Insider Secrets To Multi-Day Fasting, What Kind Of Fasting Burns The Most Fat, Boosting Your Own Stem Cells, Diet Variation, Feast-Famine Cycles & More With Dr. Dan Pompa.

Foreign. Hey, it's Ben Greenfield. When I have an amazing podcast for you, it makes me so happy. I want to sing. This podcast is really good today. It's really good because I got to interview one of my friends who I just geek out with, and it's like you get to be a fly in the wall. So if you dig the idea of being a fly, you'll love this episode. I guess it's with my friend, Dr. Dan Pompa himself in this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show.

She had seven concussions, and she had been to the best of the best, and she had tried everything, done everything. My cellular detox and the fasting transformed her world, and it fixed her. As a matter of fact, it put her back into competition, which she didn't think she was ever going to be able to compete again.

And my boys are carrying buckets around the yard, stopping and doing burpees, running. I didn't say a thing to them, right? They just saw dad doing it and realized that this was a good, cool thing to do. And in many cases, that's what it comes down to is being a good example.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

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Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield here. And I have not only one of one of my favorite guys in the world to hang out with on the podcast today, a guy who, whenever, especially in or near Park City, Utah, I geek out with, I stay at his house, I hang out with he and his wife. He's become a. A really great friend over the past couple of years. But also, I would say that the guy you're about to hear me jam with is somebody who I look up to. There's not a lot of people in the wellness world who I consider to really have things dialed in not only from a fitness standpoint and a nutrition standpoint and a cognitive performance standpoint, but also family and spiritual life and some of those things that I also hold dear. It's hard for me, in many cases, to connect with guys who kind of have a lot of things dialed in from all standpoints. Of mind, body and spirit optimization. And so for me to be able to look up to guys like the guy who you're about to hear from on today's show is pretty special. And I feel incredibly blessed to know him. His name is Dr. Dan Pompa. Dan Pompa. Dan's been on the show before. One of the most comprehensive episodes I ever did on detoxification and this concept of cellular toxicity I did with Dr. Pompa. He's considered in the circles that I roll around in to be an icon and one of the leading experts on detoxing. But he also travels around the world and he educates practitioners and chiropractic docs and the general public on the root causes of chronic diseases and inflammation and toxicity. He is a wealth of knowledge on fat loss, on hypothyroidism, diabetes, chronic fatigue syndrome, autoimmune conditions, and in the case of today's show, some really interesting, some really interesting theories and I would say very forward thinking knowledge regarding what is called diet variation, feast famine cycles and ketosis. And I should mention in addition to that, that Dr. Pompa and I have both visited park city, Utah, where Dr. Pomp actually lives and undergone the full body or spinal exosome and stem cell treatment at Dr. Harry Adelson's clinic down there. And so we both hold the mutual experience of having undergone an incredible number of injections of stem cells and exosomes up and down our spines and beyond. So that being said, Dan, welcome back to the show, dude.

Yeah, man, thanks for having me. Yeah, quite, quite the experience. And I have to admit, I was waiting. You have to understand, Harry puts you out, right? So you wake up three hours later, Dr. Harry Adelson. Yeah, yeah, Dr. Harry Adelson. And your whole body is infused with so stem cells. I mean, literally turns back the clock 10 years. Well, 20 in my case. Maybe 10 in your case, Ben. So I waited around in the recovery room because when you come out, you say some silly things. I sure did. And I waited around.

This is when you waited around for me after I'd been. I'd been under anesthesia and you had offered kindly to be the guy who could drive me home. Back to your house where I was staying.

That's right, exactly. So I'm there and your wife is there. Then I'm thinking we might get some funny things. Well, first of all, he was talking very like most of us, I'm sure do. I don't recall myself talking that way, but I'm sure I did. But Then the next, when he starts coming to, I'm thinking, here comes the good stuff. And then Ben says, I have a confession to make. Then at that point, I was looking for the door because I'm thinking, oh, you know, his wife's there, I'm there. I don't know where this is going. I mean, it's like truth serum, you know, actually, but it was okay because Ben said that I. The confession was that I am French. And then he went on to try to speak French. So pretty funny moment.

It was. I'll actually, for those of you listening in, just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com FeastFamine that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com feast famine. And I will link to the hilarious video that ensued. And you can hear, you can hear Dan in the background. And I could just imagine him shuffling towards the door, you know, expecting me to say something incredibly embarrassing, like, whatever. I have, I have a third. I have a third child I conceived on a Filipino island who's subsisting on coconuts with it. But it was, it was that I speak French. And then I went on to say a bunch of other random things. So if you guys want to see the actual video of me with my face all puffy and swollen post stem cell surgery, I'll link to that and also the videos from the, from the full body stem cell treatment. But I. What I wanted to ask you, Dan, was you. You got this treatment, I think, a couple of months before me, because I remember we went to our favorite restaurant there in Salt Lake Veneto's Italian restaurant, where there are fabulous wines. And because stem cells, one of the things they're most sensitive to is alcohol. You weren't really drinking. You were like, you would occasionally think, grab my glass and take a tiny little sip of. What's the guy who owns that place?

Yeah, Marco.

Yeah, Marco. Amazing place. So you weren't drinking because alcohol is horrible for stem cells. One of the worst things you can do when you've had a stem cell injection or you're preparing to give one. But you have also had the ability for this stuff to be able to sit in your system longer than I have. I'm about a month out from the treatment. You've had it for a while. Have you noticed much as far as the way that you feel or changes after getting the stem cell procedure?

You know, years ago, in my twenties, I herniated my disc and my back and just tortured, even fractured my neck. So I was really getting to the point where it was getting worse to the point where I didn't ski last year. I couldn't. So I can tell you that it's just been over three months. And, I mean, I can fully put my palms on the ground for the first time without pain, and I can do things that I've never been able to do again. It's been really transformative for my low back and again, my knee as well. I had a meniscus tear in there, and that's healing, really, when I tell you that it takes years off your joints. It sure does. Just injuries, old injuries, Ben. And I'll tell you, I feel I'm going to be 53 here soon, and my body now feels like back in my 20s and 30s again. So it's working.

What did they do with you? Did they take the exosomes and inject those into the joints, or did they take the stem cells out from your bone marrow? What exact procedure did you get for your discs and your knee?

Yeah, I got it drawn from my fat probably because I'm a little older. You have a little more viable stem cells in your fat when you get older, but I also got them from my bone as well as you did. Then I did get exosomes as well. Exosomes, really? They're not cells, they're not stem cells, but they're what actually stem cells produce to activate your body into healing. I think you've done it. Probably some shows on it, but not many people around the world are actually doing these exosomes. But they're extremely powerful, especially when combined with your stem cells. Your stem cells literally take up the exosomes and they activate the healing. The old kind of philosophy was the stem cells would get into those tissues that need healed and they would really just create new cells. But really the stem cells activate and release these things called exosomes, and it activates your body into developing the healing. And more stem cells.

Yeah, it's pretty interesting. I actually haven't talked about them much before in the podcast. I think probably my episode on the full body stem cell makeover that I did is going to come out after this podcast that folks are listening to right now. But, yeah, they're cell to cell signaling molecules, these exosomes. So you combine them with stem cells. And the way that Dr. Adelson, who operated on you and I, describes it is that it's like supercharging stem cells. And so you actually get the stem cells carried more efficiently to the areas or the joints that they're needed most. And you also bypass some of the issues with placental cells not being available in the US for treatment. And by using exosomes instead, you just sk tissue and you get an extremely efficient stem cell procedure done. Did they actually inject? When they do your back, do they inject the actual discs or do they inject the area around the discs?

