The REAL Reason People Are Getting Sicker & How You Can Fix Your Health NOW | Dr. Daniel Pompa

The number one cause of lead toxicity is in utero. So you get mom's lead because it's normal to lose bone during pregnancy. Out comes the lead into the baby. My wife had extreme high lead levels. She had all these hormone problems. We didn't know where it was coming from. She was. Her methylation was terrible. Long story what that is, but it gets rid of toxic hormones. When you have good methylation, when you have. You don't. You build up toxic hormones. Her mother died of uterine cancer, had breast cancer, ended up with uterine cancer, died. My wife was heading down that exact same road hormonally, and we couldn't fix it. And then we realized she had lead toxicity from her mother. My kids started having gut problems at young ages, and I said, wait a minute. Let's measure their lead off the chart. They had none of their own lead exposures. They got it from her. The number one source of lead is mom. It's normal to lose bone, but lead is stored in the bone into in utero. This is where most Americans are today, right here. A little bit more, and it overflows. I call it the stress bucket, because is that if we overflow it now, the symptoms start. And you also notice that just a little bit of stress if you see what's happening. I just stressed it a little and it overflowed. But if we can get somebody down here, I could stress it a lot more, and that's where we want to be.

All right, so I'm sitting here with Dr. Daniel Pompa in front of me, and I'm super excited for this conversation because it definitely hits close to home as far as. I'm excited to hear your story, but I know you're a renowned expert in cellular health and detoxification, anti aging, the benefits of fasting. And I've, you know, dove into a little bit of your research, and I know you shared that what stemmed you getting into the cellular health field was your own personal story and your own health battles that you were facing. And, you know, from anxiety and brain fog and a lot of these symptoms that I think a lot of people in general face. And we, you know, traditional medicine, they just treat the. The symptoms right? And like, here's another drug. Here's another drug. And I think by the time I was 16, I was on 15 different drugs, and I had no idea what was wrong with me. And so, yeah, so thank you so much for being here.

Yeah. Glad year.

And I'm excited to, you know, share with everyone. I think we definitely Have a health crisis in the world, and traditional medicine has its place, but I don't think that it's a solution for many of the issues that we see. So.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. It's. It's why the world right now is where it is. It's. The health crisis has gotten to a point where it can't be ignored anymore. Here we are. For such a time as this.

Here we are. And so you shared that your personal story was the catal to your journey. And would you mind sharing, like, what your personal story was and how you were able to figure out why you were so sick and get down to the root cause and then ultimately help cure yourself?

Well, I was a lot younger than it was back in 1999, and like so many people, it just started with fatigue. Right. And you just kind of. You have a lot of reasons for that. I just need the rest. I just. I just, you know, two young kids, a lot of reasons. But then, you know, it becomes something that, you know, rest doesn't help. That's what happened. Then it becomes this weird anxiety. Never had that before. And it was. I'm not a worrier. So I knew that was very odd. And then it became like insomnia where I just either couldn't get to sleep, wake up in the middle of night, couldn't get back to sleep. Never had that before. And then it was allergic to this food. I'm intolerant to this. Never had. I could eat anything I wanted. What happened to that? And then the brain fog, right? It's like, I can't, like, what is going on? And that was definitely not normal. It wasn't like, where's my keys? Type of thing. It's like, you can't. Like, I would read things and have to read it over again. I mean, it was like, never happened to me before. I couldn't, like, what was going on from one day to the next. It was getting confusing. I. You know, it's like the weirdest thing when people say brain fog and then the anxiety, too. It's. It doesn't. Those words don't do it justice. But that's the way my life became. All right. So, like, so many people, I start, you know, you start looking for things, right? And, you know, this and that. I realized, okay, yeah, I have. I definitely realized. I. My thyroid wasn't working right because I even had, like, symptoms of my hair thinning. I never had that. My wife was like. I was blaming her for the hair in the drain. She's like, that's your hair. Like, I looked. I was like, she's right. I was like, that's really weird. Oh, it's my thyroid. Because I don't have energy. I. I was getting what I call skinny fat. I was losing muscle. Even though I was working out, I was definitely getting fat where I never had been. So that was odd. No energy, thyroid issue. Address that. As best I could figure out, went and got blood work done. It was normal, though. My blood work was normal. That was odd. My adrenals must be playing. That's why I can't adapt to stress. I have no energy. Address. That didn't work right. So everything that I was trying to do might have helped a little bit, even diet change. I already ate a good diet, honestly. But I even, you know, I couldn't eat certain things. I even ate a better diet. They would give me some result, but not a lasting result. And then that led me to the answer of what it was. Look, I came across something called Mad Hatter's disease. Have you ever heard of that? Okay, most people haven't, but people making felt hats, they became poisoned, literally. They used mercury as part of the process to attenuate mold. And the felt hats that they were using, and they became known as mad hatters. You don't want to be a mad hatter because you know they're mad. I had all the symptoms. I'm like, I am this. So I thought maybe I had mercury toxicity. I went and got a blood work. That blood work where I checked my thyroid, everything. $5,000 worth of blood work all came back normal, including the mercury. Very disappointed. But a year or so later, I was working with a very bright endocrinologist trying to figure out my hormone issues that I had. And he said, you know, I think you have mercury toxicity. I said, ah, I thought so too. I did a blood test, came out negative. Wrong test. That would be if you had acute mercury poisoning, meaning all at once type of thing, or every day. And then I basically, I. I said, okay, what test should I do? And he recommend challenging out of my tissues. And then I did see abnormal accumulation of other heavy metals as well. And bottom line is I asked the question, where do you think I got it from? And he said, do you have any dental work done around the time this all began? And I looked back, and days after I had dental work done is when it started. I just never knew. Wow. So they drilled out two silver fillings which contained 50% mercury. One of my good friends, actually, the dentist, and I Still had some other metal in the mouth, which makes the problem worse. But it basically sent my bucket overflowing, meaning the mercury that I was accumulating in my brain and other parts of my body, it made it worse. And then I got sick. And that was that.

