How To Get Your Kids Into Fasting, The Ideal Combination Of Glucose & Ketones, Creating A High-Income Family Business & Much More

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life.

Podcast, when people would ask me about raising kids, my only intention was that I really had every plan and intention that I was trusting God for. To raise five leaders. That was always my thing. Lord, I just. I'm going to raise five leaders. That's all I know. Especially given the fact that you know our story and the challenges with getting two children that were not ours and the challenges that came through that as well. But that was my whole intention. And the other thing that I've always said to the kids is our ceiling will be your floor.

Faith, family, fitness, health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the show.

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All right folks, so one of my guests on today's podcast is a multi time, repeat, pretty popular guest. The other guest, his wife I don't think has ever been on my show before even though we've spent tons of time together as families. And my wife Jessa and my other guests on today's show who will introduce briefly are great friends and we have a ton of fun hanging out whenever we go down to Park City, Utah. She's never been on the show, so this is going to be a first and super fun. My guests are Dr. Dan Pompa and his wife Merilee Pompa. They're just absolutely amazing people. They're good friends. And they also are, after me, witnessing their really unique parenting approach, which includes everything from some cool fasting protocols to including their children in the family business in a really cool way, are people who I wanted to feature in my book Boundless Parenting. And so there's a whole chapter from them in Boundless Parenting. But I also wanted to just dive into a lot of the nitty gritty approaches that they use as a family and as parents on today's podcast. Maybe even touch on some of the cool geeky stuff that Dan's doing with some of these supplements that he's creating with mushrooms, which I briefly touched on in the Jordan Rubin episode, if you heard that. But I thought I'd let Dan explain a little bit more. So Dan and Merrily are well known in the fields of functional medicine. If you heard any of Dan's previous podcasts on my show, particularly in the realm of detoxification and kind of like this feasting fasting protocol that Dan and I have geeked out on before, they also have their own podcast or Dan specifically has his podcast called True Cellular Detox. True Cellular Detox. So Dan speaks all over the world. I run into him at various conferences. We seem to cross paths quite a bit at many of these, like longevity and, and health and optimization conferences. And he's written a couple really fantastic books, the Cellular Healing Diet and then also Beyond Fasting, which is an awesome book when it comes to some of the science and practical protocols around fasting, including some concepts from a historical and also a scientific standpoint that you probably haven't run into before. So I'll put links to all of Dan's books and also our previous podcast. If you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com pompas P O M P A S BenGreenfieldLife.com pompAS and like I mentioned, Dan and Marilee live out in the mountains in Park City, Utah. Fantastic place. If you ever get a chance to visit Park City, I highly recommend. And like I also mentioned, they have a very unique parenting style with fasting and detoxification and alternative education models and family game nights and making the kids a part of the family business and spirituality and a whole lot more. And Marilee, Dan's sidekick, has also gone through a lot in her own life in terms of detoxification and hormone challenges, and she has just picked up a lot of really great, really great wisdom along the way, not only as a parent, but also as a Little bit of a health practitioner herself. So, Dan and Marilee, welcome to the show.

Yeah, love being here.

Usually we're sitting around drinking a glass of wine and just shooting the crap about anything and everything. But Dan, before we dive into the parenting and family stuff, when I was talking with Jordan, which was just last week, so this is all fresh on my mind, he was blowing my mind about these mushrooms that he grows on his farm and how he's doing things like growing reishi mushroom on turmeric and harvesting the turmero saccharides using the, the mushrooms and blending them all together and, and you know, chaga, I think he was, he was growing chaga on ginger or something like that. And he mentioned that you actually have some of his, his first growth projects packaged up in a couple of these detoxification or cellular energy products that you're making. Tell me about the specific mushrooms that you've gotten your hands on from Jordan, this technology.

Actually, I was first in on it with Jordan back in 2013.

It was like the market wasn't ready. No one knew about mushrooms then. It was kind of shelved.

We may have disagreed on how we should have brought it to the public, but here we are now, years later. And I brought it out in a product line called Cellular Solutions. It is a doctor only or physician only line. Licensed coaches can get it at wholesale, but it's practitioner only. If people go to cellularsolutions.com, you just have to prove some type of license to sell it, to utilize it. But the technology is growing mushrooms on certain substrates. We target certain cells. I'll use a couple of examples. Like the brain cells. We would utilize lion's mane to target brain cells because it has the ability to cross the blood brain barrier and target specifically receptors of specific brain cells. We utilize that to target those cells. Then we would grow it on a substrate of the function that we're actually trying to perform. For example, if we're developing a product for the brain to de inflame, we would grow it on say turmeric, ginkgo, ginger, which is part of what we've done. Now here's the interesting thing. Mushrooms in nature, they absorb, they eat and absorb the nutrition out of basically whatever you're growing it on the substrate.

For better or worse, by the way, because that's why you got to be careful the source of your mushrooms because they're almost like a little bit of a bioremediant, you know, like I think lettuce is a more common example. You got to be careful to buy organic lettuce because it's essentially like one of nature's filters and sucks up anything from the soil that it's grown in.

So when we grow this stuff, for example, on like grape skins, right, to pull up resveratrol and all the good things that are in there, you see, it goes up into the mushroom. You'll see grape. You'll see the colors from the grape skins. If we grow it on turmeric, which we do in the brain product, it pulls up and makes it more bioavailable. Turmeric. Actually, so much of what's in it is not bioavailable or utilized in the human cell, but when you pull it up in the mushroom, it becomes bioavailable in the human cell.

Wow. So normally with turmeric, you get a lot of supplement manufacturers that combine with bio pairing from black pepper, for example, to increase bioavailability. What you're saying is if you were to grow a mushroom on turmeric, you could even skip that step and it'd still be bioavailable.

Yeah, exactly. So you're pulling it up in, and then you're targeting specific cells. So now you're targeting. You're pulling it up in. The example I'm using is the lion's mane. And then the lion's mane is going to target the brain cells. So now you're taking the functional properties of the turmeric, delivering it into exactly where you want. Now, of course, this is kind of not new because drug companies have taken. You mentioned chaga. Chaga will grow on a birch tree. It'll extract a nutrient out of the birch tree that only it can do. You can't go into a birch tree and pull that nutrient out and make it bioavailable. A human drug companies pull out that one nutrient and use it in specific drugs. But they can only utilize it once it's pulled up into the mushroom. Same technology, we have an actual patent on it, how it works, whatever cells we're targeting, that's the mushrooms we use, whether it be immune cells, like I said, whether it be brain cells. And then we're utilizing the substrate as the function again, I've created a whole detox process with different products. Many, many years now, we've just, we've replaced it with this newer technology.

That's super cool. So with detoxification, what would be an example of like a mushroom and something you grow it on for the detoxification benefit?

One of the things that we do is, for example, we'll grow it on, say, milk thistle. Right. We all know milk thistle works wonders in the liver, but again, how much of it is actually bioavailable? But when we grow the mushroom on the milk thistle now, we can actually pull up some of that more active ingredients, make it more bioavailable to liver cells.

Okay, cool. So, Marilee, a couple of weeks ago, when my wife Jess was down there hanging out with you guys, were eating mushrooms growing on milk thistle after your glass of wine?

That was after dinner.

Okay. But actually, seriously, do you take this stuff, Marilee?

Oh, my gosh, yeah, of course. I'm his guinea pig as well as his sidekick.