Yeah, he uses a procedure under fluoroscopy, so it's like using an X ray, and he goes in exactly where he needs to put the stem cells. And yes, he went right into my disc and injected. And I'll tell you, I mean, it feels like I have a new back. I mean, it feels like my disc is completely regenerate. I did something else unique last week, not even a week ago. We'll get to these subjects in a moment. But just for fun, when we're on this subject, I fasted for six days. Just water, which goes through a process during fasting, which we'll talk about called autophagy, where your body literally eats all the bad stuff, but then it raises up its stem cells naturally. So then I fasted for six days. I got my stem cells to a naturally really high point. Then I went into Dr. Harry and I injected more of my own stem cells because I had them harvested like you did, and then more of the exosomes, I'll tell youit was an absolute high for two days. That's all I can tell you.

Have you never got them injected systemically, like into your blood?

I did. I got them into my blood because I figured my own stem cells. Your body, during a fast, is releasing all these incredibly healing matrixes and others rising up its own stem cells and exosomes. So I figured I'm going to just take it to the next level. That's what I did. I might be the only one that'si'm sure I'm the only one in the world that's actually injected exosomes after a fast like that to maximize six days.

Six days. You fasted. You're. You're one of the few guys I know who not only fasts regularly and legitimately does it. Like a lot of people talk about fasting, but when I go and stay with you, like, you legitimately fast, like, I'm at your house sometimes, and you're, like, out mountain biking and walking, and you just have these big dinners at the end of the day a lot of times, or, you know, small snacks throughout the day, and then, then a big dinner at the end of the day. There's one other guy I know who does this? Todd Waite from Dry Farm Wines. He's another guy who I'll hang out with somet. And he just goes the whole day. Then at the very end of the day he has like a bottle of wine, a whole bottle of his, of his special, you know, it's low, low sugar, low alcohol because almost like a keto wine, very high in antioxidants. And then he just has this amazing scrumptious meal at the end of the day. Now I want to actually talk a little bit about fasting with you and also this concept of diet variation, a feast famine cycle. But when you're doing something like a six day fast to increase the viability of your own stem CE and prepare your body to better absorb like exosomes and stem cells that you actually underwent recently. What does a six day fast look like for you? We've got time, so just go ahead and fill us in on your strategies on extra supplements you take, how you keep your appetite satiated. Tips for people who would want to do something like a six day fast.

Well, you know, I mean years ago I was trained in fasting and so this isn't, it's kind of new now. I mean, I would say it's gotten more popular, but I've been doing this fasting for a long time. There's a lot of myths about fasting, like you lose viable muscle. It's simply not true. You lose bad muscle, you lose bad cells. One of the things, there's a scientist named Valter Longo who's made fasting more popular and he calls it a fasting mimicking diet, which is even just what I would refer more to as a partial fast. But he has a very specific food you eat, etc. He's trademarked the name fasting mimicking diet. But the point is this is that years ago they thought, okay, when you're fasting, your immune system gets lower because you're losing white blood cells. Your white blood cells drop significantly and you're losing muscle. These are bad things about fasting. Well, as it turns out, what new science shows is the massive drop in white blood cells that we actually see is a darn good thing. Here's why. Because of this autophagy that I explained where the body will literally eat all of the bad proteins, DNA, muscle, whatever it needs to get these amino acids, it will eat the bad tissue. In this case, they realized that the body was eating the mature, or I would say overly mature hyperactive white blood cells, the ones that overreact, drive Autoimmune allergies, asthma. I can go down a list. Food sensitivities. These blood cells are overreacting. They're too sensitive. Realize the innate intelligence in your body that knows best, literally was eating those blood cells. Now here's the best part. What they realized was, is that the body fires up the stem cells and then it replaces those white blood cells with new, more naive, as he puts it in his literature, blood cells that are not hyperactive. That's why we're able to downregulate autoimmune gut issues. And really so many different autoimmune hypersensitivity reactions with fasting, because you're getting rid of these hyperactive cells. So, by the way, the same thing happens in muscle. You're not losing viable muscle. You're actually losing just bad muscle that's not recovering anymore. Bad DNA, bad proteins. And then the stem cells are replacing the proteins. I challenged my son and he's a 4% body fat guy, young stud, right?

Which son was this?

Well, both, actually. It was Isaac, he was probably about 16 maybe at that time. And then my son Daniel, you know, both of them actually, they fasted. And I said, a month later, you'll actually put muscle on. You'll gain muscle. Mark my words. Sure enough, in both of them, that's exactly what happened. Because they were like, well, if I fast, I'm going to lose all my gains. I said, no, you'll lose a certain amount of weight. In Isaac's case, I said, you'll probably lose about eight pounds. But watch what happens a month from now because of the stem cells replacing the bad proteins. And now you recover better and therefore gain muscle. So it's actually, we use it clinically now. I train hundreds of doctors around the country on these protocols, which we're going to talk about these feast famine cycles, fasting, etc. But we utilize this to get people to gain weight, believe it or not, and get people obviously oftentimes to lose weight, but more for health, to regulate autoimmunity, et cetera. So it's a tool that we could never really help the people that we help.

Yeah, it's interesting because there's another guy I know, Sal Di Stefano, who's been on the podcast before. He's with the mind pump group. And he's another guy who, who has told me that when he fasts, he'll go for a certain period of time and he's swole. Like, he's a big dude and muscular and he'll fast for several Days, lose a little bit of weight and then just gain a bunch of muscle afterwards because the body all of a sudden becomes more sensitive to anabolic stimulus. It's very interesting, it's almost counterintuitive and I think probably the biggest mistake that a lot of people make is they, when they're going through the fasting period, exercise a little bit too much or stress out the body too much. I think fasting pairs well with sauna, with some cold hot thermogenesis, like hot cold contrast saunas mixed with cold baths, easy walks in the sunshine, swims, yoga, stuff like that. And then you get back into the hard anabolic eccentric training or weight bearing training at least as far as hard training is concerned. After now when you fasted foroh. Go ahead.

Yeah, no, you're right. I don't even want to leave that point because I mean people you can over exercise during fasting and people who have health challenges, we want to use that energy for healing. Very healthy people, you and I could exercise during a fast, but even myself, I don't go as hard as I normally would go. I take it easy and I want to conserve my energy and use it towards the healing process. But you're right, many people over exercise when I water fast and there's different types of fasts, but when I pure water fast, there's very few supplements that I take and I always only ever take a supplement that doesn't push the body one way or another. I don't take herbals, I'll take maybe some electrolytes, but typically I'll just do some sea salt and typically I don't even need that. But many people do because you lose a lot of glycogen stored sugar, therefore you lose a lot of water and therefore you lose a lot of electrolytes. The first three days of a fast, taking an extra sea salt, 2 to 4 grams a day, or some straight electrolytes without sugar. You don't want sugar. I don't drink coffee during an extended fast. I don't drink tea again, I just want to do water and very few supplements like I said. Maybe some magnesium if someone's getting cramps, if someone's getting some detox symptoms. There's a product called Bind that we would allow that just stays in the gut so it doesn't go systemic. Cytodetox I talked about, doctor, is bind.

Like an activated charcoal.

There's four different types of binders in it. One of them is a super activated carbon that we test because most carbon is toxic but, yes, there's four different types of binders in there from humates, folvates, and there's another binder from Africa. Plus the carbon. It just sits in the gut. However, it doesn't leave the gut. It doesn't interfere with the fast.

Okay, so you take that. And then you also said you take.

Cyto detox, but I wouldn't takei don't typically take the bind. If I decide to do a coffee enema during the fast, then I would take the bind, because I like to take bind 30 minutes before coffee enema. It sits in the gut, acts as a catcher's mitt. So when you dump your toxic bile, and that's what a coffee enema really does. And it has a catcher's mitt, so you don't auto intoxicate and reabsorb. But otherwise, I don't get symptoms. When I fast, I feel absolutely amazing. As a matter of fact, this fast, I had so much energy, I typically only require, like, five hours sleep when I'm fasting and I am going all day. I literally get two weeks worth of work done in one week. I mean, it's extraordinary. So I don't need it, but however, I just took about 10,000 people on my Facebook through a fast. We literally, I think, have the record as far as how many people were actually fasting with us. And so many people get different symptoms.