That's crazy. I didn't think that metal in your mouth could make you sick. And nor did I. Yeah, and I actually had a hair test done maybe two weeks ago, and they said I have extreme heavy metals in my body. Body.

Well, you know, hair test isn't even a great way to look at metal either. Matter of fact, when we evaluate a hair test, we look at the mineral ratios, not even the amount of mercury or other metals. It's an indicator that your body's getting rid of it. It's actually a good sign. But when very toxic people get a hair test, you don't see metals. Matter of fact, that was one of the first autism studies where they looked at kids with autism and they realized that's so weird. They never have mercury and other metals in their tissues. Well, it's because their body just didn't get rid of it. So heavy metal. I did a urine test, even at one point, without a provocative agent, and it looked clean. My hair test looked clean. But the fact was, is it was stored in my brain. Listen, there's no perfect test for heavy metals because you can't measure what's in the brain. Most people that have are very sick from heavy metals. It's what's in the brain and deep tissue. And without biopsy, you're not testing that. So even a test where you take a chelator, a water soluble chelator that grabs on and moves out through the urine, then you can measure it, it gives you an idea. But certain metals like mercury, aluminum, they don't, do they? They're deep in the brain. And you really need a different method than just, you know, chelating it and testing it.

Okay, and so what, what'd you do from there? You found out you had heavy metals and then what were kind of next steps for you to get?

Well, look, when you go online, there is so much bad information about detox from. If you just talk to most practitioners, doctors, you have different groups, right. A doctor, a medical doctor might tell you do IV chelation. Well, that's a fast way to make yourself worse because you're using a real chelator. Grabs on, pulls a lot out, goes away. You go home, 10, 12 hours later, you're redistributing metal. Happened to me and I got much worse. So not a good method. And you don't clear the body like that. You can use chelators, but you have to use them correctly. That's a whole thing that I teach. But the bottom line is, is that what you're hearing out there? And then there's people using cilantro, chlorella, this juice, cleanse that cleanse, this 10 day cleanse. All of it is there's so many pitfalls, you know, that at best they don't work at all, but at worst they make you worse. And that's what happened to me. A lot of the things I had to go through and discover and what I teach today, now that I've been teaching for over 20 years, really came out of my journey. And I have to believe God showed it to me. Honestly, I always say I'm not smart enough. I journeyed through it to bring it. But when you go online and you put in detox. Yeah, it's ugly.

Yeah. And it's such a buzzword.

It is. Especially today because I think people are now aware that they know that toxins are why they're sick. Toxins are why their hormones are disrupted, why they have brain fog, anxiety talks. I mean, it's out there now, but the problem is now. And my passion has become to take a message to the world. And by the way, when I was sick, that was given to my wife. That's a real message. Literally when she was on her knees crying out to God for an answer from me and my family. I have two kids then, I have five now. But God spoke to her heart and said, not only am I going to get him well meaning me, but he's going to take a message to the world. When she would say that to me, Hannah, I would say, I don't. How do you say these things? I said, I can't even get myself well. I was, it made me so angry when she would say that because for me it just, it was just more on my shoulders of something I already couldn't figure out. I was embarrassed. I was the doctor, I was the healthy one. Now I'm sick. It just pouted on top of me that I had to do one more thing so I would get angry. But here I am on this show, you know, and taking a message to the world, coaching doctors for 20 years and everything I learned in it. I do believe God gave it to me for this, for such a time as this. I mean, honestly, when I got sick, there was not many people dealing with that today. Oh my Gosh, I mean, look at thyroid conditions. They've just skyrocketed because thyroid is just the. That's why my thyroid was dysfunctioning. My blood work was normal, but my thyroid hormone wasn't able to get its message in the cell because something was driving inflammation. That something is toxins. No one told me that. Right. So you can look at your blood work, even make it normal by taking hormones and go, I still don't feel well. That's a toxic issue. Nobody told me that. Right. But that wasn't common that today this is what people are dealing with, most people really identify with. Something's not right with my hormones, something. So we have a world taking people, taking hormones, it's not the answer. There's a time and a place, no doubt, but people don't feel well. With all the symptoms that we mentioned and all the thyroid condition, you know, the uprise of diabetes, weight loss, resistance, all of it, you know, all these things that people are dealing with, that is a toxic issue. And the only reason I know what I know is because I went through it. And the last 10 years, these numbers have just gone up to such a point where people are crying out for detox. What do I do? Right? And yet the answer is not there so easily.

Yeah. And what do you think the biggest misconception is about detox? In the way it's used today?