The gut producthere's an interesting thing, right? Experimenting with different mushrooms, we actually ended up using lion's mane on the gut product because one of the things that obviously second brain, right? This brain, that brain. But we realized that lion's mane also targets a lot of the gut cells. So again, utilizing some things that de inflame the mucosal layers of the gut was key because a lot of leaky gut. We also put in a lot of different humics, things of that sort. But by growing it on these things that we can target the gut cells, we're able to de inflame the gut. The gut enhancer. It is like our whole family.

Well, we all started one day, right? February 1st. They arrived, the whole line, and we had a little party with the kids. Everybody took the product. Everybody slept amazing that night, and everyone got up talking about how much they pooped.

Big, long poops, right? I just got one two days ago from one of my clients, and like, okay, Dan, this new product, she's like, my wife stopped me from taking a picture of my poop because I have poop issues. I have loose stools, blah, blah, blah. Anyways, yeah, that product has been an absolute game changer.

And I will say, honestly, our energy, like, sustained energy. After taking the products, like, well, they made me because I'm mostly not intolerant, but I have the highest tolerance for supplements and things. I can take anything and not typically react. So my husband suggested, okay, a few weeks into it, are you feeling this energy that everyone else is talking about? And I said, no, because I guess maybe because I'm splitting it up. So he had me take the full dose that was recommended over the course of the day. And so I did that. And first day I did it, I said, yes, absolutely. I noticed that I had amazing energy.

The other thing that made Surprise unique, Jordan talked about his ranch, right? Most of the Ingredients were growing on the ranch. So it's from. Literally from farm or ranch to pill as much as we can. Not every ingredient we can do yet. But it's a big deal because the soil project that I've been a part of this ranch for, gosh, how many years now? A lot. But anyways, regenerating the soil, the problem with today's crops, even organic crops, is the soil that it's grown in. It's so void of most of the nutrition. The soil regenerative process that Jordan's been working on with Baylor University has been extraordinary. To grow extraordinary herbs. You grow extraordinary herbs that have far higher nutrition value than most herbs that most companies are sourcing. And then we do this technology on top of it. It takes it to another level. And then most of the herbs we're fermenting to also make it more bioavailable in people who have bad guts. You know this. The people that I help are people that have done everything and still not getting well, can't get well, can't figure it out. So these people, typically, we need really good delivery into the gut and into the cells.

Interesting. So you can actually ferment the herbs. And then also I was thinking about this, like, if you're growing, let's say something like turmeric and then growing a mushroom on top of that, theoretically, the turmeric would also be taking in whatever compounds like minerals and things like that that the soil's actually grown in or that the soil contains. If you're inoculating the soil with things like humic acid, fulvic acid, mycorrhizomes, et cetera, then it's actually three things. You're getting whatever's in the soil going up into the mushroom, and then that's going up into the plant or the. Or the herb that you would grow on top of the mushroom.

Exactly right. One of the big problems of why people don't feel well today is lack of minerals. It's very difficult because the soils are void of it. But plants take up plant, mineral. We'll just call it rock mineral, elemental mineral, and then it makes it bioavailable to the human. Okay, so eating a plant is actually the way we should get minerals. Right. But then we're taking it another step to your point, up into the mushroom, making even more bioavailability, especially a lot of the things that we need for cellular health. It's not bioavailable, but by bringing it into the mushroom, it makes it very bioavailable.

Did your guys Kids grow up taking supplements.

Yes, they did. Yeah. Matter of fact, they still do. When they come in the house, first place they go typically, like even the ones that don't live here anymore, is the supplement cabinet. And they start taking.

Daniel goes to black olive jars.

Yeah, black olives. Brand new black olives in the refrigerator. Leaves the refrigerator, but then makes his way to the supplement cabinet. Then all my supplements are spread out all over the counter with lids off.

Actually, Daniel's on day nine of a water fast right now.

Today.

10.

10, 10 today.

Yeah. I think that's super interesting how your kids have actually gone through fasting protocols. So tell me a little bit about that, like how you incorporate fasting with your kids. Because I think a lot of people just assume, based on the need for MTOR activation or, you know, rapidly expanding endocrine systems and hormones and puberty, that fasting would somehow hold a kid back. But. But tell me about your take on. On fasting, especially for kids.

First of all, they. They choose to do it. We don't choose it for them. They've been educated on the benefits of it, of course. And then at some point, they've come to us and ask more questions.

In my book, Beyond Fasting, I told the story of Simon. And one day he was looking. I was preparing a PowerPoint presentation, and he saw this horrible skin condition. I mean, nasty, horrible eczema. And he said, oh, my gosh, dad, what is wrong with her? And I explained. I said, basically, what you see there is kind of what's happening on your head. Now, you have to understand, he's my youngest son. He did not follow the pompa witness by the last son. When you have five kids, you kind of just like, they'll figure it out their own. And they actually do. And he did as well. But he was definitely not our healthiest child. He had these little spots on his head he was always worried about. I said, well, that is this expanded. You could end up here if you don't change your ways, son. Anyways, he leaves the room, and I'm like, okay, maybe he heard me. He comes back and says, well, dad, did you help her? I said, well, look, you didn't get to see the after picture. That's what she looks like now. He said, what did she do? Well, my detox. But she also fasted a few times, right? So he leaves the room, comes back and says, okay, I want to fast. I'm like, okay, yeah, sure.

How old was he?

How old was Simon?

I was actually just about to find the picture, because it came up in Facebook memory, and I sent it to the whole tribe.

Yeah. Was he, like, I don't know, 14?

I think it was two.

Well, we'll find out.

This might have been close to the time that I first met Simon. I think it was at a conference that you and I were speaking at, Dan. And, I mean, I'd, you know, not. Not to offend him or anything, but I did notice that Simon was, like, a little bit more overweight than some of your other kids.

Yeah.

Yeah. A little less fit, and he had some skin issues. And then I don't think I saw him for, like, two years. And the next time I saw him, he was, like, lean and mean and buff and apparently had gone through a few different fasts after that point, so. So it definitely did something.

Well, he ended up water fat. He said. I said, okay, you want to fast. Just, you know, set out a simple goal. You know, do three days. Well, first of all, I didn't think he'd make it to dinner. That's the honest truth. Okay. He was carb addicted. I didn't think he made it to dinner. For some reason, he did. He went one day. He went two days, three days.

He ended up town.

He ended up going ten and a half days, to be exact.

We left town, and days later, he said, you know, I'm still fasting.

So the bottom line is he fixed his skin issue. He broke his carb addiction. After that, he never gained the weight back, which was extraordinary because he was very carb addicted. But that one fast transformed his life. All of my kids have fasted. All of them, five out of five, multiple times, as Mary, like, pointed out. Daniel, my biological oldest, is on day 10 right now of another fast, and that's pure water. Now, there's partial fasting, there's water fasting, but. But our family, we love water fasts.

So for parents listening in who know the benefits of fasting or know that's good or maybe are already fasting themselves, do you guys have any tips for them if they wanted to incorporate their kids with fasting and also include with that, like, what age this might be appropriate to begin with your kids in the United States?