That's a lot of hungry people.

Yeah, well, they get a lot of detox symptoms. I mean, their fat is holding on to many toxins and they let them go. So bind would help them. And then even the cyto detox, which isit goes more systemic and it could knock down a lot of the symptoms.

Doctor. Yeah. I actually want to ask you about the cyto detox because you gave me the new formula for that the last time I was at your house. And I want to ask you about it, but before we get off this topic of bind, because I do, you know, I know we sound like a couple of complete health freaks talking here to people who aren't familiar with this stuff, but I do a coffee enema everywhere. Like, every Wednesday morning, I do a coffee enema. It's like my beauty morning. I do a clay mask to detox my face, and I jump up and down on the trampoline, and I do an infrared sauna, and I do a cough. It's like I was telling my wife this morning, because it's actually Wednesday when we're recording this, Wednesdays, I feel absolutely amazing because I'm clean as a whistle. I'm fully detox and just everything just feels clear, like a complete clean slate. Every Wednesday I just push the reboot button on my body with the sauna clay mask and the coffee enema. But I'm curious about this bind stuff because I haven't used that before. Where do you, where do you get. Is this a supplement that you make? Is this something you can get on Amazon or Where do you find this bind stuff?

It's probably. It's a fourth generation product. Years ago I constructed it out of special carbon and different binders. Then each just keeps going to the next level of how we make the product better because it's a cornerstone product of the detox. If you're autointoxicating, meaning you're dumping, most of your toxins end up in your liver and that's where your bile is. They bind up to bile and you use bile to digest fat so it gets dumped into the gut. But the problem is the body's designed to reabsorb the bile so it brings the toxins around. This grabs that toxic bile complex and pulls it out of the body so you don't reabsorb. So it's a cornerstone for what we do. And then that cyto detox really works more at the cellular level and brings the toxins to the liver and out of the body.

So bind would be for more of the gut to keep reabsorption from occurring. And then the cyto detox would be more for the cells.

Let's make sure you have it on your site. You can sell it on your site. We'll make sure that you have buying you sell it from your site.

Alright, we'll talk later. And what I'll do is I'll just get a link and a code for people if they just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com FeastFamine because I want to get some of this for myself to try for this weekly Wednesday cleanup that I do on my own body. But then this cyto detox stuff, fill me in on how that works. And also this new formula, because I used to use this little white bottle that you'd give me. And now the last time I was in Park City you gave me a couple bottles. It's like this really tasty little dropper bottle. It tastes almost like an orange creamsicle, but apparently it's even more effective than whatever you were making before.

Yeah, you know, one of thethe original cyto detox, which we've used as a group of doctors, and it's sold to practitioners, but actually, you actually have an ability to sell it as well. It's a very strong product. And the original one was as well, there's these little particles in there called clinoptilolate, not that that's important, but they have an ability to cross into the membranes and into the cell. That's where the magic happens. Because real detox has to be at the cellular level for really people to feel better, for people to actually really detox.

A lot of people don't realize that, that when you take a bunch of cilantro and charcoal and chlorella. I learned this from you. A lot of times, not only do you not detoxify the actual cell, because a lot of that isn't getting into the cell membrane, but in many cases, it can just allow toxins to float freely through the body and wind up in the brain, where they create, like, Mad Hatter's disease and brain fog. And they can damage neural tissue.

Yeah, Yep, absolutely. And that's why using real binders is magic. And that's the key. So the cyto detox goes into the cell. And by the way, that's where you have to detox. I mean, there's nothing wrong with a colon cleanse. You and I both just said that. We do coffee, enemas. All that's great because it opens up the downstream pathway. But if you don't get to the cell, you won't get well. And if you don't detox the cell, you're not going to get well. So the cyto detox goes into those precious membranes, into the cell, where get the toxins out. Now, the new formula you asked me about, the old one, was just these small particles that would go into the cell membrane. But one of my visions a couple years ago was to broaden the span of particles to actually have bigger ones, not just smaller ones. Therefore, some of them would stay outside of the cell and act as, again, catcher's mitts, Just kind of like the bind product in the gut. The reason is because most people that get symptoms during real detox, it's because toxins are redistributing, recirculating. I wanted to have bigger particles that don't enter into the cell, that clean up, literally mop up the toxins. Here was the challenge. The challenge was the bigger particles don't get past the gut. The new one is liposome. We have liposomed particles to get the small ones and the big ones across the gut. The small ones will Enter the cell, the bigger ones will stay out then also I talked about, I like multiple types of binders because they bind very differently. There's fulvates also in this product, which typically don't leave the gut, but because the liposome bring the folvates in, now we have multiple binders and we have a broad range of these particles that bind multiple different types of toxins. Product works.

When I went to Veneto with you last time, because we drank a lot of wine, I think we had like nine of us there at the table and maybe went through, you know, seven, eight bottles of wine, which is, you know, it's a decent amount good, good Italian imported wines. You had a couple bottles of Cyto detox out in your kitchen counter before we left. And I've been doing this since I saw you doing it just whenever I have alcohol in general because, you know, even, even good alcohol, it's still got some, some toxins in it. You know, I mentioned Todd White from Dry Farm Wines earlier. I also use this, this wine called Fitvine Wine that filters out, I think the 60 plus different toxins that are allowed in wine nowadays. And so if you use like a biodynamic, really fine micro filtration on a wine, you get rid of a lot of these toxins. But regardless, you get acetaldehyde, you get some amount of toxins from the alcohol. Would cyto detox be something that you could use as like a daily detox rather than going through, let's say like a full on one month out of the year, complete full on detox. Could you use cyto detox daily, for example, on the days that you're drinking or the days that you're flying on airplanes, et cetera?

We went with the UAC Ultimate Achievers Club group of doctors and we go to Napa every year and we bring cyto detox because it's glyphosate. I mean, the Napa wines, no matter what there's. Because they don't dry farm, which they irrigate. Dry farm means the vines go deep and find moisture down deep. However, most of the Napa wines are irrigated and therefore it brings the glyphosate. That's the chemical they're using as an herbicide, pesticide. And it's devastating to our gut anyways. We use the cyto detox to avoid being exposed to that because it does, it binds it, it. So we keep ourselves clean that way.

Okay.

And it helps with the alcohol, it helps with the hangover. Man, I mean, you know the acetaldehydes, you know, just that's what creates the dang hangover. And you know, it also has an effect on that.

Yeah. Okay, Soso the cyto detox, about one dropper full. You could do that for example in the morning and in the evening.

Yup, that's exactly right.

All right, so back to your six day fast. You're basically using the bind. You're doing water and you're doing the cyto detox.

Yeah.

And minerals or electrolytes.

Yeah, I mean you don't have to do that. Right. Some people can just purely water fast. However, what you just said, that little protocol absolutely works magic for down regulating the symptoms that could come with fasting. There's another product we actually developed because when you're fasting a lot of very toxic people produce something called hydroxy free radicals. It makes you feel like crap. Simply put, hydrogen molecules, which you know about these, they downregulate the hydroxy free radicals present in fasting. So the product's called fast tonic. You could also sell that one on your site as well, put that in the show notes. But those are typically only products we would ever take during a fast. It's about water and that's as simple as it gets. Everyone always says, so what else can I do during the fast? What else can I eat or take? Nope, that's just it. And again, that's a pure water fast we're talking about.

Okay, so that stuff's called fast detox.

Fast tonic is the other one that down regulates fast tonic hydroxy radicals. Okay, so fast tonic, like it's a tonic. Fast tonic.