Real detox is a cellular problem. I don't want to confuse people with slick biochemistry, but let's keep it as simple as we can. Your cells are designed to get rid of toxins day in, day out. We have 50 trillion of these things in our body. Right? When you make energy in your cell, it's like burning wood in a fireplace, right? You make smoke. But if the damper's open and the smoke goes out, you have heat. That's the energy and that's what you want. But what if something closes that damper? What if there's certain toxins that are closing the dampers of your cells, shutting them down? And now when you make energy in your cell, which we need to feel good, think clear, digest food. When you're making that energy, like burning the wood in the fireplace, that smoke is not getting out. And people die from smoke, not flames. Your cells are dying from the same thing. Your cells become smothered, right? Just like if you took a candle and this and put it smothered it like that, it's like it dies out and the toxins are left to be accumulated in the glass or your cells. That's what's happening? So people's cells are accumulating toxins at a very high rate. You know what else happens? The more that happens, the less cellular energy that that occurs that you have. Oh, and the less cellular energy you have means the less ability to get rid of those toxins that occurs. And so now you build up even more. Then it drives something called inflammation, and now it causes even more symptoms. Oh, and then it triggers your genes that we all have bad genes, but it turns those genes on. So now, yeah, you get the thyroid condition or the diabetes or whatever. It's the autoimmune diagnosis perhaps, or maybe you just don't know. Just a bunch of symptoms that you have and can't explain. But it's because that cell is accumulating toxins. So the real detox, to answer your question, is fixing, upregulating, what God put in every one of us that that cell should be doing day in, day out to get rid of the toxins that it makes when it makes energy and then accumulates because of the amount of toxins that we're under from makeup, cologne, you know, plastic, drinking, all of it. Heavy metals from the air, whatever. But our cells are designed to get rid of that. That's real. Real detox is we have to fix what's broken. If you want to feel well, my saying is if you to fix, you have to fix the cell to get well. Real detox is a cellular issue. So if we can fix that, we actually fix ourselves. Yeah, that's where real detox is. It's not so simple to just sit in a sauna. I'm for saunas. But you have to fix what's broken at the cell. Foot baths, 10 day cleanse this, cleanse this liver cleanse. No, it's. It's not that simple. It's not like that.

So how do you do it?

Yeah, well, it's so funny. This is the first time I was recording something in this studio even before you came in.

Right.

This is the first time I'm actually certifying the average person in this process. 20 years I teach doctors how to do this. I have what is called my five Rs. That is a roadmap of that. How do we fix that cell? Right. How do we upregulate the detox pathways? The five Rs became a roadmap that I remember. There's a story behind it, because I was, I came, I was lecturing a group of doctors in California and I was flying back and I was excited that like, this is it. I'm coming out of my skin right now. But I realized I was the only excited one in the room. So I either spoke over their head, maybe it was too many studies, but I said, man, I just need a way of communicating this. I did such a poor job. I literally prayed. And it was moments later that all these things started coming to my head. I picked up my notebook, and the five Rs was born. It was the roadmap needed to communicate this. So this is the first time I'm actually certifying the average person in these five Rs and how to do it. It's, it's. It's a. It is a roadmap. It's different for everybody. Real detox for you. There's a science and an art around it, but. And then my pompa program now is, instead of just teaching doctors to do it, is I've taught 100 coaches, literally the methods. And we take people into my program and do it because it's not like. It's not like, just take this box of pills, right? That's silly. Scientists get it. Doctors don't. You know, you have to teach people the process, and then they can do it long enough to matter. So my passion is that message is spreading that. And again, so I have a certification program where I teach certified people in it. Maybe there'll be a coach. Maybe they'll just use it for them and their family. And then I have a program that people can go through to get their lives back, to learn how to really get toxins out of their cells.

Okay, and how do people, like, begin that program and. And what's the timeline and I guess cost for, like, if I want to go through the program?

Yeah. So, I mean, you. You hire your own coach, right? And we start with a core of what I would call, like, this is the key to detox, right? You up. You have to up regulate the cell functions, right. As I'm explaining. But then you have to open up downstream detoxes, docs, detox pathways. There's a prep phase that's kind of where we prep you for. There's a body phase, and then the most important phase is a brain phase. All that happens in about five months. That said, the goal, then you graduate with the ability to be able to do this the rest of your life because you're not going to ever stop getting introduced to chemicals. That's what's happening on the planet right now. From your makeup, from the water that we drink, from the food that we eat from, from everything that we're putting on and in our bodies. You know, it is overwhelming. So you, everyone to be healthy today, I know that they need to be have this understanding of what we need to do. Once you get the bulk out of your tissue, then it's much easier to periodically do this process to keep it moving out of the body so we function normally. Like me, I went from that person and believe me, I'm just scraping the surface. It was worse than I'm doing. If my wife were here, she'd be like, it was way worse than that. Are you kidding me? I'm making it sound easy to, you know, here I am now thriving, you know, but that, that's the, the idea is to teach people the process. They do it long enough to matter. And so, you know, I mean that, that is a process that we start with a simple cellular inflammation test and go from there. And because it is a little different for everybody that evolution. That's why you have a coach. Because even though it starts with a core, it's very personalized what toxins, you know, somebody has, you know, vers, you know, versus the next person.