It's not appropriate. I'll put quotes around it. To have children fast. In most other countries in the world, children fast a lot. So just understanding cultural norms. One of the things I talk about in my book a lot is the feast is as important as the famine. Now, you could say it the other way. The famine is as important as the Feast. You mentioned mtor. MTOR is a process that can be good. You can put on muscle, you can heal. Too long time in MTOR is not good. You can develop bad cells, cells that are inflammatory and tumor cells, etc. Likewise with the fast or the famine, too much time. Fasting or low caloric intake is not good either. But we need times of feast and we need times of famine. The advice is that you have to teach your kids that both are very important. If they're going to fast, they should have times of feasting. Now, feasting could be higher calories than normal, more meals than normal. Feasting could be higher protein than you typically take in. Feasting could be high carbs, especially if you're low carbs. All of that will drive mtor. Again, short term, good, long term, not. Same with fasting. Autophagy happens in the fast. That's the pathway where your body's getting rid of cells, opposite of mtor, where your body's making cells. Doing time. Where you're fasting to get rid of bad cells is as important. And I think for something like a partial fast is appropriate for kids who have health problems. Probably as a starting point, Simon jumped right into a water fast, which is definitely. Probably more appropriate for a heavier child.

Which, to clarify, by the way, that's no calorie intake, but water is included in the fast.

Yes, Correct.

And I think it was about 2017. I was trying to find the video of you and him that you did together, but I think it was about 2017. He's 19 now, so he was about 14 years old.

Yeah, I guess I'm never. Right. So that's really odd. Yeah.

Yeah.

How often do your kids fast now? Like, is it systematic where you guys have certain periods of the year? Like. Like a religious fast would include once.

Or twice a year. We all fast.

Not together. Never. Don't recommend fasting together. Him and I fast together.

I was gonna say, why not fast together? Because it seems like there'd be some accountability where worked in.

Well, you know, that's because Merrily can't. Look, everyone has their ways, right? Merrily can't be around food. She gets grumpy because food is very emotional for her.

So, you know, God, it's very social for me.

Okay, well, that's emotional. Right?

Emotionally, socially emotional.

My son Daniel, like, he's fasting. He's cooking his wife food. He's in the kitchen. You know, he's.

Oh, my gosh, he's on a roll.

Actually. He's been working my Son Daniel. He runs Pompa program, which has 200 employees. He's CEO and he's running that. He's on day 10 of a fast. I was on a meeting with him already today, and his brain is functioning better than ever, and he doesn't want to quit as fast, which is scary. But her, not so much.

Yeah, no. I literally pine away. I shut myself in the house. No one is allowed to cook. I don't want to smell it. I really prefer not to see many people just because I don't even really like to talk to people.

So do we answer your question? Why we don't fast together?

You and I do.

Yeah.

We get each other.

Okay, so for a typical day of fasting or period of fasting for. For a kid or an adolescent, how many days do you think is good? Or if there. There is like a set gold standard protocol? And besides water, are there certain things that you think would, especially for a kid who's fasting, help them with the transition or even assist the. The results of the fasting, whether that's like ketones or certain supplements or anything like that?

Yeah, I mean, taking ketones in the first couple days of a fast does help. The reason it helps is because your body is not really used to using ketones. It's not efficient at burning fat to make a really high level of ketones. So assisting that will absolutely help. Hydrogen water that you've talked a lot about on your show is dramatic, actually. Studies show that it actually helps with ghrelin. So it cuts hunger. It really does. And it also takes a lot of the first two or three days of a fast is typically when you get most of your symptoms, it knocks down a lot of those symptoms that you may get. Now, you have to understand fasting symptoms are normal during a fast in the beginning for some people, I can fast. I get no symptoms, but I fast a lot. But most people will get symptoms just like when they go into ketosis. They'll get symptoms just because they're getting rid of a lot of electrolytes they need. Taking electrolytes can be very helpful in the beginning of a fast, just like going into ketosis. So, yeah, I mean, there's a couple little tips for sure. In my book, I talk about, you don't just run a marathon to get the best results. You want to train for it. So the book, I take you up what you can do ahead of a fast to actually get the best results during a fast and actually make it easier.

That's the book Beyond Fasting.

Yeah.

And is that based on the idea that when you fast, you're shifting into metabolic ketosis and so are you just like shifting macronutrient ratios leading into a fast, like higher fats, lower carbs, or use of ketones, et cetera? To make that transition easier, it's best.

To go into ketosis first. And what I've noticed is I have a way of measuring when you hit max autophagy. And, and for your audience, that just means your audience probably knows what it means, but getting rid of a lot of cells, so when your body goes into this maxotophagy, you're just crushing bad cells. What we've noted is if you go into ketosis first, you can shift into max autophagy within a day or two. Otherwise, the average human, it takes almost four days for most people because they're coming off standard American diet, they don't hit that max autophagy. That's why I used to fast people on average for five days, because it would take them four days to get into max autophagy. And I wanted to run it out at least one more day. Now, if you get into max autophagy faster, you could technically, and you're healthier, you could do a three day fast and still get a lot of benefits.

You've probably heard of grounding or earthing. I was literally reading about it in the newspaper yesterday. That's how common the knowledge of the benefits of being connected to the planet is becoming. The way this works is the electrons you absorb when your feet are in touch with the planet Earth or your back, or you're swimming in the ocean or anything else. The electrons help to neutralize free radical damage. They squelch inflammation, they restore healthy endocrine function. They enhance cellular gating and circulation, which improves the cellular uptake of nutrients and oxygens and hormones, while maximizing the removal of cellular waste. There's a whole book about this. I also interviewed a guy named Clint Ober about this idea of ground or earthing. Problem is, we can't all be outside all the time like dirty hippies. Neither do we sleep in caves. My apologies to all my hippie listeners. Anyways, Clint Ober, the same guy interviewed, he designed a ground therapy sleep mat. Now, this allows you to sleep for six to eight hours on a grounded surface. That means more time, more beneficial electrons, more results. Just like you were sleeping outside or camping, but in the comfort of your own bed on your fancy overpriced mattress. Full body grounding maximizes the electron transfer with huge surface Area contact the whole time you sleep. So while you're asleep, healing electrons help to repair your body. During the night of sleep, when your body does most of its healing and repair anyways, you can put it on any mattress. It just basically goes right underneath the sheet and transfers the electrons to your body. Easily fits into a suitcase. You can take it on the go too, which is great because grounding is awesome for jet lag and travel Recovery. There's over 20 peer reviewed research studies published on the extensive health benefits of grounding. And now you can sleep grounded the whole night. The other cool thing is it mitigates damage caused by the more harmful EMFs, like from your WI fi router or whatever. So so many reasons to try this thing. They got grounding mats for your mattress, for your pillow, for your blankets. There's one for the office. I'm standing on it. Literally, like right now. It's amazing. So it helps to bring down your inflammation, jump starts your healing, gives you massive amounts of energy, especially if you're in an EMF soup environment. And if you're ready to hack your sleep and stay grounded anytime you want again without having to be outside all the time, go to ultimatelongevity.com Ben that's ultimatelongevity.com Ben I'm often asked what is my go to desert island supplement? If I could take nothing else. Well, it's essential amino acids. I've been using them for almost a decade now now. So you probably know that the human body is mostly water. What you probably don't know is that everything else in your body is 50% amino acids. They're the building blocks of life, essential for health fitness. They naturally boost energy, they build lean muscle, they enhance athletic recovery, they stave off the appetite, even if you're eating a low calorie diet or you're fasting. They're fantastic for pre workout, for during the workout, for post workout. And the essential amino acids that I use are backed by over 20 years of clinical, clinical research. They're in perfect ratios. They essentially match what your body needs and what the muscle composition of amino acids actually is, which a lot of other amino acids do not do, especially branched chain amino acids, but many other essential amino acids as well. So this is the stuff by Kion. Kion aminos have the highest quality ingredients. No fillers, no junk, rigorous quality testing. And they taste amazing with flavors like lime berry, watermelon, probably my favorite, mango. They're amazing. You just put a little bit in water, you can add them to smoothies they are one of the top supplements that my wife and I take each day. And again it's been a staple of my diet for years and years. And I swear by this stuff. I've had friends start to take these and literally report that they feel like they're on some kind of a steroid. Now there's no steroids in the kion aminos of course, but it is amazing how you feel when you step up your intake of essential amino acids. And I'm shocked that I more people don't know this secret. So kion aminos, you can get 20% off monthly deliveries, 10% on one time purchases. And it's very simple. You go to getkion.com Ben get K-I-O-N G-E-T-K-I-O-N.com Ben to get my fundamental supplement for fitness recovery, appetite and much, much more kion aminos. Check them out. You got to get on the essential amino acids bandwagon. You will be absolutely shocked at how you feel on these things. So getkion.com Ben the first fast that.