Okay, so basically like a 1, 2, 3 combo for all your fasting would be the bind cyto detox fast tonic. Take some minerals and then drink some water.

There you go.

Okay. When you're drinking water in your own home, do you use some kind of special water filtration system?

Yeah, I mean I have a whole house like you do. And then I also have just an RO unit just to make sure at the point of service that I'm filtering out anything that would possibly get by. People always ask that what kind of water can I fast with? I always say find a good clean water that you like the taste of. I definitely stick to glass. If you're buying bottled water, you could find a really good spring water that you absolutely love. Find one you love because that's what you're going to be enjoying. Hot water actually, or warm water, sipping it with a little salt. And it can actually curb appetite. The Chinese would do that just to curb appetite. So when you're fasting on day three, day four, that warm water just. It's magic. Then here's the other question I get. Can I drink sparkling water? Yes. But it can be a little irritating for some people. So I wouldn't exclusively do that, but a little bit would be fine. Then here's the other question I get. How much water do I drink? My answer is going to be a little surprising. For most drink when you're thirsty. The body's that smart. It really knows when to tell you to drink more water when it needs it. Drinking too much water can actually work against you. It can actually work against your kidneys and some of your detox, actually.

What do you mean it can work against your kidneys?

Yeah, meaning that you can actually drink too much water and actually strain your kidneys and your kidney function. So your body is very intelligent. If you're out exercising on 100 degrees, I would recommend drinking before you're thirsty. However, when you're in a fasting state, your innate intelligence is at a very, very high level. And it knows exactly what it needs when. And you will become thirsty. Don't push it. As a little experiment, there's something called a dry fast where you don't drink water at all. There's a dry fast where you're literally not even showering because the innate intelligence will pull moisture from the shower. But I just said, you know what I'm going to drink when I was thirsty. I actually went two days without water at all before I got thirsty. Here's what happens. You actually get a three to one autophagy with a dry fast. Meaning you're going to eat more bad cells. Why? Because your body needs water. Where's it going to get it? It's going to get it from your fat cells.

Primarily because beta oxidation frees up water.

Exactly. So it's that smart. So we know that people want to dry fast. Look, most dry fasting don't try it at home. I mean, meaning that I go under some supervision. I mean there's some things that you have to know. But the point is that the body is that smart and drink when you're thirsty. And that's the main point.

Okay, so this dry fasting, basically, that simply involves just barely drinking anything at all during the actual fast.

Yeah, no, exactly. And again, my son dry fasted for almost four days. I had a client of mine, I do all virtual coaching, so I have to say client, not patient. But he went 12 days without food or one sip of water. Every time he tried to sip water, he vomited and threw up. He was that sick. He didn't choose to drive fast. He. But literally he went 12 days without food or water. And it actually ended up to be the thing that fixed him. I was at a seminar once and I was there with Joe Mercola, who I've actually convinced about fasting now. So he's very into fasting now. But there was a woman at one of the seminars that was on day eight of a dry fast. Literally no water, not even a sip, which. There's a whole community of these dry fasters. Again, I would not recommend that. I would recommend many fasts before you would even attempt a dry fast. However, I live in Utah. I'm not Mormon. However, the Mormon culture here actually dry fast one day, 24 hours, once a month. I didn't even know that.

No kidding.

Anyway, it's pretty unique that we have a whole culture that we can learn from. My doctors that I coach, we all experimented with dry fasting ourselves. Some people did one day, two days, three days, etc. And the results were across the board. Some people got a lot of symptoms. Some people it was very easy for. So very interesting.

Okay, so with thewith the water. One thing I wanted to return to real quick before we keep going, because I wanna ask you about this concept of a feast famine cycle and this diet variation that you were talking to me about a little bit at your house. I still wanna be able to wrap my head around. But one thing you said that you use both a whole. Whole house filtration, but then also reverse osmosis. What do you mean by that?

Yeah, point of service, you know, just it pushes the water obviously through a membrane.

And there's point of service meaning, like at the. At the level where the water is actually entering your home. So that's in your shower, in your kitchen sink, everything. It's going through a reverse osmosis.

No, it's going through the whole house system, which is a kdf. And then it has some carbon and other.

Okay, it's a carbon filter. So. So you go through like a whole house carbon filter, which means you filter out a lot of. Lot of toxins, but. But you retain some of the minerals and then you also have reverse osmosis.

Correct. And then also at the point service where I actually fill my water glass up, so to speak, then I have an RO unit as well.

Okay, I gotcha.

So you're sh.

For. So for example, when you Shower at your house, you're showering in water that's gone through that whole house. Carbon filtration. But then the water that you're drinking from like youryour main faucet in your kitchen, that's reverse osmosis.

Correct. And there's another. The whole house has kdf. It's a different technology. Plus the carbon. Yes. So whole house filtration, plus what I drink.

Okay, I'll hunt down some links to this for those of you listening in and I'll just link to everything that we're talking about over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com FeastFamine so that you can kinda check out some of these filters and stuff. I'll do some research and link for you guys and get some information from Dan too if you guys want to set up your house filtration system. Because I've stayed at Dan's house and he, like me, has converted into no WiFi, no Bluetooth, hardwired ethernet, everywhere, the annoying cables because you can't get on the Internet unless you plug into the wall. So he's, he's got his own little healthy home going on down there. So anyways, talk to me about this feast famine cycle and diet variation. I don't know if they're the same thing. Do they work pretty well to talk about both at once, dan?

Yeah, they.

Dr. All right, fill me in. Let's take a deep dive into this stuff.

Let's start here because there's seasonal diet variation, there's monthly and there's weekly and we'll cover them all. Look, when you, you have these hardcore people on both sides of the diet spectrum, you have your vegans, your vegetarians, and then on the other side are your plant based people, I should say. And then on this side you have your Paleo and the T. Rex diet, the all carnivore diet, the keto people. I'll tell you, when you talk to these people, they're very passionate about how this particular diet changed their world, changed their life. And so therefore they're going to try to convince everyone that their diet's right. I have been down those roads. But my diet variation is very different because basically it's saying, hey, you're all right. Because what I believe is that every ancient culture, and I've been to many every ancient culture, they have times where they're in all of those different diets. As a matter of fact, the Hunza people, who are considered one of the healthiest long living people in history, when the Brits would Come there in the summer, they thought they were vegetarians. What they missed was they left during the harsh winters and they were in a hardcore ketosis diet every spring. It's known as fasting spring with that culture, because every spring they would fast, probably because they were in between food supplies. However, it became part of the culture now recognized for why the culture actually lived as long healthy as they did. It was more about the fast than it was even what they were eating. The diet variation principle is this. It really is about changing your diet. And it's the hormone optimization that occurs when you are forced to change your diet via the adaptation that actually is needed to make the change. Therefore, it optimizes certain hormones that we benefit from every time we change our diet. It's not about one diet. The magic is the switch. I move in and out of ketotic states, I'm in and out of ketosis. I may be in it for two months, three months, maybe even two weeks. And then I'll go to maybe even a plant based diet for a period of time, or a higher healthy carbohydrate diet for a period of time. The bottom line is no culture ever stayed in a ketosis diet or even a paleo diet. The moment they had healthy carbs, they started eating them. Even the Eskimos. That's a seasonal variation, but there's also monthly and weekly. Let's just stop there. We'll discuss that before we move on to these other strategies. And by the way, I'll say this, who is this for and why it said that women shouldn't do low carb diets too long or ketosis, thyroid people, adrenal people, or those of you listening and said, I've tried ketosis, I didn't feel good, or I didn't lose weight, or I couldn't even get into ketosis. All of you people listen, because this whole strategy is being used by now, hundreds of us doctors around the country with amazing success. And I believe even for people who want to live long, healthy, this is the way to do it.