Okay, so. So the toxin spray that the doctor gave me isn't going to be the answer.

Yeah, not that simple.

Six sprays in the mouth twice a day for three months.

Yeah, right. Yeah. Let's see. Think about that logically. Like, come on, really? I mean, think about these, these toxins that we're talking about accumulated from the womb and they keep accumulating to the tomb. Meaning. There's a German study called the Drash study. The what it showed is, ladies, the number of silver fillings in your mouth, that's those silver amalgam fillings that made me sick. They contain 50% mercury. The number of fillings in mom's mouth is proportional to how much mercury they found in the baby's brains on autopsy. So that's very accurate. The point is, the number one cause of lead toxicity is in utero. So you get mom's lead because it's normal to lose bone during pregnancy. Out comes the lead into the baby. By the way, all of my kids health issues. My wife had extreme high lead levels. She had all these hormone problems. We didn't know where it was coming from. Her methylation was terrible. Long story what that is, but it gets rid of toxic hormones. When you have good methylation, when you don't, you build up toxic hormones. Her mother died of breast or uterine cancer, had breast cancer, ended up with uterine cancer, died My wife was heading down that exact same road hormonally, and we couldn't fix it. And then we realized she had lead toxicity from her mother. My kids started having gut problems at young ages. And I said, wait a minute, let's measure their lead off the chart. They had none of their own lead exposures. They got it from her. The number one source of lead is mom. It's normal to lose bone, but lead is stored in the bone into in utero. The point is, is that this is where we start our detox. This is where we start toxifying our lives. And imagine we all have a bucket. Can they see this?

Yeah.

Okay, this is a great example. I hope you can see the water line. It's right here.

Yeah. Probably hold it closer to your face.

Okay.

Right here.

Can you see? Yeah. Can they see the water line? Okay, here it is. Now, this is where most Americans are today, right here. A little bit more and it overflows, right? And we do that, right. A little bit more stress. And by the way, I call it the stress bucket. Because fact is, is that physical, chemical, emotional stress, the body doesn't know the difference. It fills this bucket. Now, genetically, some of us are blessed and have bigger buckets and some have smaller buckets, right? But fact is, is that if we overflow it now, the symptoms start. And you also notice that just a little bit of stress. And if you see what's happening, I just stressed it a little and it overflowed. But if we can get somebody down here, I could stress it a lot more. And that's where we want to be. So. But this starts filling in utero and it starts filling to the time we get here. Maybe in our 30s, maybe 20s, maybe whatever, right. Today it's happening in kids. They're filling up their buckets much sooner. But the fact is, is that 10 day cleanse or liver cleanse or the spray for whatever, really, it's going to empty that. See, scientists go, no, it's accumulated in the tissue. If it all came out that fast, you'd be dead, number one. So it doesn't happen like that. Yeah, right. And it doesn't happen with getting your cell without getting your cells doing it.

And the more toxicity each generation has, the more toxic the tissues are of the children.

What we're seeing, and here we are, we have autoimmune happening in your generation. For the first time ever, we have cancer in kids, right? 67% increase. I mean, in the, in the last, you know, 50 years. I mean, these are big numbers, I mean, 70% increase. This isn't normal, but it's become normal. And then your generation, for the first time, it's, it's hard to. Most people are on medications just coping, but it's become so normal to your generation to use stimulants just to get through a day. Right. My generation didn't do that. There was nobody in my classroom that was on these medications. I'm 60 years old. So, you know, we, we might have had one person that had a food allergy in our whole school. Yeah, there wasn't any in the classroom today. I mean it's, it's half the classroom has food, maybe more for all I know. But they're also on anti anxiety medications and different stimulants for their brain. This is the norm. You think maybe it's the toxins? Yes. It's not just so simple wording, more processed food. No, the food is a carrier of the, the toxins that are really driving the problem. Our kids, buckets are full and what are we going to do about it? You know, Bobby Kennedy, Robert Kennedy Jr. You know, he is, you know, make America healthy again. He knows it's the toxins, right? Yes. Processed food is part of it, but it's the toxins that is making the difference. Look, if we look at the toxins that we're allowed here in the United States versus even Europe and other countries, it's amazing what they have outlawed and we are still ingesting. And when you look at our health statistics compared to those every year, it's changing drastically. The toxins are the problem.

Yeah. And so like, is there a role that mental and emotional health plays in cellular detox? Because it's something I'm always really curious about.

A bigger role than you can imagine. And when we look at everything that the younger generation is going through that older generations didn't it, it is all being driven by these toxins. If you look at how these toxins are accumulating in the brain driving inflammation, it's no wonder people need drugs to exist. If you look at the connection of certain toxins with just anxiety disorder, let alone social disorders, let alone depression, mercury is a number one. One of the first signs is depression. I was so depressed that I didn't want to live. And that's when I said, I'm making it sound easier. My wife would tell you there was times she was hiding the knives because I just wanted to take my life. I never planned it, but there was times where it was easier for me to be dead. Than to live like that. And by the way, my fear was never dying. My fear was living life like it was right. And I didn't, I didn't have. People just weren't throwing around anti anxiety meds that you know. But arguably I could have landed on one. And it works in the short term. And I'm not telling anyone to take a medication or not. But the fact is is that it's not getting to the real cause of why most people can't even get their brain to feel normal. And over generalizing how people feel. But that's the problem.