Jess and I did was like a juice fast. And I didn't do a lot of research prior and I felt like crap for about the first 24 hours. And this was like super low calorie juices, like 20 or 30 calorie vegetable juices that we were doing about three or four juices of during the fast. So maybe 100 to 150 calories a day. And I didn't experiment much with shifting to a high fat diet prior or using ketone esters or ketone supplementation to shift myself into nutritional ketosis prior. But I wish I'd have known that before because since then, you know, using some of the information from your book and elsewhere, Dan I've used ketones and carbohydrate mitigation in the one to two days prior to a fast. And it's way, way easier.

Yeah, way easier. And, and obviously even doing some intermittent fasting ahead of it. This diet variation strategy that I'm talking about, feast Famine weekly helps, but that's in the book and right now the book, we're re editing it. So I think you have to get it. If you go to BeyondFastingBook.com is the only place to get it right now.

Okay.

I think the other important note is that fasting, it's an art, right? Most ancient cultures were forced into times of feasting when they had killed, they feasted. But also famine. I visited a tribe like that that just came out of the mountains in Africa. I believe I was the first white person they ever saw. And they were fasting for just, I think two days before I saw them. They really hadn't eaten. But again, famine represents a very little amount of food. So you mentioned juice fasting. I'm not a fan of juice fasting because most juice people drink is going to be very high in glucose. And a glucose spike shuts down autophagy, just like too much protein. I'm a fan of partial fasting where you have to limit your calories, typically below 800 calories depending on body size. And you have to lower protein, typically under 20 grams of protein a day. If you eat too much protein, you'll shut off autophagy. If you eat too many carbohydrates, you'll shut off autophagy. So juice fasting can shut down autophagy. Now obviously you can get back in autophagy, but you're really messing with the innate intelligence of what it wants to do to kick in this healing process.

I'll hunt it down and link to the article. But I did find one juice company that makes these so called keto juices. I think it was called farmer's juice. And they're all like, because that's my beef with juices, of course, the 18 apples and the 10 pears and the, the, you know, and the 3 pounds of lemons that they squeeze into these juices. And if you look at the label, it's like 300, 400 calories of juice with a lot of glucose and sugars. And so I was looking for a juice that was super low calorie. And these ones were like, they were just a little bit of celery. Some of them had some, some charcoal and cilantro for, for binders and you know, a little bit of ginger, a little bit of lemon. So they're pretty low calorie. But I, you know, I think that if you're not juicing yourself, it's possible to hunt down low carb juices. But I think a lot of people fool themselves into thinking they're on a juice fast. And when you actually look at the calorie intake on their, you know, so called fasting day, they're, they're exceeding sometimes 100 or a thousand calories of primarily fructose during a fast. And you're still going to get some benefits because that's still, you know, at a negative calorie balance, but nothing like the autophagy benefits you'd get from no Calories or much, much fewer calories than that?

Yeah, absolutely. But I mean, to answer your question, partial fasting is going to be easier for most children where they're just in a state of caloric deficiency for a period of time in protein as well. But again, it depends on the kid. Right. We never made our kids fast. They had to choose it and get.

A blood ketone meter that also measures glucose. I think that's just a really good tool because you can see what the body's doing.

What do you guys use for a ketone meter?

Yeah, we use keto mojo.

Keto mojo, yeah.

And measuring ketones and glucose is an example. Right. So just to know if you're in max autophagy, I got this really, from Thomas Seyfried. I was in a mastermind with him, and they were talking about. He said when you hit one to one ratio with glucose and ketones, you see the max shrinkage of tumors. And during a fasted state, I was like, oh, that's just kind of the number that they had realized that we see this max shrinkage. I said, okay, so that represents max autophagy. He said, yeah. I said, oh, well, that's interesting, because now that gives me a way to measure max autophagy based on his study. So I always give him credit for that. So if you take your glucose, let's say it's 80, and you divide it by 18 just to get. Get equivalent numbers of ketones.

That's how you get the glucose to be closed, because ketones are measured in millimolars and blood glucose varies. But I believe in the U.S. what is it? Is it milligrams per deciliter? So milligrams per deciliter, like, mine's at. Mine actually is at 57 right now, actually. So if you measure milligrams per deciliter of glucose, you would divide that by 18. And then let's say you're using a ketone monitor and it's telling you you're at, like, I don't know, one and a half millimolar ketone or something like that. You would want whatever glucose number you divide by 18 to be close to one and a half for you to reach that one to one ratio.

Yes, exactly.

And by the way, for those of you holding up. For those of you watching the video, Dan's holding up an illustration right now.

Okay. And I'll explain it. So 80, if you divide it by 18, is 4.4, okay? So your ketones would have to be 4.4 to be at a 1 to 1 ratio.

Okay.

Hit max tops, you know, so you're not going to hit that just by being in ketosis. To have 4.4, you're going to have to be in a fasted state. But as you fast, you see glucose drop. Typically your glucose is going to drop to, say, 50. Now let's see what 50 is. 50 divided by 18. Now you're 2.7. Now your ketones only have to be at 2.7, but I'm going to assure you if your glucose is 50, your ketones are probably going to be much higher than. Than that. So you're going to be even above exotophagy.

Right. And just as a quick explanation for people for that is because if your carbohydrate depleted or glucose is low, your body has to burn something for fuel. It's going to shift into higher ketone utilization. So your ketones will go up as your glucose goes down and eventually you'll read that, reach that sweet spot of what you said that you learned from Thomas Seyfried Dan, the one to one ratio.

Yeah, exactly. You know, I have people, they'll text me and say, oh, my gosh, my glucose is down to 35 or 40. Am I going to be okay? First question asks is, how do you feel? I feel fine. What are your ketones? Well, it says high.

It's like 9 or 10 or something.

Oh, yeah, that's funny. The only time I've consistently reached 40s, like I mentioned, my glucose right now is at 57. I did do breath work and cold plunge with my sons this morning, which is probably why. But the only way that I'll typically be like in the 40s is if I've actually had a large amount of those. Those ketone esters I was referring to. And, you know, you can supplement your way into that. And that seems to cause a pretty significant hypoglycemic drop, interestingly, without a lot of the blah, low energy feelings you get when you're. When you're that low. And. And by the way, you guys mentioned hydrogen as being one thing that you found to really accelerate the benefits of fasting or support it. What do you use for hydrogen? The tablets?

