Fasting, a practice that has been around for thousands of years, is where we consume little or no food or drink containing carbohydrates, fats or proteins — calories — for a certain amount of time.

This can be done for a day, a few days, a week, or even longer.

And it’s much simpler and easier than most people think.

But why is fasting is done, why would someone not eat for days or even weeks?

When we don’t ingest any proteins, fats or carbohydrates for a certain amount of time, our body goes into a sort of cleanse, a repair and rebuild state called autophagy.

In this state DNA repair occurs, faulty or damaged cells and cellular components are recycled and we build defense against oxidative stress to our cells and nervous system.

Fasting also addresses excess weight, helps increase antioxidant capacity, improves the gut microbiome and supports healthy blood pressure and healthy inflammatory responses.

And it improves metabolism, supports healthy insulin levels and can even slow the aging process.

It's very effective.

But how is it done and what exactly happens?

Let’s dive in.

How does PerfectAmino actually work? And what is it really doing in our bodies?

PerfectAmino is the perfect protein source. But there is a point there. It’s the perfect protein source. It isn’t protein in itself, but amino acids, the building blocks of protein.

When these amino acids are bonded together into chains, that’s when it becomes a protein.

That’s what any protein molecule you eat is — hundreds or thousands of different amino acids all bonded together into a long chain.

But PerfectAmino is different than other protein sources you’ve had. Very different.

Did you know too high cortisol levels not only build excess body fat, but prevent protein synthesis and actually break down our muscle?

The hormone cortisol is vital to our body, but when levels get too high it can cause us a lot of trouble.

It can raise our stress levels, making us irritated, and cause us to have poor sleep.

It can reduce blood flow, cause lactic acid to build up in our muscles, cause muscle breakdown, and slow muscle recovery.

It lowers our testosterone, growth hormone, and progesterone levels, hormones necessary to build muscle and keep off excess body fat, while raising estrogen levels.

It can damage our cells and increase insulin resistance which then leads to high levels of insulin in the future and higher levels of body fat, especially around our mid-section.

It makes deep sleep, needed for muscle building and fat loss, much harder.

And it causes our hunger hormone, ghrelin, to be released to make us hungry, even when we're not.

In short, we need our cortisol levels properly balanced for muscle building, fat loss, overall health, deep sleep, and the best results possible.

In this article we cover how cortisol works and what we need to do for balanced cortisol levels that allow us to have the body we want.

If we want to build and keep lean muscle, or have a lean, toned, and shaped body without the excess body fat, there are key hormones we need to look at:

Cortisol is our stress hormone, released in times of physical or mental stress. It's necessary, but when it goes too high it acts to break down the muscle we do have, prevent or slow new muscle gain, and create and hold onto body fat.

Estrogen and Insulin also play a large role here. 

On the other side we have Growth Hormone, Testosterone, and IGF, Hormones that act to repair muscle, bone, ligaments, etc, build lean muscle, burn excess body fat, and shape our body in both men and women.

But cortisol, estrogen, and insulin work on a sort of seesaw-reaction basis with growth hormone, testosterone, and IGF. 

Raise one side and the other side lowers, and vice versa.

Increase cortisol and we decrease testosterone and growth hormone levels, causing fat gain, preventing muscle gain, and even breaking down the muscle we do have. 

But raise testosterone and growth hormone and we lower cortisol, estrogen and insulin levels.

So while we've covered how to prevent cortisol, estrogen, and insulin from going too high in the above linked articles, in this article we cover how to increase levels of growth hormone, testosterone and IGF.

Let's dive in.

Did you know low levels of thyroid can bring on not only low energy and weight gain, but also contribute to depression and brain fog?

This can make thinking, problem-solving, and just coping with the everyday stresses of life much harder.

With the rise in hormone-blocking toxins in our environment, processed foods and processed sugars, and the low amount of protein most of us consume, low thyroid is affecting more and more people, especially among women and the elderly.

But there’s one more thing affecting this — low magnesium. Magnesium is necessary for thyroid to be produced inside the body. Yet it’s being processed out of our foods more and more every year, until more than half the people in the US are now magnesium deficient.

In this article we dive into what thyroid is, how low thyroid occurs, how it affects our mood, energy levels, mental alertness, and our ability to think and cope with the problems of everyday life and what we can do to raise it.

When we look at the fact of aging, or getting older, we often measure it in two ways:

The number of years we’ve been on this earth, chronologically.

And the amount of decay that’s set in: fatigue, lower energy, poor fitness levels, poor sleep, loss of muscle, worsening vision and hearing, digestive problems, memory loss, etc.

But, while we’ve come to see the second as the inevitable result of the first, it’s actually not. It’s the result of getting biologically older, accelerated aging before our time.

We don’t realize this because our view is obviously based on what we’ve seen for decades now. And what we’ve seen is not good.

But this isn’t a natural situation. It’s a created situation.

Today, 90 percent of the money spent on health care in the US, almost $4.1 trillion, is spent on preventable chronic disease.