Yeah, because I know, I mean for me my gut issues are so bad that's like every and not. It's not even just healthy food versus unhealthy food is like very so many foods. I mean pretty much the only thing that doesn't make me feel sick is most meat and a handful of vegetables and fruits, but they're still like apples. Inflamed me by the way.

That's why the carnivore diet is so popular now where people just eat meat because they're reacting to the lectins and the phytates and vegetables and things that people never reacted to. Now they are why? Because their gut is wide open. And we didn't even explain that. Toxins affect this brain directly where they accumulate in the brain and affect how it works. But the second brain is your gut. Toxins affect that. And this gut, this brain, their gut and this brain, when that's communicating and all working, it's great. But a lot of how this is works about how this gut works. So toxins have decimated the gut health, what we call the microbiome of the population. You need certain bacteria to make certain brain chemicals like serotonin, dopamine so you just feel normal. Oh, and when you have certain bacteria that have been destroyed by certain toxins, you don't make those. So what we're trying to do is give people those chemicals. Doesn't work that easy because there's a communication between these two brains and when that works, all is well. But if you can't make enough of those brain chemicals because you don't have enough bacteria because toxins have wrecked it, Good luck. Right. We have to get to the real cause of why. Right, holding up the bucket again. Or the real cause of why people have gut problems, have brain problems. It's the toxins. Yeah, absolutely. And then the food allergies because the toxins cause inflammation of the gut barrier. And now it opens up, it's Meant to open up for certain things to move in and out, like certain immune cells and nutrition. But now it's left open. And now undigested proteins from food, dairy, whatever it is, go across that barrier into the bloodstream where now you make antibodies. So now when you eat it again, it crosses again. Now you have this antibody reaction where inflammation throughout your body. You feel horrible. What is going on? And you've narrowed it down to, I can't eat this. I can only eat this without reacting. Well, that's where we are as a country. And the answer isn't another diet. It's not. The answer is get rid of the cause of what's creating this leaky gut and immune challenge and dealing with that then. And sometimes we have to avoid foods. Right, because you have to function. But if you're not working upstream from the real problem, we're never going to get. Well, a great example. Everyone's trying to take different probiotics to fix their gut. It's not so simple if you just bought a brand new piece of property on a river, beautiful property, but you walk down and you realize there's all these dead fish and algae and plants. You spend a lot of money repopulating that, putting fish in the water, stocking it again, and you realize in three months it's all dead again. So you spend even more money, do a better job, hire a better company. And then finally your neighbor comes over and says, hey, George, you might want to save your money. 20 miles up the river, they're dumping mercury and lead or whatever other toxin into the water. You know, how are you going to repopulate that? You're not until you get rid of the factory upstream. Right. So we better deal with what's upstream if we're going to fix the gut problem. And even in alternative medicine, I fear we're not doing that. I fear when we're ignoring the big thing that people are tripping over and that is the amount of toxins. So, number one, we have to eliminate what's going into our bodies. And that's my social media page. Right. It's like, stop doing this, stop using this, Stop. Right. It's filled with that. But we also then have to deal with what is accumulated. And that's my certification of my program.

Yeah. And you talk a lot about fasting. It's something that you're passionate about. And we hear a lot of mixed signals on fasting. And I have a love hate relationship with fat. You know, we hear, I think it's 72 hours of fasting, your body goes into autophagy where it can stop focusing, focusing on digesting food and it can start healing cells. Right. And I, I've heard statistics, wild statistics about like doing a seven day fast once a year can almost, almost eliminate your likelihood of getting cancer and these types of things. And then other people on the argument will say it slows down your metabolism and, and maybe like someone. For me, I've struggled a lot with binge eating, like fast, binge, fast, binge. And so it can be a little bit mentally difficult for me because my brain goes into, I want to eat everything in the world after I came off a fast. And, and then I, you know, kind of want to fast to compensate for overeating and all these things. So like, can you share a little bit about the, the benefits and potential setbacks of fasting and how to approach that for positive.

Here's the funny thing. Everything you said is correct. But now let's put it in context because fasting is a strategy. I've, I learned, I started studying fasting in the 90s and I was really into fasting when nobody was. Now it's in vogue. But now what I see is a lot of people fasting incorrectly. So everything you said is actually true. But that said, fasting is probably one of the most amazing tools that I've ever seen to harness innate intelligence. Meaning your body has an innate inborn ability to heal itself. And fasting is a way to harness that. But people are doing it wrong. So. And because it's very popular, you can see that people are fasting too much and not understanding that the feast is as important as the fast. Meaning we can't just stay in these fasted states. Okay, so let's take some things off the table for confusion's sake. Okay, so there's extended fasts where we're talking about right beyond a day, right. Where it's 3 days, 5 days, 10, 20, 30. Okay, so those are extra extended fast and there's benefit to those. Are there some people who shouldn't do that? Absolutely, we can talk about that. Then there is daily intermittent fasting where people fast for 15 hours, 18 hours, maybe one day. Right. So. Or eat two meals a day. Maybe they eat one meal a day. Right. So that's become very popular. So just be clear, intermittent fasting is, you know, fasting in within a day and then extended fasting is beyond, both have benefits. Let's talk about the intermittent fasting first because this is where it's gotten really popular. It works for People for weight loss, they eat less. They eat less by eating less often. And that is a better way to do it because it will hold your metabolism better. Meaning that if you just calorically restrict, we all know this, that it doesn't work long term. You'll lose weight in the beginning. And then you have to restrict, restrict to your practically nothing. And you're getting skinny fat. Your body's eating its muscle because your metabolism slowed down and it's gaining fat in all the wrong places. Caloric restriction long term does not work. But if you eat just one meal a day or maybe two, okay, that works better because the body doesn't think necessarily it's starving as quick. But now what we're finding is people just eating one meal a day or two, they're getting more and more restrictive and their body still goes, I'm starving. And so now these people, you can tell who they are when they're doing too much daily intermittent fasting. So one of the things that I developed is my four, two, one, where you do basically one day a week, you always feast. Some people need two, some people need three where you eat healthy amount of healthy carbohydrates because they're too low carb, they're too fasted. By putting in that feast day, it reminds the body it's not starving. Okay? So that's what people that are fasting now need to hear, that you have to feast. So when you look at these ancient tribes who do this type of eating, even fasting, eating one meal, but they have days where they're feasting. And so people aren't feasting. And if they're feasting, they're probably feasting on junk. You don't want to do that either.