No, we have a machine. It runs it through a tankless RO and then it makes hydrogen on the side. So you can choose hydrogen or just straight ro.

Oh, cool. Nice. That's just like under the sink.

Yeah.

Okay. All right. So, you know, I want to shift focus here a little bit because you alluded to Dan how he's the CEO of your true cellular detox company now with, you know, running over 200 employees. Last time I was down, I visited the office and of course he's got the big captain's chair and like four screens in front of him, you know, working on SEO and ads and all this stuff. I'm curious how you guys actually began to implement the kids in the family business and what that looked like.

Well, let me tell you something. This is actually a God thing and that business is actually called Pompa program and that's what they run. So I'll quickly tell the story then Merily can add to it. It was four Christmases ago, and every year I pray for a word from God and I give a little family, what would you call it, Encouragement through.

Inspiration that God's given you. I mean, you pray about it in advance and God lays something on your heart.

This year he laid it heavy on my heart and it was prophetic. I sat there where I always sit in the living room every year, and I delivered a very prophetic message to the children and that they were going to take this message far higher than me. I've been helping. I've been teaching Doctors for almost 20 years now. Everything I learned because of my own illness and coming out of my own illness of just unexplainable illness, we'll just keep it simple like that. It took me several years, but everything that I learned coming out of my own illness I now teach. But this has been a mission of mine for many, many years. Here God gives me this prophetic word to my children that they're going to take it. They're all going to be working in this mission and they're going to take it higher than me. Of course they're sitting there with looks of like, what are you talking about? We don't want anything to do with what you do, dad. They thought I was crazy, all five of them.

Trust me.

Well, it wasn't but a year later that I'm talking to Daniel about taking this, what I do, and scaling it to the world in a very way that we do it because it's. And you have to understand cellular detox. It has to be different for everybody. You can't give someone the same box. You can't put this person on the same detox as this person. Doses are different, cellular support is different. How could I structure this? I started thinking about this whole process. I came up with it. Daniel being savantly brilliant with social media, said basically, here's how we can take it to the world. And pop a program was born and we went from a company because of his efforts. And then my son Isaac became part of operations in Palm program. Now my daughter Olivia graduated chiropractic school. Now she's like training head training coach for all the coaches. And Simon, well, he's been in and out of the business. Dylan's been in and out of the business.

And Daniel and Simon are actually starting a Sibo jerky company.

Did you say Sibo Jerky?

That's another story. Let me finish this. That's a barely ism. So hold on. So the bottom line is we went from a company, zero worth nothing startup. Right. And the first year, I don't know, Maybe he did 7 million and helped. I forget how many thousands of people we took it to. The next year it was over 10 million. It's now over 20 million. And this year it looks like a. It's going to be $60 million company reaching hundreds of thousands of people. It's been a godsend and a blessing already that word from God. They have taken my message to more people than I did in 20 years. That's the ability that my children have.

Daniel had always really was very disturbed by the fact that his dad couldn't help more people with the information, the ability that he had, that he was helping people one on one. Daniel was always saying, dad, you have to help more people. We have to think of a way to help more people. When people would ask me about raising kids, my only intention was that I really had every plan and intention that I was trusting God for to raise five leaders, that was always my thing. Lord, I'm going to raise five leaders. That's all I know. Especially given the fact that you know our story and the challenges with getting two children that were not ours and the challenges that came through that as well. So that. But that was my whole intention. And the other thing that I've always said to the kids is our ceiling will be your floor.

Yeah.

And heatedly, I really do believe that when you. I mean, I know honestly, Daniel would be the one kid that would say to you, my mom put a lot of heavy stuff on me. And that heavy stuff was honestly just the thing in my heart that I really believed that God was going to do something great. In fact, I was reading something this morning on Facebook and it was a whole little thing about how men would go to God. Men would travel in the Old Testament, they would seek God, they would find him on the mountaintops and they would be with him and he would speak to them. And women can't do that. And in this message it was, well, but God comes to women. And I just thought of that. It was such a big deal for me because I said, oh my gosh, it's so true. God has come to me twice in my life. And the first time was when Danny was very sick and there were no answers. And he was not going to compromise. His philosophy of the body doesn't need help healing. It just doesn't need interference. What is the interference? And we already ate well according to everything that God has given us. And we avoided things. If man messed with it, we stayed away from it. And we didn't understand environmental toxins, of course, at that time. But that was when I remember saying, in just big frustration, enormous frustration, lord, what is happening with Danny? And God spoke to my heart. And I heard so clearly, not audibly, but I know he spoke to me. And he said, not only will Deanna get well, but I'm going to use them to take a message to the world.

Let me speak into that a little bit. I never liked when she said that to me because I was sick and I was. My exact words back to her were, I would laugh, I would say, I can't even get myself well. So why would you say. Why would you put that on me? Take a measure. Like, how possibly could I do that? Right. And so I would get angry, you know, but she would always repeat it to me, you know, despite my dislike of it. But, you know, that's what happened. So she was right.

I remember one time, I mean, it was. It was very bad, my husband was very sick. I remember one time. But by the way, I really feel that it was because God deposited that into me, that no matter what he felt, no matter how difficult he was for experiencing himself to be, or me experiencing him, it anchored me to the future and to the hope. And as believers, isn't that how we're to live anyway? Right? We're to be anchored to the hope of our faith. And the second time God spoke to me was when my cousin was killed and we were to take the kids.

That's a whole story that we. Her best friend Lisa, growing up, horrible tragedy in their family. But mom and dad died, her cousin Lisa and her husband. And we ended up with the kids through the will, actually, but two boy and a girl. They were seven at the time.

Is that Dylan and Olivia?

Yeah.

Okay.

And so we at the time had a five year old Daniel, a three year old Isaac. You know, my husband's still Just beginning to get well. He now knew what was wrong. He was on the path. And a six week old baby, that was Simon.

So imagine I just am starting to get better.

Okay.

And thinking, oh my gosh, it's so good to have my life back again. And we go from two kids in.

Six weeks to five newborn baby and then these two. That got willed to you.

Wow. Yes.

And my mom was begging me not to take the kids, begging me. And of course, I never ever thought otherwise. You know, basically I knew that not that God willed it, but in his providence, he provided and he allowed for all this to be figured out in advance. And so I remember one of the things my mother finally said to me after everything else she had been trying to say to me, to appeal to me was, what about Daniel? And I stopped in that moment because I had never thought about Daniel, but obviously birth order disrupt, you know, the whole thing. And I remember freezing in that moment. And again I said, lord, what about Daniel and God? Again, same experience, but like, boom. And he said, not only will I do great things for Daniel, I will do great things through Daniel. That's a whole other story because we have another kid in our life that I thought would have been a Daniel. Luke Winters. He's on the US Ski team. He is like our kid.

Oh, yeah. I'm in Luke love. When I was down though. He's a beast.

Yeah. And I thought Daniel would be my ski kid because he just loved it so much. And I thought, oh, that's going to be the thing God does for Daniel. No, God has really chosen Daniel to take this mission.

Yeah. It's pretty remarkable. The people that we've been able to turn their lives around through everything, like I said, all the knowledge that I learned to her first prophetic word, that God will use me to take a message to the world. And then God's speaking through me to the kids. He's going to take it higher through you kids. And now we're reaching people all over.