And a 2018 study found that 88 percent of Americans are in poor metabolic health—meaning they are on the road to the above diseases.

That’s not 88% of the elderly, that’s 88% of the population of the US.

This is despite the US spending nearly double the amount on healthcare and medicine as any other country.

But in the Blue Zones of the world, where they don’t have access to either our medicine or our toxins and very poor foods, they live quite healthily to 100 or more.

This is accelerated aging. And we don't need it.

So sit tight, because we’re about to get sciencey.

Someone born in 1950 started out life receiving 50 times less toxins going into their bodies than a child today. Their mother had grown up receiving even less than that and so had less to pass onto them before birth as well.

And they grew up on this much smaller toxic load.

So the amount of toxins injuring or destroying cells was much less.

But now look at where we are today — 50 times as many chemicals as we had then, and many of them are much more toxic.

These very definitely have an affect on our health. In some cases it’s quite obvious, but in most cases it’s something we don’t notice, because it happens over time.

If we want to actually increase longevity, increase lifespan and increase overall health and ability during the entirety of that lifespan, then we need to define what we’re talking about. 

Even more, we need to compare the current “norm” we’ve become accustomed to… to what not only can exist, but does exist in other places today.

A person should be able to live past 100 years old, with high energy levels, strength and mental ability, doing what they want without the need of twenty different drugs to keep them going, and then pass away peacefully.

And not only should that be the case, but in places outside of our “modern world” — called Blue Zones — it is the case. Quite routinely.

Let's dive in.

When we talk about losing body fat, toning our physique, or doing any kind of diet, for most of us, while it's something we want, it's also something that's just little bit hard to get started on.

Because we know it will be hard to do. So hard that we come up with so many excuses to push it off into the future.

But why? What makes it so hard to do or even hard to face?

And what makes it so hard to keep our discipline in after so as to keep the weight off?

The key to sustainable fat loss is not “cutting calories”, “working out”, or “changing our diet”.

Yes, we absolutely do need to do all of this for immediate fat loss.

But we’re talking about sustainable fat loss now: how to reduce body fat in the smoothest and most pain-free way, and how to keep it off afterwards.

And there is one thing that determines this more than any other: our hormones.

If we’re having any trouble losing excess fat, or gaining it in the first place, this is due to hormones that are out of balance.

This is what causes excess fat creation when it shouldn’t occur, what prevents us from losing excess fat despite our best efforts, what keeps our energy levels low and our hunger cravings high, and what ensures that even if we push through all the way and lose the fat… we’re going to gain it back again.

It’s unbalanced hormones. And to fix these, we need to fix our nutrition.

Did you know that whey protein powder spikes insulin levels, building as much body fat as sugar in many cases?

Insulin is the hormone responsible for shuttling sugar (glucose) to our cells.

But, when our cells can’t take any more sugar, then it attaches the glucose to fatty acids to create body fat. This is how body fat is created.

And, while insulin is present in the blood stream, fat loss cannot occur.

Now, normally sugar is what causes insulin to be released. But whey is unique among proteins in that it can cause as much or more insulin to be released than sugar can.

This is one of the biggest reasons that we build so much excess body fat along with muscle when bulking — because we’re also taking whey.

And it’s what causes our cuts to take so long.

Because, even when we cut calories and cut down on carbs, if we’re still taking high levels of whey, then to a large degree the whey is causing new fat creation.

And, at the same time, it’s also preventing fat loss.

All because of the high levels of insulin it stimulates.

But why is this and how does this work?

Let’s dive in.

Did you know that the type of food we eat, and how it affects our hormones, is more important than how many calories we eat?

Ask anyone about bulking and cutting, or losing weight, and they'll bring up calories and macronutrients.

“You have to count your calories and eat more than you need to build muscle, or eat less than you need to burn fat.”

And that's true… to a degree.

But there's more to it. Much more. And if you just follow the above, you'll more than likely miss your goals.

Yes, we need to measure the amount of calories to make sure we get enough energy, but not too much. And we need to make sure we get enough protein, fats, and carbohydrates so we can build muscle and have energy to power us through the day.

But which proteins, fats, and carbs? And how do they affect the hormones that will determine how they're used?

Because it's our hormones that decide how these foods will be used in our body.

Will these foods trigger fat loss hormones, or fat gain hormones? Will they trigger muscle growth hormones, or muscle loss hormones?

This is key to attaining and keeping a lean, muscled body.

So let's dive in and see how this all works.

Did you know that the official measurement of what is considered to be normal testosterone levels has been lowered? 

It has. And this was done because the majority of men no longer fall into the earlier acceptable ranges. 

Their testosterone levels are too low. 

Why is this? What's happening? And why would they choose to lower the acceptable levels instead of addressing why they are lowering?

In this article we talk about what testosterone does in the body, largely from the view of its anti-aging effects, how lowering testosterone levels, not just in the elderly, speeds up our biological aging, and what is causing this.