Intermittent Fasting Test: Could You Benefit?

Answer these questions to see if you might have adrenal issues that would contraindicate fasting:

• Do you get shaky or irritable if hungry?
• Do you get out of breath climbing stairs?
• Are you fatigued in the afternoons?
• Do you have trouble getting or staying asleep?
• Do you have stiff or painful joints?
• Do you have fluid retention?
• Do your ears ring?

If you have several of these symptoms, intermittent fasting might not be a good thing for you to do. More accurate testing could determine what WOULD work to lose weight. Often this will be a solution to improve your overall health rather than diet and exercise weight loss.

(NOTE: If you have these symptoms, you might have adrenal stress. This can cause a lot of issues, from belly fat and anxiety to immune problems. Click this link or the “Free Health Analysis” button below to take a symptom quiz and get a free phone consultation to find out more.)

What’s Intermittent Fasting?

Intermittent fasting is an eating pattern that cycles between periods of fasting and eating. For example, you might eat only between 8 AM and 6 PM, or you might fast for two full nonconsecutive days a week. There are a lot of variations.

The benefits: The idea is to improve your health by mimicking ancient eating schedules instead of always having food available. Reportedly, you can increase your mental clarity, burn fat and lose weight, feel better overall and improve your health to avoid diseases.

I believe that some people may get substantial benefits from intermittent fasting. I’ve read the research and rationales behind it, and much of it does make sense.

Where I can’t entirely agree is that any diet, food, supplement, or treatment could work for “everyone.” As an example, in my practice, I see mainly severe chronic cases. These people are physically very stressed. They are very toxic and usually have some immune suppression. Intermittent fasting would be about the worst thing that many of these people could do to themselves.

“Testing,” a Weird New Idea?

I can’t think of any single food, supplement, or treatment that would be appropriate for every patient I’ve had in the past year. Well, except for maybe clean water.  Every person is unique in many ways and needs different solutions.

When I make this statement to people, they often ask, “But, how would you be able to tell who would benefit and who would not?” This confusion shows how foreign the concept of TESTING is to most people. If you could accurately test someone to determine what foods, supplements, diets, and treatments would be effective and safe for them—why would anyone make any decisions without testing first?

Medicine’s Failure to Test

When medical doctors treat patients with chronic illness, they test to diagnose but don’t test to determine causes. Not knowing the cause, the doctor must follow a fixed treatment protocol for that diagnosis and often only treat symptoms. The result is often a lessening of the symptoms but no solution to the actual problem. The undiscovered cause of their conditions or diseases may continue to deteriorate their health, and the patient may suffer from chronic health conditions for the rest of their lives.

“One Accurate Measurement is Worth a Thousand Expert Opinions”

—Admiral Grace Hopper

The practice of medicine relies on the doctor’s opinion as the primary method of deciding what is wrong with the patient and what treatment would be effective. This is so true that it’s normal to seek a second opinion to see if you can get more than one doctor to agree on your treatment.

My long experience is that many—maybe most—people are so used to this medical guessing that they’ll shrug and say, “So what’s the problem with opinions?” The problem is that an opinion is really a guess.

Doctors have been practicing this way for so long that we think it’s normal. But what other profession could get away with this approach? Would you need a “second opinion” on the engineering of a bridge or skyscraper or the design of your car? These and almost all other professions rely on accurate measurements and proven methods based on scientific and engineering principles that consistently get results.

Engineers do not guess. Neither do carpenters, chefs, pilots, accountants, or carpet installers.

Professionals are expected to “know their stuff” and get a predictable, effective result. Except for doctors! (Well, and, maybe philosophers, sports bookies, and politicians.)

The Takeaway:

Everyone’s body is different.

Your genetics, damage from illnesses and injuries, the diet you were raised on, your preferences, your environment, available food, your drug history, stress history, personality, and many more variables are all different from other individuals.