It's interesting how your son, it sounds like Olivia also leapt at the chance to be a part of the family business. From the time I've met you guys, you've been pretty well off and seem to make a good income and you have a nice house and your kids are well taken, taken care of, and get all the black olives and supplements that they want. And when you interact with the family like that, I think a lot of times the kids do have a kind of a silver spoon mentality and everything's been paid for. Them and they maybe don't work so hard or at least tend to sometimes slack off a little bit. And I'm curious if you guys did things like allowance, like if you gave your kids allowances and. Or if you had like, certain methods or strategies that you used to ensure that they didn't develop a silver spoon mentality growing up in a well to do household, like, did you guys do anything that would have made them kind of more hungry to be a part of the family business and contribute?

We had a greater blessing than that. We lost everything in our life. So there was a time before you knew us, Ben, where we absolutely. We went bankrupt, lost everything.

Yeah. I didn't know that.

Yeah. So when we took on the twins, we ended up in a battle with the grandmother, and it was horrible. We were in court for three years now, maybe two, I don't remember. But we lost everything and our kids going through that. It ended up to be so many blessings to us. If you would have told me that all of this was going to be one of the greatest blessings in your life. I mean, even coming out of my sickness, that ended up to be the greatest blessing of my life. And then dealing with all these legal things after we took on two kids, that disrupted our whole family unit. Yeah, it just disrupted everything in our life in dealing with this court stuff and the grandmother and all of that ended up to be more than a blessing. And one of them was that our kids knew what it was like to have. Knew what it was like to have nothing and to struggle. Honestly, that was the greatest lesson that could ever be taught and God taught it, not us.

If you asked, especially Daniel, just the emotional connection, I think, with your first born is because he's privy. Right. Firstborn kids are just kind of privy to you emotionally. He's definitely wired closely with us and was as a kid. And he would tell you if you asked him about a time when he can remember in that adversity, we had moved to our condo in the mountains and he would drive the kids when he would go to the office, an hour and a half one way to school. And he did that the balance of the year. And it was, you know, another six months from the time we moved. We chose that.

When I think about that now, I don't even know how I did it.

Yeah, that's a long ride to the bus stop. Geez.

Yeah, he did that. And there was a time when, you know, Danny didn't have gas for the truck and was on the side of the road. Basically, you Know, crying out to God. And I don't. I believe all the kids were there, but it was definitely a time that Daniel has spoken of as just, you know, just seeing your dad. First of all, seeing your dad sick. You know, my husband wasn't able to play with his kids when they were little. You know, to be the wife and experience, that was really hard. But yet again, the fortitude that I have or had came from God. So he enabled me to frame it in a way that allowed us to get through it with hope, as hard as it was. And then to have our kids go through that experience, Absolutely. They know. They know the substance of our parts. They know who we are at our core. They know when things fall apart or when things are difficult, what our source is and who it is and how we anchor to him. And circumstances don't have to make sense. Life is hard. I mean, my gosh, look around right now, right at the inside sanity, the absolute lunacy. And yet those situations have huge impact on your life. But when your core values are strong and you know the foundational premise by which you function, and it is so important to know that, you know, for everyone listening, if you haven't yet done this, you need to sit down with your kids or just sit down with your spouse. Identify your foundational premise for how you live your life. What are your values? What is the most important, important things in order of priority, and stay there, Stand on those. Teach your kids and demonstrate that.

And I think our kids, obviously, everyone's going to go through hard stuff and trials. It's how you go through it. My kids can quote the scriptures that I quoted, hanging on and telling them it's going to be okay, because I believe this. So you could look at all the hard stuff as opportunities. Going through my sickness, I always say I probably didn't get through it perfectly. I lacked faith at the times and probably got angry at God at times and questioned him at times. But the next big valley in our life, I went through it very differently, with a lot more faith and a lot more hope than I did the first time. And so when we hit adversity, our kids know where we're reaching, we're reaching out.

Yeah, I'm so glad you brought that up about family values and knowing what your family believes in merrily, because is. Not only is it kind of a repeated theme in the book, but, you know, our family even went down there to meet with somebody else who's in the book, Rich Christensen. And we actually had three days in his cabin with him riding on walls and on giant whiteboards and mapping out and listing all the things that our family, well, particularly mom and I, held dear and the things we'd inherited from our parents in terms of family values. And we wound up creating an actual mission statement for the family and a list of values that the mission statement was built upon and a family legacy playbook. And basically this whole structure, this whole branding almost of what it means to be a Greenfield and what we actually do stand for and believe in and hold dear. And I found that to be. You know, there's certain repeated themes throughout the book, like more is caught than taught and lead by example and, you know, travel for building culture and children and prioritization of family dinners and things like that. But this idea of having some type of structured or almost like ceremonial way in which you pass on the family values and the family mission statement onto the kids is just so important. Did you guys ever do anything like that? Did you ever do, like a. Like a trust document or.

We know Rich.

Yeah, we know Rich, of course.

Yeah, he's like your neighbor.

We did the exact same thing with the family. Like I said, everything we do, we live in our family. The fasting, the supplements, the detox. The very thing that got my life back is the detox that I teach. The detox that's in Pompa Program that Daniel brought to thousands of people. We live it, but it is our mission. And I had a conversation with Daniel yesterday, and Isaac was actually on the call.

Your other son Isaac, Yeah, and he.

Runs operations for Pompa Program. But it was a reminder to all of us that you know what it's like. We serve people who are crying out for answers. That's what we're called to. Because it was a decision whether we should spend this much more money on what we were actually looking to spend that much more money on to make the program that much better. It was going to cost us a lot, whole, whole lot more money to do that from a financial standpoint did not make any sense. But one of our core values in our business is the fact that we've served that mission, first and foremost, of people crying out for answers. And, yeah, it was an easy decision, but my kids are rooted in it because they saw, they suffered, and they had their health challenges later in life as they fell into the world and came back out of it.

Yeah, it seems like when I've had dinner with your family, you guys are very, very together and connected. And I see one issue, especially in a lot of modern Families is that the comings and goings throughout the day result in everybody almost being like ships passing in the night and never really connecting at any point during the day. Back to the idea of some type of a ceremonial practice worked in throughout the day, whether it be a family dinner or you know, family meditation or like I, I interviewed the gentempos and they had like the family morning hour. Everyone gathers music and burns incense and meditates and has waffles or whatever. Did you guys have anything like that? Like I seem to recall in the, in the book chapter. I don't have it in front of me right now, but I think you had mentioned you have like family game nights or things like that. Like were there certain ways that you kind of kept the family together?

Yeah, yeah, but we did game nights for many, many, many years. I mean that was something we absolutely loved.

What did that look like?

Oh, it was just always, always a blast. Boulder Dash Pictionary Family fights, cards now cards, as they got older, turned into poker.

I was going to say that now.

It'S all about poker with the kids.

Right?

But we still do it, we still love it. But you know, and then we have this Christmas thing where God gives me a word. This year was as special as the one that I talked about four years ago where I give each child prophetic words and God always gives me some type of, of vision for them and some type of prophetic word to the family or to them individually. And that's become a family tradition as well. And they've watched it walk out, they've watched every bit of that happen. And that just is just a faith builder for them.