Yeah, I like my cheat day, actually. But when I was in the best shape of my life and felt the best, I was like clean, you know, organic pasture, raised meat and vegetable during the week. And then in a deficit, A deficit. And working out hard every day. And then on the every Saturday, I would do like my hardest workout in the morning and then I would have a feast day. That's good, you know, was.

And that works. So you can deficit, but you have to remind the body it's not starving. So imagine you buy this piece of. Or let's just say you live in the middle of Alaska, right? And every winter, you know how much wood it takes you to get through the winter. This winter in particular is the worst winter ever. And you run, or you're running, you notice you're running out of wood sooner than you did before. So what are you going to do? You're going to burn less wood, and instead of your cabin being at, you know, 70 degrees, you're going to be happy at 50 to 55 to save your life. So you make it through the winter with the amount of wood you have, right? So think of the wood as the energy that you have, your metabolism. And so now you're burning less because you're trying to get through a cold winter because you don't want to freeze to death. But your friend comes over and says, oh my gosh, I have so much wood. Let me just give you more, okay? And he dumps a lot of wood. What are you going to do now? You're going to start burning more of it, bring it back up to 70? Well, that's exactly what your body does when you give a, give it a feast day. So you go, oh my gosh, I don't have to starve anymore. I'm not going to burn less wood. Right. I'm going to be able to burn my fat now, no problem. Because, see, when your body thinks it's starving, just like the guy in the middle of Alaska, it's going to hold on to its fat. In other words, it's not going to burn its wood, it's going to hold on to it. Oh, and it'll eat your muscle. And now your metabolism is getting worse and worse because your body's now in a starvation mode. That's where caloric restriction ends. But if you remind it and feast, you know, and again, it doesn't have to be the jelly donuts. You know, when you feast, you can do healthy carbs and, but you have to make sure it knows that it's not going to starve, you know, and then it'll keep its metabolism up. Some people need three of those a week, some people one. Right. So. But you have to remind the body it's not starving.

Okay. And so for intermittent fasting versus extended fasting, are, are there still the cellular toxicity and detoxification benefits?

Oh, people that are toxic have trouble what we call fat adapting. Okay, follow me. Your cells can only use two things for energy, sugar or fat. Healthy people have the ability to use one or the other. Okay, so let's say that I'm, I didn't eat today, which I haven't yet, actually, my body will burn fat for an energy source. Toxic people have trouble making that transition into fat burning. So their cells are stuck because toxins affect where we burn energy in the mitochondria they're stuck as sugar burners. Okay. With the inability to use fat very efficiently. So now it has two choices. It could give you a craving and say, hannah, eat that bread. And you listen and eat and you go, okay, I feel better. My brain got what it wanted or you're not. It knows it's not going to win with you, so it taps into its muscle and it takes muscle and makes sugar from it. It's called gluconeogenesis. So now you're burning muscle long term, you feel okay, you're barely eating, but you're going, I have plenty of energy. Because you're using your muscle and your tissues and you're becoming, in this catabolic state, going less and less metabolism. And by the way, this is where all the cheat drugs are doing to people too. Semaglutide, all it's doing is putting people in a catabolic state. They're losing cartilage, they're losing muscle, and their metabolism is going down to one day where it doesn't work anymore. But remember your cells. What should happen is a healthy person that's not toxic has the ability to use fat as energy.

So.

So when I'm not eating, my body's using its fat and it all works great. It stays away from its muscle, my metabolism sets up. But if I stay in that deficiency too long, then I'm going to end up just like this person. Right. So we have to remind it it's not starving. You know, feasting is important as the fast, but you understand that shift from, you know, being, we call it metabolically flexible to fat burning when you're not eating. That breaks in toxic people. So what I explained to people is the real reason we have weight loss resistance, meaning you can't lose weight despite diet. I did all this. I did all. It's because it's a hormone problem caused by toxicity. That's the big issue. That's why people are like, I don't have enough energy. They get skinny fat. We see this generation of, you know, people struggling with this.

Yeah.

Reaching for drugs.

