenals are sensing the decline of glucose that might be stressful to the body, and the adrenals start to kick up cortisol. They become hyperactive, and that cortisol kicks in at two or three in the morning, and you wake up. Your body’s like, wake up. It’s time to run from the tiger.
Dr. Mindy Pelz
So one of the ways that we can prevent the adrenal response to a fasted state is make sure you’re always supporting good adrenal health. These are, like, your classic adaptogens. So Ashwagandha is a great one. As far as just like general supplements that I love for supporting good adrenal health right now, stress Guardian by bio optimizers is one of my favorite again, we’ll put links so you guys can find them, but you but make sure, before you go into some of the longer fast that you are supporting your adrenals. And one of the ways you might know night might notice that your adrenals are not working that great, or that you’re or they’re stressed, is when you go from sitting to standing and you get dizzy. So if that’s happening at any point in a fast, or anytime before a fast, make sure you’re powering up on these key nutrisense to support great adrenal health. The second one that I want you to think about is liver. So the liver is repairing it between two and 3am as well. So we’ve talked a lot about the liver, the liver, when you switch over into this place where you’re in a fat burning state. It is the liver that makes the decision to burn fat to make a ketone. So when you always want to make sure that your liver is in good health, and I have done videos, I’ve done podcasts, I’ve tried my best to give you as many liver ideas as possible, but for the sake of this question, I want to say, make sure that you are eating all the bitter foods when you eat. I have lists of them. And eat like a girl, the radicchio and the dandelion greens. I am a huge fan of a supplement called tudka again. I’ll leave links in here, great for liver support. And then my my favorite liver recommendation truly is, resolve any forgiveness, resolve any anger you have, because the liver is the organ that stores anger. So again, we’ll leave links. If you’re watching this on YouTube, we’ll leave links in the notes for you to go and look at the videos I’ve done on liver health and or the same thing if you’re listening to this on the podcast, in the show notes, we’ll we’ll leave links for you to go look at that. But two to three in the morning, it’s either adrenal stress or liver stress. Let’s fix those two organs. Okay. Number four, the fourth question is, can I still take my Lion’s Mane mushroom supplements or mushroom coffee during a fast now, I want to tame that, take this question and put it into just an overall picture. So first, if you go into a fast 24 hours or longer, I’m going to ask that you don’t do supplements anything that’s 3648 72 or beyond, you’re really asking the intelligence of the body to repair itself do what it needs to do. And if we start putting any kind of supplement outside of the mineral supplements, I recommend you start messing with the intelligence. Let’s let just innate intelligence do its job. Anything 24 hours or under supplements seem to be okay, because you’re not going into these deep healing states at 24 and under. So your Lion’s Mane mushroom is most likely okay, as long as it doesn’t have any fillers in it or any sweeteners, you’re okay. The mushroom coffee, you may not be okay. I love mushroom coffee, but please make sure it doesn’t have any sweeteners in it. I would.
Dr. Mindy Pelz
Definitely with the mushroom coffee, I would get a CGM, a continuous glucose monitor, and I would test it and see if it works for you. Otherwise, I would, you know, I would get a handheld one, but I the mushroom coffee makes me a little nervous. I haven’t seen it keep somebody in a fasted state, but, but again, we’re all bio individual. Okay, fifth one. I love this one too. How do I eat one hour after waking up if I’m shooting for 15 to 17 hours of intermittent intermittent fasting? Okay? I think I understand where this question is coming from, and it’s really about the when do you decide to eat? So I think this is really important, because there’s been a lot of interesting information in the culture, in on social media lately that we all need to be eating breakfast. So I brought Dr Sachin panda onto my resetter podcast, and you can go listen to that, and he talked about how important it was not to eat within one hour of waking up. And the reason for that is when you first wake up, you have a lot of melatonin, and when you have a lot of melatonin, you are more insulin resistant, so you want to let melatonin come down. So you wait an hour to let melatonin come down. Now the second part of this is just, I’m just gonna, like, help you think this through for yourself. I brought Dr Stacy Sims onto my resetter podcast, who’s an exercise physiologist that specializes in menopause, and she’s a big fan of making sure you get nutrisense into your system, into your body, within immediately when you wake up, because she says, it sends a signal to the hypothalamus and tells the hypothalamus to start the hormonal production. Okay, how do we rectify these two things? Well, and I’m gonna come back to this 15 to 17 hour eating fasting window. Here’s what I like to do when I wake up. I already told you, I do the minerals. And then the second piece that I like to do is I like to have my coffee and put some creatine in it and some collagen in it. This is what Stacy Sims does, too. Is she, she puts some kind of nutrisense in there, because it’s the nutrisense that are signaling to the hypothalamus. So regardless of when you’re going to eat that first morning cup of coffee or drink, put some nutrisense in it, have your minerals now that is resetting the circadian rhythm and the hormonal system. Now, when you’re shooting for 15 to 17 hours of intermittent fasting. Let’s use 15 hours as the marker. If you are fasting for 15 hours, that means your eating window is a nine hour eating window. You get to choose wherever you’re going to put this nine hours. So if you want to eat within an hour of waking up, and let’s say you eat at eight o’clock. That opens your eating window. So now you can eat from eight until let’s see if we go eight four, you can eat eight until five, and now you are within your nine hour eating window, and at five you shut down food, not even a night snack, and it starts over again. And that’s how you get you you eat, you do the one hour after you wake up. So again, the nuance is important. This is why I call it the art of building a fasting lifestyle. There is an art to it, and there is a personal personalization to it. If you are new to my work, or depending on when you’re watching this, I have some incredible podcast interviews where people have interviewed me, and we’ve just gotten in really good discussions. And today, I actually got an incredible discussion with Dr Josh AX, the Josh AX show. Go watch that. Because it was a phenomenal conversation about this exact thing, the eating window, what to eat, how to eat. Really great conversation. So you can go into the nuance on that a little deeper and go listen to the Stacy simwa Sims, Sims podcast. Go listen to the William Lee go listen to Sachin panda. The great thing about long format like listening to a podcast and YouTube, is you get the nuance and now you can make the right decision for you. Okay, dub it whatever you do. Don’t plan your whole health habits around a 92nd reel or a 92nd short. You that is the recipe for health disaster. Listen to podcasts, listen to long form like YouTube videos, and then you make a decision that feels right for you. I call it be your own. N of one. So as always, I hope that helps. Please leave comments. If you’re watching this on a video, please leave comments, because this is how.
Dr. Mindy Pelz
Can create more great content for you, as if we can hear where you’re getting stuck, questions that you have, and most of all, I just love being on this journey with you, so I hope that helps.
Dr. Mindy Pelz
Thank you so much for joining me in today’s episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we’d love to know about it, so please leave us a review, share it with your friends and let me know what your biggest takeaway is. You.