We spend a lot of time obviously traveling as, you know, things he has to do. And we have a great time with the people that we spend time with. Case in point. But I can honestly say, and I love my people everywhere I go and love on them, that's a big thing for me. But when we come home, our kids, it's a priority like for us to be together, it's a priority for them to be with us.

Do they still live with you?

1 Simon for full time still. Right. According to Simon, he's going nowhere anytime.

And you can't just stop feeding him because we've established that doesn't work well.

See, yeah, it's the grass fed meat.

But what I really think is that, or I experience, we experience this is that our kids wanting to be with us. I think, I don't think there's anything that I could say I've Done really well as a mom. You know, I was raised by a single mother. My grandparents pretty much raised me. And I always said if I would just be there for my kids, that would be enough. And then you raise kids and you realize that wasn't enough. But what was enough is that I would always ask God to make up for what I'm not. And I would ask him to be what they look to and that they could see my intentions and my heart, even if it wasn't always in my actions.

Yeah.

And so now.

I'm looking at you because, you know, now I really feel that God has honored that. He really has. The kids have a desire to be with us. We have a desire to be with them, and we have so much fun with them. So much fun.

Mary said there was some of the best times of raising children, especially a dad with his kids were taken from me because of my illness. And that was heartbreaking for me. Honestly, looking back at my illness, it was probably the thing that. That I regretted the most, had the worst thoughts about. But now here I am, and my children are adults, and I'm working with them. How many people get that opportunity? So once again, God gave back tenfold. I think it's a hundredfold, maybe a thousand. I mean, I'm on the phone with my kids every day. I'm on meetings every day with my kids. Zoom meetings. I'm doing life with them in a big way. And, yes, dinners for us is, you know, now a lot of our kids have moved away. It's like. But when they're here, we are together.

We take trips together, too. We do business together. So we have to be together.

Exactly.

Yeah.

God has. Honestly, it is. I believe with all my heart. It is one thing, one thing only, that has unified our family, and it's trusting God and letting him know we expected it from him.

Yeah. I knew you guys were savvy travelers when I was first met you, and we went out to dinner together, and I think it was Marilee who ordered the Brussels sprouts off the menu, and she said, I'm allergic to vegetable oil. Please cook them in butter. And that was the first time I'd seen someone actually go out of their way to ensure they didn't get the oxidized vegetable oils in their dish. And now that rubbed off of me, because when I go out now, I'll ask, what's the sauce? What's the dressing? And I'll tell them, hey, could you use extra virgin olive oil or butter? Or. I was in India. I Told them to use ghee. And I actually learned that from marilee. I'm like, oh, you actually can ask them to use a different fat or oil. I never thought of that.

Absolutely. Three of the five. If you went to dinner with them, they would be saying, I'm allergic to vegetable oil, canola, and just drilling them to make sure. It's like, I'll make an exception on a dessert. You've been to dinner with us, maybe, but we don't make exception on the oils. And the reason why is because the oils stay in your cells, literally in your cell membranes, causing dysfunction for months, not days, months, if not years, of bioaccumulation. So it really is something that we make no exception on ever. But again, I'll have a dessert. Maybe she won't, but I'll have a dessert periodically. I don't care.

Well, I care what's in thei do ask which one doesn't have a vegetable or canola oil. I do. I say, which of your desserts do not have that? And I won't taste it until I know.

I'm often known for having a bottle or a bottle of extra virgin olive oil and a small bar of dark chocolate and a little bit of really good salt in my fanny pack. And so I can always kind of. Kind of play my own game with the menu. I gotta return to one thing because I'm absolutely intrigued with it. You know, we pray for our kids, as a matter of fact, every night before we go to bed. I think this is. It seems simple, but I think it's one of the keys to Jess and I having a lasting relationship. Is the very last thing we do in our heads hit the pillow is we pray. And a big part of that prayer is for our sons to grow in wisdom and discernment and for God to forgive our sons of any sins that they've committed and for them to wake committed to achieving their life's purpose that God has given them. And it's very difficult to say that prayer at night and not wake up the next morning committed to implementing, right? You pray to God, but then you put on your seatbelt and strap on your sword and go out and take action. So I feel very hypocritical if I like, you know, don't gather the family for our morning devotion and prayer, or don't check in with my sons on their Bible reading to make sure they did their, you know, Bible before breakfast, bible before bed type of habit. And the prayer manifests in all sorts of really interesting ways, which I Think is one of the powers of prayer is if it comes from the heart, you got to act it out. And so, you know, prayer is a huge part of our family and of our relationships. But, Dan, I'm intrigued about this praying for a word. You've mentioned a few times about how you do it on Christmas. What's that actually look like? Are you going off by yourself? Are you there for like an hour a day hearing voices in your head? I would love to hear a little bit more about that.

Yeah. Look, I start every day in the word, and I've done that for many, many years. You know, and when we were going through a lot of hard times, right. You know, we didn't have that opportunity to just pull in our kids and pray every day. But they saw me there every day, and to the point now where they're like, hey, could you pray this for me, dad? Can you put this in your prayer time for me? Because they know what comes out of it. But it's in that time that I get those words right and God leads it. I ask him in my prayer time, lord, give me a word for each child this year. Give me a word for the family. And it never is boom, like that. That's the way God works with merrily. I mean, boom, big things. But for me, it's something that comes and it keeps coming. And I'm reading. I read the word. I love the old Testament. I probably spend more time there. But in it, God starts to open things up to me. And then in my prayer time, he just starts to speak to my heart, and it forms the message that he gives me, and it's as clear as day. I have challenged him in it several times, like, okay, Lord, if this is what you want me to speak, if this is exactly what it is, then you have to show me another way. It's like laying fleece. Then, sure enough, God shows me another way. This year, it was a gentleman from God was giving me this word. Give me this word. And then this young man that we put through school in Africa, he sends this email, and it was like, oh, my gosh. It was just exactly what God was giving me. And I already had written out, and it was absolute confirmation. I was chasing Marilee down with it. Like, can you believe it? She's always busy. Like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. She didn't even realize the correlation until I spoke it that year of, like, what God was speaking to me and what he just cemented into my mind through what the young man gave me.

Yeah. And speaking of Words. And there's a point in your chapter in the book. And I also heard you speak at Cal Jam down in California. First time I ever saw you speak from stage, it was powerful and you were speaking Hebrew and it was raka something.

Rakazaka Motz.

Yeah, rakazaka motz. Which could be a Sesame street character, but I think it's got a little bit more meaning than that. So what does that phrase actually mean? And why is it a part of your chapter?

It means a lot to our family because I said from pain, my illness, and obviously all the other stuff that we've been through. But from pain to purpose. And the most important part of it is to promise. From pain to purpose, to promise is the key to our family. Merrily's writing a book right now of that title. But Rak Kazakh Matz when you look at the English translation in the Bible, it really doesn't do much, but the English translation is be strong and courageous. So every time someone was fearful or something God awful was going to happen, God would send somebody to speak rock. Kazakh matz but most of it is when someone's about to go into a promise God had, and they were fearful to step into the promise, whether it was Solomon sitting there as his father David was giving him the whole. Whole layout of what he was going to do because God told him that I am not building the temple, I am not taking the legacy, just like what I was telling my kids. But you are. And Solomon sitting there frantic. But it was spoken through David in the Prophet Ra, Kazakh Ahmad, Solomon, as Israel was about to cross the Jordan into the promise that God had given them 40 years before. I mean, here they are, about ready to walk in. All they saw was the 31 armies that they were about to confront instead of focusing on the promise. So here God speaks to Israel through Joshua razakamat's Israel. Here's the best part of the translation. It's not the English. The Hebrew translation means, I've already done it for you. I've already taken the battle for you. I've won the battle. All you have to do is step into the promise that I have declared for you. Pompa family. Greenfield family. So everyone has. Rick Warren wrote the number one book of all time. And it was the purpose driven life, meaning every human has a purpose. I think we all believe that. But I really believe it's stronger to know that focusing on the promise God has for you is where the fears come in. And most people don't step into the actual promise God has for them and their family, perhaps. And you know, and that's.