So, there is no “universal” diet, food, lifestyle, supplement, drug, or treatment that would get good results for everyone. Far, far from it!

The ability to test any of the above items before recommending them to an individual is not only of critical importance, it is obvious.

Because: the only other option would be to GUESS.

Women Age 35+… Having Good Health Isn’t Hopeless

We Tell Adolescent Girls What’s Going to Happen

So, why don’t we tell 40-year-old women what’s going to happen?

Why is it still taboo to talk about?

Remember puberty? Your reliable young body suddenly got a mind of its own. Crazy things started happening, both physically and mentally. Can you recall the helpless, out-of-control feelings that you had at that time?

Your parents probably gave you a “heads-up” in advance, so you knew (kind of) what to expect. Your friends sooner or later, were going through the same experience. It was scary and awkward, but there was the promise of becoming an adult to look forward to, and you coped with the changes.

Peri menopause is a different experience.

First, no one has likely given you that needed heads-up. Honestly, it would be difficult to do because everyone experiences peri menopause at different ages and in different ways.

Your cycle may suddenly become irregular, your sleep terrible, and your moods frightening. Then everything can go back to normal. Did that really happen?

There are the common symptoms of peri menopause… and then there are YOUR peri menopause symptoms. Everyone experiences this life process somewhat differently.

Health Care System Failure

Most of us look to our doctors for answers to personal health questions. The problem is, you may not see your gynecologist but every three to five years for a Pap screening, during which time you may move well into peri menopause. The other problem is that many peri menopausal symptoms are nonspecific, and your doctor won’t try to treat them anyway.

If you tell your doctor, “My energy is completely unpredictable. I wake up exhausted but then feel OK later in the day. Sometimes. Other days I’m fine. I yelled at my kids for no reason, then broke down in tears.” This is unlikely to elicit a prescription, and if it did, you might not want to take it.

Conventional medicine is usually ineffective at helping you with peri menopause. Leaving you… where?

The Cause

In your late 30’s, your ovaries will begin to rid themselves of their eggs by releasing more and more eggs each month. As you progress into your 40’s, there are fewer follicles available for ovulation.

Peri menopause begins when you have some cycles with no ovulation.

Estrogen and progesterone are your two main sex hormones, and these balance each other. Progesterone is released with ovulation, so fewer ovulations reduces progesterone and causes “estrogen-dominance” in your body. This is the cause of hot flashes, mood swings, vaginal dryness, irregular cycles, poor concentration, and many more peri menopausal symptoms.

As peri menopause continues, there is a gradual decrease in both estrogen and progesterone. The problem is that none of this is predictable or linear. Your hormones rise and fall erratically, creating physical and emotional havoc.

The Way Out

Treating individual peri menopause symptoms is a game of whack-a-mole: you never win.

What is required is a holistic approach to understanding the physiology of the hormone changes taking place, digestion and food reactions, and related organ and gland stress (liver, thyroid, adrenals, etc.).

Correct lab testing is critical, but even more important is for your doctor to know you and follow along with the changes in your body. Seeing your doctor at least monthly, often more frequently, allows her to understand the changes your body is making and the various components of those changes.

An effective doctor functions as a “peri menopause coach.” With this help, you can feel happy, productive, and energetic even as your body continues to change unpredictably.

I hope this helps!

Dr. Melodie Billiot

Energy is Life; Fatigue is No Life

If you have a fatigue problem, you know it.

The Misery Package

Often physical fatigue combines with mental sluggishness. Brain fog, poor concentration, and memory problems at the same time you have no energy can make up a misery package.

Physical and mental fatigue combined can be a knockout blow to your life.

You get two choices:

1. Push through the fatigue to live your life as best you can. Although this is admirable, the stress of pushing yourself can lead to additional health problems.
2. Reduce your activity level to what you feel you can do. Pacing yourself sounds like a sensible solution, except that in most cases, your energy will continue to drop, and you’ll do less and less. Living with reduced output and accomplishment can lead to depression, apathy, and a poor quality of life.