Do you. Oh, there's something. Questions I can ask you, but do you, do you have to be following like a keto type diet to make that transition easier? Or if you're healthy, your body can automatically make that transition.

I teach something called diet variation. So I may be the only one in this space that preaches this. Mindy Peltz, who is one of my students, she's written several books on fasting. Fast like a girl. But in other ones that she's written. But I believe that switching diets is key. Every ancient culture never stayed in one diet. They were forced to switch diets. The problem today is we are able to stay in one diet. So therefore you have your keto people, you have your low carb people, you have your high protein people, you have your plant based people, you have your vegans, vegetarians, and I make an argument for all of those diets. I just did that, what I taped here before you came in. I showed the science on how staying in one diet, any diet too long causes bad, causes problems. Staying in a plant based diet too long, you start reacting to lectins and these plant toxins. Staying in keto causes something, a rise in something called that. Your body stores up this nasty free radical called 4 hydroxynen alone and it'll build that up and they'll say staying in carnivore keto too long causes cancer. You're right. If you stay in it, you'll build it up too long, you can't stay in it. But for short periods. Keto diets, carnivore. Every ancient culture moved in and out of these diets and they're, they're absolutely important. They moved in and out of higher healthy carbohydrate diets, they moved in and out. So I believe and what I teach doctors is switch diets and how to successfully do that. That and I call it feast, famine, cycling and but anyway, so yeah, I think that we have to understand that there is a benefit to improving our gut microbiome by using diet rotation. Switching diets, that's hard for people because they get used to these safety foods. So we have to show people how to do it slowly, but we need to do it.

Yeah, I actually just recently heard that from the ultimate nutrition bible, some book I read on these bodybuilders, builders and I guess that was back in the day, I don't know, Arnold Schwarzenegger or something was like all carnivore. All carnivore and then would switch to all plant based and was able to maximize lean, you know, muscle and things.

It's so funny you said that because I, I didn't read that, but I even in the talk that I did before this, I said the bodybuilders figured it out even on the, the feast days. So what do they do before a couple competition, they absolutely feast. They hate high, super high carbohydrates. Most of them just eat pizza, probably pasta, but they eat high carbohydrates to go into the competition the next day, leaner, more vascular, and more pumped. And that's what feast days do. Right. It's like they just fire up that metabolic engine again.

Yeah.

So bodybuilders learn that, but also. Yeah, they learned that diet rotation. That you can't stay in this, you know, always in this high metabolic diet. You know, the rotation really is the key.

Yeah.

So.

And your body, I think from what I'm hearing from you and, and what I've heard from the research I've been trying to do on my health journey, is that as much variability as you can do in the healthy way to avoid homeostasis or homeostasis is the best. Like the diet rotation, like the intermittent, intermittent fasting or feast versus fast and all these things. Because otherwise the body is so good at adapting.

Exactly.

And too much of any good thing, good things bad.

You just tapped into a premise that I teach every doctor to understand and person that's willing to listen. Hormesis. Hormesis is a premise that'll change your life if you understand it and apply it not just to diet, but to exercise or just about anything in your life. Even this cold bath revolution that we're understanding. You have to understand this principle to really maximize saunas, cold baths, diets, exercise. Here it is. The premise is, is if we stress a biological system like us and we adapt, we get stronger, faster, smarter. All the benefits. If we stress a biological system, if we don't adapt, we get weaker, slower, dumber, more sick, less unhealthy, you know, you name it. So the key is, if we don't stress the system, we don't get stronger, better, faster, smarter. So we have to stress the system. The question is, is how do we do that without going overboard? If you think about exercise, it's the easiest to understand. So when you first start going to the gym, you get results. It's different. It's a stress. If you keep doing that same exercise that you started with, you will no longer get results. It will start to actually go in a diminishing fashion of results. So therefore then you hire a trainer because you're frustrated, you're not getting results anymore. First thing that they do is come in and they start changing the stress. They do more of this, less of this. Does it up the reps, up the weight, up the, you know, and they keep making those changes. The reason, because they've been educated on this premise that if you don't keep changing the stress, hence diet variation. Right. Or all these things we're talking about Then it won't be perceived as a stress, you will not get stronger. Oh, and then they're telling you to do all these things so you adapt to the exercise. Because if you don't adapt and you do too much, then you get weaker, not stronger. So exercise variation has been known for a lot of time, many, many years. Diet variation does the same thing when we switch, when we feast, when we famine, when we fast, when we switch diets. All of that is creating the same hormone optimization is that we see when we change our exercise. We need to change diet to even cause more diversity in our microbiome. That means create more good guys that help our brain work, that help our immune system work. You don't do it by taking pills. We do it by stressing it by changing diets or feast famine. So we're doing the same strategy now. Let me just bring it home with the ice bath thing that, that's so popular right now. Most people are violating hormesis and they're not getting the positive reaction that they really want long term. When they first do it, it works. Their body adapts. It thinks it's going to die. It upregulates something called norepinephrine, which upregulates growth hormone and they feel amazing and they d inflame. But then it starts not working because what happens is, is the body starts not adapting because they're doing too much time. They're doing three minutes because they saw Ben Greenfield do three minutes. Right. Or five minutes worse yet. And then the body starts not adapting to that. And when it doesn't adapt, it gets weaker, more inflammation, everything, more hormone issues and you start going, gosh, I'm tired. See, because oftentimes you don't know that it's the next day or that it affected your deep sleep that night, showing you that it didn't adapt, that you didn't adapt to the stress. There was a study done showing that 10 minute cold showers worked better than the longer 3 minute ice bath. No, it's because they were taking average people that 10 minute shower or it was 10 seconds of cold. I think actually 10 seconds of cold worked better because they were adapting to that stress. So it looked like it was better, but it was better because these people couldn't adapt to three minutes. So the point is people were doing too much. They're not adapting to the cold and it's working against them, not for them.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense because I mean, I think our society and this culture in America is always rewards for More Right. Like, oh, I did five minutes. I. Now I'm gonna do seven minutes. Now I'm gonna do 10 minutes. And I got up to the point where I was doing 25 minutes in the sauna and then eight minutes in the cold plunge and cycling that for like, 45 minutes. And I would be sick. I would, like, I would be sick for three days. And I'm like, how is this healthy? And then I quit altogether.