That.

That's Rock Cazocka Matz. He's already done it. All you have to do is step into what he already has for you.

And that's an identity issue, by the way. And I. That is a lot of what I'm speaking about in the book because it's so important for people, I think, especially now as the world just feels so hopeless for so many reasons. And even in families, good families, families whose kids love their parents and vice versa, people are still anchoring to maybe the way they've been raised. Just like I was saying, you know, if I had just, if I thought if I just raised my kids this way, it would be enough, right? So at a certain point, you know, like, I realized, wow, you know, even though Daniel now knows the thing that was in my heart, I didn't necessarily need to speak that over him because that he too young to handle it. But yet God was merciful and he allowed Daniel to step into his God given purpose in spite of me and any unfair burden I put on him. But when we identify what he says about us, then we travel that journey and amazing things happen.

When you look at the promise God gave merrily about me getting well and taking messages to the world, that was a promise that she anchored into and she.

I probably shouldn't have told you.

Yeah, she does that oftentimes better than me, honestly. Obviously, me giving the kids a promise that God's going to take this through you and reach many more people that are suffering with what helped me, that was a promise that I held onto and they watched that happen. The promises are what God will move you and promise gives you more than hope. Right? Promise is something that brings you into a calling.

It's beyond hope.

Yeah, it's beyond hope in my mind.

Yeah. Well, you guys are a really great example of this whole concept of generational legacy, passing on values to your children from practical standpoint, even doing things like, you know, prioritizing family, praying for family, and then including family in the family business, which is just. It's been amazing to see that growth and it's been inspiring to me as I kind of start down the path of something we can talk about later. I've already talked about my podcast, but me and my sons are launching a card game company right now and it's just super fun working with them and kind of seeing the writing on the wall that, that they've kind of observed and are now implementing some of the entrepreneurial and hard work principles that I've taught them and I've learned a lot from you guys as well. Merilee, when does the book come out in case I want to. I want to link to that or feature it.

I'm literally telling my husband I think I have to go. Way to finish this thing up.

Yeah. Go to Paris written.

But I have to go through it and make sure it has my voice. I've done it. I actually did it with Scribe.

Oh yeah. Scribe. Scribe Media. They're fantastic. Tucker Max's old company.

Yeah. So she interviewed me and I'm happy. But I really want it to be solely expounded upon based on things only I can add to it. And I've already. What I've spoken. But yeah. So I don't know. Hopefully in a year.

Best tip I can give you is give yourself a deadline. That's how I work. I give myself a hard deadline. Then come hell or high water, sleep deprivation or not, you just do it. I was going to say. I don't know if you heard me. One thing you could do a lot of authors do is just go to Paris for a few months and that's where the muse strikes, apparently over a glass of wine.

All right, well, I haven't been so. Okay. I might have to do that.

It just cost me some money.

Maybe not.

Sorry, Dan. Sorry.

But I will tell you the one thing that just is in the process of launching and you already can see how my allergy affects people's lives in a good way. Just ask Jeff Hayes, the fussed up foodie.

Basically, people want to always know. We travel so much, what restaurants so we get. She gets mostly because she knows all the restaurants we are in wherever city, Austin. Where do we go that's healthy. Healthy quality food. Oh yeah, she'll tell them. Four restaurants, searching them out. Yeah. So now she's doing. Well, it's not a blog, it's a.

It's more of a social media effort. But it's a website. Yeah.

For staying healthy when you're eating out.

Yeah. Fussedupfoodie.com and then you can go there and find out her take on restaurants that are out.

Yeah.

What restaurants we went to, why we liked them, how accommodating they were.

That's useful. I'm going to link to that in the show notes and by the way, it's going to be@BenGreenfieldLife.com Papas I'm also going to link to previous episodes I've done with Dan deep dives into fasting and keto and detoxification. We went deep into the science on I think like three or four episodes. I'll also link to their supplements company, all their programs and anything else you want to know about Dan and Marilene. If you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com pompas you can also leave questions, comments or feedback. For Dan and Marilee. We didn't even get to things like, you know, education and homeschooling versus public schooling, et cetera, but they have a fantastic chapter. I'm going to toot my own horn in my new book, boundless parenting@boundlessparentingbook.com so I would definitely check out their chapter there because it's a hoot and it's a great education and you're going to learn a lot from them in that chapter too, especially parent with this interview. So Dan and Merrilee, thanks so much for coming on and merrily, congratulations on getting on the podcast.

Finally, make sure you put pompaprogram.com in there, okay? Looking for answers. That's where they go.

Okay, I'll put it all in there. So Dan and Marilee, thanks. I wish I was down there in Park City with you so we could go out to some fussed up foodie restaurant afterwards, but we'll make it happen at some point.

Awesome, Ben. Love you, man.

All right, you guys, I love you. Bye Bye.

All right folks, it's coming up. It's right around the corner. It's the Health Optimization Summit. Me and my entire family are headed to London for this thing and it is crazy amazing. It's this massive expo full of the best biohacks. You get to be ahead of the curve and see this stuff before it even hits the streets. You get entrance and access to all stages and breakout talks by an amazing variety of speakers. Speakers. They've got 35 world class forward thinking speakers from the biohacking, nutrition, longevity, fitness, functional and preventive medicine fields. They've got next level exhibitors and workshops, amazing VIP experiences with parties with gadgets, with refreshments, with priority seating, with upgraded goodie bags. And the list of speakers at this event is crazy. So it's happening June 17th and 18th this year. So it's coming up quick. Jim. Jim Quick, Vishen Lakhani, Mimi Icon, my friend and dentist and former podcast guest Dr. Dominique, Dr. Jolene Brighton, Dr. Mark Atkinson, Chris Gethin, Dr. Christopher Shade. The list goes on and on. Some of the best of the best speakers, the coolest crowd and the exhibition floor is absolutely mind blowingly amazing. Plus, London is fun. Great restaurants, cool people, and it's a party. So if you want to go to this year's Help Optimization Summit, here's how to get in with a discount that's going to give you 10% off of all the regular and the VIP tickets. So again, it's June 17th and 18th to the business Design center in London and here's your code BenGreenfieldLife.comHOS23 that's BenGreenfieldLife.comHos23 use the code BenGreenfield for 10% off both regular and VIP tickets. Tickets that's Ben Greenfield for 10% off regular and VIP tickets. Enjoy.

More than ever these days, people like you and me need a fresh, entertaining, well informed and often outside the box approach to discovering the health and happiness and hope that we all crave. So I hope I've been able to do that for you on this episode today. And if you liked it, or if you love what I'm up to, then please leave me a review on your preferred podcast listening channel, wherever that might be, and just find the Ben Greenfield Life episode. Say something nice. Thanks so much. Means a lot.