The Reinventing the Supermarket Podcast Series
#12 Dr Jason Fung – The Disaster of the Culture of Constant Eating
We are joined by nephrologist and obesity researcher Dr Jason Fung. Dr Fung is a researcher and clinician who is achieving superb results using fasting in the treatment of both obesity and diabetes. Dr Fung’s work brings together critical insights on insulin resistance, the nature of long term obesity, the weight set-point and how to alter it, and the incredible value of fasting as a treatment for obesity and diabetes. Dr Fung is the author of the The Obesity Code, and co-author of The Complete Guide to Fasting – two books that are essential reading for modern human beings trying to find their way back to health after significant weight gain.
We discuss in some detail insulin resistance and the failed “energy balance” or “caloric balance” approach to weight management as well as the issue of “weight set point” and how we can influence and reset it. We also discuss the nature of fasting and how the reality of fasting is the opposite of everything we’ve been told…when we fast, our metabolism actually speeds up.
This discussion is centred on the dangers of chronically high blood insulin levels being suffered by a large percentage of the population in our contemporary society, whether they are fat or thin…and it dovetails significantly with the modern habit of snacking – a habit which has been largely driven by marketing since the latter 20th century, and which seems to have been one of the critical environmental changes contributing to the obesity epidemic.
Dr. Fung is a Toronto based nephrologist. He completed medical school and internal medicine at the University of Toronto before finishing his nephrology fellowship at the University of California, Los Angeles at the Cedars-Sinai hospital. He joined Scarborough General Hospital in 2001 where he continues to practice.
In his own words: “I grew up in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I went to the University of Toronto at age 17 to begin studies in Biochemistry. By 23, I completed medical school at the U of T, and began my Internal Medicine residency there.
Finishing my specialty of Internal Medicine, I chose Nephrology (kidney disease) as my sub-specialty. Each field of internal medicine draws its own personalities. Nephrologists had the reputation of being a ‘thinkers’ specialty. There are a lot of intricacies of fluid and electrolytes, and I enjoyed these puzzles. I studied Nephrology at the University of California, Los Angeles mostly at Cedars-Sinai Hospital and the VA Wadsworth. Looking back, I realize that it must have been a little disconcerting to patients in the hospital to be treated by a doctor who looked about 18 years old.
I returned to Toronto in 2001 to start my career in Nephrology, where I still have both an office and hospital practice. Type 2 diabetes is by far and away the leading cause of kidney disease, and I treat many hundreds of patients with this disease. Many also have obesity. By the early 2010s my interest in nutrition, combined with my professional focus on obesity and T2D had led me directly to the diabesity puzzle.”
– Dr Jason Fung
https://intensivedietarymanagement.com