Yeah. You know, Exactly. And again, I'm not against cold baths. I'm not against saunas. I'm against people doing too much of it and not adapting. And if you're already challenged, these people should be doing way less time in a cold bath. This is the people that should be doing 10 seconds and going, okay, there. Now you know, I got my body to react. Right. But you have to. The question I always get is, well, how do I know? You have to evaluate how you feel. Not right away. We all feel good when we come out of a cold bath. Adrenaline goes up. Right. We all feel good. It's. How did you sleep that night? You can use, like, aura rings or different things, because if your HRV is going down, you're not adapting. And it may. Right. I've challenged people to see where your adaptation is. It might surprise you. And then how do you feel the next day? You know, are you waking up sluggish, you know, because you may be doing too much.

Okay, that's good. Because I wear a whoop band and my aura rings on order. But so that's interesting to know. So the next day. So, like, if I cold plunge or sauna, do some sort of testing today, my HRV the next day that I look at what it was.

Yeah. See what it was that night. See how you slept. Because if you don't adapt, it will. Something's going to be affected. Your deep sleep, your REM sleep, your sleep in general.

Yeah. Okay. So what do you think are the trends in health and wellness? Like, where do you think the future is leading in health and wellness? And is there any, like, trends that you're excited about or any breakthroughs that are going on that you're excited about?

Let's talk about some trends that I'm. I'm not thrilled about. You know, a lot of the genetic testing is very in vogue right now, and I think it's cool. And I, you know, it gives ideas, but that's. It's more complicated than people think. Epigenetics, meaning your body has the ability to go around a lot of these snips Right. And your body has the ability. It's our environment, it's our epigenome above the genome is really what causes most illnesses. Today we're looking at these little genetic snips and saying, oh, you should be this or you have trouble detoxing or it's way too general. It gives ideas and it's. If it were only so simple to be able to tell you what to eat based on your genetic SNPs or what you should take or not take. It's not every year we discover new snips that go around other SNPs. Oh, you have this, but look, you have this and this. That kind of counteract that again, innate intelligence. It's. It's not as simple as people are making it. So I'm not excited about that. A lot of the microbiome testing, gut testing is the same. I think we thought it would be like we could study this and change your diet. We realized that it changes so rapidly, your microbiome that the one thing that's very consistent is looking at people diversity. The more diverse someone's bacteria and their gut is, the healthier they are, the less diversity, the less healthy they are. That holds true. And it's very accurate to measure that. So I like that. But I think the biohacking craze is focusing on the minors and ignoring the majors. I love them. I mean, I have red light. I have, you know, I do all these things. I love it. But I recognize it, that it's the minors. None of those things got my life back. None of them. What got my life back was getting to the big cause of why people are so sick. The majors are the toxins that we're bringing in our body through our food and water. Yes. You know, these are the majors that people need to realize and. But we love the little miners. We love the little biohacks. And they're fine if you don't ignore the majors.

Yeah. And that's what's fun, Right. People don't want to, I guess the cellular health, it's not. It's more abstract and people just want like a quick fix. Like me. I'm like, how do I fix it today, doctor?

So it runs in like. Then it's the next red light. Right. I'm not against red lights. I love red lights. But the point is it's not like going to get. You fix you. Right. It can be part of your journey. But, you know, but people are looking for that one little miracle thing, right? Yeah. Instead of, wait a minute. Hold on. Let's get our cells working and let's get the toxins out of our brain and our deep tissue. Yeah, that sounds really boring, and it sounds like something that I have to commit to.

Yeah, I know.

Except if I could just buy that and take that and that's great.

Yeah. The easy, easy pill.

Yep.

But what are your take. What is your take on the GLP ones? The semi glutide, the tirzepatide, and this new one that I just bought, the Refuge or whatever it's called.

I look at you and go, why would you buy that? You don't need that. Okay, so, yeah, tell my therapist that. Yeah, I was back around when everyone was into the. Gosh, what was it? The. The ghb. Right. It was the. It was the weight loss thing that basically it allowed you to go on a low calorie diet and not burn muscle. So low calorie diets with this was the. It was everywhere. Right. And I kept saying, hey, long term, this is a bad idea. What happens when you stop this? Ghb, gb. I'm dyslexic, so I flip three letters all the time in my brain. But anyway, so.