Causes of Fatigue

Fatigue has physical causes, but only a few of these are medically treatable.

Fatigue can come from many different sources:

• Thyroid: This is a hormone gland that controls your metabolism, your heart (your primary source of energy), and your brain. So, a thyroid malfunction can slow your metabolism, cause fatigue from heart stress, and create severe brain fog. Often this won’t show on a blood test.
• Adrenals: These glands create a hormone called cortisol. Cortisol controls your blood sugar and blood pressure, digestion, and whether you feel hungry. It manages your sleep, your ability to tolerate physical activity, and your ability to cope with stress. Are you sluggish in the morning? Do you crash in the afternoons? Do you have high energy at midnight? Cortisol can be the culprit in all of these.
• Sleep problems can cause fatigue and brain fog. If you try to solve your sleep problem with drugs, you’ll still get no actual sleep. The drugs will knock you out into what looks like sleep, while your sleep deficiency continues, and drug dependency increases.
• Heart stress can cause debilitating fatigue. In some cases, you will be diagnosed and treated with drugs, surgeries, or pacemakers. But the fatigue, though improved, can persist. In other cases, your heart stress may not show up on labs or tests—but your fatigue will continue.
• Medications often have fatigue as a side effect. Culprits are blood pressure meds, anti-depressant and anti-anxiety meds, steroids, and antihistamines. Solution: get healthy enough to get off your meds!
• Mental problems can suck the life out of you, creating lethargy and fatigue. Depression, anxiety, eating disorders, drug or alcohol abuse, and grief all can create fatigue.
• Deficiencies of all kinds can create fatigue. Vitamin B12, vitamin D, folic acid, and iron deficiencies can all cause fatigue.
• Infectious diseases can cause short-term fatigue, as anyone who’s had the flu can attest. However, some infections (such as Covid) can be long-term or even lifetime. CMV (cytomegalovirus), Lyme disease, EBV (Epstein-Barr virus) can cause long-term—even decades—of fatigue.
• Chronic diseases often have fatigue as one of many symptoms. Diabetes, kidney disease, liver disease, and anemia can all cause fatigue and brain fog.

The Fatigue Siren Song

The number of people with fatigue problems is undoubtedly staggering. Once you have fatigue, you often can’t recover from it because the fatigue can entrap you into perpetuating itself.

Fatigue often prevents you from fixing your fatigue problem.

It takes action and energy to resolve your fatigue problem, but you may be too tired to do anything about it. If you reduce your activity level to match your available energy, your activity will continually reduce as your fatigue increases until there is little left of your life.

In Greek mythology, the Sirens (monsters who looked like beautiful women) sang to the sailors and lured them onto the rocks to their death. In real life, fatigue can lure you into a similar fate.

There is an Answer to Fatigue

There are three things you must know to be successful at ending your lack of energy and getting your life back the way you want it to be:

1. DECIDE: You have to overcome the “Fatigue Siren Song” and decide to do what you must to end your fatigue. If you decide that you will handle the fatigue, and you aren’t slowing down until you do, then your chances of success get very high.
2. REALIZE: Conventional health care can rarely help you with chronic fatigue. Medical doctors aren’t taught the knowledge and techniques to handle most causes of fatigue effectively. You’re going to have to find a holistic doctor.
3. UNDERSTAND: Just because there’s no medical treatment available for most causes of fatigue, this doesn’t mean that there’s no hope. Your body can heal almost all of the causes of fatigue listed above.

Your body has a fantastic ability to heal itself. Just because there is no effective cure for your condition doesn’t mean that your body couldn’t—with some assistance—heal the problem.

Find Out More

You should find out if you could recover from your fatigue (or other “unsolvable” health condition). What would your life look like if this happened?

Find the underlying causes behind your fatigue. THIS IS A FREE ANALYSIS.

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