Doctor, okay, so stopping there with the seasonal diet variation, and I agree with you, it's very difficult to find any long lived population on the face of the planet that eats strictly vegetables or eats strictly ketosis. You know, people ask me about why ketosis is the ultimate diatom. It's not like, name me one blue zone, for example. That'sthat's pure strict ketosis. All year long you have periods where you go into ketosis and usually it's not from Sucking down exogenous ketones and putting butter in your coffee. Usually it's from fasting that you're getting into that state. But anyways though, so this idea of seasonal variation, how do you know which seasons, what to eat?

Well, look, I mean, you could look around you and say what's ripe, right? And that's a good variation. I mean, that's a really good way to do it. And I think there's magic in that. And people even make lists of foods on the Internet, like these are the seasonal eating things in your area. I mean, it's really easy to find now. So that's one way. However, even without that, because my schedule is to kind of odd and I travel a lot like you, I'm forced to vary not because of the environmental changes, like the different tribes. One of the tribes that I visited, they were always in different drought and environmental pressures that forced them to change for me, traveling. So when I went to Italy, yeah, I ate like the Italians. When I went to Israel, I ate like the Israelis. So those were forced changes. So I oftentimes will be on a diet for two months and then I'll move out into another diet simply out of boredom sometimes. But here's what I've noted. When I make the change, it's like I immediately get leaner. I immediately get more muscular without doing anything except changing my diet. All of a sudden, now I'm eating higher carbohydrate diets and I'm ripped. I'll tell you, Ben, it happened to me. I was hardcore in ketosis, probably around a year or so. I started getting some chub on my belly. Being in my 50s, most people would think it's age. But that was not normal for me because when I went into ketosis, I got extremely lean. It worked very well. My energy, everything was awesome. Now I did what most people would do. I was probably 50, 60 carbs a day, no problem. And staying in ketosis, no problem. So I lowered it to 30. Then I realized it's not going away. I went down to 10 grams of carbs a day or less. And I realized it was getting worse. My belly was getting worse. And then I noticed I was actually losing muscle. So what did I do? I started researching like many and I even found that ketosis long term can cause insulin resistance and store fat, lose muscle. But I realized, wait a minute, it's actually not insulin resistance like diabetics. It's that the fact is, here's what happened very simply. The body's so smart when you Go and do this low carb ketosis diet. You're forcing the cells to use fat as energy, as its major energy. Your cells can only use sugar or fat. When we force it to use mostly fat, eventually all it wants to do is survive and hold onto its fuel source in case it needs it. What does it do? It starts to slow down fat metabolism. Because God forbid, it uses all of the fat, it's. It slows it down, it becomes more efficient at using fat. Here's the example. You're in the middle of Alaska or where Ben lives, and you're in a cabin in the heart of a really hard winter, and your only fuel source is a stack of wood outside. In the beginning, you're using your wood. You're keeping your little cabin at 75 degrees, feeling great. The winter now is getting long and hard. You look out in your wood supply. Your only source of fuel is diminishing, dwindling. What are you going to do? You're not going to burn more fat or wood. In this case, you're going to start burning less and less. Then you're going to be happy it's 60 degrees because now you're thinking of survival. This is what your body's doing. This is what your metabolism is doing. It starts to burn less. The wood supply is getting less. Now you have a friend that comes by and he's checking on you and he sees that your wood supply is down. He has so much, he dumps you more and says, here, man, I got plenty. Now what are you going to do, Ben? You're going to start burning the fuel again. You're going to start burning fat up again. That's what these feast days as we're talking about. Feast, famine. So now what I learned was when I threw carbohydrates at myself, all of a sudden, two days later, I look down and I'm leaner. Matter of fact, my ketones even went up. How is that possible? Because my body said, man, let's just start burning the fuel. We fired up the fat burning again. So we need feast days, just like any ancient culture would to remind our body it's not starving. That's where I got this. Then one more thing, just one more example. I had a really difficult client who was not losing weight in ketosis. I had her on a very healthy diet, plant based, still low carb, wasn't losing weight there either. I moved her into ketosis. She couldn't even get into ketosis. She was not burning fat. I did that for three months. And then I moved her back onto the diet that I had her on prior. All of a sudden she goes back on that diet and she starts losing weight. I'm like, how is that possible? It stopped. She lost maybe 8 or 10 pounds and it stopped. I kept her on that diet for a few more months and I moved her back into ketosis. Lo and behold, now she goes into ketosis and she actually lost some weight in ketosis. Same thing happened to Marilee, my wife, who, you know, she struggled, like many women to get into ketosis. Really solid. She's perimenopause. So that probably has something to do with it. By the way, this is who this works for really well. Likewise, I moved her out of ketosis and then I put her on another diet and then three months later moved her back in and boom, she got into ketosis at a much deeper level. That switch for my wife over the last, whatever, that's a few years ago now, but over a year's time made her so metabolically flexible, meaning she can now move in and out of ketosis. She can get into ketosis in just two days.

This is interesting. When you look at this from an ancestral standpoint and you look at a lot of these tribes, I know even Native American tribes that you certainly studied, studied a lot have, you know, when you investigate these indigenous tribes, in the winter, a lot of times they become fat adapted, they shift to ketosis. They, you know, for example, I think it's the sheep eaters of Wyoming I've seen you talk about where they adapted their diet by eating bighorn sheep, right, as their, as their mainstay for winter survival. But then in the summer, they would eat roots and berries and prickly pears and beans and mosquitoes, skeet pods and mustard seeds and pumpkins and gourds and what would be considered like a higher carbohydrate diet and in many cases also work in resistant starches so that they produce a lot of short chain fatty acids to allow them to maintain the fat metabolism. And something else that's important to note here is that it makes sense from a pure metabolic standpoint. This is something I learned a long time ago when I interviewed the author of Lights Out Sleep, Sex and Survival. I think it's called T.S. wiley. And she talks about how when your vitamin D levels rise in the summer, you become more insulin sensitive and more hormone sensitive. So during the summer, when a lot of these more carbohydrate or fructose rich foods, or squashes, et cetera, are growing, your body is able to better metabolically handle those. And the other thing I wanted to ask you about, in addition to what we can gather from observing these indigenous populations and the way that their diets vary, is the idea in Ayurvedic medicine, Ayurvedic diets, for example, of switching to hot, warming, spicy soups and stews and heated foods in, for example, the fall in the winter versus cooling foods in the summer. Have you looked much into the Ayurvedic concepts that could be tied into this?

Yeah, no, I think that they are big into the seasonal eating and that's basically what they're saying is, hey, look, there's times to eat certain foods. Matter of fact, what we've learned is that our microbiome actually changes seasonally and therefore makes certain foods, even us, crave certain foods more. If you look at their principle is grains should be eaten in the fall because what happens is your microbiome shifts and you actually have the highest level of, of enzymes needed to break down these really hard proteins like gluten for three months of the year. We just happen to have these high levels of these certain enzymes needed to break down grain. Go figure. Grains harvested in the fall, however, today it's harvested all through the year and people eat grain all year, throughout the year. Which again is another explanation for why people have trouble with gluten because you simply don't have the ability to digest it well enough through certain times of the year. Here's the cool thing when you look at it. What oftentimes shifts the microbiome is there's a theory that the position of the sun literally has a lot to do with it. It's not just the weather, the temperature, etc. But literally where the sun is and the sky can literally change our bodies and our microbiome and has an effect on our bacteria, which has effect on our enzymes and what foods we should eat more of and less of. So there's a heck of a principle there.

Do you know what the best book I ever read, I think is on? On this idea of seasonal variation and, and what to eat and when. That's a little bit more as we've kind of talked about indigenous population and kind of ancestral tribe based versus Ayurvedic based.

Was it John Dellard's book?

No, John Dellard's book is good. He's the guy who wrote the book Mind Body Sport. But there's this guy who flies under the radar. He was on my podcast two years ago. He hails from the first nations in Canada. And he grew up on the diet of his indigenous ancestors, meaning he was eating wild organ meats from the animals he hunted and feasting on the wild salmon that he caught. And he learned from the first nations people their entire medicine wheel, their entire seasonal diet that they follow. He's a very interesting guy. He's a professional martial artist. He's on my radar as somebody. I want to travel up to Canada because it'd only be about a six hour drive for me to go visit with my kids for them to kind of see what a, what a, what a version of like a mix between a Chinese medical practitioner and a First nations physician is like. But he was not only on my podcast and if you guys go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com FeastFamine I will link to my podcast with him. But he wrote a book, flies. You can't even get it on Amazon. It's only on his website and I've got a copy here in my office. It's called Returning to an Ancestral Diet. Returning to an Ancestral Diet. Amazing read. You dig this one, Dan, and it digs into in really good detail a lot of these concepts. You know, if you wanted to know, hey, spring eat this and summer eat this and winter eat this. He's also a big proponent of a cannabis based medicine and so hehe just he's got a lot of things going for him as far as being like a healer and a fighter and a good source of knowledge. So he would be a cool guy for you, for you to talk to as well. Dr. Michael Smith up in Canada.

Yeah, I'm gonna. If you have a connection, I would love to interview him on my podcast as well.

Yeah, I'll connect you guys after this, after this show and I'll put a link in the show notes. So one of the things that you alluded to before we took a dive into seasonal variation was how this looks like from a weekly variation standpoint. And I think the way that you described it to me was 511-511. Can you go into that?

Yeah, exactly. Let's talk about why this actually works and then that'll make the 511 will even make more sense. Everything is about adaptation. The body just wants to survive and it does it via adaptation. I think your viewers can understand this. Probably the best look when you first start a workout routine, you get these amazing results or if you haven't worked out in a while and you start working out, everybody gets results. Then it plateaus, then you're watching late night TV and you see the new thing. Maybe it's the TRX or who knows, you get it and you start doing this new thing and you think, oh my gosh, this is the bomb. I'm losing weight again, I feel better. Look at the muscles I got. But then it plateaus again and then you switch to the next thing. The point is that it's not the exercise, it's the change, it's the adaptation. When the body, you switch nutrients. You know how it is, Ben, when you go into a new gym, you get a better workout. My gosh. Just because the angles are different, why the body had to adapt. It's the adaptation that creates the growth, it's the adaptation that creates the fitness. If you stop forcing your body to adapt, you're not going to get fit. You have to force adaptation. That's what these dietary changes do. Feast, famine cycles, when you look at it weekly, is where the magic is every time. And I'm writing a book on it right now, so I have a lot of sights on this. But every time we switch diets, we force the body to adapt the microbiome and also hormonally growth hormone actually rises and so does norepinephrine by the way. Both of those rise when you switch your exercise as well. What happens is once it adapts, then you still get the benefits of the growth hormone and of the norepinephrine which has this massive anti inflammatory effect. The norepinephrine drives all these other hormones that benefit our brain and our bodies and our cells. The change of diet forces the adaptation. Feast, famine. It's funny because in this book I just found, this was probably three days ago, I just found a study, they compared an all fat diet throughout the week. It was just high fat, low carb, continually, every day. Then they also looked at a low fat diet every day of the week. Then they did what they called alternating the diet. They would do one day, say Monday where they did high fat, low carb and then on Tuesday they ate one meal, that was the fast the next day. High fat, low carb again, that was the feast next day, one meal fast next day. So they alternated. Well put it this way, the alternating diet outperformed the high fat, low carb diet easily. And it also outperformed the low carb, I'm sorry, the low fat diet every day as well. The alternate. And they explained it, it's because it raises this norepinephrine, it creates an adaptation which ultimately creates a hormone optimization. The reason why people can't stay lean, be lean is more about hormones than it is about the food you're eating. Therefore, how do we optimize our hormones for muscle gain, for leanness, for health, for energy, for our brains to work better, we have to drive adaptation. Therefore we do it by changing our diet more frequently. That's the concept. The 511 we start people on is where they'll do five days of a regular diet or intermittent fasting where maybe you eat in a six hour window or an eight hour window. Then one day you pick and just fast. Either don't eat it all or eat one meal just like in the study. Then the next day, it doesn't have to be the next day. These could be completely separate days. And one day where you feast, that's my Saturday, I will eat high healthy carbs. Or we go to my favorite Italian restaurant. That's the one that reminds our body it's not starving. Then we progress it to 4, 2, 1 where we add two fasting days. Then we can even progress it further to where we add three fasting days. We keep progressing it along with feast famine. Feast famine. Sometimes some people do better with two feast days, some people do better with three feast days. As a doctor group, because I train these doctors around the country, we work people up to this feast famine cycle and weekly. And it works. And it works because we're forcing the body to adapt and we're driving a hormone optimization.

I really like this.

You and I have done cryotherapy, right? Remember when you and I did cryo together?

Doctor? Oh yeah, yeah. Down at the cryotherapy clinic in Salt Lake, we did cryo. They had a whole room with a bunch of joovv infrared panels and then they had these vibration platforms at the US cryotherapy.

So why did we feel, we all felt euphoric right after we come out of this thing 150 below zero and for three minutes and we come out and we felt amazing and we get this downregulation of inflammation. And what do they explain? Oh, it works because it raises growth hormone in norepinephrine which drives the anti inflammatory effect. Also norepinephrine is how your body balances serotonin and dopamine. So that's why you get the feel good effect as well. Then we went into the hot. What were we creating? We were creating basically feast famine. We're creating adaptation. We're forcing an adaptation to occur, driving our hormones in a positive direction and therefore driving our recovery to be better. No different diet so it's fi.

So the 51 1. To me that seems like a very simple place to start for people. Just to clarify, so five days of the week you go low carb or keto and then one day of the week you choose to do a dinner to dinner fast. Like you stop eating Saturday night at dinner and you don't eat again until Sunday's dinner. And then the remaining day of the week, let's say maybe that's a Monday, starting Sunday at dinner through Monday is a feast day where you're loading back up and eating plenty of healthy carbohydrates and starches.

Correct?

Okay, got it doctor.

Exactly. And by the way folks listening, you folks that are like, well, I don't want to do the carb day, it's as important as the fast day.

Yeah. People feel guilty and they read all this information about blood sugar swings and glycemic variability. And the trick is if you're really good on the ketogenic day and on the lower carb days, then the carbohydrates actually your body serves as almost like this sink, like a sponge for the carbohydrates. And you also get the avoidance of the thyroid downregulation, everything that goes along with long term caloric restriction and ketogenic dieting.

Yeah. And by the way, here's another big point. It's said that people with adrenal and thyroid issues and perimenopausal women, hormone issues, struggle in low carb diets, ketosis and fasting, diet variation, feast famine cycles is the answer for you. Here's another principle of why it works. You need insulin for certain hormone conversions to make from T4, which is a stored inactive hormone, to go to T3, which is the active thyroid hormone that you need to feel good and burn fat. Well, you need insulin to make that conversion. So the lower insulin goes on a long term low carbohydrate diet. Especially if you're already struggling in that area as a perimenopausal woman or person, then you are now not making that conversion. The moment you fire up the fuel with some carbohydrates all of a sudden now you're making that thyroid conversion. We're able to get these low adrenal hormone people, thyroid people, to do low carb diets and fasting. As long as we utilize this feast famine cycling, otherwise it doesn't work.

I really like this. So the one thing I'd throw in because I've done a lot of experimentation and I also coach a lot of athletes and work with a lot of pro sports teams. And obviously you are going through a huge amount of glycolysis and pushing the body sometimes beyond what might be natural or ancestral. And you might need an unnatural means to accomplish an unnatural end if you're a warrior or a gladiator or an athlete. And what I've found in Those folks is this 511 type of thing works really well. Like I try and do once a week a 24 hour fast. And I restrict carbohydrates on several days of the week. But rather than having that one feast day, what I have is a feast meal at the end of every day when I'm in my heavy training cycles, meaning that I eat low carb to no carb the entire day. Lots of packages, plants, vegetables, some fats and then moderate amounts of protein. And then at the very end of the day after an afternoon or evening workout. So I'm even more receptive to carbohydrates. That's when I'll have red wine, dark chocolate, sweet potatoes, yams, higher caloric intake. And for the athletes, I find that for them having to get up and do a hard charging workout in the morning, train, race, scrimmage, etc. That works pretty well to allow them to have the energy levels necessary. Again, we're talking about people who are training hard for an hour and a half plus per day. You know, Ironman athletes, Spartan athletes, folks who are really digging deep. That's the modification I've found to work really well. And that's just cyclic keto. Right. That's an evening refeed. And you can still assuming that. And you should have this a rest day each week, a recovery day each week. That's, that's the day that you do your fast.

Absolutely. And you know, there's also you're emptying the glycogen tank when you're in hardcore low carb too long. I mean you're walking around with half your glycogen. So if you have a big event the next day, you have half your glycogen now. So then to fuel it up the first, you know, the night before, now you're going in with full glycogen. And by the way, the low glycogen, high glycogen, it also creates this adaptation which creates a hormone optimization. Joe Mercola, we were at a seminar one time, it was a cancer summit in Orlando. He asked me about it. He had been a hardcore keto like myself, and he was losing muscle and gaining some fat. He Asked me the question. I said, well, I explained the diet variation, feast, famine cycles and that was it transformed his work. I wrote part of chapter 10 in his book Fat for Fuel on this principle. It works. Bodybuilders figured it out years ago, but you can have the best of both worlds. Let me explain monthly, real fast because so many ladies listening, this will transform your existence on the planet, your relationships, your health, everything. My wife and my son's girlfriend were having a discussion in the kitchen and it was about their cravings the week before their period. I intuitively said, listen to your innate intelligence and give in to the cravings. Make it as healthy as you can, but give in to the higher carbs that you're craving. I walked into my office and I thought to myself, of course you do. Then I thought to myself, well, why aren't I doing this variation monthly? So I started, I got on my doctor training group and I said, here's what we're going to try. I think I tried it a couple times prior to telling them this, that but I said we're going to basically put especially women, by the way this, men, this works for you too. The week before their period, we're going to give them the high carbs, we're going to move them out of the low carb ketosis diet and for one week we're going to do high carbs, even higher calories. Lo and behold, it worked. Why the hormone conversions, Insulin obviously playing a role in thyroid hormone, but also estrogen as well. We need pop the insulin to make these hormone conversions. I'm telling you, it works. That's the monthly variation. By the way, for those of you saying, ah man, I just can't do carbs. I get protein works too. We vary even high protein days, we vary even high protein times. Remember when you were doing kind of like the T. Rex diet, if you will. I said, man, that's awesome.

When I was doing a ton of meat every day, not a full on carnivorous, but pretty close to it, right?

But see, there's a massive benefit from that. Now I want your listeners to understand this. There's two, I said there was two groups of people. You have your plant based people. Those people hate a pathway called MTOR because that TOR pathway is an anabolic pathway that ages you prematurely. Bodybuilders, you all love TOR pathway, growth hormone, all of it. Man, you want to build muscle. The key is could there be a benefit in both because the plant based people, they get more of that autophagy pathway where your body's eating the bad cells. In the fasting times, we get the autophagy. That's one pathway. Imagine that in your left hand and then your right hand is the MTOR pathway, which is that anabolic build phase. My point is this. Stay too long in either, it's not good. I've watched people fast too long. I've watched people go low calories too long because low calories will stimulate this autophagy. I've watched that happen. Matter of fact, There was the Biosphere 2 project where they realized that if we restrict calories for 30% we can live longer. It worked in mice and it worked in fruit flies and yeast. They put themselves for two years, there were seven people in a biosphere and dropped their calories. Well, they absolutely, on blood work, etc. Extended their life a little bit. But the whole project was a fail because actually they became catabolic, their immune systems lowered, they were in autophagy too long, didn't work. On the other side. You stay in that MTOR pathway and the studies do show that you will age prematurely and end up with inflammatory diseases. The point I'm making is this. You can get the best of both worlds, in and out of both. High protein for a period of time, stimulate mtor, I promise you, you'll stimulate some healing. Then the other, you go into a fasting state, stimulate autophagy, you'll stimulate healing and stimulate stem cells. The point is that this feast famine cycle really represents the autophagy pathway and the MTOR pathway and it gets the best of both worlds. You have both sides fighting right now of which pathway is best. Point is, both are best and both can be detrimental as well.

Tell me about your kids because your kids fast. That blew my mind. Tell me about how you incorporated fasting with your family, what happened to your kids when you got them into fasting and how old they were when you started to get your entire family on board with this.

Yeah, all five of my children have fasted. Most of them several times. My daughter Olivia has fasted. I, I can't count how many times and beyond a week she's fasted. My youngest, my 14 year old, when he was 13, he actually, I was preparing for a PowerPoint presentation and there was a picture of a gal who had autoimmune massive psoriasis. I mean, horrific looking picture. But then there was the after picture and she was completely normal again. I was putting it in my PowerPoint. He saw the first pitcher, of course, was interested and he said, oh my God, what is It. I explained what it was. He said, well, did you help her? I said, yeah, there's the after picture. Well, what did you do? I explained fasting and the cellular detox. He had done the cellular detox and understood that. But fasting, he was interested. He just so happened he had this little patch of psoriasis that showed up on his head. It struck his interest. He said, I'm fat. Well, he left the room and I was like, oh, that was interesting. I could see you as interested, but he's a kid. I didn't think he was that interested. He came back five minutes later and said, okay, I'm going to fast. I said, okay, all right. How long should I go? I said, go at least four or five days. He started on the fast. I didn't think he was going to do it. Well, four days later, five days later, seven days later, he ended up going. Now he had. This was my. My chubby son. So he had a little weight that he could play around with.

Yeah. I saw him the last time I was in Park City and I was shocked. He didn't look like the same kid. Like, he was like lean and mean, but not in a bad way. Not, not in like a starved, you know, Ethiopian poster child kind of way. Like, he looked awesome.

Yeah, no, he. He had lost all that fat. But he fasted for 12 days, man.

Kids don't do that. That's not, that's not normal. Did. Was he just self motivated? Did this all on his own?

All his own. Matter of fact, I was trying to tell him to break the fast because Marilee and I were going away. So I'm like, simon, come on, man, you know, break the fast before we leave. He wouldn't do it. He felt amazing, you know, I mean, it was like just transformed. He's my last kid. All of my kids and your kids.

Don'T have eating disorders. By the way. We went to the Mother's Day brunch together and they just punished stuff. Like they're totally foodies. So that's amazing because a lot of. I know people write it and they'll be like, oh, you're giving your kid an eating disorder. But that's not the case. I mean, in a healthy scenario. And I think here's what's important. They saw their parents doing it the right way. And I find like with my kids, a lot of times, rather than me talking to them or trying to convince them to do something, I just go out and do it. Like yesterday I was kicking my own ass running around the yard, hauling sandbags, carrying buckets, preparing for the spartan race that my boys and I are racing this weekend. Well, an hour later, as I'm inside preparing dinner, I look out the window and my boys are carrying buckets around the yard, stopping and doing burpees run. I didn't say a thing to them, right? They just saw dad doing it and realized that this was a good, cool thing to do. And in many cases, that's what it comes down to is being a good example.

Oh, man. Listen, my daughter, you know, she again, they watch me fast, right? And they watch, you know, what mom and I do. And she had a concussion when she was in Spain. It was her second concussion. She said, what should I do? I said, what do you think you should do? She said, fast. I said, start. She fasted for seven days. She got through a concussion literally in a week. Tora Bright, she's a double Olympic gold medalist, and she had seven concussions. And she had been to the best of the best. And she was on Dancing with Starz. You probably know who she is, but she's a snowboarder, Olympic gold medalist, and seven concussions. And she had tried everything, done everything. My cellular detox, which there's a part of it called brain phase, and the fasting transformed her world. And she gave a testimony on my Facebook about it, but it fixed her. As a matter of fact, it put her back into competition, which she didn't think she was ever going to be able to compete again here, where I live in Park City, because I put her back in competition. She actually hit her head twice and got two more concussions, but this time she fasted right away. Look, fasting is amazing. There's seven big things that happen during a fast, an extended fast. Number one, I talked about autophagy. The body gets rid of the bad DNA and the bad cells. Number two is the stem cell rise that raises up and starts the healing process. When you read the testimonies of these 10,000 people we just took through a fast, it's remarkable. Of the things that clear up, I mean, just absolutely remarkable. The innate intelligence knows what to eat and what to upregulate via stem cells. The third big thing is something that I like to call energy diversion, meaning that it takes so much energy to process food, to eat food, to assimilate it, to digest it, to burn it in. The mitochondria make ATP that when you take that away, the innate intelligence has so much energy left, it literally will start to just heal things through a fast. You always get this weird ache, and it's like, oh, this hip. What is going on in the hip? Meanwhile, you remember back in high school, you injured the hip. The body and its innate intelligence will go back and it will utilize that extra energy to start healing things that need to be healed. Every fast, I have something that actually starts to heal that is remarkable. Like, one time it was my knee. The last fast before this one was my kidneys. And they just ate for like two days. But they needed healed. That's a big thing. Your DNA. You turn off bad DNA during fasting. It's remarkable. So you down regulate bad genes and upregulate good genes. You change your microbiome. This is the way that we fix guts. You don't fix a gut by giving people more probiotics, but these ancient healing strategies feast, famine cycles, the fasting. This is how we change the microbiome and actually fix the gut. Then lastly, you benefit from much higher levels of ketones because the ketone levels go so much higher during a fast. And that's what we use to help fix the brain and downregulate cellular inflammation. Actually, there's one more. The hormone optimization. What I already talked about, the elevated growth hormone norepinephrine. Those are seven reasons why fasting changes lives.

Yeah. Even the benefits of ketones themselves, in terms of not just the research for treating Alzheimer's disease or staving off dementia, but improving insulin sensitivity, resulting in the growth of new mitochondria, satellite cell proliferation for anabolism. You know, a whole host of benefits of the endogenous production of ketones that you can get is pretty amazing. And granted, you do get some of those benefits when you just supplement with ketones, which I do, especially for exercise, but nowhere near the amount of benefits that you get from tapping into them. The true ancestral way, which is via fasting. Now, you talked about this fasting challenge that you did with 10,000 people. Are you gonna do another one of those? Because I'm interested in doing it. I know a lot of people would be interested in kind of the, I guess the accountability and also the solidarity, knowing that a whole bunch of other people are fasting along with them. Fill me in on this fasting challenge thing.

Yeah, so it's going to be in October, the next one, and our goal is 100,000. So, yeah, let' swe'll do another podcast, you and I, and we'll getyou know, we're just teaming up, people. All ships rise with the tide. You know, it's just, honestly, I Educate. I bring people on like you during the fast. This last one I brought Jason Fung on and and some other folks interview them during the Facebook Live. Every day I do a Facebook Live and do interviews. I'm educating you all on what's happening every day because every day something is happening during the fast. So we kind of take it day by day. And you're right, the camaraderie, people saying, oh yeah, I experienced that and it's magic. You can go to my Facebook now and actually see all all the videos I've done because there's a group called Fasting for a Purpose. So if you join Fasting for a Purpose group under announcements is like literally every video I did. If you want to know more, I'll.

Put a bunch of links. If you guys go to the show notes@BenGreenfieldFitness.com FeastFamine here's what I'm gonna do. I'll link to all the different things that Dan and I talked about from buying to cyto detox to fast tonic. The things that you could take while you're fasting. Some of the water filtration systems. My interview with Dr. Michael Smith on that Returning to an Ancestral Diet book. And after the podcast, Dan, I'll connect you with him. Some of the organic and biodynamic wines I drink. Other similar episodes I've done about like cellular autophagy and fasting with folks like Naomi Wattel. I'll even put the funny video of me waking up from being sedated during the stem cell surgery. And you can hear Dan's voice in the background. It's a pretty funny one. It's like a two minute long video. It's hilarious.

Practitioners and doctors watching and listening. I should say listening. Naomi Whittle, who you just spoke of, she's speaking at my November seminar. That's November 4th. And you?

Yeah, I'm speaking there too.

You're running the fasting exercise. We're going to be fasting or exercising in a fasting. Fasting state, optimizing our hormones. So practitioners of any type and doctors, if you want to know more, we'll put a link to this seminar and you can. It's in Vegas November 2nd through the 4th.

I'm taking a note to myself to remind Toto get the link in there. That's for like practitioners and physicians and folks like that, right?

Yeah, correct.

Okay, perfect. So I'll link to that as well over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Feast, famine. And then the last thing I was going to ask you or actually I was going to ask you about this. I was going to fill folks in. Dan and I, every year we run this full detox where we take all of Dan's detox knowledge and we combine it with an exercise program that I designed and a whole bunch of different biohacks from sauna to dry skin brushing to different kinds of smoothies that you drink to rebounding. Just like if you wanted like a done for you, zero guesswork detox program. So you could either go toif youif you wanna get in on that, you can do it yourself during the year if you want to, or you can do it with a whole bunch of people and we usually do it in January, but that's@bgdetox.com and I'll link to that as well if you guys just don't want to memorize many URLs. Just the only one you need to go to is BenGreenfieldFitness.com FeastFamine and I'll link to that along with everything else that Dan and I talked about. Dan, dude, we covered a ton of crap. I think we probably knock people out with, with enough good information where we can, we can call this one good and, and let folks visit the website if they've got follow up questions for us because I'm, I'm sure if you're listening, you have some questions. So leave them over there@bengreenful fitness.com feast fam and neither Dan and I will hop in and reply. Thanks for coming on the show, dude.

Yeah, man, I love it. Love you, Ben. We just, we just jive, man. We were functioning in the same world and the same things and love the same things.

I know. I love it because you practice what you preach and like your boys are little beasts and I would love for my kids. I was hanging out with your son Dan, who I think was leaving for Europe before I was hanging out with you. And he's out. We went to the gym together and he's crushing the weights. But then he's also fasting, he's reading, you know, these wonderful spiritual books at the table. It's like, yeah, I, I love what you're doing from a fatherhood standpoint too, dude, so kudos.

Likewise. I love your wife, man. Just.

My wife was, she left your home for the very first thing she did was she called up the Florida stem cell clinic and because she had been talking to your wife merrily and she's going down to the stem cell clinic in Florida to do her like tutor vaginal enhancement and like stem cell cosmetic procedures and. Yeah, so, so she, I think she got interested in that stuff after talking to your wife. So. So yeah, yeah. Youyouyouyou're making a difference at least in, in my own family's life. So keep up the good work, man.

Likewise. Hey, my kids will listen to you oftentimes more than me when it comes to exercise and things like how I.

Know I'm getting your kids swole on sarms and all sorts of fringe stuff too. So there's that. Alright man, well we'll catch up later. And again for those of you listening in, BenGreenfieldFitness.com FeastFamine that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com feastfamine to get access to everything Dan and I talked about. And until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Dr. Dan Pompa signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week.

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